The question is not whether the global climate is changing- it is always changing. The real question is not even whether there is anything that can be done about our ability to thrive in the face of those changes. No.

The essential question is whether we will freely abandon our human rights to big and bigger government over this or any other issue.

If an appropriate response to “climate change’ cannot be found that also insures basic human rights and “liberty for all,” then, yes. I say “Do Nothing!”

What has made America great is our insistence that all individuals be free to pursue “happiness” as they see it. Granting control to government over the very air I breathe is out of the question.

I will not have anyone tell me how much to CO2 to exhale, how many children to have, when (or if) my parents should “go quietly for the greater good,” where I must live, what I must eat (or not eat) or anything else of the kind!

“Climate Cjhange/Global Warming” is shaping up to be little more that a massive grab for political power in the name of the environment. Little attention is being given to real ecological issues, and much to wealth distribution and governmental control over the lives of individuals.

I say- Resist Tyranny in every guise. Whether the Devil appears as a saint or a sinner- he’s still the Devil.

The only real disaster here is that oil/gas/coal companies are a static target and the science community are shooting with both barrels to create a lot of fervor and hike up the research funding – scientists gotta’ eat dude…!

I don’t dispute that the environment is being polluted but so what? It’s inevitable that the human race implodes and kills itself due to it’s collective aggressive nature, what does the earth care. The planet will rejuvenate itself once the infrastructure is given time to naturally.

The only real positive, effective and sustainable way to cut down pollution of the planets’ ecosystem is to restrict the growth of the populous! Stop the uneducated, young, elderly, poor, middle-class, wealthy, religious and stupid classes of society having children at will! Bring in enforced abortion where countries cannot sustain the growth of it’s population – in every nation. Cut the amount of unnecessary births which result in over population and a massive drain on the resources available. Lower the numbers overall.

People are the problem not the technology – just halt the rabbit like spread of the human race instead of flying all over the world and pontificating, over-taxing companies or berating corporations that are only doing what’s natural to companies – making money!

To effect the message of global decay, stop producing the damaging element to the environment – people, not CO2!!

From the overview from your own NAS Panel Report link:

There is sufficient evidence from tree rings, retreating glaciers, and other “proxies” to say with confidence that the last few decades of the 20th century were warmer than any comparable period in the last 400 years, according to a new National Research Council report. There is less confidence in reconstructions of surface temperatures from 1600 back to A.D. 900, and very little confidence in findings on average temperatures before then.

So, the most recent 400 years was accurate. The 600 years before that had a bit lower confidence. The hockey stick graph was only 1,000 years, so the last portion about very little confidence has nothing to do with the hockey stick at all.

Here’s a good overview of the controversy on this one out of a great many peer reviewed publications on the subject.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_controversy

Note the final paragraph.

In a paper on 9 September 2008, Mann and colleagues published an updated reconstruction of Earth surface temperature for the past two millennia. This reconstruction used a more diverse dataset that was significantly larger than the original tree-ring study. Similarly to the original study, this work found that recent increases in northern hemisphere surface temperature are anomalous relative to at least the past 1300 years, and that this result is robust to the inclusion or exclusion of the tree-ring dataset.

So, after all the controversy, the improved dataset still says the same thing as the original statement a decade ago.

Vindicated.

Here’s the full text of the 2008 article.

http://tinyurl.com/lxyh3g

Hey … the graph … still looks just like … a hockey stick!!

Cite a source instead of continually blowing out your ass and people might one day take you seriously.

Still looks like it’s going up to me … in fact … it looks a bit like … dare I say it … a hockey stick.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record

I checked out your link for the National Acadamies and this is all there is.

High Confidence in Surface Temp Reconstructions Since A.D. 1600
Print This

June 22 — There is sufficient evidence from tree rings, retreating glaciers, and other “proxies” to say with confidence that the last few decades of the 20th century were warmer than any comparable period in the last 400 years, according to a new National Research Council report. There is less confidence in reconstructions of surface temperatures from 1600 back to A.D. 900, and very little confidence in findings on average temperatures before then.

Skimming Wegman’s report, it appears that his methods are well presented. Your link did not have any criticism of Wegman or the report.

Sorry, you lose again.

Bloggers – 0, Peer Review – 2

http://tinyurl.com/mhylwt

and here is the NAS Panel report

http://nationalacademies.org/morenews/20060622.html

Read through them, and you’ll see that on methodology they agree the hockey stick paper is fatally flawed.

If you don’t wish to read them, and would just like to rely on media reports f what’s in them, that’s up to you.

If you

1) told us where and posted a link to these “quotes” you are using, we could assess them.

