Global warming?

[ZenGum]

On the lighter side, I was just marking an essay on CC and had to pursue a Chinese source through babelfish to check for plagiarism. I found this gem:

Certainly also possibly has superimposed nature changing rate, but also has certain uncertainty.

Take that, you denialists

[casimendocina]

[Clodfobble]

"the worst scientific scandal of our generation".

Just wait until they figure out they've been defiantly brain-damaging babies for decades.

[classicman]

With no disrespect to sausages and laws, Bismarck’s most famous aphorism clearly requires updating. “Scientific research” is bidding furiously to make the global shortlist of things one should not see being made.
Understandably so. Sciences at the cutting edge of statistics and public policy can make blood sports seem genteel. Scientists aggressively promoting pet hypotheses often relish the opportunity to marginalise and neutralise rival theories and exponents.

The malice, mischief and Machiavellian manoeuvrings revealed in the illegally hacked megabytes of emails from the University of East Anglia’s prestigious Climate Research Unit, for example, offers a useful paradigm of contemporary scientific conflict. Science may be objective; scientists emphatically are not. This episode illustrates what too many universities, professional societies, and research funders have irresponsibly allowed their scientists to become. Shame on them all.
The source of that shame is a toxic mix of institutional laziness and complacency. Too many scientists in academia, industry and government are allowed to get away with concealing or withholding vital information about their data, research methodologies and results. That is unacceptable and must change.

Only recently in America, for example, have academic pharmaceutical researchers been required to disclose certain financial conflicts of interest they might have. On issues of the greatest importance for public policy, science researchers less transparent than they should be. That behaviour undermines science, policy and public trust.
Dubbed “climate-gate” by global warming sceptics, the most outrageous East Anglia email excerpts appear to suggest respected scientists misleadingly manipulated data and suppressed legitimate argument in peer-reviewed journals.

These claims are forcefully denied, but the correspondents do little to enhance confidence in either the integrity or the professionalism of the university’s climatologists. What is more, there are no denials around the researchers’ repeated efforts to avoid meaningful compliance with several requests under the UK Freedom of Information Act to gain access to their working methods. Indeed, researchers were asked to delete and destroy emails. Secrecy, not privacy, is at the rotten heart of this bad behavior by ostensibly good scientists.

Why should research funding institutions and taxpayers fund scientists who deliberately delay, obfuscate and deny open access to their research?
Why should scientific journals publish peer-reviewed research where the submitting scientists have not made every reasonable effort to make their work – raw data & sophisticated computer simulations – as transparent and accessible as possible?
Why should responsible policymakers in America, Europe, Asia and Latin America make decisions affecting people’s health, wealth and future based on opaque and inaccessible science?

Three very good questions. . .

Link

[Urbane Guerrilla]

I thought this para from Booker's Guardian article was notable:

But the question which inevitably arises from this systematic refusal to release their data is – what is it that these scientists seem so anxious to hide? The second and most shocking revelation of the leaked documents is how they show the scientists trying to manipulate data through their tortuous computer programmes, always to point in only the one desired direction – to lower past temperatures and to "adjust" recent temperatures upwards, in order to convey the impression of an accelerated warming. This comes up so often (not least in the documents relating to computer data in the Harry Read Me file) that it becomes the most disturbing single element of the entire story. This is what Mr McIntyre caught Dr Hansen doing with his GISS temperature record last year (after which Hansen was forced to revise his record), and two further shocking examples have now come to light from Australia and New Zealand.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Global warming is beginning to look as well founded as the learned seventeenth-century tracts on witchcraft.

Climate Change and the Death of Science

Damning.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

And my goodness: it shows a lifelong, avowed socialist doing something bad to make socialism look necessary. Gee, who'd've thought? Politics is bad for science.

[TheMercenary]

Why should research funding institutions and taxpayers fund scientists who deliberately delay, obfuscate and deny open access to their research?
Why should scientific journals publish peer-reviewed research where the submitting scientists have not made every reasonable effort to make their work – raw data & sophisticated computer simulations – as transparent and accessible as possible?
Why should responsible policymakers in America, Europe, Asia and Latin America make decisions affecting people’s health, wealth and future based on opaque and inaccessible science?

Damm good questions.

[TheMercenary]

Imagine that...

India will not sign binding emission cuts-minister

and neither should we...

http://www.reuters.com/article/hotSt...00309720091203

[Undertoad]

India would however accept international verification of reductions if supported by financing and technology transfers.

