Reader Nimed sends along this short video on peer review in the climate change community:
On a more serious note, this interview with the head of the UN's climate experts is ridiculous. He responds to concerns about the peer review process being stacked by saying . . . all the work was peer reviewed. I am open to being convinced that I should not care about hacked information, and I am a confirmed believer in AGW. So why can't, or won't, the climate change community mount a more compelling defense?
Copyright © 2010 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
But on what have you based your confirmed belief, if not the highly dubious information and analysis from the very people now under suspicion of corrupting the scientific process?
And what are we to make of the painfully obvious collusion of major media covering up this story?
Their silence speaks volumes.
This argument works even better the even loonier a conspiracy theory gets. The less anyone says about anything, the truer it must be.
The problem with his argument is that the media isn't being silent about it. The OP linked a Reuters article mentioning what happened, and I'd wager that they said a fair bit about it when it was first revealed as well. If frigging Reuters is talking about it, there's no left-wing conspiracy of silence in the first place.
Alsadius,
The headline on the linked Reuters article is this:
Climate science untarnished by hacked emails-IPCC
So ... you're pointing to a piece of advocacy journalism that makes the ridiculous claim that these emails don't in any way tarnish the climate science or the scientists.
Of course there will be apologists among the tightly-knit climate journalist community who "believe." They will seek to tamp down any controversy. There will be many articles which attempt to foist the belief that there is no evidence these leaked emails cast any doubt on the scientists involved.
These merely reinforce the "left-wing conspiracy of silence" you rightly point out.
Here, let me Google that for you:
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&tbo=1&tbs=nws%3A1&q=CRU+email+hacked+site%3Acnn.com&aq=f&aqi=&oq=CRU+email+hacked+site%3Acnn.com&fp=d9a759baa6dac0ac
CNN couldn't be bothered to cover the hacked CRU email story.
ABCNews can't be bothered to cover the CRU email story.
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&tbo=1&tbs=nws%3A1&q=CRU+email+hacked+site%3Aabcnews.com&aq=&aqi=&oq=CRU+email+hacked+site%3Aabcnews.com&fp=d9a759baa6dac0ac
The NY Times cannot be bothered to cover the CRU email scandal.
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&tbo=1&tbs=nws%3A1&q=CRU+email+hacked+site%3Anytimes.com&aq=&aqi=&oq=CRU+email+hacked+site%3Anytimes.com&fp=d9a759baa6dac0ac
But there's no left-wing conspiracy of silence here. No sireebob.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2009/11/climategate-cru-hacked-into-an.shtml
Nooo, no one sat on this AT ALL.
BTW, the fact that reporters got this before it was posted pretty much confirms a whistleblower, and not a hacker incident.
Couldn't find an ABC news story on it easily, but CNN and the NY Times did report on it if you change your search terms. And yes, of course they're biased in their reporting - like I said, this is Reuters we're talking about. But they're not silent.
I think Megan has said her basis for belief comes from the claims of consensus among scientists. It's a fair cop -- after all, you can't spend your whole life personally verifying every scientific claim. We all have to rely on what amounts to a priori knowledge to a large extent.
Of course, we generally assume pretty strictly in the cases of scientists that our a priori knowledge is their a posteriori knowledge: we reason we can trust their claims because they are objective scientists whose work is carefully reviewed by other objective scientists.
That's why this is so damaging: the consensus is increasingly being shown to be politicially driven by activists who put their agenda ahead of their science. When your primary epistemological basis for costly political action is a consensus of experts, it's problematic when your experts have a clear political slant that compromises their objectivity (or in the case of James "Coal trains are Auschwitz! War crimes trials for skeptics!" Hansen, a fervent crusade that involves getting arrested outside coal plants). It's even more problematic when your experts are exposed conspiring to silence dissenting opinions.
I was mostly convinced of AGW in 1998, when I didn't know much about it beyond MSM coverage and temps were clearly going way up. After a graduate degree in Information Systems, I was considerably more skeptical they could actually predict anything accurately out to 2100 when so many variables were involved. Of course, all that was before bristlecones, Yamal, inverted datasets, a decade of flat temps, and now this...
"... I was mostly convinced of AGW in 1998, when I didn't know much about it beyond MSM coverage and temps were clearly going way up."
I used to be a journalist and thus I've always been somewhat of a skeptic about everything. So after an argument with a friend of mine, I determined to do a little digging. It was quickly evident that almost all of the raw data was being illegally withheld by the East Anglia CRU and was the source of almost all AGW theory.
Immediate red flags. This only confirmed to me that I should be skeptical because it is so outside the norms of proper science.
Additionally, the actions of people like Al Gore don't in any way, shape or form match their rhetoric. When you do a little digging and realize the millions of dollars he stands to profit ... well you'd have to be a moron to continue blindly accepting these people's assertions at face value any longer.
Illegally...What shall we charge them with, Information Withholding in the 1st Degree, which is a crime punishable with a tongue lashing from Movetypoguy?
Conspiracy to evade lawful FOIA requests.
Evading lawful FOIA requests.
Fraud for any grant obtained based on any studies from the withheld data.
Hmmm, the chance of that "case" going anywhere beyond the prosecutor's Round File is about...zero. Anyone care to bet?
I got into this issue when a lot of mainstream scientists were still resisting the global warming findings. Their resistance got worn down by the data, but only slowly.
I myself reckoned that if this amount of extra energy was being put into the chaotic set of flows that is our atmosphere, it should be showing up in an increasing trend of extreme events (none of the scientists bought that idea then). So I looked up what the people who had most to lose from weather disasters were saying. Sure enough, the world's biggest re-insurers (the people who get hit for the excess over 'normal' losses) were tracking an increasing trend of weather disasters, and presumably including it into calculating their premiums.
That made me look at the basics of the climate data. It summarised as CO2 in the atmospheris going steadily up. We cannot see any way that does not mean that temperatures will go up; and they have been trending up already. Unless something is done about it, in some tens or scores of years the Earth's surface is going to get uncomfortably hot for mankind; and a while later it will get disatrously hot. Further, there are nasty hints that the process might speed up on us at some point we cannot predict. And so far, the only safe way of slowing or stopping the process is to cut the amount of greenhouse gases we are adding to the atmosphere.
That is science, so none of it is absolutely certain; but if we bet against those long odds, we are staking one hell of a high future cost against a relativly small gain in current living standards. Arguments about what precisely has happened to our climate over the past ten or twenty years (that seems to be the subject of Climategate) don't change the bleak general picture.
What about the slight cooling trend of the last 10 years?
This is not a personal attack on you, Diversity, but I want to point out several places where your logic is very unscientific. It may just be that you phrased things a certain way to fit them into this comment and you were more scrupulous in your actual search for truth, I'm not sure. I'll ask you to clarify if that is the case.
"if this amount of extra energy was being put into the chaotic set of flows that is our atmosphere, it should be showing up in an increasing trend of extreme events"
The issue is not energy being put into the atmosphere. CO2 is a very stable element, so it does not break down exothermically. Already you have made a HUGE assumption - that CO2 is in fact increasing the amount of heat energy per unit time in the atmosphere. Without that assumption, this statement is meaningless. Humans are putting significant amounts of waste heat into the atmosphere, and this will inevitably lead to true global warming - but only after we double our energy use several more times.
" Sure enough, the world's biggest re-insurers (the people who get hit for the excess over 'normal' losses) were tracking an increasing trend of weather disasters, and presumably including it into calculating their premiums."
I will let the "presumably" pass, because it is quite true. However, your statement does not even come close to suggesting that climate change is the cause. Population growth near coasts has outpaced overall growth for decades, and coastal property values have increased faster still. More people living in more expensive homes means higher insurance premiums. Occam's Razor suggest that it really is that simple, and studies have been done in the past decade that show this to be the case. No need to bring global warming into this.
"It summarised as CO2 in the atmospheris going steadily up."
True.
"We cannot see any way that does not mean that temperatures will go up"
Whoa. Whoa whoa whoa. Hold your horses. You just backed up your "energy pouring in" argument with... "we cannot see any way." Lets leave aside the maxim that lack of proof is not proof of lack. This is a completely untrue statement. it has absolutely NOT been proven that CO2 concentrations must cause warming. It is a trace gas, a weak greenhouse gas, the atmosphere is mostly opaque in its absorption spectrum anyway, and there is no leading correlation in the historic record where massive amounts of CO2 from, say, volcanic eruptions, cause runaway climate change.
if we bet against those long odds, we are staking one hell of a high future cost against a relativly small gain in current living standards.
The cost/benefit of AGW is very unclear. Our models can't predict anything shorter-term than several hundred years with any precision - that's how the scientists can, rightfully, dismiss the last 10 years' decline (and the previous 25 years' rise) as noise. But the likelihood of Earth becoming uninhabitable in the near future due to climate change is about the same as the odds of Earth becoming uninhabitable in the near future due to comet strike, supervolcano eruption, or nearby supernova. We are not spending trillions on any of those things.
The prudent, and cost-effective, approach is to continue to study the climate until our climate models can predict trends within a shorter timeframe. What kind of timeframe? I would suggest approximately the timeframe in which industries grow and mature - say, 30-50 years - because we have no way of knowing whether our technology will make fossil fuels obsolete in that amount of time anyway. Another possible timeframe would be the likely lifetime of major legislation - say, 20-30 years - because if we cannot have a reasonable level of certainty of the externality cost of not changing our ways, we should not be making policy that aims to level those externalities. Finally, since we are talking about spending trillions and slowing global growth, we should be fairly certain of the effects within a time-value-of-money timeframe - say, 5-10 years - because otherwise our investment will be very difficult to recoup.
Are you 9 years old? That's the most retarded thing I've ever read.
The only trend in insurance is the increasing amount of high value property in high risk areas. There's been no change in frequency of events.
Are you 9 years old? That's the most retarded thing I've ever read.
Hey hey, try to keep it civil.
I got into this issue when a lot of mainstream scientists were still resisting the global warming findings. Their resistance got worn down by the data, but only slowly.
Yep, that was me in 1998.
So I looked up what the people who had most to lose from weather disasters were saying. Sure enough, the world's biggest re-insurers (the people who get hit for the excess over 'normal' losses) were tracking an increasing trend of weather disasters,
You should check the hurricane trends of the last couple years. They've almost fallen off the chart.
That is science, so none of it is absolutely certain; but if we bet against those long odds, we are staking one hell of a high future cost against a relativly small gain in current living standards.
Actually, the future cost is probably low. It would be cheaper in the long run to keep expanding GDP at full throttle while researching geoengineering solutions in case the problem becomes serious.
This is also better because it's possible we could have catastrophic climate change that has nothing to do with mankind's emissions.
