RE: [greenyes] Global Warming and Response to Critics

["Steve Bloom" <spbloom@no.address>]

	The McIntyre controversy is no controversy at all within the scientific community.  In
addition to www.realclimate.org see
http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/cgi-bin/blog/2004/08#mckitrick6 for a pithy discussion
of one of McIntyre's egregious errors (confusing radians with degrees in a critical
calculation).  Also, the WSJ article didn't say that Mann had failed to provide McIntyre
with data (McIntyre already has it) but that other climate scientists had refused to do
so.  Given his past errors, why should they?  That the WSJ is attempting at this stage in
the game to keep McIntyre afloat speaks volumes about their bias.
	On the landfill GHG issue, I look forward to the results.
	-- Steve Bloom


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Peter Anderson [mailto:anderson@no.address]
> Sent: Thursday, February 17, 2005 9:50 AM
> To: GreenYes
> Subject: [greenyes] Global Warming and Response to Critics
>
>
> Last week I posted a Wall Street Journal article describing the efforts of a
> mining engineer, Stephen McIntyre, to challenge one of the graphs used to
> support global warming, the so called "hockey stick" representing higher
> temperatures in the 20th century, which was developed by Michael Mann.
>
> Patty Bates asked how I reacted to that article.
>
> At the outset, as the WSJ article itself repeatedly acknowledged, this
> debate over the hockey stick is a sideshow that does not affect the
> overwhelming evidence of warming associated since the onset of the
> Industrial Revolution with increased fossil fuel burning and other manmade
> sources of greenhouse gases, such as landfills.
>
> But, to be fair to the other side, the hockey stick neatly pulled many
> stands of the case together in a visually understandable format.
>
> I haven't had occasion to read the technical papers, but from the newspaper
> article, what McIntyre is doing is attempting to replicate Mann's study as a
> way of testing its validity.
>
> To me it's not important whether McIntyre has the noblest of motives, both
> sides of any debate ought to be prepared to rationally defend the factual
> assertions it makes...otherwise what one is saying quickly descends into
> dogma.
>
> If the article is correct in stating that Mann has refused to share his data
> base and computer codes with McIntyre, then I believe that is wrong.  It
> appears that Mann views McIntyre as a gadfly, and he may be right in that
> regard. But, I don't believe that that gainsays anyone's obligation to
> support one's contentions with the facts relied upon.  The fact that the
> dominant weight of scientific opinion in this case mirrors the views of most
> of those on the listserve should not lessen that obligation now that the
> shoe is on the other foot from most of the situations we are in.
>
> On a note closer to home, Steve Pollard has challenged my statements that
> landfills are a major source of greenhouse gases being grossly undercounted
> by EPA, which has ignored the issue in reliance upon arbitrary assumptions
> that are so absurd they are mathematical impossibilities.  The fact that
> Steve appears to have based his disagreement solely on those same impossible
> EPA assumptions, without any further facts, is immaterial to my obligation
> to support what I say. In the next few weeks, I will be sharing with him an
> analysis that supports my belief that landfills add something more like 12%
> rather than EPA's assumed 3% to greenhouse gases, so that he can respond to
> each of the underlying points.
>
> If we can only strip away as much as possible the rhetoric and dig down into
> the underlying facts, this deeply divided country of ours will go a long way
> to reach comity with each other.
>
>
>                     Peter
>
>
>
>
> _________________________
> Peter Anderson, President
> RECYCLEWORLDS CONSULTING
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>