Everybody's hand is out. Here's China's:

China has been the chief beneficiary of the U.N.’s Clean Development Mechanism, or CDM, which under the Kyoto Protocol set up a system of credits which can be sold and traded, and which are used by companies to offset their own emissions. Some 60% of all globally traded carbon credits originate from China projects.

China’s climate-change regulators have approved 2,232 CDM projects this year through October – but only 663 of those, or just under 30%, have received final approval by the U.N. to issue credits.

The basic idea is that companies in rich countries, to reach their own greenhouse gas quotas back home, pay for carbon abatement projects that wouldn’t have gotten built otherwise in poor countries.

We clean them there so we don't have to clean us here? How about we just clean us here, cut out the middle man.

After all, the US will be blamed unless we both pay to clean them AND clean us:

"What the world is waiting for now is exactly what will be the American commitments to reduce their emissions," Hedegaard said and added the world also wanted to know "what kind of financial contributions would come from the American side."

"There, President Obama could be very helpful if he has something in his pocket ... when he comes to Copenhagen. I think it would be very useful."

And it's not just poor countries with their hand out, here are the Saudis:

As the world's leading oil producer, Saudi Arabia has previously fought attempts to agree curbs on emissions, and has also argued that it should receive financial compensation for "lost" revenue, given that constraints on emissions might restrict oil sales.

The entire thing is now a shameless shakedown. Speaking as an unemployed American, my opening bid is we will clean us up, and the rest of you can go fuck yourselves raw.

[classicman]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Speaking as an unemployed American, my opening bid is we will clean us up, and the rest of you can go fuck yourselves raw.

Fixed that for ya - and I agree!
Its like we are the world friggin bank with the resources to fix everything for everyone. Uh - HELLO!!!! We are having issues here too folks.

[TheMercenary]

Where are all the defenders of China and India now? Poor beat up little developing countries.

[classicman]

I wasn't sure where to put this, but since we had talked about this earlier in this thread ...
Drywall investigation expands into US products

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) -- A federal probe of tainted Chinese drywall has broadened because a small number of homeowners are reporting that American-made drywall is causing some of the same problems: a sickening, sulfurous stench and corroded pipes and wiring.

"We are not limited in the scope of our investigation to just Chinese drywall," said Scott Wolfson, spokesman for the Consumer Products Safety Commission, which is conducting the largest investigation in its history after thousands of homeowners complained and filed lawsuits.

The vast majority of complaints still center on China-made gypsum board imported during the recent U.S. housing boom, when domestic building materials were in short supply. And the commission's investigation is focused mainly on the imported drywall, Wolfson said.

But sporadic reports are surfacing from owners of homes built with American drywall, and the symptoms they report are similar to those reported with the Chinese drywall: a rotten-egg odor that makes occupants sick, corrosion of copper pipes, and ruined TVs and air conditioners.

"We've got a huge problem here, and we just need help," said George Brincku, 48, who bought his southwest Florida house in 2004 and almost immediately began noticing the odd smell, the corrosion of wires and headaches.

When he saw reports about Chinese drywall, he assumed that was the problem with his house - until he called the contractor who installed it.

"I have all 100 percent American-made drywall," Brincku said.

He sent samples to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which found that the wallboard from Brincku's home contained 50 percent gypsum and 50 percent cellulose, an organic compound. Drywall should contain mostly gypsum.

Researchers do not know for certain what causes the chemical reactions, but an MIT scientist said the mixture of gypsum and cellulose in Brincku's wallboard, combined with the humid atmosphere in Florida, was releasing sulfurous gases, causing corrosion of copper, brass and silver.

"The only solution is removal of the drywall," Thomas Eagar, an MIT professor of materials engineering, wrote in his report. He did not return a call from The Associated Press.

Most of the drywall in Brincku's home was made by Charlotte, N.C.-based National Gypsum, which said its own testing found the material from the house contained just 4 percent cellulose.

Link

Rather informative article. I'm sure we'll hear more about this in the future.

[TheMercenary]

Come on you guys who are all defenders of the suppression of the US economy at the expense of the poor pitiful struggling economies of China and India......

I know, we just need more layoffs or more pass through on taxes to the big companies to make you all happy.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Old link gone dead. Here's a new one.

Climate Change and the Death of Science