It summarised as CO2 in the atmospheris going steadily up. We cannot see any way that does not mean that temperatures will go up
Then you are blind and ignorant.
First of all, CO2 is not the most efficient greenhouse gas by any stretch of the imagination. So Constant babble about CO2 merely shows your ignorance.
Second, CO2 up means plant growth up. Plant growth up means potential change in the albedo of the earth. What reflects more, brown ground or green plants?
Third of all, ever hear of the Medieval Warm Period? It's been much warmer than it is now, and it was a good thing.
Fourth, the vast majority of scientific advancement comes from "the world isn't behaving as we expected." The fact that your fantasies, I mean hypothesis's, say that "this must be happening", doesn't mean that's actually happening. That's why we have the scientific method, and rules about transparency, and letting other people see your data so they can question your results.
The CRU people have been violating those rules because they are frauds. Because their claims are crap. Because they know that letting people who aren't True Believers see the data and code would pop their balloon.
And thanks to the CRU leaker, the world now knows this. So kiss your fantasy goodbye.
I am also very skeptical of the AGW proponents, mostly because they have been reluctant to release the underlying data. However, here is a quote from a post at REAL CLIMATE giving what may be a valid reason for the lack of disclosure of the complete data set:
675Halldór Björnsson says:
26 November 2009 at 4:47 AM
Re: CRU data accessibility.
National Meteorological Services (NMSs) have different rules on data exchange. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) organizes the exchange of “basic data”, i.e. data that are needed for weather forecasts. For details on these see WMO resolution number 40 (see http://bit.ly/8jOjX1).
This document acknowledges that WMO member states can place restrictions on the dissemination of data to third parties “for reasons such as national laws or costs of production”. These restrictions are only supposed to apply to commercial use, the research and education community is supposed to have free access to all the data.
Now, for researchers this sounds open and fine. In practice it hasn’t proved to be so.
Most NMSs also can distribute all sorts of data that are classified as “additional data and products”. Restrictions can be placed on these. These special data and products (which can range from regular weather data from a specific station to maps of rain intensity based on satellite and radar data). Many nations do place restrictions on such data (see link for additional data on above WMO-40 webpage for details).
The reasons for restricting access is often commercial, NMSs are often required by law to have substantial income from commercial sources, in other cases it can be for national security reasons, but in many cases (in my experience) the reasons simply seem to be “because we can”.
What has this got to do with CRU? The data that CRU needs for their data base comes from entities that restrict access to much of their data. And even better, since the UK has submitted an exception for additional data, some nations that otherwise would provide data without question will not provide data to the UK. I know this from experience, since my nation (Iceland) did send in such conditions and for years I had problem getting certain data from the US.
The ideal, that all data should be free and open is unfortunately not adhered to by a large portion of the meteorological community. Probably only a small portion of the CRU data is “locked” but the end effect is that all their data becomes closed. It is not their fault, and I am sure that they dislike them as much as any other researcher who has tried to get access to all data from stations in region X in country Y.
These restrictions end up by wasting resources and hurting everyone. The research community (CRU included) and the public are the victims. If you don’t like it, write to you NMSs and urge them to open all their data.
If you're aruging that the CRU was acting in good faith... maybe, or maybe not. But there's still the issue research based on an unavailable data set is non-peer-reviewable.
AFAIK, we "know" that the information was "hacked" only because UEA CRU says it was "hacked". It may well have been released by a "whistleblower" or merely copied from an unsecured FTP server. Time will tell. (It could take years, however.)
Regardless, after years of delay, information requested through FOIA has finally seen the light of day. A quick review suggests that the non-email info released is nearly as "indefensible" as the actions of the researchers who attempted to keep it from being released. It is "intuitively obvious to the casual observer" that this is not merely a case of "the dog ate my homework".
It will be interesting to see what Steven McIntyre and Ross McKitrick are able to deduce from the newly released information they have been trying to obtain for so long. They may well be even more motivated, now that they clearly understand the high regard in which they are held by the authors of the various released emails.
"Regardless, after years of delay, information requested through FOIA has finally seen the light of day."
All their bases are belong to us.
So what you're saying is, they have no chance to survive, and thus they should make their time?
(Also, it's "all your base", not "all your bases". It'd never have been famous if the grammar was correct.)
Thanks. Have you scoured the internet for any other typos.
I highly suspect there are some.
Out there.
If 'All their bases are belong to us' correct grammar you think, by Yoda you must have been taught.
No, "By Yoda taught you must have been." Sheesh, off the cliff grammar falling is.
I'm with Alsadius. Correct grammar ruins it.
No need.
To go.
Elsewhere.
Find all the typos.
I want.
Right here.
Charles at WUWT points out that two of the most famous CRU 'hacks' were actually an 'own goal' and a leak. It looks like the CRU data handling and security protocols are as sloopy as their coding and documentation.
Careful ... Alsidius is on a typo hunt and he's not as sloopy as you are.
Sorry, but I'm with Alsadius on this one. Flubbing a meme is like clubbing a baby seal. It doesn't matter whether it was accidental, you will still be known as That Guy.
So why can't, or won't, the climate change community mount a more compelling defense?
Um...they got nothing? Or, more likely, the 'consensus' talking points haven't yet been agreed upon. And also, probably, they're worried about saying something now that will look ridiculous when more shoes drop. What's going to come out when people have a chance to really analyze the workings of all that code with the dubious 'fudge factors'? Lastly, they're thinking the 'brazen it out' strategy may yet succeed (a few hand-waving non-responses and then, voila, it's 'old news' -- why are you still asking about that?) There are certainly plenty of people out there who'd like to help them ignore the whole thing (we woke up to NPR this morning -- several stories about global warming, but not even an oblique mention of 'climategate').
So why can't, or won't, the climate change community mount a more compelling defense?
I think that answers itself. We are getting a chance to see the raw data and in every case, the long term warming trends have vanished.
The problem is, it's still not intellectually respectable to recognize the fraud as what it is in certain media social circles. You'll be branded a Beck or worse. So you won't see people in the media admitting it until it's safe for all of them to do so. Then, suddenly, one day nobody will have ever believed in it, just as nobody walks around saying "Boy, that population bomb stuff sure suckered me in!"
"Then, suddenly, one day nobody will have ever believed in it, just as nobody walks around saying "Boy, that population bomb stuff sure suckered me in!"
The best thing about being a con artist is that almost nobody wants to admit they were had. In fact, very few people will call the police because they don't want to appear to have been outsmarted.
Who wants to admit they were stupidly taken in by The Sting?
The charlatans running the East Anglia Climate Research Unit are counting on this fact of human nature.
"Who wants to admit they were stupidly taken in by The Sting?"
Not anyone who's entire world view is based on them being the Progressive result of thousands of years of human intellectual Progress and so us cattle need them, the Progressed, to protect us from our own inferior stupidity. If they admit to stupidity, what's left (no pun intended)?
I had a customer, with a ground source heat pump system that didn't work. Poorly designed and implemented. It was an expensive mistake.
We suggested something that would work. The response was no, I want to be able to say that I have a ground source heat pump system in my home to prove my environmental bona fide.
I have long since stopped believing anything in this field unless it is proven to me.
Derek
But Derek, the science is settled. Everyone except "deniers" believes this.
I takes much longer for a large group of people to reach consensus on something when the first thing they agree to is "voice communication only."
But I suspect the answer is more obvious: What do you say when someone points to the "fudge factors" in your code and shows that your results would have been much different without them? "Oops"? Most anything they could say would just draw more attention to this and that's got to be the last thing they want right now.
Then too, there's the business of deleting files subject to FOI requests. As that's supposedly a felony, they could well be exercising their right to remain silent.
What is most off putting about the spectacle is the sense of entitlement we see from the climate scientists. They collectively pretend to advise us on global energy policy, on little more than one anothers' authority which we can now see is (at the very least) coordinated and political. Realistically, no one is in a position to evaluate model outputs or the PCA analysis of tree rings, except full time hobbyists like McIntyre who are then dismissed by the professorial class as dilettantes.
Worse still, the ramifications of warming (both economic and ecological. eg the Stern Review.) are rarely challenged even though they are well outside the expertise of climate scientists and have never been peer reviewed in any context.
"... and I am a confirmed believer in AGW ... So why can't, or won't, the climate change community mount a more compelling defense?"
Because the science is settled.
How do they know the science is settled? Because the only peer-reviewed papers show consensus that the science is settled? Who controls the journals of peer review ... why they do, of course.
My how convenient that is.
Megan you needn't be required to blindly "believe" in global warming. These frauds have an obligation to demonstrate it using the same scientific principals and process as with any other science.
Deleting emails, altering raw data to increase temperature readings (never decreasing it for any reason), refusing to respond to legal Freedom of Information requests. I mean really, Megan ... put on your skeptic journalist hat for a moment. What do these actions tend to demonstrate?
What do these sorts of actions always demonstrate?
"Global warming" isn't a religion one "believes in."
Is it?
yes, why are you a confirmed believer in AGW? Are you also a 'confirmed believer' in string theory? I'm not, but then I admit I don't truly get it. Climate physics, paleoclimatology, and GCM modelin are to my eyes no less arcane, and the predictive power of this new hybrid discipline no more testable, much less tested.
No one is asking you to believe in theories you don't completely understand with no tangible predictive power that can be observed by mere mortals.
You provide an wonderful opportunity to demonstrate the difference between real science and climate science. I used to be a graduate student in String Theory. There are no confirmed believers in String Theory in physics. Why? Because while it's a spiffy theory, we have *no* evidence to confirm it. None. We keep poking at the theory and refining it, looking for something that we can measure, but all we can say so far is that String Theory doesn't contradict already known reality. Lots of folks in Physics have their careers bet on String Theory, but you won't find anyone claiming it's settled science, because there's no evidence.
Exactly. While relativity was not beyond contemporary thinking, Albert Einstein became famous because his hypotheses (sp?) generated testable predictions that currently accepted theory did not, and those predictions worked.
Good theory has predictive value.
As I understand it, string theorists spend much of their time trying to make predictions that general relativity, special relativity, and quantum mechanics do not.
No theory can be "proven" until it makes a prediction that can be verified. Relativity was an interesting plaything until it was tested by observing the procession of the perihelion of Mercury, among other things.
So, Climate "Science" isn't really science. It's data fitting at this point. In 50 years we might be able to test some of those theories, but not now.
And it fails at data fitting. Their computer modeling is terrible (I saw the code over a decade ago and was appalled), and there is no proper error analysis.
"... they're worried about saying something now that will look ridiculous when more shoes drop."
Bingo.
And more shoes are just waiting to be dropped the moment they mount their defense.
This is a chess game. We are six moves ahead of them with an endgame mapped out.
They're playing fkin checkers.
