The nub of the climate change thing problem

[Ibanez]

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2015/02/ ... e-science/

Yale study confirms skeptics of global warming theory are more knowledgeable about climate science than believers of AGW theory.

Ultra liberal commie college.

[kalm]

Hey, I found a real live scientist from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who agrees with you, T-man!

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/us/ti ... .html?_r=0" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[houndawg]

McKittrick, McIntyre, Watts and Homewood (as well as dozens of other debunkers) have been peer reviewed.

You

Have

Nothing

Try again.

In which scientific journals?

Bump for unravelinman....

[travelinman67]

Hey, I found a real live scientist from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who agrees with you, T-man!

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/us/ti ... .html?_r=0" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Where are the records?



Oh yeah...btw...what research of Soon's has been disproven?

[travelinman67]

In which scientific journals?

Bump for unravelinman....

McKitrick
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/papers.html

McIntyre

Selected publications

McIntyre, Stephen; McKitrick, Ross (2003). "Corrections to the Mann et al. (1998) Proxy Data Base and Northern Hemispheric Average Temperature Series". Energy & Environment 14 (6): 751–771. doi:10.1260/095830503322793632.McIntyre, Stephen; McKitrick, Ross (2005). "The M&M Critique of the MBH98 Northern Hemisphere Climate Index: Update and Implications".Energy & Environment 16 (1): 69–100.doi:10.1260/0958305053516226.McIntyre, Stephen; McKitrick, Ross (2005). "Hockey sticks, principal components, and spurious significance". Geophysical Research Letters 32 (3): L03710.Bibcode:2005GeoRL..3203710M.doi:10.1029/2004GL021750.McIntyre, Stephen; McKitrick, Ross (2009). "Proxy inconsistency and other problems in millennial paleoclimate reconstructions". PNAS 106 (6): E10.Bibcode:2009PNAS..106...10M.doi:10.1073/pnas.0812509106.PMC 2647809. PMID 19188613.McKitrick, Ross; McIntyre, Stephen; Herman, Chad (2010). "Panel and multivariate methods for tests of trend equivalence in climate data series".Atmospheric Science Letters 11 (4): 270–277.Bibcode:2010AtScL..11..270M.doi:10.1002/asl.290.O'Donnell, Ryan; Lewis, Nicholas; McIntyre, Steve; Condon, Jeff (2011)."Improved Methods for PCA-Based Reconstructions: Case Study Using the Steig et al. (2009) Antarctic Temperature Reconstruction". Journal of Climate 24 (8): 2099–2115.doi:10.1175/2010JCLI3656.1.McIntyre, Stephen; McKitrick, Ross (2011). "Discussion of: A statistical analysis of multiple temperature proxies: Are reconstructions of surface temperatures over the last 1000 years reliable?". Annals of Applied Statistics

Densedawg...

...empty Troll.

Never

Has

Anything



Get a life, Troll

[Chizzang]

The TRUE BELIEVERS on both sides of this debate kill the entire thing...
The money on both sides - and fraud on both sides - is alarming



Why anybody would think they NEED to be on one side or the other is confusing
The Climate Change debate is now so toxic and partisan (see: Crusader Zealots) that nothing further can actually be researched, studied and commented on without complete chaos to follow


Well Done Humans...



and also this:

[travelinman67]

Sorry, Hippie, but the Alarmist con-job has failed.

All of the warmist "science" theory has been debunked, and their data either found to be fabricated, cooked or inexplicably "lost".

Congress has begun formal investigations of NOAA and NASA policy and practice of changing data to force hypothesis.

Post all the cute memes you want, but it won't change the reality...

...the Anthropogenic Climate Change theory is false.

Next

[kalm]

Sorry, Hippie, but the Alarmist con-job has failed.

All of the warmist "science" theory has been debunked, and their data either found to be fabricated, cooked or inexplicably "lost".

Congress has begun formal investigations of NOAA and NASA policy and practice of changing data to force hypothesis.

Post all the cute memes you want, but it won't change the reality...

...the Anthropogenic Climate Change theory is false.

Next

One might even say...it's settled science...?

It's post like these that make me sometimes wonder if you might be a liberal troll.

[travelinman67]

Sorry, Hippie, but the Alarmist con-job has failed.

All of the warmist "science" theory has been debunked, and their data either found to be fabricated, cooked or inexplicably "lost".

