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• we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have
• it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations
• Emphasis on extreme scenarios may have been appropriate at one time
• he thus embarrassed NASA by coming out with his claims of global warming

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed — and hence clamorous to be led to safety — by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."  —  Henry Louis Mencken

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister

Other Lies

• The Science is settled.  If so, then why are the peer-reviewed science journals still publishing opposing papers and other theories?
• There are no peer reviewed paper opposing global warming. See above.
• All credible scientists agree. See above.
• CO2 is the major greenhouse gas. No water vapor is.  . . . the maximum supportable number for the importance of water vapour alone is about 60-70% and for water plus clouds 80-90% of the present day greenhouse effect. (Of course, using the same approach,  the maximum supportable number for CO2 is 20-30%,    
• CO2 causes the temperature to rise. Actually temperature rises cause CO2 to increase:  At least three careful ice core studies have shown that CO2 starts to rise about 800 years (600-1000 years) after Antarctic temperature during glacial terminations. These terminations are pronounced warming periods that mark the ends of the ice ages that happen every 100,000 years or so. ... All that the lag shows is that CO2 did not cause the first 800 years of warming, out of the 5000 year trend. The other 4200 years of warming could in fact have been caused by CO2, as far as we can tell from this ice core data.    (Notice “could in fact have been”? That means that they don’t really know.)
• Historic temperature were stable until recently. Here is what Dr. Wegman, past president of the statistics division of the National Academy of Sciences says about the temperature chart the AL Gore uses. (MBH98 and MBH99 are the scientific papers that created Al Gore’s chart; MM03/05a/05b are the scientific papers that pointed out the errors in MBH98 and MBH99):

In general, we found MBH98 and MBH99  to be somewhat obscure and incomplete ... Normally, one would try to select a calibration dataset that is representative of the entire dataset. The 1902-1995 data is not fully appropriate for calibration and leads to a misuse in principal component analysis.  (From: 07142006_Wegman_Report.pdf, page 4)

The criticism in MM03/05a/05b  pointed out a number of flaws such as:

• You can take red noise and put it into the algorithm used in MBH98 and get the famous hockey stick.
• You can remove the bristle cone pines from the data set and the hockey stick disappears.
• If you use the correct data centering methodology, the hockey stick disappears.

The whole field of climate prediction is fatally flawed because

most of the field uses the same data and methods - they are not independent.

Wegman: page 4:  Our findings from this analysis suggest that authors in the area of paleoclimate studies are closely connected and thus “independent studies” may not be as independent as they might appear on the surface.   (From: 07142006_Wegman_Report.pdf, page 4)

Fraud Allegation Against Key Foundation of Warming Data Accuracy

Allegations of fraud at Albany - the Wang case

Professor Wei-Chyung Wang is a star scientist in the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center at the University at Albany, New York. He is a key player in the climate change debate (see his self-description here). Wang has been accused of scientific fraud.

The fraud allegation against some climatic research of Wei-Chyung Wang”.

“The Civil Heretic” was a perfect example of what Freeman Dyson disagrees with: blatant and unfounded exaggeration. Dyson is not a “global-warming heretic”; he does not dispute the science. He simply says, and rightfully so, that the science is both uncertain and very much exaggerated. It is no secret that a lot of climate-change research is subject to opinion, that climate models sometimes disagree even on the signs of the future changes (e.g. drier vs. wetter future climate). The problem is, only sensational exaggeration makes the kind of story that will get politicians’ — and readers’ — attention. So, yes, climate scientists might exaggerate, but in today’s world, this is the only way to assure any political action and thus more federal financing to reduce the scientific uncertainty.

MONIKA KOPACZ

Applied Mathematics and Atmospheric Sciences

Harvard University

Cambridge, Mass.

The  above is the complete letter as published in the New Your Times,  April 12, 2009

Lying is Necessary!