They're the ones playing checkers, but we're the ones who are routinely mocked by most of polite society? I'd advise giving them a bit more respect than that - yeah, they're jerks pushing bad science, but they're clearly very good at it.
I don't think they're very good at it at all.
They've got away with this far and got tripped up by dumb luck -- a hacker, a leaker, or a failure to keep track of where they put the files -- and they're not very good?
So why can't, or won't, the climate change community mount a more compelling defense?
Because they can't, there is no compelling defense. The leaked CRU files are incredibly damaging. Collusion to hide or distort data, to intimidate and oust others, to use the peer-review process itself as a weapon to exclude critics, and to delete emails and data pending a FOI request. But to the scientific community, the greatest sin is the distortion of data, and the incredibly sloppy and taped-up way in which their models were constructed. I don't need to detail it, just google harry_read_me.txt. Scientists have been fired for much less.
I am not optimistic that any long-term repercussions will come from this. AGW is a political beast, there are tens-of-thousands of "public policy" jobs riding on this, not to mention the egos of politicians. This gravy train must roll on. The media will spin, and it will work.
The only point-of-attack I can see is through the scientific community. Scientific journals depend on the trust of the scientific community - we depend on the peer-review process to screen papers, so that we can trust and accept their findings without further scrutiny. Most scientists reasonably assume that a published finding is trustworthy, particularly from a prestigious journal like Nature or Science. But even with the less prestigious (*cough* Elsevier *cough*) journals, we assume at least good-will and honesty on the part of the authors, no matter how mistaken their conclusions might be.
The blatant and shameless manipulation and politicization of the peer-review process in climate science, and collusion in data manipulation blows a giant hole in the credibility of the entire field. This is a dagger at the heart of scientific community, the trust we put in published papers. We can expect Science and Nature, the pinnacles of scientific publishing, not to take kindly to being made fools.
Scientists know how the sausage is made. If it becomes widely-known that the sausage-making process was deliberately exploited to sell some questionable meat, those sausages will not sell. All it takes a few good and honest journal editors or a few fearless climate scientists. Once this fraud is explained to the general scientific community, the implications of it will be immediately obvious.
In this rare instance, I actually am thankful for the total scientific illiteracy of the mainstream media. They can spin it for the general public, but they don't know how to spin it for the scientific community. It's like watching a used-car-saleman trying to sell a lemon to an auto mechanic. You're better off not talking at all.
"... we depend on the peer-review process to screen papers, so that we can trust and accept their findings without further scrutiny."
This is the tendency that is being exploited sir. And as these CRU emails demonstrate "without further scrutiny" is a serious scientific mistake.
Peer review journals are the Achilles heel of science. It is trivial to take them over when only a very small community of charlatans are allowed to possess the raw data from which everything else flows.
Michael Mann: "This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the "peer-reviewed literature". Obviously, they found a solution to that--take over a journal! So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering "Climate Research" as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal.
See how easy that was!
These people have no ethics. They cannot be trusted and everything they write from here on out should receive extra scientific scrutiny just because it has the name Micheal Mann on it.
Nothing these scientists ever publish ever again can be accepted "without further scrutiny."
I agree. Michael Mann is not a fool. He knows how the system works, and he knows how to exploit it. But thankfully, the editors of Science aren't fools either. They are politically-secure and very senior members of the AAAS.
The scientific community is not the blogosphere, this supertanker is going to take some time to turn. But I believe the rudder has been turned. It is too early to tell.
It's often hard for me to convince laypeople of this, but most scientists don't believe in AGW, they believe what their peers in climate science say, because they trust them, because they trust scientific journals to do their job. That trust is being called into question. It's not hard. Ask any experimentalist. They're already skeptical of theory and "computer modeling" papers.
One wonders at how loaded the word "encourage" might be, considering the level of politicization in action here.
I'm sure CRU wasn't the only organization on campus that brought in grant money and these shenanigans place all those grants in peril. This directly reflects on the prestige and credibility of the entire university. Any other university that's implicated will be looking very hard at this as well. I wouldn't be at all surprised if these guys are tossed out on their ears forthwith, with great pomp and ceremony. Universities simply can't afford to have anyone think they might tolerate academic fraud and generally deal with it very harshly.
In light of decades of feminist, Latino, etc. "scholars", your trust in the university to not tolerate charlatans is hard to justify.
"I am not optimistic that any long-term repercussions will come from this. AGW is a political beast, there are tens-of-thousands of "public policy" jobs riding on this, not to mention the egos of politicians. This gravy train must roll on. The media will spin, and it will work."
Altoid nails it, unfortunately. Gaia-worshipping carbon taxes will become just another public policy that's wrongheaded but will become part of the political lansdcape because of the stakeholders. See also: farm subsidies, ethanol, affirmative action based on race instead of class, socialism. Meanwhile, the Chinese, Indians, and anyone else with any common sense will snicker at the USA as they whip past us.
They won.
He responds to concerns about the peer review process being stacked by saying . . . all the work was peer reviewed
Self-licking ice cream cone, anyone?
The response of Obama's climate czar was even lamer:
Yes, that's sort of the problem. They all agree, they all review each other's work, and their grants are heavily dependent on their belief.
What the climate change skeptics fail to seriously address is why scientists would choose to fabricate evidence promoting it. It's not like we don't all enjoy our energy gulping lifestyle. So unless you are a paranoid type, there is simply no reason for all these otherwise intelligent scientists to suddenly conspire to foist all the required changes on the whole world.
I can imagine intelligent people trying to educate the world to a long term danger and, faced with irrational opposition, trying to ensure they have message unity. What in rational scientific circles passes for honest debate about what the data mean suddenly gets demagogued by the James Inhofe's of the world and we end up doing nothing.
Shame on the scientists for trying to save us from ourselves. We really don't deserve it.
Senator Inhofe is rather far down the list of demagogues; well below Algore and James Hansen. However, he is on the other side of the issue.
"What the climate change skeptics fail to seriously address is why scientists would choose to fabricate evidence promoting it.
Bullshit. How about millions of dollars in grant money? Consulting gigs at GE? Blind love of Gaia or otherwise nonsensical political beliefs?
It is trivial to address the reasons why scientists might be fabricating data. History is replete with scientists who have been found out to have done exactly that (Google cloning).
But the entire premise of your assertion is crap. It is not the skeptics job to present motive. It is the scientists job to demonstrate through their actions that no ulterior motives can exist.
Faked data ... deleting emails ... destroying raw data rather than turn it over to other scientists ... conspiring to take over review journals to keep papers from being published ... these are not the actions of scientists who are without ulterior motive.
These are the actions of criminals.
Neal, the answer should be obvious. They do these things because they are human beings. Personally I don;t believe they fabricate evidence, they simply overplay their hand. They don't need to conspire regarding anything because so much of their discipline rests on the same sets of rickety data that they would like us all to believe is as tangible as aircraft engineering.
The job of scientists isn't to "save" anyone or anything. Science is a method, not a religion or a cause. Even if you accept the theories behind AGW (on the rickety basis of "trust the geniuses") you have to recognize that none of the climate scientists have any informed basis to describe likely ecological or economic impact of warming, as none of them are ecologists or economists. They may be qualified to build climate models (or not), interpret tre ring data etc but none has any informed opinion as to outcome.
Richard Lindzne has several more good insights on the question of 'why' here:
http://arxiv.org/abs/0809.3762
"They don't need to conspire regarding anything ..."
And yet, they do conspire.
Phil Jones: "If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I'll delete the file rather than send to anyone."
"They don't need to conspire regarding anything ..."
Here, the two leading climate scientists in the world conspiring to delete incriminating email.
Wall Street Journal: Consider the following note sent by Phil Jones to Michael Mann in May 2008:
"Mike, Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. . . . Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same?"
AR4 is shorthand for the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change's (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report, presented in 2007 as the consensus view on how bad man-made climate change has supposedly become.
What the climate change skeptics fail to seriously address is why scientists would choose to fabricate evidence promoting it.
This has been addressed quite often, actually: because they tend to be environmentalists who want to push us out of coal and oil anyway (e.g. Hansen), and because you get more grants for sudying a gigantic problem than a non-problem.
I can imagine intelligent people trying to educate the world to a long term danger and, faced with irrational opposition, trying to ensure they have message unity.
That's politics, not science. If they want to hold a press conference where they stand on a stage and have message unity, great. Not so great when reviewing each others' scientific work.
"What the climate change skeptics fail to seriously address is why scientists would choose to fabricate evidence promoting it"
Why is it necessary to do that? If the evidence is clearly fabricated, determining the motivation is interesting, but not relevant to the debate.
If you're curious why though, take a look at the emails - when the evidence refutes AGW theory, the "scientists" studying it don't adjust or abandon the theory; they assume the evidence must be wrong. Where have you seen that behavior before?
"It's not like we don't all enjoy our energy gulping lifestyle"
For reasons that are not clear, many people in our culture feel profound guilt over any good fortune that comes their way, and believe they should be punished for it.
I realize that in our world, everything is corrupt. Certainly it's normal for those who might have their business models disrupted by a move away from fossil fuels to fight the move to the death. The skepticism that all the commenters have about climate change seems curiously absent in the other direction. That's OK. I guess we'll find out which side is right eventually.
I have no kids so I have no interest in reducing my energy consumption. That should tell you something. I believe the scientists are correct and allow that the consequences of my actions will affect the quality of life for the next generation, but I don't care. Why should I change my behavior to prevent something from happening after I'm long gone?
Neal,
What you have is religious faith.
It really has no more to do with science than a belief in intelligent design.
The problem with you argument, is that, whatever the motivations, we have actual evidence of behavior on the part of global warming advocates. Comparable evidence of behavior does not exist in the other direction. It is not critical thinking to ignore empirical observation in favor of evaluating motives. Whatever the motives of the scientists in question, we know that they have fudged data and short circuited the peer review process. The same cannot be said of their opponents.
"I believe the scientists are correct and allow that the consequences of my actions will affect the quality of life for the next generation, but I don't care. Why should I change my behavior to prevent something from happening after I'm long gone?"
Wow, that has to be the most despicable, amoral declaration I have ever heard. I hope you aren't in charge of much that is truly important. You have no friends, no nieces or nephews? Good God, man.
Why scientist would choose to fabricate data? I don't know. But rational scientific circles don't become parties to fraud. The data speaks for itself and the models speak for themselves. Until such time both can be credibly vetted the conclusions are not science and their proponents are no longer scientists.
I agree. The whole bunch should be dismissed, disbarred, and deboned.
