pjb05 wrote on Jun 1^st, 2008 at 10:21am:


Was Mann discredited ? No. Again, you should be discriminating in your use of Wikipedia. (I realise that I quoted a Wikipedia site before)

Stephen Schneider's site provides a reasonable explanation of this episode and the infamous McIntyre and McKittrick paper (Often referred to as the M&M Paper).

Schneider is a qualified climatologist who frequently appears in the media, including the ABC.

http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Climate/Climate_Science/Contrarians.html

"Mann and his colleagues and other members of the scientific community were outraged when they learned of the publication of the McIntyre/McKitrick article. Most credible scientific journals receiving criticism of previously published work typically give the authors under fire the chance to review and respond to an article challenging their claims. Energy & Environment never gave Mann and his colleagues that chance, and it was not clear whether any of the reviewers who did look over the paper were well-known climatologists or other natural scientists qualified to judge the validity of such a paper (nor have I seen any evidence that McIntyre and McKitrick have any training in climatology or natural science!). In fact, it is well known that the editor of Energy & Environment, Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, has sometimes allowed her political agenda, rather than the high standards of scientific peer review, to dominate the content of the journal. In 2003, Boehmer-Christiansen also allowed the publication of another Soon and Baliunas paper nearly identical to the one published in Climate Research (discussed above), and she is known to be against ratification of the Kyoto Protocol and supportive of the work of Bjørn Lomborg, another contrarian (discussed below). Though Energy &  Environment is geared toward social scientists, she told the Chronicle of Higher Education that she published scientific papers that refute the notion that global warming is a problem because there are very few outlets for such work. This practice fits nicely with her political stance (see, e.g., Parsons, 1995 — comment on page two) and calls the objectivity of Energy & Environment into question. (See an e-mail from Boehmer-Christiansen regarding the McIntyre/McKitrick paper to Michael Mann that was posted on the internet and an e-mail response from co-author Raymond Bradley)."

You probably need to know a bit about Stephen McIntyre too:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Stephen_McIntyre

Which of these men would you buy a second-hand car from?

I don't think it can be said with any certainty the the present rate and extent of warming is unusual.

In the face of such uncertainty a precautionary approach is the only rational one. Failure to take 'evasive action' until you are 100% certain it is necessary will give you a certain outcome - that eventually you will be too late to solve a problem of your own creation.

It was noticed a couple of significant and fairly well accepted climatological history facts to be conspicuously missing.  The first was the well-documented "Medieval Warm Period"

It is not missing. It is all there.

The second was the "Little Ice Age", a period in which the temperatures dropped so low the Thames River in London froze over.

Also there.

I had a look at Source Watch Muso. I got a laugh out of this - apparently they are against the nuclear industry! Even though it is the only proven large scale baseload power source that doesn't generate CO2. It seems that they might be guilty of some bias themselves - albiet a lefty-green one:

"The Nuclear Issues portal is intended to help readers find out more about those behind the global push to revive the nuclear power and and nuclear weapons industry. It also aims to facilitate citizen journalists document the activities of the individuals, lobby groups, PR companies, trade associations and front groups promoting what has been dubbed the 'nuclear renaissance'. Every aspect of the nuclear industry will be covered from uranium exploration and mining, the nuclear power industry, spent fuel reprocessing, nuclear waste disposal and weapons proliferation".

There is no proven way of storing electricty on a large scale FD - at least one which is economic. I don't know what you mean by mentioning aluminium production and desalination - both are heavy users of electricity which needs to be reliable and constant. Electric cars are only as 'green' as the power used to charge them. You might as well have people driving smaller, more efficient ICE cars (which is the trend anyaway).

both are heavy users of electricity which needs to be reliable and constant

They do not need to be reliable and constant. Intermittent is fine. While storing energy is difficult, storing water produced from energy is not.
Really - its sounds more like a recipie for chaos to me - trying to rumn an industrialised society on intermitent power!

Electric cars are only as 'green' as the power used to charge them.

So you charge them with renewables at offpeak times, further buffering the system. This also doesn't need to be reliable if yu use hybrids, which are already on the market.

What renewables would that be? Wind is unreliable and requires massive back up from baseload sources where ever it has been used. Solar is expensive and can't be used offpeak for obvious reasons. Hybrids aren't economic due to the much higher purchase price and the cost of battery replacement. A small ICE car is not far off hybrid fuel use - especially for freeway speeds.

You might as well have people driving smaller, more efficient ICE cars (which is the trend anyaway).

Hybrids are more efficient, and can take advantage of peaks in supply from renewable sources, when the marginal price of electricity is likely to be zero or near zero. Plus, once you've got it plugged in, it can double as a distributed electricty storage system.

See above. You have to have a renewable source in place first.

Here's a 'source watch' on Source Watch!
Source Watch is a project of the Center of Media & Democracy:

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7353

Established in 1983, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) aims to "strengthe[n] participatory democracy by investigating and exposing public relations spin and propaganda" -- focusing largely on what it views as the transgressions of political conservatives. Another CMD objective is to assist liberal and leftist "grassroots citizen activism that promotes public health, economic justice, ecological sustainability and human rights." Toward these ends, CMD produces articles and blog posts on the political, social, and economic issues of the day.