Congress has begun formal investigations of NOAA and NASA policy and practice of changing data to force hypothesis.

Post all the cute memes you want, but it won't change the reality...

...the Anthropogenic Climate Change theory is false.

Next

One might even say...it's settled science...?

It's post like these that make me sometimes wonder if you might be a liberal troll.

Put up or shut up.

You have nothing.

[kalm]

One might even say...it's settled science...?

It's post like these that make me sometimes wonder if you might be a liberal troll.

Put up or shut up.

You have nothing.

How much does Dailykos pay you to make "conservatives" look dumb?

[Grizalltheway]

My my, isn't this inconvenient!

For years, politicians wanting to block legislation on climate change have bolstered their arguments by pointing to the work of a handful of scientists who claim that greenhouse gases pose little risk to humanity.

One of the names they invoke most often is Wei-Hock Soon, known as Willie, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who claims that variations in the sun’s energy can largely explain recent global warming. He has often appeared on conservative news programs, testified before Congress and in state capitals, and starred at conferences of people who deny the risks of global warming.

But newly released documents show the extent to which Dr. Soon’s work has been tied to funding he received from corporate interests.

He has accepted more than $1.2 million in money from the fossil-fuel industry over the last decade while failing to disclose that conflict of interest in most of his scientific papers. At least 11 papers he has published since 2008 omitted such a disclosure, and in at least eight of those cases, he appears to have violated ethical guidelines of the journals that published his work.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/us/ti ... .html?_r=0" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[travelinman67]

My my, isn't this inconvenient!...

Hey! Brownshirt!

http://www.championshipsubdivision.com/ ... 15#p957215

Still waiting for the "records"!

[kalm]

My my, isn't this inconvenient!...

Hey! Brownshirt!

http://www.championshipsubdivision.com/ ... 15#p957215

Still waiting for the "records"!

What records?

When it was announced that Soon was giving a talk at the University of Rochester, I knew it would be interesting. I was more than willing to hear what the man had to say. The whole point of being a scientist is, after all, to try to leave your preconceptions at the door and let the work speak for itself. I also wanted to understand Soon's own thinking about the role he was playing as a public skeptic.

On all counts I was disappointed.

Taken as nothing more than a scientific talk, Dr. Soon's presentation was, in my opinion, pretty bad. I watch a lot of these things. It's part of my job. If Soon had been giving a Ph.D defense, he would have been skewered. I was left without a clear line of argument or clear justifications for his claims. More importantly, for a topic this contentious there was insufficient discussion of the voluminous and highly detailed response critics have offered to his claims that solar activity accounts for most observed climate variability. Many of my colleagues listening to the talk said they felt the same way. I came away thinking, "Is that the best they have?"

But more troubling was a conversation I had with Soon earlier in the day. Every scientist has the right to his or her own perspective. But scientists also understand how research communities build their understanding about what is known and how anyone knows it. So, I wondered how Soon could fail to acknowledge that the weight of evidence was overwhelmingly against him when he made his overarching public statements of skepticism. I asked Soon why his testimony to Congress did not begin with something like, "I acknowledge that the majority of researchers in my field hold a different view from me, but let me now explain why I am taking such a contrarian position."

When I asked Soon about these points, he had very little to say.

I came away from my meeting with this famous climate skeptic feeling pretty depressed. What I had seen was a scientist whose work, in my opinion, was simply not very good. That, on its own, is no big deal. There are lots of scientists whose work is not very good — and some people may even think my science should be included in that list. But Soon's little string of papers were being heralded in the highest courts of public opinion as a significant blow to everyone else's understanding of Earth's climate. From TV studios to the halls of Congress, we were being told his was world-shaking research of the highest caliber, and that we had to take notice.

From what I saw and learned that day, the truth wasn't anywhere close. That was what made it all so depressing. For an issue so important to all of us, the standards should be a lot higher.

That is the real problem with Willie Soon and climate denial.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2015/02/2 ... te-skeptic" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[travelinman67]

Hey! Brownshirt!

http://www.championshipsubdivision.com/ ... 15#p957215

Still waiting for the "records"!

What records?

These records, Lil Abner.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentclo ... limate.pdf

Here's the Cliff Notes: The Smithsonian, NOT DR. SOON, submitted a multi-year, $60,000 +/- annual research grant request, to The Southern Company, on behalf of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, for a continuation of an existing research project demonstrating positive correlations between solar variations and climate patterns. The research costs are detailed for each year.