As I said later in this thread, we'll know the right answer in a few years. We are debating the meaning of the data gathered so far. In a few years the conclusions of the climate change advocates will either be confirmed or refuted. It's reasonable to conclude, as our favorite blogger Megan has, that there is sufficient evidence to warrant concern and to initiate discussions regarding appropriate preventive measures. Is it really too much to ask that we increase fuel efficiency on cars or fund research into cleaner fuels?
What's wrong with that? The cost is trivial at the moment.
As I said later in this thread, we'll know the right answer in a few years.
I was told this in 1998.
I think I got my answer. Others disagree.
@Neal
That's an entirely different question.
As I stated on an earlier post of Megan's, I'm as conservative as they come, but I'm all for protecting the environment.
But let's protect the environment on its own merits, not because of some faked/hyped AGW armageddon.
AGW proponents said: we know mandating higher fuel economy will increase the number of deaths. But that isn't as important as stopping AGW! Well, now we don't have to kill extra people by forcing them to drive the 2010 version of a Yugo. We can let the auto market gradually make mass-produced hybrid cars cost effective enough to be used on every vehicle, so no one has to choose between economy and safety.
And that's just one of thousands of mandates the AGW proponents were trying to force on everyone.
Besides the safety issue -- which is vital, obviously -- you do realize that more fuel efficient cars are, in effect, subsidizing car travel? And like all subsidied things, you get more of it?
One reason we have so many McManisons is that building got more efficient. Insulated windows did not mean lower heating bills; it meant vaster expanses of glass for the same heating bill.
""What the climate change skeptics fail to seriously address is why scientists would choose to fabricate evidence promoting it"
Hubris. What, you say, scientists are above such things? ha ha ha
Neal: "So unless you are a paranoid type, there is simply no reason for all these otherwise intelligent scientists to suddenly conspire to foist all the required changes on the whole world."
Baloney. Without AGW, Al Gore would be just another washed up politician, and James Hansen would be just another governemnt bureaucrat.
In addition to the hucksters, AGW resonates because people need a religion. I can't think of a way to prove this, but anecdotally, my agnostic and atheist friends are much more likely to believe AGW than my Christian (especially fundamentalist) friends.
What in rational scientific circles passes for honest debate about what the data mean[s]
Trust me, it doesn't pass for honest debate. The media is showing its scientific illiteracy for even trying to push this narrative. The bar for scientific misconduct is set very, very low - you don't have to show deliberate data falsification (although that is what has been shown), all you have to do is show that they knew something was wrong, but they didn't ignored it and published it anyways. They are way beyond that.
You're not going to sell this to any scientist. Like I said earlier:
In this rare instance, I actually am thankful for the total scientific illiteracy of the mainstream media. They can spin it for the general public, but they don't know how to spin it for the scientific community. It's like watching a used-car-saleman trying to sell a lemon to an auto mechanic. You're better off not talking at all.
The CRU knows this. They're not talking, just saying "it's peer-reviewed." They have no other defense, and they know it.
I find this to be most infuriating. Basic scientific literacy appears to have gone untaught to at least one whole generation.
It is also ironic that the journalistic crowd who do a passably good job of covering criminal court cases by explaining the quality of evidence appear blinded by the word "science" in this situation.
If you're building a case on false testimony (CRU data) and making extrapolations for lots of other claims based on that testimony, everything built on the false testimony has to be thrown out. Hiding, manufacturing, and destroying evidence are also grounds for a mistrial, dismissal, as well as charges against and disbarment of the prosecution.
I guess when all of modern Western civilization and/or humanity is the alleged criminal, different standards apply such that we're all guilty right from the outset. The prosecution, however, is unimpeachable and enjoys every benefit of the doubt.
Infuriating, I say...
Basic scientific literacy appears to have gone untaught to at least one whole generation.
It's a lot more than one generation. I doubt it's ever been properly taught en masse, to be honest.
the journalistic crowd who do a passably good job of covering criminal court cases by explaining the quality of evidence
Ask an attorney with substantial criminal-law experience how good journalists are at understanding and explaining evidentiary issues. Make sure there aren't any small children nearby.
Ask anyone who actually understands the topic of a story what they think of how it's being reported. I don't think anyone will be happy with it.
Journalists are notoriously bad at explaining any technical topic. I think that this is especially true of science, since scientists may want to push their theories rather than provide context and what journalist tries to 'get both sides of the story' when it comes to a scientific issue? None, that I'm aware of.
Do you really, really consider it a coincidence that Mann, et al, got everyone looking at our 'warming' temps a decade ago, and the last decade has experienced an unexplainable 'pause' in warming?
Clearly once we weren't depending on Mann for raw data on global warming, it disappeared. Ergo fraud.
The WSJ explains "peer review":
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115283824428306460.html
...Mr. Wegman brings to bear a technique called social-network analysis to examine the community of climate researchers. His conclusion is that the coterie of most frequently published climatologists is so insular and close-knit that no effective independent review of the work of Mr. Mann is likely. "As analyzed in our social network," Mr. Wegman writes, "there is a tightly knit group of individuals who passionately believe in their thesis." He continues: "However, our perception is that this group has a self-reinforcing feedback mechanism and, moreover, the work has been sufficiently politicized that they can hardly reassess their public positions without losing credibility."...
This is well-known in science. You'll always run across the odd paper where half of their citations and half of their references are to other papers published within that group, or from people who have graduated from that group. Sometimes it is legitimate, they are truly the leaders in their field. Sometimes it means that the whole research group has gone off the rails. But don't worry, scientists are aware of this phenomena and we look out for it.
The difference with the CRU group is the size. One professor asking another to delete emails regarding scientific research should set off alarms in the mind of any scientist.
On a side note:
Peer-review has taken a beating here, but it is really the only game in town. The alternatives are all worse. It works, and works very well, most of the time. It just can't withstand this sort of sustained, multi-agent, multi-decadal assault. This is the real story here.
One thing the peer review process can do is to actually develop and enforce the data and code archiving standards that are needed when dealing with these complex computer modeling efforts. The feedback mechanism in the scientific process is replication, and in these situations, papers have been published that do not provide any meaningful way to replicate the results.
This group has been allowed to publish for years without ever providing an adequate description of their experimental setup, and that's where the peer review process has really fallen short.
One thing the peer review process can do is to actually develop and enforce the data and code archiving standards that are needed when dealing with these complex computer modeling efforts.
Absolutely. Going forward (and backward too), in this field, everything must be open source -- the raw data, the computer code of the modes -- everything. No paper should even be considered for publication unless everything is made available to the paper's reviewers and then subsequently to the public when/if the paper is accepted. A no previously published paper should be cited until the original authors cough up their data & code (let's see what else is buried out there in other research centers). Otherwise, given what we know now, I can't fathom trusting the results or conclusions of any paper in climate science that doesn't meet those standards.
It actually can provide this, but it requires that editors enforce the disclosure of data and methods. Unfortunately, editors were also corrupted completely in this particular case.
Peer review might be the best possible solution for science to progress broadly speaking. However, not all systems of peer review are created equal. Empirical sciences should mandate, with rare exception, that all data, methods, and code be fully available for review as a condition of publication, i.e., there should be sufficient information available to fully reproduce the work. I am aware that many journals presumably require this to be disclosed on request after publication, but the reality is that scientists have the ability and incentive to stall and make it very difficult, if not impossible. The best way to weed out bad science is make it possible for it to be falsified directly, i.e., find fatal flaws in the methods and math behind the conclusions, instead of forcing other researchers to create wholly original alternative studies that are presumably more robust (and again, this will be difficult to do without openness). This simply cannot be done if the science cannot even be reproduced fully by researchers with the inside track (optimally any member of the public should have the opportunity).
Furthermore, in the case of AGW and other sciences where it is to be used to drive massive policy decisions, it is extremely sensible to demand more than this. In other words, any study that wants to make its way into IPCC or other policy documents should, at the very least, be certified reproducible by independent scientists. I would also argue that we should provide a forum where all qualified criticism can be aired (many journals make such criticism very difficult). We should consider providing direct incentive for qualified independent 3rd party review of any important work given the stakes involved.
While I don't think you can ever fully remove the human element, I believe that properly designed systems, e.g., mandatory upfront reproducibility, would have gone a long way towards discrediting the types of bad science witnessed in the climate science community recently and would likely have kept the editors and researchers involved (more) honest from the beginning.
"I am a confirmed believer in AGW"
You'e phrasing is interesting, and telling, as you're admitting that this is essentially a religious belief. In the face of ovewhelming evidence that AGW theory is wrong, why do you continue to believe it?
"In the face of overwhelming evidence that AGW theory is wrong, why do you continue to believe it?"
She does so purely for professional reasons. If she were to announce that she does not believe in AGW theory, she would be hounded out from her job. In journalism, you simply cannot be an AGW "denier." It's like the "N" word. You simply cannot say it.
So can you really blame Megan for telling this little white lie? She no more believes in this crap than any other educated person does ... as evidenced by the fact that she keeps posting on it ... giving everyone a forum in which to discuss this.
Almost all other national media are comically not reporting this story so as to prevent their comment sections from leaking this news to their readership.
Every time the Houston Chronicle publishes a climate 'story', they get hammered in the comments about it.
Megan, may I just say that I very much appreciate your willingness as a journalist to closely weigh and examine views and evidence that do not comport with your previously established beliefs. I don't always agree with you but your open-mindedness is why I always give serious consideration to your analysis of complex and controversial issues. You are a great asset in this age of politically divisive rhetoric (on both sides), and I thank you for what I consider your very trustworthy contributions to our national conversation. Your integrity is both rare and valuable.
In this particular case I think the most important thing to know is how much of currently accepted climate research was based directly or indirectly on the unreliable evidence revealed by this recent exposure. Perhaps you could do a "six degrees of Kevin Bacon" type analysis of this if you have the resources and the time.
I would trust findings published by you more than many of your colleagues on the left or right who are condemning or dismissive based on their political views.
Has anybody released a DVD with all the parody videos using that scene? The super bowl episode is still the best of the bunch if you ask me.
I'm not sure they'd all fit on a DVD.
I'm a confirmed believer in O-ministration-induced job losses, and an unconfirmed believer in stirring the "presidents are not responsible for employment" pot once again.
Since the left took over legislative powers in 2006, our nation's government has shut down the construction of new power plants. They've ensured that light-bulb manufacturing is wholly off-shored to China by 2012, when incandescent bulbs are made illegal in America (signed into law last year, IIRC).
Here in coal country, the EPA has used its powers (Clean Water Act) to suspend previously confirmed surface mining licenses, sending thousands into unemployment -- including those in mine equipment maintenance, repair, and sales companies.
The intentional restrictions on electricity generation caused by all this has forced at least one aluminum producer out west into closure.
All this aggressive regulation in the name of saving the planet is a very effective job killer.
