If the medieval warm period was as warm as today then that would suggest that the current warming is either largely natural, or even if it is caused by humans, it won't hurt anything more than what was hurt back then (i.e. not extinct polar bears or mass extinctions or tipping points to catastrophe)

I don't have to have a lot of expertise on climate to know that hiding the decline is not acceptable science. If those thousands of scientists defend that practice, then I see no reason to trust their recommendation to spend trillions to reduce co2 output. I understand science and have tremendous respect for it, but it looks like climate scientists may be environmentalists that have left behind science and shifted to advocacy.

That's a tricky survey question. Even many skeptics would say humans are making a significant (i.e. non-negligible) contribution to global warming. But that still leaves the big questions: Are humans the primary cause? Has it warmed up as much as they say it has or just some insignificant amount? Has it been warmer in the past anyway? and Will the environment be better off when it's warmer?

I expect the endorsements of those scientific organizations were made before they found out from the climate gate emails, the extent of the "trick" being played on us. Those endorsements may go away in the coming months.

Wikipedia and realclimate are highly biased sources on this issue. Realclimate defends hiding the decline. Are you unbiased enough to fairly recognize bad science? Will you admit that it was bad science to hide the decline from the hockey stick graph? Will you admit that it hurts the credibility of the climate science community to defend that trick?

The divergence was hidden. They may have made a vague mention of it buried in the text, but the graph was the key element to sway public opinion, and they left the divergence out of the graph for no good reason. Also, I'm not sure, but I don't think they talked about it until they were exposed by skeptics. And they continue to hide it from the general public by continuing to minimize discussion of it and continuing to minimize the divergence in the graphs they publish.

Is there actually an issue with the reliability of the data?

Absolutely. If a tree is giving falsely low temperatures for the last 50 years, for some reason they still don't know, then temperatures from that tree cannot be trusted for any time period. Failure to put the divergence clear and up front was corrupt science. They wouldn't think such tricks were acceptable if an oil company tried to pull them.

Are you saying that the world is, in fact, getting cooler?

No, I'm saying that my understanding is that some of the tree ring proxies are showing temperatures declining relative to the thermometer temperatures, or at least not rising as fast.

Having just two mistakes in the report is actually incredible.

Follow a site like wattsupwiththat.com and you'll find out about a lot more than two mistakes in the IPCC report. Not that skeptic sites aren't filled with plenty of mistakes and garbage as well.

Does the errors about glaciers ice loss question the existence of climate change?

Yes, because every one of us can't go out and do the research ourselves. We have to evaluate whether the climate scientists are credible. This error, together with others has cast serious doubt on their credibility. And unfortunately the general science community was apparently circling the wagons with the climate scientists until the climate gate emails came out. I don't know if they still are. I'm guessing people are waiting for everything to shake out before deciding what side to join up with again. For example, it's going to be interesting when the Attorney General finally manages to pry Michael Mann's emails out of the University of Pennsylvania. And there will likely be a lot more skeptical research being published over the next couple years.

I'd never heard of "Mike's Nature trick", so I looked it up. Here's what Google turned up:

"Mike's Nature trick" refers to the technique of plotting recent instrumental data along with the reconstructed data.

"Along with"? More like "instead of".

..."Hide the decline" refers to a decline in the reliability of tree rings to reflect temperatures after 1960. This is known as the "divergence problem" where tree ring proxies diverge from modern instrumental temperature records after 1960...

Diverge in what direction? Downward right?
Besides, whether it was a decline in temperature or decline in reliability, they had no business hiding it. They wouldn't accept such a practice if it had been done by an oil company. They should have just plotted the full proxy data including the known unreliable parts along with the thermometer data in a different color. Then we all would have known immediately of the unreliability of the proxy data. But they didn't because they knew that if we could see that the proxy data was unreliable and giving falsely low temps for the last 50 years, then nobody would have given the proxies any credibility a thousand years ago.

One other thing: quoting only the "hide the decline" part of the email is rather disingenuous, since a lot of people will assume, without context, that it refers to a decline in temperature.

I didn't have time to expound on the subject in depth. And I think it does refer to a decline in temperature.

So in a 3000 page report, you can point to one minor error...

One error. LOL. Surely you jest. I've heard of lots of errors. Of course I didn't cite them all. The reader may be interested in investigating further.

This wasn't just a typo in one section of the report. The erroneous number came with a cite to an article by the highly partisan World Wildlife Fund, which wasn't even a piece of actual research on the subject. In other words, whoever put that number and cite in that part of the report, DIDN'T EVEN CHECK THAT THE EVIDENCE EVEN EXISTED when they wrote up the citation. They just believed the WWF article without even checking its source.