Yeah...Dr. Soon is an evil "denier"on the take.

Once again, Kalm...

...you fail.

[kalm]

What records?

These records, Lil Abner.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentclo ... limate.pdf

Here's the Cliff Notes: The Smithsonian, NOT DR. SOON, submitted a multi-year, $60,000 +/- annual research grant request, to The Southern Company, on behalf of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, for a continuation of an existing research project demonstrating positive correlations between solar variations and climate patterns. The research costs are detailed for each year.

Yeah...Dr. Soon is an evil "denier"on the take.

Once again, Kalm...

...you fail.

"What's The Southern Company"?

He said, playfully lobbing another volley over the net...

[kalm]

Sea levels rose quickly by 4 inches on EC(b).

Sea levels across the Northeast coast of the United States rose nearly 3.9 inches between 2009 and 2010, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Arizona and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The waters near Portland, Maine, saw an even greater rise -- 5 inches -- over the two-year period.

While scientists have been observing higher sea levels across the globe in recent decades, the study found a much more extreme rise than previous averages. Such an event is "unprecedented" in the history of the tide gauge record, according to the researchers, and represents a 1-in-850 year event.

"Unlike storm surge, this event caused persistent and widespread coastal flooding even without apparent weather processes," the study's authors wrote. "In terms of beach erosion, the impact of the 2009-2010 [sea level rise] event is almost as significant as some hurricane events."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/2 ... mg00000014" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Ibanez]

I didn't know we had so many Climatologists on CS.

[kalm]

I didn't know we had so many Climatologists on CS.

Funny thing is, I'm not sure if T-man has posted an article from a single climatologist.

[Pwns]

The TRUE BELIEVERS on both sides of this debate kill the entire thing...
The money on both sides - and fraud on both sides - is alarming



Why anybody would think they NEED to be on one side or the other is confusing
The Climate Change debate is now so toxic and partisan (see: Crusader Zealots) that nothing further can actually be researched, studied and commented on without complete chaos to follow

I can agree with this.

Talking about the merits of the science gets boring. I'm ready to start calling out alarmists on what it is they want to do to fix the alleged problem.

Wind in solar is not going to make significant emissions reductions on the timeline that alarmists say we need to make them.

If the problem is as dire as alarmists say it is a carbon tax will be about as useful as digging trench to try and stop a hurricane from flooding your house.

Fracking and biofuels? LoL.

There is only one energy source that can really make large-scale emissions reductions that alarmists talk about making. Yet these alarmists don't complain when nuclear reactors get shut down, don't complain that more waste sites and reactors and infrastructure aren't getting built.

Don't tell me I'm ignoring scientific realities when you want to ignore mathematical and engineering realities (which are actual immutable realities, not guess work).

[kalm]

The TRUE BELIEVERS on both sides of this debate kill the entire thing...
The money on both sides - and fraud on both sides - is alarming



Why anybody would think they NEED to be on one side or the other is confusing
The Climate Change debate is now so toxic and partisan (see: Crusader Zealots) that nothing further can actually be researched, studied and commented on without complete chaos to follow

I can agree with this.

Talking about the merits of the science gets boring. I'm ready to start calling out alarmists on what it is they want to do to fix the alleged problem.

Wind in solar is not going to make significant emissions reductions on the timeline that alarmists say we need to make them.

If the problem is as dire as alarmists say it is a carbon tax will be about as useful as digging trench to try and stop a hurricane from flooding your house.

Fracking and biofuels? LoL.

There is only one energy source that can really make large-scale emissions reductions that alarmists talk about making. Yet these alarmists don't complain when nuclear reactors get shut down, don't complain that more waste sites and reactors and infrastructure aren't getting built.

Don't tell me I'm ignoring scientific realities when you want to ignore mathematical and engineering realities (which are actual immutable realities, not guess work).

Renewables in Germany provided over 1/4 of demand last year. They are aiming to provide 100% of output by 2050.