And the O-Mighty Toastmaster General plans to go to Copenhagen and pledge that we cut our "greenhouse gas" emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels, the year that this leftist hoard took over the agenda-setting reigns of our legislative branch, by 2020.
Whether or not Cap'n Trade passes, the EPA will use the high court finding that the plant food CO2 is a pollutant to squash domestic production, raise energy prices, and ship untold industries to somewhere in Asia.
Who cares that the science was faked? We'll just declare that we've restored science to its rightful place and do whatever the hell our academic, public-sector political clientele demands.
"I'm a confirmed believer in O-ministration-induced job losses, and an unconfirmed believer in stirring the "presidents are not responsible for employment" pot once again."
Barack Obama is John Galt. Destroying the country from within.
No, no, no - John Galt just slipped away.
Hey, leave me out of this.
In what I do, confidence is a sign of inexperience. Or fraud.
When consensus is used in the context of a complex system, it should be an automatic red flag. Does economics deliver consensus' (consensi?) on anything? Never. If the word is used, it is a power situation.
There may be consensus that higher levels of CO2 are something to worry about. I believe that. But the effects are very difficult to predict.
In fact, trying to predict, put a number on the temperature rise is foolish, and is being shown to be foolish and may discredit the whole enterprise.
The unpredictability of the system is the best reason to worry about any attempts or actions that may affect it. We don't know. We do know that there have been large effects from discrete events such as volcanic eruptions. We know how fragile our human systems of survival are. For that reason something should be done to reduce energy consumption.
And we know that centralized control mechanisms don't every work as planned. We have already seen that with carbon credits, ethanol production incentives. If could be argued that attempts to fix the problem have cost more lives than the problem itself.
Disdain is a rational response to anyone selling anything in this field.
Prove it. Otherwise we may make the problem worse.
Derek
Looks like the MWP is back from the dead. Even Mann is now acknowledging (with local caveats) a global MWP.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/26/mann-has-a-new-paper-he-apparently-discovers-the-medieval-warm-period/
Hah, you didn't even read the article. Mann has explained how the so-called MWP arose, even though the earth as a whole was cool. He's explained why there was a climatic anamoly.
He's not the first one to do so. While deniers have been screaming about scienists ignoring the MWP, the scientists have actually been hard at work on it. You know, doing research and stuff, not just PR stunts. And they have assembled a lot of data about how it arose.
The only ones who have their heads buried are the ones who are still attacking 2001 research as if it is the state of the art.
Mann has explained how the so-called MWP arose, even though the earth as a whole was cool.
I did read the article, but I'm not sure you did. He says exactly the opposite of what you said:
"...the medieval period appears modestly warmer globally in comparison with the later centuries..."
There are various caveats about some regions being colder, but that statement clearly concedes overall global warmth.
While deniers have been screaming about scienists ignoring the MWP,
Actually, Mann tried to kill it by inverting a dataset and using horribly flawed proxies. You know, really bad science and stuff. But it's good he's gotten over his MWP denialism.
"While deniers have been screaming about scienists ignoring the MWP, the scientists have actually been hard at work on it. You know, doing research and stuff, not just PR stunts. And they have assembled a lot of data about how it arose."
I am literally lauging out loud. In the context of this discussion, you seriously impugn "deniers" while praising hard-working scientists gathering data and doing research?
Yeah. Those scientists were hard at work all right, gathering data, doing research. Except they weren't in this case, it seems. They look now to have been conspiring, manipulating data, fudging models, and attacking opponents who questioned their methods. In fact, they may have been "screaming" wolf, like the little boy of old, in a worse case scenario.
So, tell me again how the "deniers" are to be scorned this day? Me, I think the scientists and their apologists needs to think hard about what to say next. Real hard. We trusted them. They lied.
This is just devastating. The CRU code contains instructions in several places to truncate data where it shows a decline.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/25/climategate-hide-the-decline-codified/#more-13197
There are also numerous references to the generally junky state of the code and databases. Remember, this data/code is being used to argue there is a 90% certainty we need to spend trillions of dollars.
The greater the change in theory,
the greater the resistance by those
whose expert status is threatened thereby;
Add in money, politics, and MONEY MONEY MONEY.
Megan, many of your commentators seem to have little familiarity with the peer review system or climate science. As a university professor in a related area, I am very familiar with the first, and reasonably conversant in the second. I've been following this scandal with interest. My take is that this controversy is overblown as a matter of substance. Of course, it's a PR disaster. Here's what I see that relates to your last post:
a) The peer review system is a lot like democracy, or the jury system. It is a lousy system, except for all the others. Authors, editors and reviewers do all sorts of very human things because they are, after all, human. So: Authors often suggest reviewers who are their professional friends. Editors sometimes select reviewers known to be receptive or critical to a particular author or perspective based on their a priori judgement. Reviewers may give a pass to their professional allies or an excessively hard time to their competitors, and do not always respect confidentiality.
b) That this is as true of climate science as medical research or any other area in academics is shocking only if you have an overly romanticized view of academia and academics. Any scientist or academic who tells you such things do not happen has lived a sheltered life, lives in denial, or is trying to sell you something.
c) What is critical for a journal to prosper is that the research community have confidence that, despite its flaws, the editorial system of a journal filters out badly-reasoned papers, responds appropriately when such papers inadvertently make it through the filter, and doesn't give too hard a time to well-reasoned papers. If it fails to do these things it will stop attracting high-quality papers, its papers will not be cited by other papers, and hence its influence (its "impact factor") will fall.
d) Context matters. The most troubling of the comments related to peer review in these emails are the reactions of climate scientists to a flawed paper making it through the review process in one journal early in the decade. This paper pushed a contrarian argument. The heat of the comments reflects the fact that this paper got a ton of attention, including from politicians, even though these scientists were convinced that the offending paper was allowed through for political reasons - i.e., that this "failure" was a result of a deeply flawed editorial system. In the end, several editors resigned from the journal because they agreed with this perspective and were dismayed that the publisher was not responding appropriately. This included the newly-appointed editor-in-chief. It is very much worth noting that this editor-in-chief (Hans von Storch) has been critical of some of the politically-celebrated findings of the climate community and of the tactics used by some of the more celebrated scientists. Nevertheless, even he could not defend what his journal was doing, and so he quit rather than be tainted by it.
e) Like other humans, climate scientists will often say rash things in private that they would not or could not act upon. This seems to apply to Phil Jones, the focal point of these emails, who directs the CRU. Commentators have focused on his rants about "redefining" peer review. What they don't acknowledge is that the evidence is that his rants on this topic didn't translate into inappropriate outcomes. Most importantly, papers that he said should be excluded from the IPCC report were included. That said, he comes across as a hothead who is not very politically savvy. His attitude toward FOI requests, no matter how obnoxious these requests were, indicates he has a bunker mentality. Jones may be an excellent scholar. He may be an excellent man to have in the trenches, or even in some managerial role. But someone like that should not be overseeing an operation as broadly important as CRU has become. That job is too important at this point.
f) More broadly, what this episode shows is that the importance of the climate issue has grown to the point that the usual practices of academics - which are sufficient for the usual academic debates - are not sufficient to earn public confidence when the stakes are as high as they now are. Academics are often thin-skinned when it comes to perceived attacks on their integrity, which is why there is so much defensiveness. The solution is that key research needs to be curated and vetted by groups over which the political system has some oversight, so that the public has some indirect oversight and hence confidence in the process. This is the case in the U.S., where NASA and NOAA - gov't agencies - play key roles. Unlike CRU, these agencies have moved to be very open in the past decade. That practice should continue, and should be a model for others.
g) As important: None of this peer review brouhaha has anything to do with cooking data. There is no evidence whatsoever in these emails of the climate community conspiring to put bad data into peer reviewed publications, or of good data being suppressed from publication. All the references I have seen to "hiding" things, etc., have to do with one particular type of temperature record among many which is well-known to be problematic. The emails and comments in computer codes that have been publicized reflect the attempts of researchers to figure out how to cope with this problematic proxy in a way that doesn't just discard it but that doesn't give it too much weight. The researchers involved use lots of colorful and informal language, as professionals often do when talking shop with each other. But for those of us who understand the issues its hard to see anything unseemly in what was actually done.
h) Most important, nothing in these emails changes the physics of CO2 and climate as we understand it. Nothing in these emails changes the facts that CO2 is rising and they this rise is caused by us. Nothing in these emails changes our understanding that temperature has increased over the past 100+ years (even if you discard the CRU records as suspect, so as to be uber-careful, there are plenty of other compilations). Nothing in these emails changes the reliability of the many climate models used to forecast future climate. So while these emails are not pretty, they don't affect anything of substance.
g) Finally, to get back to your main question: Why is the community not organizing a better response? Because climate scientists, like most scientists, are lousy at politics and public outreach. You can see this in the Jones emails about FOI requests. The academic training process selects for many qualities, but public relations is not one of them. Unlike lawyers, scientists are not taught how to persuade non-experts. This is one of the reasons that Congress is full of people with J.D.s rather than Ph.D.s.
And the apologia community thus stakes out their position.
It's all just bad PR ... not an illegal conspiracy to violate the law.
"As important: None of this peer review brouhaha has anything to do with cooking data.
Bullshit. It has everything to do with cooking data. And your attempt to define narrowly the areas for debate has failed.
The raw data is what is being deleted, and hidden. It is the raw data that is being "massaged" and "truncated" and "corrected" - always showing every higher temps mind you. Never corrected to lower a temperature.
The peer-review crap is the sideshow. Those are the sorts of Alinsky-inspired "community organizing" that are part-and-parcel of every academic exercise at every college in the US and UK. Friends are helped, published, rewarded. "Enemies" are hounded, uninvited and attacked. It's high school tactics all over again from people who never really ever left high school.
The data - it is the data being faked and hidden. Hidden from legitimate legal FOIA requests; under threat of deletion by top climate scientists determined to keep it hidden. Your attempts at obfuscation are miserably failing. And comically so.
Pass the popcorn.
I've got to defend peer review - read my comment posted November 27, 2009 9:51 AM.
Just so I understand you correctly, you have followed the CRU leak "with interest", and yet you think it is "overblown as a matter of substance", and just a "PR disaster"?
To put it more bluntly - having understood the problems of the CRU leak as presented by McIntyre, Lindzen, and others, do you believe that scientific misconduct has been committed? Do you believe their papers should be retracted? Is there anything about their professional behavior as scientists, with regards to their research, that concerns you in the least?
altoids,
Yes, it is overblown for the reasons I articulated. In the end, it doesn't change any of our understanding.
"Scientific misconduct"? Define what you mean. I see plenty of behavior that I would criticize. Behavior that I would tell my graduate students and colleagues to avoid (such as stonewalling an FOI request). I made clear in my original post that some of this behavior concerns me. But "concern" is a long way from the idea of a grand conspiracy that has so many so excited.
