Ever Wonder What Goes On at a Climate Skeptics Conference?

[Paratus]

Not much science.

As this subject appears to be my dead horse to beat on ATP&N I thought I'd share this article.

Arstechnica sent a science journalist to a Heartland Institute Climate Skeptics Confrenece.

http://arstechnica.com/science/2015...-ars-attends-a-climate-contrarian-conference/

Some choice quotes:

Serious scientific argument was thin on the ground. For instance, in a breakfast keynote on the second day, Mark Steyn simply made fun of well-known Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann for 30 minutes. (Steyn has written that Mann's research was fraudulent, resulting in a defamation lawsuit from Mann. Steyn is also the editor of a forthcoming book called A Disgrace to the Profession—you can guess who it’s about.)

This is, it probably goes without saying, not the kind of thing you hear at an academic conference. Nearly every presentation referenced both Obama and Al Gore so frequently that a drinking game would have resulted in serious liver damage. References to studies published in peer-reviewed journals, on the other hand, were almost completely absent. Clever insults ruled the day; belly laughs were far more common than the curious "hmms" that usually dot the audience of a research talk.

But hey it wasn't all jokes. Our elected leaders also had a platform:

Congressman Lamar Smith, who heads the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, gave a keynote speech that focused on this “secret science.” He pumped his bill requiring the EPA to only use studies based on data that is publicly available and “reproducible” (problematically excluding some published research), which was popular with the conference attendees. Smith said that regulations were often supported by “spurious science and a liberal political agenda,” and he called the EPA’s proposed greenhouse gas emissions regulations “nothing more than a power grab” that “will give the government more control over Americans’ daily lives.”

After his speech, a member of the audience asked if Smith could do anything about the National Science Foundation funding for climate research, complaining that “it only goes to one side.” Winning applause, Smith told the crowd that his committee had just cut NASA’s Earth science budget by close to 40 percent and was pushing the National Science Foundation to stop funding research that he perceives as useless.

Senator Inhofe was there to.

Since there wasn't much science it was hard to keep the message straight.

Many climate “skeptics” have recently defended their movement by saying that of course they don’t deny the Earth is warming. They simply disagree with the degree to which humans have caused that warming. But at the Heartland conference, the only consistent thread was that the “alarmists” are wrong—and comically so. Thus, you had some speakers challenge the magnitude of anthropogenic warming, many others arguing that the observed warming is only an artifact of bad measurements, and others arguing that the greenhouse effect doesn’t exist at all. Without actual scientific research, it’s hard to converge on reality.

But there was a little actual science, the guys from UAH temperature set gave a talk, ( :hmm: who here likes to reference them. )

University of Alabama in Huntsville climate scientist Roy Spencer gave a tame, technical talk about the satellite temperature record he manages. (That satellite record, which spans a thicker portion of the atmosphere than surface records, is popular here because it shows a little less warming.) Spencer described some of the adjustments he and his colleagues must make to the raw data in order to account for things like a satellite’s decaying orbit or time-of-day differences between measurements of the same region. He even showed how a number of updates to the team's adjustment procedures over the years had increased the apparent warming trend in their record.

No one challenged the legitimacy of those adjustments. But when it came to surface temperature datasets from NASA, NOAA, or the UK Met Office, “adjustments to the raw data” were generally synonymous with “fudging the data to exaggerate global warming.” Only Spencer is, it appears, beyond suspicion.

Anyway there's a lot more.

I left out direct quotes about:

• EPA conspiracies
• The physics of the universe make alternative energy impossible
• The environmental benefits of coal
• Admonishing the Pope
• And Many More!

Take a read, it's and eye opener.......

 

[sandorski]

Sounds like typical P&N Denialist postings.

 

[Paratus]

Sounds like typical P&N Denialist postings.

It is but worse because it's a complete echo chamber. It's the church of denialism.

 

[DrPizza]

What's sadder is the senators involved and the committees they're on.

 

[Greenman]

In a few years the polar ice will all be gone and we'll be growing GMO corn in the Arctic. You'll be able to tell all those foolish deniers "I told you so", so why sweat it now?

 

[Jaskalas]

That satellite record, which spans a thicker portion of the atmosphere than surface records, is popular here because it shows a little less warming

Your source offers a very fraudulent description of the satellite record, which shows ZERO warming for almost 20 years. Which he describes as "a little less". As if there's no material difference.

Agenda, much?

 

[nickqt]

Your source offers a very fraudulent description of the satellite record, which shows ZERO warming for almost 20 years. Which he describes as "a little less". As if there's no material difference.

Propaganda at its finest. Carry on soldier.

Propaganda indeed.

 

[Paratus]

Your source offers a very fraudulent description of the satellite record, which shows ZERO warming for almost 20 years. Which he describes as "a little less". As if there's no material difference.

Agenda, much?

This is false.

I just answered this in the other thread. You guys keep linking the T2 dataset from UAH. Because of how the sensors work they pickup overlap with the stratosphere which is predicted cool. So the mid-high troposphere reading is biased lower.

It's one of the errors UAH has been fixing and why they keep bumping the temperature record up.

 

[Paratus]

What's sadder is the senators involved and the committees they're on.

Yup that sucks.

Lamar also reduced funding for commercial crew, (Boeing and SpaceX) so may end up dependent on the Russians longer.

 

[dainthomas]

In a few years the polar ice will all be gone and we'll be growing GMO corn in the Arctic. You'll be able to tell all those foolish deniers "I told you so", so why sweat it now?

And more food would be terrible because.......reasons.

 

[Newell Steamer]

Not much science.

Who needs science when we have bloated neck beard losers who can't figure out how to use a fucking gift card tell us what is really going on??

 

[First]

Yikes. Poor guys were never taken seriously in school or in their professions, so they have no choice but to seek the affirmation and warm comfort of the partisan church of denialism. Poor fellas.