Ooh, La, La- the Gores have new digs:
The couple spent $8,875,000 on an ocean-view villa on 1.5 acres with a swimming pool, spa and fountains, a real estate source familiar with the deal confirms. The Italian-style house has six fireplaces, five bedrooms and nine bathrooms.
Do they know that the President thinks "at a certain point you have made enough money?"
Regarding climate change in the news, Douglas Keenan has at last, as I think we've mentioned here before, succeeded in getting the raw data released from some reluctant researchers. The researchers and their university have given various reasons for their refusals over the years, and the new one is that information Keenan wants will not work for proxy temperature records, but there is a problem with this, as Steve McIntyre points out:
Baillie made a similar statement to the Guardian:
“Keenan is the only person in the world claiming that our oak-ring patterns are temperature records,” Baillie told the Guardian.
Rob Wilson agreed with Baillie on this point, telling the Times that “oaks were virtually useless as a temperature proxy”.
Mann et al 2008
Notwithstanding the considered opinion of Baillie and Wilson that oaks are “virtually useless as a temperature proxy” and “dangerous” to use in a temperature reconstruction, no fewer than 119 oak chronologies were used in Mann et al 2008.
Ooops. Sadly, neither The Guardian nor the Times reporters seem aware of this.
Further, the same trees were discussed positively as possible temperature proxies in 2009.... by Baillie.
Common Room and other young (and old) Scholars interested in reading more about the science and pros and cons of using trees as thermometers should read this.
The Climate Change defenders in the comments at both the Guardian and the Times insist that if the University must release it's data because it is paid for by the public, well, then, they should be able to march into the University and help themselves to the desks and computers, because they are paid for by the public, and taxpayer information gathered by the public is likewise fair game (one senses they have all been reading the same talking points)- they also insist that Douglas Keenan should put on his boots and collect his own tree cores instead of asking to see the measurements of his betters.
Over at Climate Audit in the comments, Craig Loehle points out:
Several commenters have stated that if the public payed for the data it should be public. That is missing the point. In a field where replication is cheap and easy such as some areas of chemistry, it is sufficient to describe the methods and others can replicate your results. If your experiment is on a supercollider, you better publish your data so others can check them. Even moreso if it is tree rings because no one will ever be able to recore exactly the trees you used. If it can’t be checked or replicated, it isn’t science. There is a problem with people using the data for their own analyses (not just checking the work), and this can be worked out, but the current system with all the data hidden away so no one can check anything is simply not good.
Emphasis added. Commenter TAG follows up:
As well, when analyzed data is being sused to guide public policy (a la the IPCC) then that data must be available for public scrutiny.Pajamas Media:
If e nuclear power company indicated that their proposed power plant would be safe for earthquakes but refused to release the data beyond a summary report, then their proposal would be rejected. It would not matter if the summary had been peer reviewed by a number of eminent scientists and engineers. The power company could not argue validly that the data and codes used to process were proprietary and subject to IPR and patent restrictions. They would produce the data and code or see their proposal rejected.
Whether Wall Street colossus Goldman Sachs has committed a crime remains to be seen, but the investigation may well uncover the environmental lobby and its public figurehead. For nearly a decade, Goldman Sachs has been a quiet but major investor in cap and trade. And Goldman’s main investment partner has been Al Gore.
About a decade ago, Goldman executives recognized that personal fortunes could be made with the invention of a carbon trading system through the passage of a U.S. cap-and-trade bill. [...]
Today, seven of Gore’s GIM chief partners are from Goldman Sachs. The company is now valued at $2.2 billion.
It doesn’t stop there. The Goldman Sachs/Gore team then established the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), a new cap-and-trade carbon trading platform, and partnered with the UK-based Climate Exchange, Plc (CLE), a holding company listed on the London Stock Exchange. CLE does carbon trading in Europe. In late 2004, they also created the Chicago Climate Futures Exchange (CCFX).