I don't see evidence of fraud - by which I mean knowingly pushing bad data or suppressing known good data to fit a story. If you see this, please point it out to me, specifically. That would be a big deal.
As I've noted in other posts in this thread, you could throw away the entire CRU database if you want to be really squeaky clean and the science would not change.
Which papers do you think should be retracted, and why? Please be specific. And please don't tell me, as another poster has, that my focus on specifics is some clever attempt to "narrow the debate". Specificity is at the heart of science and reason.
They put in bad data. It's right here...they TYPED IN a string of numbers, interpolated it for the data series, then added it to the data!
From FOIA\documents\osborn-tree6\briffa_sep98_d.pro
;mknormal,yyy,timey,refperiod=[1881,1940]
;
; Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!
;
yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)*5.+1904]
valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,-0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,$
2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor
(...)
;
; APPLY ARTIFICIAL CORRECTION
;
yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,x)
densall=densall+yearlyadj
They suppressed data that did not fit their conclusions.
From FOIA\documents\osborn-tree6\summer_modes\data4sweden.pro
printf,1,'IMPORTANT NOTE:'
printf,1,'The data after 1960 should not be used. The tree-ring density'
printf,1,'records tend to show a decline after 1960 relative to the summer'
printf,1,'temperature in many high-latitude locations. In this data set'
printf,1,'this "decline" has been artificially removed in an ad-hoc way, and'
printf,1,'this means that data after 1960 no longer represent tree-ring
printf,1,'density variations, but have been modified to look more like the
printf,1,'observed temperatures.'
From the euphemistically named FOIA\documents\harris-tree\calibrate_nhrecon.pro
;
; Specify period over which to compute the regressions (stop in 1960 to avoid
; the decline that affects tree-ring density records)
;
Other data trimming.
FOIA\documents\osborn-tree5\densplus188119602netcdf.pro
; we know the file starts at yr 440, but we want nothing till 1400, so we
; can skill lines (1400-440)/10 + 1 header line
; we now want all lines (10 yr per line) from 1400 to 1980, which is
; (1980-1400)/10 + 1 lines
(...)
; we know the file starts at yr 1070, but we want nothing till 1400, so we
; can skill lines (1400-1070)/10 + 1 header line
; we now want all lines (10 yr per line) from 1400 to 1991, which is
; (1990-1400)/10 + 1 lines (since 1991 is on line beginning 1990)
There is 200MB of text in FOIA2009.zip. We're just scratching the surface right now.
What REL is really saying is that the data doesn't matter. It was never about the data. It's about advancing a religious view that every knows is correct.
Thats why it is only a pr distraction to believers.
I'll give REL the benefit of the doubt. There are many scientists of great integrity that believe in AGW, simply because they choose to defer to the "expertise" of their peers in climate science. It's not malicious.
He (or she) is at least willing to engage the criticism, which is already commendable.
REL,
Respectfully, I think you are mistaken. At the least, when you say things like "None of this ... has anything to do with cooking data," you appear to lack a basis for actual knowledge. If all of part of the CRU team were indeed cooking data, it might well look something like this. I do not mean I'm convinced they were cooking data -- but from what anyone outside can see, they might have been.
More generally, complex and imperfect systems such as parliamentary democracy and scientific peer review sometimes break down and have spectacular failures. Peer review didn't stop Michael Bellesiles; critical outsiders (many without PhDs) with whom he refused to share his data did. Why are you convinced that such a breakdown - which demonstrably occurs sometimes - has not occurred here?
If you have sufficient expertise, I hope you will comment on a previous question of mine: to what extent is climate modeling and forecasting based on the CRU's work? More specifically, what rough proportion of papers and the like depend for their validity either directly or indirectly dependent on CRU research?
Shelby,
Thanks for the calm and reasoned tone of your post.
You write that "I do not mean I'm convinced they were cooking data". That's my point. There is nothing here that is convincing. There is smoke, yes. I can see why someone who doesn't know the specifics might be concerned. I was, too, which is why I dug into the matter a bit. But whenever I try to peer through the smoke to find the raging fire alleged by conspiracy theorists, I find nothing of the sort. For example, the passion over the "hide the decline" business - there is nothing there once you know the issues.
Since I don't work at CRU, don't personally know Jones, etc., it's of course true that they could be doing something about which I do not know. That's always possible. But I don't see how any of us can function if we take as a presumption that everyone must always be presumed to be malicious unless they prove otherwise. That's a slippery-slope down into Inquisition-land, don't you think?
Of course, complex systems can break down. Fraud can and does happen. Groupthink happens. Smart and incisive outsiders can and do play a valuable role at times. But the climate research field has involved too many people and too many independent research groups over too long a period of time for serious problems of this sort to have gone undetected. I say this as someone who has watched the field evolve over the past 20 years up close (I am part of the larger geoscience community within which most climate scientists work). I was originally something of a skeptic because I tend to be a contrarian who doesn't follow the herd. I have met some of these players personally over the years, and followed their careers and their work, and not seen evidence of a lack of integrity. I have listened to the arguments of Lindzen and others, seen them debate other experts, and come away unconvinced by their arguments.
None of this means that the consensus is right. Nature has a funny way of surprising us. But the conspiracy theories are loopy, in my opinion. The climate community may turn out to be wrong, but it is not pulling the wool over your eyes. The consensus is based on our best understanding of the science as it stands.
On your final point, I'm not close enough to this field to comment on the fraction of papers that depend on the CRU dataset. But it is one of several parallel compilations. The others are widely used. This is why I conclude that even if the worst is true and Jones et al. really did "cook" the CRU database somehow, it really doesn't matter to our understanding of climate. And I reiterate that those jumping to conclusions are doing just that - they are running ahead of the evidence based on their preconceived ideas. They are doing precisely what they mistakenly believe the climate science community does with its research.
REL,
1) Just to be clear, it appears your contention that none of what we're seeing "has anything to do with cooking data" is based chiefly on your own investigation and finding no fire beneath the smoke, and secondarily on your personal assessment of some of the people involved. Is that accurate?
2) I am no expert on scientific or academic fraud, but from what I know, large numbers of researchers and/or groups are at best an imperfect check on the potential problems (fraud, groupthink, cognitive bias). This is especially so when an important part of the overall group's work goes on under a screen of deliberate secrecy, as is apparently the case here. (I've seen some allegations from other scientists that every bit of the CRU's work has been fully and publicly disclosed, but that seems to me incorrect.) It is this secrecy that most strongly suggests (a) a problem exists with the data, and (b) the data's proponents know it.
3) Despite some insistent commenters here, not everyone responding with alarm to CRU data release believes it demonstrates actual fraud. I think it is deeply problematic, moreso than you do, especially regarding any political or policy implications. But it needn't be fraudulent to be a serious problem; groupthink and cognitive bias are sufficient to justify renewed skepticism of the CRU's data.
4) Finally, what is science without replicability? Can anyone now replicate the CRU's work in a transparent manner? If not, do you think it retains any value? And are the "parallel compilations" to which you refer addressed to the same paleohistorical geography and chronology; that is, can they effectively substitute for corrupted CRU data?
REL,
With all due respect, you seem to be drawing the argument into a false dichotomy: either the mistakes made are trivial or there is some evidence of a vast, corrupt, conspiracy. The fact of the matter is that they may have been engaged in what amounts to enough normal professional pettiness, understandable professional laziness, and reasonable professional bias to have fundamentally misrepresented the data.
I appreciate this comment; thank you for the details. However, speaking as a non-climate-scientist, you haven't convinced me. These guys don't seem competent, nor honest enough to admit to the rest of us when they've built a massive dataset on sand. If they can't reproduce their results, I don't see what they're worth.
Maybe climate scientists have lots of other pieces of evidence. Let them regroup and figure it out. I do submit that those of us who are not climate scientists are not qualified to insist that there's lots more evidence. More evidence, but is it for the particular theory that the IPCC report is based on, that "this rise is caused by us"? This was an important dataset in that understanding, and someone needs to think about where the evidence is holding without it. Someone we can trust.
REL, as a more general response to your points:
(a) It certainly happens. But most reputable hard-science journals have a large pool of reviewers, who are randomly assigned by the editors, and are totally anonymous to the authors. Collusion is only possible if editors are complicit. I can't speak for the "soft sciences".
(b) Not true. It's never said in polite company, but some sciences are more scientific than others. The scientific rigor of different fields is totally incomparable. The Standard Model has been verified to 1e-7 or better. Our measurements of photon statistics in lasers is 1e-5 or better. The experimental results perfectly match theory, within the limits of SNR. And the SNR ratio is better than 1000:1.
Climate modelers, answer me this: If the world warms by one degree, will it (on average) rain more or less? If you can't answer that, how do you expect me to believe the model is worth anything?
(c & d) Agreed. Kudos to those editors.
(e) Good points. But a conspiracy doesn't need to succeed to be a conspiracy. Intent is damning enough. ("My wife tried to kill me, but she didn't succeed, so it's okay.")
(f) Government oversight? No thanks. What a disaster that would be. NIH is bad enough. But we can all agree that more transparency is a good thing.
(g) See my comment above. They cooked data. And did it in the most ham-fisted, embarrassing way. These guys are terrible coders.
(h) Maybe. We'll see. The USGS temperature record has well-documented problems too. The spotlight has never been turned on the temperature record data, but now, it's turned on. We'll see what survives, and what melts under the glare.
(g) That's true...
altoids,
Couldn't stay away for another comment or two...
I've published in many journals, including Science and Nature. None of these journals randomly assign reviewers. Ever. Reviewers are selected by the editors based on their judgement as to who would provide an insightful review. This is why the judgement of editors matters, and why the publication of that flawed paper in Climate Research was seen as an indictment of the editorial process - leading ultimately to most editors resigning in protest of the publisher not addressing the issue correctly. I'm not sure what point you are trying to make here, but your statement here shows that you do not understand the way peer review works.
Your comment about "scientific rigor" also suggests to me that you are not really familiar with these issues. "Scientific rigor" is not a matter of how precisely you can measure something. It is a matter of how accurately and precisely you build your arguments in view of the accuracy and precision of your data. Almost invariably, the action in any scientific field is where the arguments butt up against the limits of the data, whatever they are. At those limits, the debates are as challenging and heated in particle physics as they are in climatology. Take String Theory, for example!
A brighter spotlight on the temperature record is fine if that's what is required to convince those who are skeptical. Note that plenty of records other than CRU's are totally open and available. They all tell the same story, give or take. So have you or others vetted them yet? If those taking the skeptical position are truly interested in getting to the truth, then wouldn't the smart thing to do be to tear into those records that are available rather than worry about why the keepers of one of these records are being obtuse? That sort of behavior says to me that the skeptics are more interested in hunting for conspiracies than in dispassionate validation, and that no amount of validation would convince them.
