Global Warming
I've always been something of a global warming skeptic who was willing to accept that reducing CO2 levels was generally a good thing. I've moved hard away from global warming in the last year because of a few things.
First, the hockey stick graph. You know, the graph you couldn't get away from in 2001. It's bunk. Pure and simple, the people who generated it from the data did so in a way that may as well have been designed to generate hockey stick plots from random noise.
Second, GISS released an October temperature map with all of Russia's temperature measurements identical to that in September. This is fundamental data used for climate change analysis, and that data should never have passed a sniff test. To me, this level of quality control on data calls into question the veracity of all global warming data.
Third, in 2008, Antarctic sea ice hit a record high since satellite measurement started in 1978. At the same time, climate scientists and the media have been trumpeting the decline in Arctic sea ice. This dichotomy strikes me poorly, as it gives every appearance of confirmation bias overriding the actual data.
Fourth, the weakness of quantitative models describing complex systems (e.g. the formulae used to calculate riskiness of debt) was made very apparent. Why should vastly more complex models with equally large simplifications be any less suspect?
Suffice it to say, I have extreme doubt of the veracity of global warming. The hockey stick was peer reviewed and then it passed inspection to be the center point of an IPCC report. These have every appearance of passing muster because they fit with the biases of the examiners rather than because they are good science.
In the 1950s, global freezing and a new ice age was the climate change bugaboo. Since the 1990s, climate change scientists have been selling global warming as a world wide threat. This has resulted in a funding bonanza, guaranteeing their future employment. Without global warming, most of these climate scientists would be out of a job. To me, this dramatically adds to the amount of skepticism their predictions should be examined with.
Why is this so important? We are moving the world to more expensive power because of these predictions. While this will be an inconvenience to most in the USA, going this route will mean billions of people continuing to live in abject poverty world wide. This is not a small cost, and it should be weighed heavily against the cost of preventing climate change.
Why did I write this post? I'd very much like to see a real scientific justification of global warming. The IPCC reports are deeply tainted due to their use of bad data, and everyone else in the climate change world seems to be taking global warming as a given. If you believe in global warming, I'd like to know why (fair warning: if the name "Al Gore" comes up, you should be prepared to be mocked mercilessly).
First, the hockey stick graph. You know, the graph you couldn't get away from in 2001. It's bunk. Pure and simple, the people who generated it from the data did so in a way that may as well have been designed to generate hockey stick plots from random noise.
Second, GISS released an October temperature map with all of Russia's temperature measurements identical to that in September. This is fundamental data used for climate change analysis, and that data should never have passed a sniff test. To me, this level of quality control on data calls into question the veracity of all global warming data.
Third, in 2008, Antarctic sea ice hit a record high since satellite measurement started in 1978. At the same time, climate scientists and the media have been trumpeting the decline in Arctic sea ice. This dichotomy strikes me poorly, as it gives every appearance of confirmation bias overriding the actual data.
Fourth, the weakness of quantitative models describing complex systems (e.g. the formulae used to calculate riskiness of debt) was made very apparent. Why should vastly more complex models with equally large simplifications be any less suspect?
Suffice it to say, I have extreme doubt of the veracity of global warming. The hockey stick was peer reviewed and then it passed inspection to be the center point of an IPCC report. These have every appearance of passing muster because they fit with the biases of the examiners rather than because they are good science.
In the 1950s, global freezing and a new ice age was the climate change bugaboo. Since the 1990s, climate change scientists have been selling global warming as a world wide threat. This has resulted in a funding bonanza, guaranteeing their future employment. Without global warming, most of these climate scientists would be out of a job. To me, this dramatically adds to the amount of skepticism their predictions should be examined with.
Why is this so important? We are moving the world to more expensive power because of these predictions. While this will be an inconvenience to most in the USA, going this route will mean billions of people continuing to live in abject poverty world wide. This is not a small cost, and it should be weighed heavily against the cost of preventing climate change.
Why did I write this post? I'd very much like to see a real scientific justification of global warming. The IPCC reports are deeply tainted due to their use of bad data, and everyone else in the climate change world seems to be taking global warming as a given. If you believe in global warming, I'd like to know why (fair warning: if the name "Al Gore" comes up, you should be prepared to be mocked mercilessly).