In September of 2006, Climate Exchange Plc acquired the remainder of CCX it didn’t own and placed £12.2 million of new shares with Goldman Sachs.
Goldman is reported to have made an investment of $23 million in the venture. Between Gore and Goldman, they are the largest investors in the Chicago Climate Exchange, owning 20% of it.
And this is actually a really bad sign that we're going to be somebody's lunch:
The nation's largest electric utilities association and three of the country's biggest oil companies will endorse the climate proposal Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) will introduce Monday, Kerry told supporters in a private phone call Thursday evening.
The declarations of support show the three senators have made some inroads with the business community in drafting their plan, but have yet to win over traditional opponents of mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions. Several consumer groups will back the plan as well. Kerry's office declined to comment on the matter.
Think about the CPSIA and remember that regulations are merely the big guys' preferred method of eliminating competition and creating a market favorable to them.
Consider what's happened to 'Earth Day' and it's hard not to snicker:
The organizers wanted it to be one-time event, but it has become an annual, global celebration. The first one cost about $122,000 to put on; today, the Earth Day Network, which oversees Earth Day worldwide, boasts an $8.5 million budget and a long roster of corporate sponsors, including Underwriters Laboratories, Siemens, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, AT&T Mobile and Procter & Gamble.More about that here.
In 1970, students at San Jose State buried a car as a protest against consumerism. In 2010, there will be Earth Day events in Washington put on by Chevrolet and Ford.
[...]
In fact, many also seem to have absorbed the lesson that the best thing for the environment is to buy things.
This year, a poll conducted by professors at George Mason, Yale and American universities showed that respondents who were most alarmed about climate change were more than eight times more likely to express their concern through shopping for "green" products than by contacting an elected official multiple times about it.
I <3 Judith Curry, I hope I am wrong, but I think we are witnessing the implosion of her career in Climate Science and she is simply too honest to realize this. She says:
The Oxburgh investigation initiated by the UEA took on a very narrow slice of these overall concerns: whether or not the CRU records of temperature change had been deliberately biased or manipulated by UEA scientists. While the Oxburgh report is hardly a ringing endorsement of the CRU science, their main conclusion is that they do not find any evidence of scientific misconduct such as falsification of data. The basis for this conclusion is examination of a selection of 11 research papers published by CRU (based upon a recommendation from the Royal Society, the exact provenance of this recommendation is unknown) and interviews with CRU scientists.
Criticisms of the Oxburgh report that have been made include: bias of some of the members including the Chair, not examining the papers that are at the heart of the controversies, lack of consideration of the actual criticisms made by Steve McIntyre and others, and a short report with few specifics that implies a superficial investigation. When I first read the report, I thought I was reading the executive summary and proceeded to look for the details; well, there weren’t any. And I was concerned that the report explicitly did not address the key issues that had been raised by the skeptics. Upon reading Andrew Montford’s analysis, I learned: “So we have an extraordinary coincidence – that both the UEA submission to the [UK Parliament's Science and Technology] Select Committee and Lord Oxburgh’s panel independently came up with almost identical lists of papers to look at, and that they independently neglected key papers like Jones 1998 and Osborn and Briffa 2006.” I recall reading this statement from one of the blogs, which seems especially apt: the fire department receives report of a fire in the kitchen; upon investigating the living room, they declare that there is no fire in the house.
So in summary, Jones, Briffa et al. can be relieved that they have been vindicated of charges of scientific misconduct. Even with the deficiencies of the Oxburgh report, I don’t disagree with their conclusion about finding no evidence of scientific misconduct: I haven’t seen any evidence of plagiarism or fabrication/falsification of data by the CRU scientists. Sloppy record keeping, cherry picking of data, and inadequate statistical methods do not constitute scientific misconduct, but neither do they inspire confidence in the research product. Further, the “bad apple” issue is still out there, but this is something that is impossible to assess objectively. And the behavior of these scientists (sloppy record keeping, dismissal of skeptical critiques, and lack of transparency) has slowed down scientific progress in assessing and improving these very important data sets. Therefore I have been proposing that we move away from the focus on individual behavior, and shifting focus to issues related to the IPCC assessment process, addressing issues related the availability of data and transparency of the methods, and to improving the temperature data and proxies. Once these issues are addressed, the “bad apple” issue becomes mostly moot.