In CMD's view, capitalism generally, and corporations in particular, are the principal root causes of societal ills in the U.S. and abroad. The Capital Research Center, which rates the ideological leanings of nonprofit organizations, places CMD near the extreme far left of the spectrum. The website ActivistCash, which provides "information about the funding source[s] of radical anti-consumer organizations and activists," characterizes CMD as "a counterculture public relations effort disguised as an independent media organization."

Members of the CMD Board of Directors include: Joseph Mendelson, a former Director of Friends of the Earth and co-founder of the environmental organization Center for Food Safety; Anna Lappe, co-founder of the social justice organization Small Planet Institute and a former W.K. Kellogg Foundation fellow; David Meritt, former Executive Director of the Citizens Utility Board (a Wisconsin consumer advocacy group that opposes utility rate increases); Inger Stole, an assistant professor at the Institute of Communications Research; and Jan Miyasaki, an Asian American Studies professor at the University of Wisconsin.

The most notable CMD Board member is Ellen Braune, whose leftist affiliations are extensive and longstanding. She currently serves as Vice President of Communications at the Ms. Foundation for Women, and was formerly a Senior Vice President at Fenton Communications and a Communications Director for the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES). Part of the Soviet-controlled World Peace Council, CISPES was established in America in 1980 by high-ranking members of the Salvadoran Communist Party and Cuban intelligence to support El Salvador's murderous guerrilla bands and to influence American public opinion through protests and one-sided disinformation.

CMD was founded by the leftist writer and environmental activist John Stauber, who continues to serve as the Center's Executive Director. Stauber began his activism in high school when he organized anti-Vietnam War protests and early Earth Day events. The co-author (with SourceWatch founder Sheldon Rampton) of six books, Stauber created the now-defunct website Vote2StopBush.org.  He is also an unpaid advisor to several organizations, including the Action Coalition for Media Education, the Center for Food Safety, the Liberty Tree Foundation, the Media Education Foundation, and the Organic Consumers Association.  

The aforementioned Sheldon Rampton currently serves as CMD's Research Director. A graduate of Princeton University, Rampton was formerly an outreach coordinator for the Wisconsin Coordinating Council on Nicaragua, a group established in 1984 to oppose President Reagan's efforts to stop the spread of Communism in Central America, and currently dedicated to promoting a leftist vision of "social justice in Nicaragua through alternative models of development and activism."

An April 2001 commentary in the liberal publication Village Voice said of Rampton and Stauber: "These guys come from the far side of liberal."

According to ActivistCash, "Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber operate ... from the presumption that any communication issued from a corporate headquarters must be viewed with a jaundiced eye. ... [T]hey recently referred to corporate PR as a propaganda industry, misleading citizens and manipulating minds in the service of special interests. Ironically, Rampton and Stauber have elected to dip into the deep pockets of multi-million-dollar foundations with special interest agendas of their own. Their books Mad Cow U.S.A. and Toxic Sludge Is Good For You were produced and promoted using grant monies from the Foundation for Deep Ecology ($25,000) and the Educational Foundation of America ($20,000), among others. Along with the more recent Trust Us, We're Experts, these books are scare-mongering tales about a corporate culture out of control, and each implies that the public needs rescuing. … If someone in a shirt and tie dares make a profit (especially if food or chemicals are involved), Rampton and Stauber are bound to have a problem with it. Unless, of course, that food is vegetarian, organic, certified fair-trade, shade-grown, biodynamic, or biotech-free — in which case, the sky's the limit!"

In his 2005 article, "Strategy for Progressives: Where Do We Go from Here?," Stauber lauded the violent 1999 anti-WTO protests in Seattle and the anti-Iraq War protests of 2003, though all these events were replete with political propaganda, which CMD professes to disdain. The fact that the propaganda was of a leftist nature made it acceptable to Stauber, who in the same article praised Moveon.org as a "brilliant and effective internet-based activist group.

OK they might not be perfect. I have strong suspicion of any of these think tanks that have political agendas. Generally speaking though, the source watch reports are quite accurate and it's a useful service. When they say that a certain person has certain qualifications, it's not spin. Even outside source watch, it's widely known that McIntyre is an retired mining executive with no formal qualifications in Environmental science or climatology.

The question is, why would you want to get your information from such people who are totally unqualified to comment on the matter?

If real climatologists such as Steve Schneider are painting a totally different picture, why would you go out of your way to listen to the likes of retired geology professor Bob Carter or agronomist Jennifer Marohasy?

Because you like what they say?

muso wrote on Jun 3^rd, 2008 at 8:31am:


I never mentioned Bob Carter and Jennifer Morohasy's opinions were already a topic of discussion on this thread. Though as a geologist Bob Carter might have some insight regarding the paleoclimate. Geologists do seem to be more relaxed about climate change. Anyway what is a 'climate scientist'? Earth's climate is an enormously complex subject, spanning not only the "pure" sciences like physics and chemistry, but many of the "natural sciences", such as oceanography, meteorology, volcanology, paleontology, archeology, solar science, and many others.  How many are really on top of all those disciplines?   

I'd call myself agnostic on the subject of AGW. I am suspicious of the absolutism that surround the issue. Some have described it as bordering on a religion. Then theres the fact that a lot of environmentalists, activists and Greens only want a 'solution' on their own terms. This and their tendency for exaggeration of the threat tends to bring into question their motives. They have a zero tolerance for nuclear power. Also a distain for other big engineering solutions such as clean coal. They would prefer to put an energy hungry would on an energy crash diet - which is what a switch to renewables will surely do.