A Free-Market Energy Blog

Climategate: There Is Normal Scientific Discourse Too (revisiting the millennial temperature ‘trick’)

By Chip Knappenberger -- December 12, 2009

[see bottom of post for an update]

Steve McIntyre, chief blogger and workhorse at the blog ClimateAudit, has a recent post which is grabbing a lot of attention across the web and being trumpeted by some as a triumphant unmasking of the fraudulent behavior in the preparation of the IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR).

Science/science policy blogger Roger Pielke Jr. covers Steve’s post, with a post of his own, under the title The “Trick” in Context. However, I think the post should more accurately have been titled The “Trick” in “Context.” For the “context” is one supplied by Steve McIntyre. My read of the relevant emails surrounding the incident in question doesn’t lead me to the same conclusions as Steve.

Context must be supplied in this case. For as anyone who has looked through any of the leaked/stolen Climategate emails (available here) quickly realizes, most of the email threads are not complete from start to finish, and, as is typical of most conversations, they assume the participants already know a lot of what is being discussed, including the context. …

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Roger Pielke Sr.: Towards Climate Science Pluralism–and Starting Over With Climate Policy

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- December 11, 2009

Roger Pielke Sr. is a well respected climatologist and professor. His blog is a top go-to place on the Internet for those searching for the happy middle of the contentious climate-change debate. (His son, Roger Pielke, Jr., also has a must-read blog for Climategate students.)

Here at MasterResource, Chip Knappenberger covers climate science. Knappenberger is skeptical of ultra-skepticism and trenchantly challenges exaggerated science in the service of climate alarmism.

In this tradition, I recently read a very interesting post on Pielke senior’s blog, titled “Three Distinctly Different Climate Science   Perspectives,” that is worth sharing with MasterResource readers. Here is what he wrote, and my critical comment is at the end.

There needs to be recognition that there are three distinctly different viewpoints with respect to the extent that humans alter the climate system.

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The Left, Nuclear Power, and Copenhagen: Rejecting the Viable

By Robert Bryce -- December 10, 2009

With thousands of politicians and environmentalists meeting in Copenhagen to discuss ways to achieve major cuts in global carbon dioxide emissions, one might assume that the need for drastic increases in nuclear power capacity would be an obvious solution – a path forward upon which factions on both the Left and the Right could agree.

Alas, that is not happening. Instead, the Green/Left in the US continues its decades-long opposition to nuclear, all the while insisting that the only way forward is through greater use of alternative energy sources like solar and wind.

Los Angeles Times: Now and Way Back Then

Consider the unsigned editorial published by the Los Angeles Times on November 28. The piece, titled “No new nukes – plants, that is,”[1] declares that nuclear energy “is not a reasonable solution because plants take too long to build and cost far too much.”…

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Electricity for the Poor – What Copenhagen Really Needs to Confront

By Donald Hertzmark -- December 9, 2009
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Climategate Did Not Begin With Climate (Remembering Julian Simon and the storied intolerance of neo-Malthusians)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- December 8, 2009
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Ethanol: Unintended Consequences

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- December 7, 2009
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Power Politics: Enron Lives! (From Ken Lay’s “natural gas standard” to cap & trade today)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- December 5, 2009
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Wind Integration: Incremental Emissions from Back-Up Generation Cycling (Part III – Response to Comments)

By Kent Hawkins -- December 4, 2009
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The Undulating Oil Plateau: Peak without Decline

By -- December 3, 2009
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Apologist Responses to Climategate Misconstrue the Real Debate (Quantitative, not Qualitative)

By Robert Murphy -- December 2, 2009
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