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The State censoring climate change data

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TheEgoist

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It maybe is an unscientific position, but I don't really care about that as long as it applies to an essentially pseudoscience---as much as the fact that Nazism is illegal (as distinct from other totalitarian theories) is politically wrong, but it doesn't bother me since they are Nazis.

In the current situation, there is so much to fundamentally change---whereas some violation of certain rights of Nazi ideologists (which should not be properly used by a rational man anyway) would be a mere concrete concern to be changed while realized.

Why do you consider it to be an "anti-science" act? It is a political (to use 'politics' in its more negative connotation) response to what was political from its very beginning, back in the 1970's. He merely faked the data that had already been fake.

As such, I do not manage to understand why it particularly "disgusts" you.

And yes, even the term "anti-science," in a sense, is an example of political influence over science: I saw it used by political activists who claimed that Obama is the "scientific choice" with my own eyes.

I'd call it anti-pseudoscience, or, more correctly, anti-some specific variant of pseudoscience. Of course, it does not imply that the act is consistent with the scientific method in itself, because anti-pseudoscience is not the equivalent of pro-science.

Most importantly: The fact that the act was not scientific, or that few of the "climate-skeptics" have a non-scientific mentality (primarily the religious ones) doesn't mean that climatology or ecology or environmentalism are objective, since in fact the people who identify themselves as supporters of those concepts lie more than anybody else in "science."

A principle can be judged only qua principle---not by what it opposes or by the way it is opposed.

Finally, I went over that site.

Once, when you stated that Richard Dawkins' notions are "as scientific as Newtonian mechanics" and that Hume was actually "pretty rational in some aspects," I asked you whether you thought also that Kant's philosophy is positive and Global Warming is science.

As far as I remember, the answer I received was "I don't," and maybe some condemnations for my "package-deals" as well.

As for the latter: Have you changed your mind?

If so, when do we get to see you suggesting that Kant's philosophy is a philosophy of reason, and that even Kant himself said so (though it couldn't get much worse than pointing out that Hume was rational)?

Edited by Tomer Ravid
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My personal opinions on climate changer are irrelevant, quite frankly. THe issue at hand is the censoring of scientifically collected data by the state.

Comparing the mainstream opinion in climate science about the warming of the Earth's temperature to Nazism is ludicrous. This is not pseudoscience. You may disagree with their results, but you cannot simply attack them because some have suggested political implications to the results. That is what is pseudoscientific: allowing your personal political beliefs to get in the way of the truth of the matter.

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http://motherjones.c...ientific-revolt

This is absolutely disgusting behavior by Perry. Never has the term "anti-science" been more applicable.

Come on, Egoist. You are overreacting, again. When are you going to wise up and stop getting played by propaganda?

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is inherently a political institution and its products are political footballs. Of course they are. How could they not be? If Perry was still a democrat and was a believer in anthropogenic global warming then the attribution of a local sea level rise along the Texas coast to AGW would be every bit as political and anti-science.

The actual document in its original form plus the notated edits is linked here. Some of the edits I can understand because they are speculative assertions. For example, the second paragraph of the summary originally read as follows:

Current rates of relative sea level rise, due to both an increased rate of eustasy and subsidence, are approaching 3 mm per year and may well exceed 4 mm per year by the end of this century.

The edited version is:

Current rates of relative sea level rise, due to both an increased rate of eustasy and subsidence, are approaching 3 mm per year.

This is justified because "may well" is weasel words. It also may well not reach 4 mm per year.

Some of the edits are nonsensical. For example,

The Trinity bayhead delta is vulnerable to rapid sea level rise and variations in sediment supply.

This is changed to:

The Trinity bayhead delta is vulnerable to variations in sediment supply.

This is stupid because the paper reviewed the history of Galveston Estuary going back to before the last ice age when the interglacial high sea level was +5 meters above the current sea level, through the recent ice age when it went to -120 meters below. The changing sea level was not always gradual, but often episodic resulting in the formation of natural terraces of sediments at various depths. Sometimes between these episodes the change was catastrophic and the flooding erased the wetlands and made something closer to a fjord in appearance. The original sentence is fully correct.

There is this sentence on page 3:

Bulkheads have been constructed at the edges of the wetlands and development has been allowed to fill and build on wetlands through a regulatory permitting process.

Revised as:

Bulkheads have been constructed at the edges of the wetlands and wetlands have been developed as authorized through a regulatory permitting process.

This is pure politics having to due with the presumed legitimacy or illegitimacy of filling and building on the wetlands, and whether the role of the state of Texas is to allow people to use their property or merely to make regular potentially conflicting uses of property. The editor is within rights to enforce his or her own point of view, such is the nature of government sponsored science.

In this sentence:

The impact of sea level rise on an estuary is dependent on sediment supply to the estuary. If the rate of sediment supply is great enough to fill the space created by rising sea level, the bay shoreline and wetlands will not be affected.

The editors changed this sentence so that it doesn't even make any sense.

The impact of sea level change on an estuary is dependent on sediment supply to the estuary. If the rate of sediment supply is great enough to fill the space created by changing sea level, the bay shoreline and wetlands will not be affected.

Only a rising sea level can create a space for sediment to be deposited, so using the word change is just bad writing.

Some of the edits I don't understand, such as deleting the figures 5.1 and 5.2 which simply makes the paper harder to follow.

The editors sometimes let pass things they should not have:

Regional subsidence along the Gulf Coast is the natural response to loading of sediments on the seafloor,

which for east Texas is slow (about 0.1 mm per year at the coast). However, subsidence can also be caused

through groundwater and hydrocarbon extraction from the shallow subsurface. Within the past century,

Galveston Bay and adjacent areas have experienced high rates of subsidence (Figure 4.17) caused by

subsurface fluid extraction (Morton et al. 2006).Groundwater extraction has slowed, resulting in a

significant reduction in the rate of subsidence.

This last sentence needs a citation to show that subsidence has in fact slowed, not just that groundwater extraction slowed because the center of the oil industry shifted away from the area. Houston is just upstream and its population is growing strongly (2nd in the U.S. behind only Dallas/Fort Worth). Population taps into the surface water supply and aquifers. The editors missed this.

Figure 5.6 illustrating changes in mean sea level 1974-2006 via tidal gauge readings was deleted. Tidal gauges are potentially unreliable, and are definitely unreliable in the Galveston area because of the large land subsidence problem. The state of Texas has established The Harris-Galveston Subsidence District (http://www.hgsubsidence.org/) to deal with the problem. Quoting that website:

In fact, in the critical areas along Galveston Bay, the land surface has sunk as much as 10 feet since 1906!

Do the scientists writing this paper not know about this issue? W. T. F.?

The editors don't know how to be consistently objective, but very few people do. The scientist original authors had lapses of objectivity. This conflict would not happen if everyone involved could be objective. If enough people could be objective the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality would not exist in the first place.

To what extent is Perry to blame for this? I greatly doubt Perry would ever read this paper, and he did not hire the editors Holligan and Nelson (see related Mother Jones article Perry Officials Censored Climate Change Report ). He is broadly skeptical of the AGW and has presumably staffed up with liked minded people, but so would I if I were a governor. I have no doubt Mother Jones magazine would vilify the shit out of me if I were in charge.

I am definitely not pro-Perry. I am just trying to be objective. And remember Heinlein's Razor: "Do not attribute to maliciousness what can be adequately explained by incompetence."

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