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Hmmmm… scientists or politicians…

… whom should we believe? :-) Gee, that’s a TOUGH one! :-)

I can’t believe that I have to ask such a stupid question (This may be one of the RARE examples of a genuinely STUPID question!) :-)

It MUST be a rhetorical question (or a “no-brainer” – your call).

Most intelligent, reasoning individuals (I guess that leaves out a number of politicians), even in countries with high carbon emissions like China and India (yes, the U.S. is one of the worst), believe the global warming data and scientific reports of climate change.

A CNN article reads “Climate head steps down over e-mail leak.” For a moment, let’s ignore the archaic spelling of “email.” This was not an email “leak.” THIEVES broke into a server and stole private emails that were never meant to be published concerning the scientific discussion of climate change. Since I started my career along a scientific path, I know a lot of scientists. Sure, a lot of them have personality types that can only learn by confrontation and argument. (Some of us are smarter that that.) Some politicians (who GENERALLY ONLY learn by confrontation and argument, or by failure to get re-elected :-) ), who do not understand the process of “peer review,” are questioning whether scientific argument and discussion (in the stolen emails) might discredit overall conclusions about climate change, after selecting bits of data here and there that might support their biases.

What such politicians are really MOST concerned about is getting re-elected, and how very real climate change might affect that! :-)

The discussion of the STOLEN emails has now generated such HEAT (and no discernable LIGHT), that the UK’s weather service, the Met Office, is to publish station temperature records that make up the global land surface temperature record. Professor John Mitchell, director of climate science at the Met Office told CNN that, “We are releasing the data to reassure people that climate data is <sic> sound.” The data include (sorry CNN, “data” is PLURAL,” the singular is datum) information from more than 1000 stations worldwide and will be published next week.

Professor Mitchell told CNN that he did not see “any issue whatsoever with the soundness of global mean temperature records. If you look at the land data, the sea surface data temperatures, and mean air temperature data, those three records independently show a 0.7 degree warming trend over the past 100 years. That’s all published by the IPCC.” Mitchell added “We also know that NASA have data sets that show pretty much the same trend over the past 100 years and NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) also have a data set — which, I think, is all freely available.”

Never mind the data sets… most people do not want to look at them, and most people lack the knowledge of statistics that would be necessary to draw intelligent conclusions from the data. (I personally worked with Fortune 500 companies that had trouble drawing intelligent conclusions from statistical data. :-) )

The lack of statistical expertise and lack of desire to look at the data are what some politicians are “counting on…” (“Never use a preposition to end a sentence WITH!:-) )

Sadly, climate change happens to be rather urgent, right now.

President Obama, after a change in plans, will attend the end of an upcoming climate change summit in Copenhagen, Denmark. The U.S. President believes that continued U.S. leadership can be most productive through his participation at the end of the conference, on December 18, rather than on December 9. President Obama will be at the conference on December 18 along with other world leaders. The U.S. has representation at the conference throughout the negotiation process.

-Bill at Cheshire Cat Photo™

“Your Guide to California’s Wonderland™”

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