REL, comparing String Theory to the Climate Change theory is utterly ludicrous. The String Theorists have plenty of skeptics outside their field whom people pay attention to, and moreover they are not trying to Change The World.
REL:
(a) I'll rephrase. They aren't randomly chosen, but are chosen without the knowledge of authors. Authors are often allowed to submit lists of people they don't want review their papers, but usually there is no input at all. I've been a co-author in Science. From the author's point of view, it's is essentially random.
(b) You are mistaken. String theory is understood by all of physics to be nothing more than a theory at the moment, it is not science, and is universally understood that way. I agree that science ends where the data ends, but the ability to conduct experiments to a fantastically precise degree is the hallmark of a well-designed experiment. By its nature, experimental physics or chemistry has the ability to totally isolate the experiment from outside influence, to conduct repeated experiments under identical conditions, and to precisely measure the result. These are the critical ingredients that distinguish science from mere reasoning. The ability to conduct good experiments yields good science, and we are able to make better experiments in some fields than others. This is not an insult to the scientists, this is simply stating the nature of their work.
(c) There is one data set that is unimpeachable - satellite data. Curiously, that is the data set least used by climate modelers, and most favored by skeptics. The USGS ground station data is fatally flawed. You have weather stations literally five feet away from air conditioning units, not to mention brick walls and black asphalt. An exhaustive study has shown that over half of them fail to meet basic standards for survey sites. They add "corrections" for the urban heat island effect, but what are they calibrating against? The answer - whatever they feel like. Not very reassuring.
In a healthy environment, peer review works pretty damned well. In a toxic environment where the people doing the peer review are either cooking the data or relying on said cooked data knowing it's bad, peer review is utterly useless.
"g) Finally, to get back to your main question: Why is the community not organizing a better response? Because climate scientists, like most scientists, are lousy at politics and public outreach. You can see this in the Jones emails about FOI requests. The academic training process selects for many qualities, but public relations is not one of them. Unlike lawyers, scientists are not taught how to persuade non-experts. This is one of the reasons that Congress is full of people with J.D.s rather than Ph.D.s."
REL no disrespect intended but this is very thin gruel indeed.
In light of the staggering expense, disruption of the economy and substantial impact on living standards that implementing the changes advocated would entail, to convince the public AGW needs a far higher standard of proof than has been offered to date. Putting all the data published and the models used in the best possible light AGW still does not pass the smell test. It would be best if all models and all the raw data be published so it can be studied not only by climatologist but by others in other scientific fields as well as mathematicians to verify the processes used by the climatologists. Then and only then after considerable review and reconsideration can the facts be determined and the appropriate conclusions drawn.
I am not a scientist nor claim any expertise in any area of scientific discourse. However I find it very difficult to trust models that are at best very crude and rather limited representations of physical reality using data that is not uniformly measured and uses an arbitrary baseline. Surely you can understand why I and so many others find the conclusions to date not to be at all credible.
100 years of data on a planet that is 4 billion years old whose last major ice age was 14 thousand years ago and from this data concluding that the effects will be as far reaching in impact as an ice age is simply not belivable to the layperson. It may well be true, but to date what passes as scientific consensus is appears to be nothing more than belief with a patina of 'science' at this point. Certainly not enough to convince the American public to willingly commit economic suicide.
REL:
My perception re what you are saying is that science ( big science- grant dependent science) has been corrupted in areas unrelated to climate science.
20 years ago I was a young faculty at a top university. I was sharing a lab with a senior colleague who was very well known nationally and internationally. journal editorial board, chairing panels etc. Well his technique in the lab basically amounted to discarding experiments that yielded results he didn't like. I quit academics a few months later.
It sounds awfully like your post is condoning this kind of behavior.
Science- climate or otherwise -needs to proceed with discipline and integrity. Otherwise it becomes the bastion of charlatans.
I personally agree with Richard Lintzen ( cannot find the post anymore) when he asserts that the big science big grants game essentially corrupts scientific endeavor.
Grants- which are the lifeblood of " science" today are dependent not on the ideas creativity and science - but about fashion , poltical correctness and how well one can massage the good ole boy network.
It is interesting that many scientists do not have a clue re scintific method. as an exapmle, an accuaintance of mine- PhD, tenured full professor, Huge NIH grants- was completely clueless about falsifiability.
Perhaps, Karl Popper should be a prerequisite for anyone pursuing a PhD!
"...to get back to your main question: Why is the community not organizing a better response? Because climate scientists, like most scientists, are lousy at politics and public outreach. You can see this in the Jones emails about FOI requests. The academic training process selects for many qualities, but public relations is not one of them. "
Actually, as a scientist who knows a number of players in the scandal, this is too generic and wrong.
First, the media have not exactly been skeptical towards AGW scientists. The Society of Environmental Journalists have, in fact, protected VP Al Gore from critical questioning when faced with this last spring at one of their functions.
Second, as Dr Tim Ball, Canada's first PhD in climatology (University of London), said last night on George Noory's Coast-To-Coast (available as a podcast), they are reacting with shock, then denial. Only George Monbiot - called the "Al Gore" of England because of the AGE issue - has responded with outright dismay and anguish, and calls for CRU director Phil Jones to resign, And even that positive direction becomes muted.
This is a crisis for the establishment regime of "global warming climate science" because the hypothesis was predicated on the claim of monotonic warming that hasn't happened for ten ten years.
Thus, each year is another warm record based on CRU data sets. But as Roger A. Pielke, Sr, University of Colorado at Boulder climatologist, says, no less than five temperature data sets from two satellite to ocean temperatures, are in up to a decade decline.
"...nothing in these emails changes the physics of CO2 and climate as we understand it." Except what can't be measured isn't science. In this case, many critics have claimed that any AGW "signal" is swamped by noisy data rendered up by CRU in pretentius one-hundredths of a degree.
Therefore this expose simply reinforces the critics - or in the case of MITs Richard Lindzen, a "denier" because he denies any negative AGW effect - claim that the IPCC has been deceiving you. This is huge and world-wide.
As Dr. Ball says, this gives him no joy. (Although for those victimized by this cabal like Richard S. Courtney, Pat Michaels, Sally Baliunas and many others "Schandenfreude" should be expected.) It is bad for climate research, and for science itself.
I agree with a,b,c,d,e and f.
g is simply not true. The code comments clearly show intent to alter the data.
h is partly true, but where it is true it lacks relevance. Yes, almost everyone concedes some rise since 1850, but the CRU data has been widely used to argue the rise in temperature is too large to be explained by natural variation, and GCMs have been built against it: GIGO. These emails devastate the already weak claim that GCMs were 90% accurate.
g #2 made me chuckle. Climate scientists have gotten more and better PR than almost any issue in history.
Also, the satellite and ocean readings suggest the trend is half what the surface stations record, and the well-documented abysmal state of the surface networks strongly argues the surface trend is picking up stray heat.
I still believe this is far bigger to AGW theory than the MSM realizes--
the most fundamental step in defining human caused global warming is to first establish what the "normal" temperature was.
We have scads of local temperature data going back maybe 150 years -- but local temperature isn't global temperature. So -- HadCru is one of the only to attempt to take all the local temperatures and calculate an historical global temperature index.
If a scientist is so inclined, how difficult would it be to make the last 30 years look abnormally hot if they also got to calculate what "normal" was for the preceding 100 years?
Thus the interest in seeing the raw data that went into calculating the index -- it goes straight to the question of "what is normal".
What Climategate suggests to me is that we don't really know what normal is anymore.
Sorry REL, what we read wasn't objective scientists worrying, for the good of mankind, that their idiot skeptic detractors were getting flawed papers through. They were worried the truth was getting through. You 2 page comment roadblock is nothing more than an attempt to close off debate and keep your lies hidden.
Johnny,
Please show me evidence that these scientists thought the objectionable paper was "true", and hence that their intent was nefarious, as you imply. I have not seen any such evidence.
I have seen evidence that they were vexed by the problem of the recent tree ring record. A well-known problem, but one that doesn't really swing the story even if you toss it out entirely (which to their credit these guys would not do; instead they tried to figure out how to fairly represent the problems).
Note also that just because people use hardball language and bullying tactics in emails does not mean that their intentions are not above board. Your post is a good illustration of this fact - assuming that the hardball tone of your post doesn't mean that you are not an honest and honorable guy.
I have not seen any such evidence.
You have seen evidence, sir. Emails demonstrate attempts to cover tracks. That is evidence even if you wish to say that is not evidence.
Attempts to undermine the legitimate function of peer-review journals is evidence that you are ignoring, sir, and which is not going away.
Here is Michael Mann describing in an email a plan to subvert a peer-review journal publishing inconvenient truths: "So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering "Climate Research" as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal."
Your own comment shows evidence of your own involvement in the conspiracy. You write:
"... many of your commentators seem to have little familiarity with the peer review system or climate science."
This is a patently transparent attempt at advancing the argument that you, and only you, have the education, intelligence and experience to decide what is evidence and what is not evidence.
Won't work sir. You and your kind are being knocked off your ivory tower by your own words.
movertyperguy,
Again, there is only one peer-reviewed journal being discussed in the thread your are talking about, and the paper they are talking about was a pretty big scandal (in that little world) that led to editors resigning.
If a journal publishes bad papers, what do you expect the scientists who know better to do? Just let it slide? Keep publishing in the same journal, which they and their peers no longer respect?
As for education, etc.: I do think that many people speaking up on this issue have not delved into the matter enough to understand what it is they are getting upset about. I do think that knowledge and experience matter, and that those who have knowledge and experience are worth listening to (that's why I read Megan's blog - she knows more about economics than I do, so I learn something here).
I am sad - really, genuinely - that my attitude so upsets you that you feel the need to label me a "conspirator", snark about the "ivory tower", etc. Your way of thinking means that in your view only those who lack knowledge and experience can be trusted. Great! There goes Western civilization...
REL,
Frank Tipler is a scientist who is willing to use his real name and not hide behind a pseudonym. He disagrees with your contention that this isn't about the data.
"The now non-secret data prove what many of us had only strongly suspected — that most of the evidence of global warming was simply made up. That is, not only are the global warming computer models unreliable, the experimental data upon which these models are built are also unreliable."
Frank J. Tipler is Professor of Mathematical Physics at Tulane University. He is the co-author of The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford University Press).
And he is not hiding. He is transparent. You, on the other hand, hide behind your pseudonym.
You, on the other hand, hide behind your pseudonym.