[travelinman67]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2 ... e-science/

We Get What We Pay For With Disastrous Climate Science

A rapidly growing number of Americans are coming to distrust “scientific” climate report conclusions that emanate from authoritarian government and institutional sources — often with good reason. Such skepticism has arisen in part from revelations of conspiracies among influential researchers to exaggerate the existence and threats of man-made climate change, withhold background data and suppress contrary findings evidenced in the “ClimateGate” scandal.
Other doubt is legitimately fueled by direct observations. We commonly witness alarmist claims based upon short-term warming events, while other equally notable cooling episodes are dismissed in importance, attributed to warming, or cited as proof of disturbing “climate change.”Who pays for all this bad science, and worse, news? We do, of course. And it doesn’t come cheap. According to data compiled by Joanne Nova at the Science and Public Policy Institute, the U.S. Government spent more than $32.5 billion on climate studies between 1989 and 2009. This doesn’t count about $79 billion more spent for related climate change technology research, foreign aid and tax breaks for “green energy.”
To suggest that climate science money trickles down from government would be a gross understatement. Actually, it cascades from mountains on high, presided over by agencies and their federal and state minions we generally assume to be knowledgeable and objective. But often we might be wrong. This occurs when a particularly orthodox or partisan view becomes inculcated into government leadership and surrogate organization power structures — yes, exactly like man-made global warming, for example. Then follow the rivers, streams and creeks as those influences spread.
Agencies get funding appropriations based upon how important they are, or more accurately, how important we are persuaded to think they are. In the case of climate and environmental issues, they appear to be a lot more important when represented to address (certainly not waste) a crisis. Climate change, a topic offering an opportunity to regulate something really dangerous, like natural air, is just too wonderful to pass up.Who populates these agencies? People with orthodox credentials of course. It helps a lot if they have published books or articles that favor and advance those views, or at least associate with influential organizations that do. Let’s call that the “orthodox mainstream.” Then again, most of those books and articles wouldn’t have been published at all if the authors didn’t have good science credentials, right? They would need to have undertaken research that was published in respected journals.
Farther downriver, the universities that support learned research and hire scientists to conduct it depend upon federal and state agencies (again from us). To compete for that money they must address topics that are recognized by the orthodox mainstream as being very important. Only then can they hire and produce people who write successful proposals to support staff to do the research to prepare the papers that get published in the respected journals.But what if those learned people’s papers can’t get published in the respected journals because they contradict views of influential orthodox mainstream gatekeepers who attack their merit — the exact circumstances exposed in the U.K. East Anglia University Climate Research Unit’s ClimateGate e-mails? In this case, those scientists wouldn’t win grants and contracts (from tax and tuition money we supply) to gain tenure and promotions at leading universities and research laboratories, or gain credentials needed to get hired by the agencies and surrogate organizations that distribute and administer the funding. Others who play the game by the rules of politics and ideology are likely to fare much better.Is this a real problem? Consider just a few examples.
A June 4, 2003, e-mail from Keith Briffa to fellow tree ring researcher Edward Cook at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York stated:

“I got a paper to review (submitted to the Journal of Agricultural, Biological and Environmental Sciences), written by a Korean guy and someone from Berkeley, that claims that the method of reconstruction that we use in dendroclimatology (reverse regression) is wrong, biased, lousy, horrible, etc…If published as is, this paper could really do some damage…It won’t be easy to dismiss out of hand as the math appears to be correct theoretically… I am really sorry but I have to nag about that review—Confidentially, I now need a hard and if required extensive case for rejecting.”A July 2004 communication from the U.K. East Anglia Climate Research Unit’s director Philip Jones to Michael Mann referred to two papers recently published in Climate Research with a “HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL” subject line observed: “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin [Trenberth] and I will keep them out somehow—even if we have to redefine what the peer review literature is”. 

