IPCC reports are only evidence of malfeasance
Re: "They do. Read the IPCC reports for example.
The IPCC reports are not evidence. They are documents, and political ones at that.
Re: Where you are no doubt confused is that like most "skeptics" you imagine there is a single simpistic "Is AGW true" issue here where in fact there are multiple issues.
The skeptics are not the confused ones here. Steve McIntyre was not confused about Michael Mann's hockey stick. It was incorrect and he proved it. Michael Mann is mathematically illiterate and Phil Jones can't even use a spreadsheet for heaven's sake.
I am not really concerned about AGW at all. I neither know nor care what is happening there. What concerns me is the following *set* of questions:
1) Is the climate changing so that it will cause catastrophe.
2) If so, can we can do something to mitigate this.
3) If so, should we? [Accommodation might be better.]
Alarmists are obliged to *prove* all three to the point we are willing to bet Trillions of dollars and waste lives changing things. None of the three have even been convincingly demonstrated, let alone proven. In my opinion, all three are flat out false.
Kevin Trenberth's astoundingly clueless notion that we should reverse the null-hypothesis aside, it is not up to skeptics to prove anything at all. It is up to alarmists to make their case and a partial case will not do. The fact that alarmists don't understand this is discouraging.
Re: Is the climate changing? yes and there is 'overwhelming evidence'.
Stipulated Arguendo, that it is changing. However, the change is *tiny*, gradual and unlikely to cause any harm.
Re: Are humans contributing to climate change? Yes again with overwhelming evidence.
This notion of overwhelming evidence is simply false. It does not matter how forcefully this is said or how deeply it is felt as a conviction. That does not make it so. If you have good evidence, let's see it. You do not need 'overwhelming' evidence to convince me. You just need a single complete and cogent argument and sufficient hard evidence to back it up. You do not have that. If you did, you would present it, rather than waiving your hands and piling on empty rhetoric.
Even if we were contributing in some measurable way, it would be largely irrelevant. That we might be involved is neither necessary nor sufficient to support an argument for spending money to mitigate.
Re: Are humans going to drive significant climate change with continued emissions? Very likely, yes based on overwhelming evidence and with a "consensus of experts" who have been convinced by this evidence.
Don't keep saying you have 'overwhelming evidence'. Put up or shut up. Gavin Schmidt attempted to put up the chain of evidence at RealClimate. It was laughable.
For the sake of your own dignity, stop referring to the intellectually and morally bankrupt notion of 'consensus'. One of the most irritating things about 'Climate Science' is that it turns everything on its head. Arguing from consensus is the business of scoundrels. It has no place in science.
Re: Do we know for sure what will happen? No. Are models perfect. No. Are models wrong? Yes. In many ways.
No argument there. You might want to mull that over some more before you insist we plunk down a Trillion dollars.
Re: "What?" I hear you say - How can the models be wrong and yet the evidence for human driving of climate be overwhelming? Because that is not simply based on models, plus the models are not wrong enough to preclude that. They are wrong enough to prevent details of what will happen being known.
What can anyone say to arguments like these? I think I understand what you are trying to say here, but it is too incoherent to address.
Re: Not true. Try to actually read the emails, not just the out of context quotes skeptics take from them. The scientists didn't game peer review - they complained about papers they thought are rubbish >>including cases where they thought *skeptics* had subverted peer review<<. Yes that's right, if you want to take the emails at face value of what the scientists actually thought.
I have no trouble reading and I did read them. The 'out of context' notion is an absolute howler. As the context expands, they make the authors look *worse*, not better. They are downright gruesome, much more so in context.
Re: There was a lot of animosity between certain people, largely due to accusations of fraud being made. That impaired judgment when it came to giving those people data.
If you review things such as the (described as 'ugly') attempt to get Chris de Freitas fired, you might change your mind. He did his job reviewing, supervising editing and publishing a paper in climate science. The paper in question presented evidence re-instating the MWP and LIA; things that were improperly erased by the (quite thoroughly debunked) 'hockey stick'. The 'hockey team' starts on the offensive.
Re: Has no relevance to the science however.
True. However, it does greatly weaken their arguments as to the merits of, and necessity for, the current regime of 'peer review' in 'Climate Science'. Besides, this is not really a dispute about science.
Re: Their work has been reviewed and vindicated. BEST replicated Phil Jone's temperature record work for example and in fact found more warming. Clearly then the idea that Jones has gamed the data to make it show more warming is completely false.
The 'hockey team' *say* that BEST vindicates them, but like most of their 'talking points' it is simply dishonest. Do yourself a favor. If you care about the truth, stop listening to the 'hockey team' and look at the evidence yourself.
Apologists keep saying that multiple 'independent' investigations have vindicated the climateers and their science. The 'investigations' have not really addressed the science as such. To the extent they did, most did not even look at the arguments of critics. Investigations described as 'independent' were very much *not* independent. The UEA investigated itself. UEA vindicated itself, but if you read closely the reports at the U.K. government site you will see that they say "There is prima facie evidence that UEA has breached the Freedom of Information Act 2000". The government declined to investigate this, but only because it had gone past the six month statute of limitations to prosecute. Penn State's 'investigation' of itself did not include contacting any critics like McIntyre.
Re: FOI violations do not affect the actual science. In fact the whole focus on FOI laws rather suggests desperation on the skeptic's part.
FOIA violations were used to defeat the scientific enterprise. Science depends upon replication and the 'hockey team' used FOIA violations to prevent examination and replication of their work. Their willingness to break the law to conceal their data indicates that there may be a problem with the quality of that data. This latest body of Emails contains the 'back and forth' between Phil Jones and UEA that directly demonstrates he violated FOIA to hide the fact that he had actually *lost* (to be charitable) the data being requested. If anyone is desperate, I expect it would be the 'hockey team', especially Phil Jones. He broke the law. He avoided prosecution only because of statutes of limitations, but he may well be unable to dodge civil suits.