She's also quite clear and specific about the corruptions in the IPCC process, and this is vitally important because the IPCC is used as the basis for sweeping governmental policy changes that affect ALL of us-and by 'us,' I mean the entire planet:
Corruptions to the IPCC process that I have seen discussed include:
• lead/contributing authors assessing their own work – (e.g. von Storch criticism in 2005), in some cases resulting in an overemphasis on their own papers written by themselves and their collaborators;
• tailoring graphics and not adequately describing uncertainties ostensibly to simplify and not to “dilute the message” that IPCC wanted to send;
• violations of publication (in press) deadlines for inclusions of papers in the IPCC report;
• inadequacies in the review process whereby lead/contributing authors don’t respond fairly to adverse criticism; this inadequacy arises in part to the authors themselves having ultimate authority and in part to cursory performance by the Review Editors;
• evasiveness and unresponsiveness by the IPCC regarding efforts to investigate alleged violations occurring in the review process;
• IPCC Review Editors and authors using the IPCC to avoid accountability under national FOI legislation.
And the IPCC's Pachauri is, again, lying about the IPCC and the peer reviewed literature. He's overstating the number of peer reviewed sources (he says over 18K, it was closer to 12) and greenwashing the number of 'gray' literature cited - it's actually almost 1/3rd of the sources.
http://climateaudit.org/2010/04/21/mann-of-oak/
Pajamas Media:
Whether Wall Street colossus Goldman Sachs has committed a crime remains to be seen, but the investigation may well uncover the environmental lobby and its public figurehead. For nearly a decade, Goldman Sachs has been a quiet but major investor in cap and trade. And Goldman’s main investment partner has been Al Gore.
About a decade ago, Goldman executives recognized that personal fortunes could be made with the invention of a carbon trading system through the passage of a U.S. cap-and-trade bill. [...]
Today, seven of Gore’s GIM chief partners are from Goldman Sachs. The company is now valued at $2.2 billion.
It doesn’t stop there. The Goldman Sachs/Gore team then established the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), a new cap-and-trade carbon trading platform, and partnered with the UK-based Climate Exchange, Plc (CLE), a holding company listed on the London Stock Exchange. CLE does carbon trading in Europe. In late 2004, they also created the Chicago Climate Futures Exchange (CCFX).
In September of 2006, Climate Exchange Plc acquired the remainder of CCX it didn’t own and placed £12.2 million of new shares with Goldman Sachs.
Goldman is reported to have made an investment of $23 million in the venture. Between Gore and Goldman, they are the largest investors in the Chicago Climate Exchange, owning 20% of it.
And this is actually a really bad sign that we're going to be somebody's lunch:
The nation's largest electric utilities association and three of the country's biggest oil companies will endorse the climate proposal Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) will introduce Monday, Kerry told supporters in a private phone call Thursday evening.
The declarations of support show the three senators have made some inroads with the business community in drafting their plan, but have yet to win over traditional opponents of mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions. Several consumer groups will back the plan as well. Kerry's office declined to comment on the matter.
Think about the CPSIA and remember that regulations are merely the big guys' preferred method of eliminating competition and creating a market favorable to them.
Consider what's happened to 'Earth Day' and it's hard not to snicker:
The organizers wanted it to be one-time event, but it has become an annual, global celebration. The first one cost about $122,000 to put on; today, the Earth Day Network, which oversees Earth Day worldwide, boasts an $8.5 million budget and a long roster of corporate sponsors, including Underwriters Laboratories, Siemens, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, AT&T Mobile and Procter & Gamble.
In 1970, students at San Jose State buried a car as a protest against consumerism. In 2010, there will be Earth Day events in Washington put on by Chevrolet and Ford.