2) use quotation marks or italics to show what is actually being quoted so we can follow along.

3) quoted something relevant

it would assist your comments. Just posting goobly gook like that with nothing to put it in context is silly.

This is not a science class. If it was you would fail. Nor is it a game of bullshit. You are just too unconvincing. You are just a fraud trying to convince others of something you have no concept of.

Bloggers-0, Peer Review-1

AN interesting thing about the hockey stick, is that the NAS panel that reviewed it and supposedly OKed it, they accepted every criticism issued by the guys at ClimateAudit.org.

For example, take this comment made by one of the authors of the hockey stick at realclimate.org

Even without technical training or a statistical background, you should have an adequate basis for discerning which of the two parties is likely wrong here. Only one of the parties involved has (1) had their claims fail scientific peer-review, (2) produced a reconstruction that is completely at odds with all other existing estimates (note that there is no sign of the anomalous 15th century warmth claimed by MM in any of the roughly dozen other model and proxy-based estimates shown here), and (3) been established to have made egregious elementary errors in other published work that render the work thoroughly invalid. These observations would seem quite telling. -mike]

But the NAS Panel report then said:
McIntyre and McKitrick (2003) demonstrated that under some conditions, the leading principal component can exhibit a spurious trendlike appearance, which could then lead to a spurious trend in the proxy-based reconstruction. To see how this can happen, suppose that instead of proxy climate data, one simply used a random sample of autocorrelated time series that did not contain a coherent signal. If these simulated proxies are standardized as anomalies with respect to a calibration period and used to form principal components, the first component tends to exhibit a trend, even though the proxies themselves have no common trend. Essentially, the first component tends to capture those proxies that, by chance, show different values between the calibration period and the remainder of the data. If this component is used by itself or in conjunction with a small number of unaffected components to perform reconstruction, the resulting temperature reconstruction may exhibit a trend, even though the individual proxies do not. Figure 9-2 shows the result of a simple simulation along the lines of McIntyre and McKitrick (2003) (the computer code appears in Appendix B). In each simulation, 50 autocorrelated time series of length 600 were constructed, with no coherent signal. Each was centered at the mean of its last 100 values, and the first principal component was found. The figure shows the first components from five such simulations overlaid. Principal components have an arbitrary sign, which was chosen here to make the last 100 values higher on average than the remainder.(86-87)

Read the report to look at the charts, but they agreed that Mann used a faulty method that would create hockey stick graphs out of random data. Bloggers 1, Peer-Reviewers 0

If you were really interested in this, you can look thru climateaudit.org for descriptions of various peer-reviewed papers where the authors will not provide the data and methods.

If peer-reviewed journal article doesn’t provide all this, what good is it? How would the error ever be noticed?

Very simple. The journal would decline to publish it then.

To be peer reviewed means several peers (scientists in the same or a similar field) review the paper.

They search it for obvious errors and completeness. Some may even try replicating the paper but that is usually not a requirement. The math is reviewed for errors. Facts are reviewed for completeness. Sources are reviewed for correctness.

If the paper is deficient or missing something, it is sent back to the author(s) for correction or explanation.

The reviewers do not pass judgment on the paper; that is not their job. They are only looking to see if the paper passes specific standards. It is up to the scientists in the field to discuss, debate, and test the paper after publication.

Not every paper that passes the reviewers is published. Most journals have more submissions then they are capable of publishing. Sometimes, a journal might submit the paper to a sister journal for publication.

It is not unusual for a paper to still be published with errors. The errors are found out and the paper’s thesis is adjusted as required. This is science correcting itself as more information becomes available.

If a scientist ever tried to publish a paper and failed to provide the requisite data and methods used to obtain the result, it would not be published and probably rejected outright. Since most proprietary research does contain secrets, they rarely are published by serious journals.

First, I still reiterate that it did not fail in this case. You might want to find one where it did.

Second, there were peer reviewed articles back and forth over the hockey stick. That is the beauty of peer review, not that it is perfect, but that the solution is more peer review.

Blogs do not cut it. I can say anything I want on my blog. It has no credibility at all in and of itself. That’s why I tend to like to post links both here and on my own blog.

Why on earth should anyone take my word for anything? Or yours? Or some retired meteorologist who doesn’t know the difference between weather and climate any more than the difference between meteorology and climatology?

So, they make pretty pictures. Who cares? There is no credibility to the data.

sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/294/5546/1431b

sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/278/5341/1257

nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7065/abs/nature04121.html

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2004/2003GL019024.shtml

http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~wsoon/myownPapers-d/Soonetal01CR.pdf