Jones and Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research,  were joint lead authors for a key chapter of that 2007 report. Mann was an originator of the infamous “hockey stick” graph suggesting accelerating human-caused global warming since the Industrial Revolution.Tom Wigley, a senior scientist and Trenberth associate at the National Center for Atmospheric Research suggested in another e-mail to Mann: “If you think that [Yale professor James] Saiers is in the greenhouse skeptics camp, then, if we can find documentary evidence of this, we could go through official [American Geophysical Union] channels to get him ousted” [as editor-in-chief of the Geophysical Research Lettersjournal].So what about the “fourth branch of government,” the media? What do they appear to think about such breaches of public trust? Judging from all of the seven invited representatives at Part Two of a Nov. 23, 2010, Yale Forum titled “Scientists and Journalists on Lessons Learned [from the ClimateGate e-mail release],” not very much at all. 
Curtis Brainard of the Columbia Journalism Review observed: I’d say that most journalists didn’t learn anything from the ‘ClimateGate’ and IPCC-errors ‘pseudo scandals’…those events only served to confuse editors and reporters.” He was less confused about motives behind the reporting of those events, stating, “The New York Times had a great front-page story about climate denial being an ‘article of faith’ for the Tea Party, which made it clear that the group’s climate politics are not synchronous with climate science.”Richard Harris from NPR believed that ClimateGate reporting “was not a product of journalism, but activism…crafted by people with a desired objective.”Elizabeth Kolbert of The New Yorker agreed with both Brainard and Harris: “The obvious lesson of faux scandals like ‘ClimateGate’ is that they tend to be created by groups or individuals with their own agendas, and journalists ought to be very wary about covering them.”
Eric Pooley of Bloomberg Businessweek also dismissed the legitimacy and importance of the e-mail revelations. “When the next climate scandalette comes along,” he said, “some news organizations will surely play to hype and get carried away with their coverage- in effect, becoming a handy transmission belt for the professional deniers.”Does anyone else detect any indication of media bias here? Maybe it’s just me.But consider a much larger issue.
Whatever our individual political orientations or climate views, let’s all recognize that it is a very big deal indeed when key professionals entrusted with important science and reporting responsibilities betray our trust. Think about government policy impacts involving many billions of dollars that are influenced by false premises, including regulatory standards and budgets attached to energy, environmental, science and education programs. Try to imagine but a few of the sweeping impacts of bad science upon our national economy and daily lives.So where is responsible journalism in all of this? All too often the mainstream is very far downstream in channeled disregard of abuses. The combined Bernard Madoff and Enron hoaxes did far less national damage yet received a whole lot more media attention.

[travelinman67]

http://joannenova.com.au/2014/05/big-gr ... ind-to-it/

Big-Green have more money than Big-Oil but the media are blind to it.

Finally, some coverage of the massive amount of money pumping the Big-Green agenda. What is really so remarkable about this is that skeptics are winning, despite the fact that the greens have almost all the institutional, academic, government, and big-media support, and far, far more money. All we have is truth and wits.

The Washington Examiner

Mainstream media don’t know Big Green has deeper pockets than Big Oil

Ron ArnoldMainstream reporters appear not to be aware of the component parts that comprise Big Green: environmentalist membership groups, nonprofit law firms, nonprofit real estate trusts (The Nature Conservancy alone holds $6 billion in assets), wealthy foundations giving prescriptive grants, and agenda-making cartels such as the 200-plus member Environmental Grantmakers Association. They each play a major socio-political role.
Seeing Big-Green funding means taking a broader view of the money trail:Invisible fact: the environmental movement is a mature, highly developed network with top leadership stewarding a vast institutional memory, a fiercely loyal cadre of competent social and political operatives, and millions of high-demographic members ready to be mobilized as needed.That membership base is a built-in free public relations machine responsive to the push of a social media button sending politically powerful “educational” alerts that don’t show up on election reports.
Big Oil doesn’t have that, but has to pay for lobbyists, public relations firms and support groups that do show up on reports.

US environmental activists have access to $13 billion?

I’d like to see a detailed breakdown of that. But if we include government funding to activist-scientists, as well as government grants for all forms of emissions reduction and education campaigns, it’s believeable. Compare $13 billion to funding for skeptical scientists.  The Heartland Institute are the largest single group usually named as supporting skeptical scientists. Their total budget (for all their projects, which involve a lot more than just the climate) is about  $6 – $7m.“… you do need detailed knowledge to parse Big Green into its constituent parts. I spoke with Washington-based environmental policy analyst Paul Driessen, who said, “U.S. environmental activist groups are a $13-billion-a-year industry — and they’re all about PR and mobilizing the troops.“Their climate change campaign alone has well over a billion dollars annually, and high-profile battles against drilling, fracking, oil sands and Keystone get a big chunk of that, as demonstrated by the Rockefeller assault.”

Mind-boggling. One hundred billion at their disposal?