[...]
In fact, many also seem to have absorbed the lesson that the best thing for the environment is to buy things.
This year, a poll conducted by professors at George Mason, Yale and American universities showed that respondents who were most alarmed about climate change were more than eight times more likely to express their concern through shopping for "green" products than by contacting an elected official multiple times about it.
I <3 Judith Curry, but I think we are witnessing the implosion of her career in Climate Science and she is simply too honest to realize this. She says:
The Oxburgh investigation initiated by the UEA took on a very narrow slice of these overall concerns: whether or not the CRU records of temperature change had been deliberately biased or manipulated by UEA scientists. While the Oxburgh report is hardly a ringing endorsement of the CRU science, their main conclusion is that they do not find any evidence of scientific misconduct such as falsification of data. The basis for this conclusion is examination of a selection of 11 research papers published by CRU (based upon a recommendation from the Royal Society, the exact provenance of this recommendation is unknown) and interviews with CRU scientists.
Criticisms of the Oxburgh report that have been made include: bias of some of the members including the Chair, not examining the papers that are at the heart of the controversies, lack of consideration of the actual criticisms made by Steve McIntyre and others, and a short report with few specifics that implies a superficial investigation. When I first read the report, I thought I was reading the executive summary and proceeded to look for the details; well, there weren’t any. And I was concerned that the report explicitly did not address the key issues that had been raised by the skeptics. Upon reading Andrew Montford’s analysis, I learned: “So we have an extraordinary coincidence – that both the UEA submission to the [UK Parliament's Science and Technology] Select Committee and Lord Oxburgh’s panel independently came up with almost identical lists of papers to look at, and that they independently neglected key papers like Jones 1998 and Osborn and Briffa 2006.” I recall reading this statement from one of the blogs, which seems especially apt: the fire department receives report of a fire in the kitchen; upon investigating the living room, they declare that there is no fire in the house.
So in summary, Jones, Briffa et al. can be relieved that they have been vindicated of charges of scientific misconduct. Even with the deficiencies of the Oxburgh report, I don’t disagree with their conclusion about finding no evidence of scientific misconduct: I haven’t seen any evidence of plagiarism or fabrication/falsification of data by the CRU scientists. Sloppy record keeping, cherry picking of data, and inadequate statistical methods do not constitute scientific misconduct, but neither do they inspire confidence in the research product. Further, the “bad apple” issue is still out there, but this is something that is impossible to assess objectively. And the behavior of these scientists (sloppy record keeping, dismissal of skeptical critiques, and lack of transparency) has slowed down scientific progress in assessing and improving these very important data sets. Therefore I have been proposing that we move away from the focus on individual behavior, and shifting focus to issues related to the IPCC assessment process, addressing issues related the availability of data and transparency of the methods, and to improving the temperature data and proxies. Once these issues are addressed, the “bad apple” issue becomes mostly moot.
She's also quite clear and specific about the corruptions in the IPCC process, and this is vitally important because the IPCC is used as the basis for sweeping governmental policy changes that affect ALL of us-and by 'us,' I mean the entire planet:
Corruptions to the IPCC process that I have seen discussed include:
• lead/contributing authors assessing their own work – (e.g. von Storch criticism in 2005), in some cases resulting in an overemphasis on their own papers written by themselves and their collaborators;
• tailoring graphics and not adequately describing uncertainties ostensibly to simplify and not to “dilute the message” that IPCC wanted to send;
• violations of publication (in press) deadlines for inclusions of papers in the IPCC report;
• inadequacies in the review process whereby lead/contributing authors don’t respond fairly to adverse criticism; this inadequacy arises in part to the authors themselves having ultimate authority and in part to cursory performance by the Review Editors;
• evasiveness and unresponsiveness by the IPCC regarding efforts to investigate alleged violations occurring in the review process;
• IPCC Review Editors and authors using the IPCC to avoid accountability under national FOI legislation.
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