Before the climate gate emails were released I had heard of the "hockey stick" but I didn't look into it because I thought it was probably just anti-science oil company propaganda. But after hearing about the trick to "hide the decline", I looked into it more. Climate scientists wanted to get rid of the medieval warm period because if temps were just as warm in the recent past, then there couldn't be much worry about today. So they found some tree rings that showed temps were cool back in the medieval warm period. Problem was that some of these trees were saying that temps were also cool during the last 50 years. Instead of eliminating these lying trees from the data set, they covered up the inconvenient data for the last 50 years from the lying trees with thermometer measurements and left us to think that these lying trees were telling the truth about the temperatures 1000 years ago.

There seems to be two main defenses given by the climate science community for these cover ups. One is that some of the trees don't show this "divergence" from the thermometer temperatures. But if it is true that they have trees that give good data, then why not exclude the trees that lie? They can't claim they're reluctant to cherry pick the trees because this whole temperature from tree rings procedure demands picking out trees that are growth limited only by temperature and not anything else like water or CO2, and therefore cherry picking is inherently part of the process. And besides, even if they ought to leave the lying trees in, that's still no excuse to "hide the decline" in the final results.

The other defense is that other studies by other researchers using other proxies, like sediments, have come to similar conclusions about the medieval warm period. But that's kind of like saying "My methods may have been corrupt, but my good buddies who have defended my corrupt methods, have gotten similar results in their research." This defense doesn't alleviate my concerns. And even getting correct results doesn't justify corrupt methods.

If you think my criticisms of the hockey stick are harsh, imagine what the climate science community would think if someone like an oil company used similar methods in some research. Imagine an oil company found the medieval warm period was much hotter than today, but their results were based in part on rings from trees that showed temperatures from the last 50 years were much hotter than they really were, and the oil companies hid the results from the lying trees by replacing them with thermometer temps. But of course nobody would criticize that method if sediment studies from other oil companies showed the same results, right?

I don't know about the credibility of this report. Maybe the glaciers are melting because of human CO2, maybe they would have melted anyway, or maybe they aren't even melting. But when the supposedly respected Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change made that mistake in their report where they claimed the Himilayan glaciers would melt by 2035, it exposed more than a simple mistake. It showed that for their report, the IPCC didn't do what you would expect, which is thoroughly scrutinize what they cited. Nor did they look over what they cited to see if it was reasonable. No, they didn't bother with all that. They didn't even check to see if the evidence they cited about the effects of global warming EVEN EXISTED.

The entire climate science community has defended "Mike's Nature trick" to "hide the decline" so that people wouldn't see how bad their evidence is, instead of criticizing the hiding of results that cast major doubt on their evidence. None of them have any credibility left, and will never get it back until they condemn instead of defend "Mike's Nature trick".

My criticism of climate science on Slashdot are routinely the target of moderator abuse, so watch the down moded comments for good stuff.

Investment in teachers, shows, cds, long hard labor, and such things are why an author deserves a copymonopoly for a limited time. But even those investments don't compare to the value of what an author learned from those that came before, and which the author didn't pay for. For example, Mozart gets no royalties from what this composer learned from Mozart. Nor did this composer pay for what he learned about music by listening to the radio.

crmarvin42 wrote:

I don't know where you are from, but 'round here teachers don't work for free.

But listening to and learning from the radio is free. And downloading and learning from Mozart is free.

If your reasoning is taken to its logical conclusion, then no creative person should ever expect to be paid for their arts, no matter how popular they become, unless they created their art in a vaccume.

I support copymonopoly, as the constitution does, for a limited time. But since an author didn't create his work in a vacuum, he shouldn't expect exclusive rights to it forever. And violation of copymonopoly which is claimed for longer than the constitutionally authorized limited time, is both legally and morally acceptable. Though the courts seem to claim otherwise.

So in closing- if the music and movies really ARE so worthless, and SO unoriginal, that you really think they don't deserve to get paid... then instead of ripping someone off, shouldn't you just be making it yourself? If it is something you can not do, or are not willing to do, or don't have the time or resources to do, and yet you want to use it- then it really is NOT so valueless, is it? In the end, even if the final product itself is worth very little to you, you should STILL at least be willing to pay someone for doing something which you yourself were not willing to do.

Though others may be, I'm not advocating the elimination of copymonopoly. I'm only advocating that it be for a limited time. In fact, the constitution only authorizes copymonopoly for a limited time. Congress is not authorized to extend copyright beyond a limited time. The constitution is the law that supersedes the laws below it, so those who claim and enforce copymonopoly after long periods are actually lawbreakers.

But if the value of your work is largely derived from the ideas you learned from others, you shouldn't claim exclusive and perpetual right to your work. Copymonopoly for a limited time should suffice.

Just because the author may derive ideas and themes that are universal, doesn't mean people shouldn't pay him for the beautifully-crafted little sentences, the quirky little off-harmony note or the intriguing drawing of character.

They should get paid, but only for a limited time.

Anybody who claims they have some intrinsic right to another's work needs to seriously consider whether they are a geniune member of society or a freeloading rat.

Most of the ideas in the creations of most authors are taken from the work of previous authors without compensation. But I expect you wouldn't consider them freeloading rats to spite them taking the ideas of others without compensation.