Driessen then identified the most-neglected of all money sources in Big Green: “The liberal foundations that give targeted grants to Big Green operations have well over $100 billion at their disposal.”That figure is confirmed in the Foundation Center database of the Top 100 Foundations. But how much actually gets to environmental groups? The Giving USA Institute’s annual reports show $80,427,810,000 (more than $80 billion) in giving to environmental recipients from 2000 to 2012.I checked the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and found $147.3 million in assets while environmental donor Gordon E. and Betty I. Moore Foundation posted $5.2 billion.Driessen pointed out another unperceived sector of Big Green: government donors. “Under President Obama, government agencies have poured tens of millions into nonprofit groups for anti-hydrocarbon campaigns.”

RON ARNOLD, a Washington Examiner columnist, is executive vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise.

[HI54UNI]

I can agree with this.

Talking about the merits of the science gets boring. I'm ready to start calling out alarmists on what it is they want to do to fix the alleged problem.

Wind in solar is not going to make significant emissions reductions on the timeline that alarmists say we need to make them.

If the problem is as dire as alarmists say it is a carbon tax will be about as useful as digging trench to try and stop a hurricane from flooding your house.

Fracking and biofuels? LoL.

There is only one energy source that can really make large-scale emissions reductions that alarmists talk about making. Yet these alarmists don't complain when nuclear reactors get shut down, don't complain that more waste sites and reactors and infrastructure aren't getting built.

Don't tell me I'm ignoring scientific realities when you want to ignore mathematical and engineering realities (which are actual immutable realities, not guess work).

Renewables in Germany provided over 1/4 of demand last year. They are aiming to provide 100% of output by 2050.

Demand or energy? There's a difference.

[YoUDeeMan]

What records?

When it was announced that Soon was giving a talk at the University of Rochester, I knew it would be interesting. I was more than willing to hear what the man had to say. The whole point of being a scientist is, after all, to try to leave your preconceptions at the door and let the work speak for itself. I also wanted to understand Soon's own thinking about the role he was playing as a public skeptic.

On all counts I was disappointed.

Taken as nothing more than a scientific talk, Dr. Soon's presentation was, in my opinion, pretty bad. I watch a lot of these things. It's part of my job. If Soon had been giving a Ph.D defense, he would have been skewered. I was left without a clear line of argument or clear justifications for his claims. More importantly, for a topic this contentious there was insufficient discussion of the voluminous and highly detailed response critics have offered to his claims that solar activity accounts for most observed climate variability. Many of my colleagues listening to the talk said they felt the same way. I came away thinking, "Is that the best they have?"

But more troubling was a conversation I had with Soon earlier in the day. Every scientist has the right to his or her own perspective. But scientists also understand how research communities build their understanding about what is known and how anyone knows it. So, I wondered how Soon could fail to acknowledge that the weight of evidence was overwhelmingly against him when he made his overarching public statements of skepticism. I asked Soon why his testimony to Congress did not begin with something like, "I acknowledge that the majority of researchers in my field hold a different view from me, but let me now explain why I am taking such a contrarian position."

When I asked Soon about these points, he had very little to say.

I came away from my meeting with this famous climate skeptic feeling pretty depressed. What I had seen was a scientist whose work, in my opinion, was simply not very good. That, on its own, is no big deal. There are lots of scientists whose work is not very good — and some people may even think my science should be included in that list. But Soon's little string of papers were being heralded in the highest courts of public opinion as a significant blow to everyone else's understanding of Earth's climate. From TV studios to the halls of Congress, we were being told his was world-shaking research of the highest caliber, and that we had to take notice.

From what I saw and learned that day, the truth wasn't anywhere close. That was what made it all so depressing. For an issue so important to all of us, the standards should be a lot higher.

That is the real problem with Willie Soon and climate denial.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2015/02/2 ... te-skeptic" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Honestly, kalm...read that piece you posted and tell me what evidence the writer provided to back up his criticism of Soon (and I don't know Soon from Late).

That was a typical NPR fluff piece, with a bizarre statement that any opponent should begin any presentation with, "I acknowledge that the majority of researchers in my field hold a different view from me, but let me now explain why I am taking such a contrarian position."

Strange piece. To borrow his own phrase..."Is that the best he has?"

And is that the best you have?

[travelinman67]

Dr. Soon is an astrophysicist. His research was on solar activity and its correlation with climate change patterns.
Climatology is an exceedingly complex discipline utilizing many scientific fields.