Mighty tough-sounding words from someone calling himself "movertyperguy". I have no objection to pseudonyms, just to cheap hypocrisy.
Wow, I am just extremely grateful that I happened to come on this site and joint the company of REL who - as he relates - represents the pinnacle of Western Civilization. My homage sir or ma'am.
@Shelby,
movertypeguy also isn't asking people to trust his expert opinion, like REL is.
movertypeguy is only asking people to heed or ignore on the basis of his logic and argument. For that, the person is immaterial.
Since REL is portraying himself as an expert who can be trusted, he needs to verify his credentials. Remaining anonymous raises the question of whether his credentials are valid at all.
"REL is portraying himself as an expert who can be trusted, he needs to verify his credentials. Remaining anonymous raises the question of whether his credentials are valid at all."
Nathan gets a cookie.
I would remind everyone of REL's first statement on this matter was an appeal to his alleged authority:
REL Claimed: " ... many of your commentators seem to have little familiarity with the peer review system or climate science. As a university professor in a related area, I am very familiar with the first, and reasonably conversant in the second."
Notice how he subtly backhands those he deems do not have the education and experience to even comprehend the vast knowledge that only he, as a "university professor" has attained.
Rubbish.
REL refuses to reveal his actual identity so that we could determine for ourselves whether he really is a university professor and in what "related area" his expertise lies - assuming he has any at all.
This is a common tactic of the AGW crowd: appeals to authority that can never be checked by us mere mortals.
My first reaction to REL was "Wow. Condescending, unconvincing, and often off-topic. Yup. He is a university prof, for sure."
But as I married to a science professor, I quickly revised my view to one of worshipful admiration. I need to stay in practice for my offline life.
More seriously, Movertypeguy and his supporter Red have "pwned" in this sub-discussion, as the kids say. Those who claim credentials based on education, position and experience should generally provide those. I understand, however, if someone who *does* possess a significant position and prestige would not disclose it in this forum. Too risky to their day-job.
If a journal publishes bad papers, what do you expect the scientists who know better to do?
What made the papers bad, methodologically?
(to movertyperguy)Your way of thinking means that in your view only those who lack knowledge and experience can be trusted.
I don't think that's what his phrase means. It means that the privileges granted to academics based on their credentials should be diminished relative to the rest of the population. Appeals to authority should be taken with a grain of salt and if scientists conceal data then that should be held against them. Seems reasonable to me. Granted, someone with a doctorate could support their argument far better than a layperson. Experience and knowledge are still valuable to the degree they can be demonstrated.
"and hence that their intent was nefarious, as you imply. I have not seen any such evidence."
Hide the decline, please delete the emails, I'll delete the data before turning it over....
So did someone assign you this blog to spew in, or are you freelancing your politics disguised as 'science'?
Sorry, I left off code comments that admit to data massaging to get a predetermined answer.
Johnny,
As I understand these code comments, they relate to the tree ring temperature issue. In that case, the "predetermined answer" is the actual temperatures measured by instruments. So the "precooking" here does not seem to be what you think.
I have not read every code comment line, and the fine points of compiling the CRU dataset are not my area of expertise. So I'm open to being convinced that there is something else here. Feel free to convinced me.
However, even if you toss the entire CRU database from discussion nothing changes, because there are other temperature databases that are openly available and that tell the same story.
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/11/26/skewed-science.aspx
A French scientist’s temperature data show results different from the official climate science. Why was he stonewalled? Climate Research Unit emails detail efforts to deny access to global temperature data
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/25/uh-oh-raw-data-in-new-zealand-tells-a-different-story-than-the-official-one/
Uh, oh – raw data in New Zealand tells a different story than the “official” one.
Of course we don't know if 'tossing the entire CRU database' will not affect anything - because it hasn't been made available. Not even when required by an FOIA instruction.
So, parsing together two time series with distinct statistical properties (implied temperatures from tree rings versus observed data) to try to pull together trend data from the parsed series is purely innocent and unworthy of criticism or concern? I'm not a climate scientist, but I know enough statistics to say you might want to step back from that one.
Nonsense. What you do with the temperatures and the tree rings is work out the relationship, and then use it on tree rings before they had temperatures.
What they did was find a function that worked part of the time and throw out the data where the function didn't work.
Johnny,
You need to read up on the facts.
Do you know what the "decline" is that was being "hidden"? These guys were talking about the recent tree ring temperature record, which everyone accepts is wrong because it disagrees with direct measurements of temperature! They were trying to figure out how to represent this record fairly. You are misinterpreting careless and casual shop talk as evidence of conspiracy.
Show me I am wrong on this point. Show me and the readers of this thread that you understand better than I do what you are talking about.
As for "delete the emails", etc., in my original post I was critical of Jones' attitude to the FOI requests - that's the business that relates to deleting emails, threatening to delete a data file, etc. But again there is no evidence here that Jones believed that the CRU records had problems, let alone that he thought they were in any way untrue (there's also no evidence anything was actually deleted, but who knows). There are any number of reasons to explain his attitude toward FOI requests that are not nefarious. The simplest being that he may be a smart but thin-skinned ass who responds to any challenge with anger and venom. Not unlike many in the blogosphere.
I totally agree with you and others that he shouldn't have adopted this attitude, given the gravity of this issue. He should have followed the lead of the NASA GISS group, which has gone for an open-the-doors approach. But to assume that his circle-the-wagons attitude necessarily equals a global conspiracy of climate scientists to bamboozle the public is a pretty big reach!
Who assigned me? No one assigned me anything. Who assigned you? I read Megan daily and noticed that this comment chain is dominated by pretty shallow ranting on one side of the issue. So I decided to speak up in hopes it would help some readers (and perhaps Megan) sort things out.
You have no idea about my politics. You have no idea what I think about energy policy, as opposed to climate science. You might be surprised. Those who conflate these two things, on both sides of the policy debate, are not very logical thinkers.
I'll be glad to talk specifics if you want to engage in a real debate, and let Megan and readers judge. But if you just want to keep snarking then I'm out...
Hey REL, explain how the mysterious decade long pause in AGW is exactly the same period of time when Mann got everyone looking at global temps, thus making himself no longer the single source of temp data. Interesting how the phenomena ended as soon as other people started tracking it, isn't it.
Johnny,
Time will tell, I suppose. The current pause in the T increase is not outside the uncertainties of the model predictions. A decade's pause is too short a time to falsify the models at their current level of sophistication. And who knows - maybe the research community has not factored in some unknown phenomena (e.g., like the Svensmark idea, which presently is not well enough understood to stick into a model). But ignorance does not equal a conspiracy.
If you want to read conspiracies into single-step correlations then that's your prerogative. I don't find such arguments convincing. Maybe others do.
Weird how REL's comment below had no reply link.
"The current pause in the T increase is not outside the uncertainties of the model predictions"
Then why is it a 'travesty' (their word) that they can't account for it?
The current pause in the T increase is not outside the uncertainties of the model predictions.
It depends on the model. Hansen Scenario A from 1988 has clearly failed to materialize.
The uncertainties from these models only become relevant some ways out in the future, by which time there are new models predicting more warming out further in the future. You see the problem this creates, I'm sure.
But ignorance does not equal a conspiracy.
Neither does a lot of people with the same opinions happening to reach conclusions convenient to said opinions.
REL, as you know the issue is the very inconsistency between tree ring data (and how it was transformed to temperature) and the instrumental record. Everyone doesn't accept that tree ring data is wrong. It's the main basis for the long term climate records used in all these studies. Both the level and variability of past temperature suggested by these records is very much in dispute.
http://camirror.wordpress.com/2009/11/26/ipcc-reviewer-show-the-decline/
Here we have an IPCC reviewer objecting to this ad hoc 'reconciliation.'
more here:
http://climateaudit101.wikispot.org/Bring_the_Proxies_up_to_date%21
ANHE,
My understanding of this issue is that there is a well known problem (published in Nature a decade ago) with a particular type of tree ring proxy since 1960. I'm not aware of anyone who argues that this record is correct (how could they, when we have multiple other proxies over that time that go the other way?) How to handle that is a matter of debate. My own $0.02, as a non-specialist on tree rings, is that if you can't trust a particular proxy for the last 50 years you should just chuck it altogether to err on the side of caution and to avoid precisely the issue that is causing confusion here: How to present a dataset of supposedly mixed reliability next to others than are more reliable.
My understanding from those who are more versed in paleoclimate reconstructions than I am is that even if you do chuck it, the paleorecord doesn't change all that much (note that it is not all tree ring proxies, just some, that are problematic). My understanding could be wrong.
I would go one step further, though, and say that reconstructing global paleo T at the level of precision that Mann and others try to do on a millennial timsecale seems to me to be a really tough game (ironically, I think it's easier once you get into the glacial timescale), so I don't trust the arguments made from these records very much one way or another. I wasn't surprised they caused controversy. So when I look at the issue of climate change, my focus is on (in order of importance): (a) what we know about the physics; (b) what we know from the past couple of hundred years when the records are easier to validate; (c) and what we can infer from the deeper time ice core and other records, when both CO2 and T are measured with better reliability than over the past 1000 - 2000 years, and correlations can be observed over multiple cycles of change.
Why 1960? Is that because that's when the first weather sats went up and we started serious data collection?
In plain English, tree rings have, in recent times, verifiably not corresponded to temperature.
Therefore, tree rings are not a measure of temperature. QED. What could be simpler?
Are they dismissing tree rings then? No, they are taking an earlier correlation between tree rings and temperature and running with it. Ockham's Razor would indicate that correlation was dumb luck, that nothing happened in the 1960's to magically stop the correlation, and therefore it can not be used as a proxy.
One way to think of the post 1960 divergence is like the thirteenth stroke of a clock - when heard, it should cast doubt on all its predecessors.
Instead these guys have assumed that the thirteenth stroke was an unprecedented event, and continued to use the clock as a way to tell the time.
Saying on believes in AGW is like saying that you believe that economic growth leads to a rising stock market. The interesting questions are quantitative: how much, how fast, how important is the effect compared to other driving forces? In economics, there are all kinds of people who use computer models with dozens of free parameters to predict the behavior of the stock market. Megan is very clear in her recommendations about how much money to invest with these people: zero. Curious that she thinks we should invest a huge amount of tax money in a different clump of computer models.
I'm with Freeman Dyson on this. Even if we get to the point where the data is no more biased and the computer models no more buggy than usual - climate predictions under the current paradigm will still be very preliminary and speculative steps to understanding the climate. The kind of thing that Megan would never invest money in if it was in a field that she knew about.
Bob_R,
I'm really fond of the stock market analogy, personally. We have a very hard time predicting the behavior of the stock market over the short-term, right? Even decade-to-decade is dicey. However, we think we understand it well enough that as a society we place major long-term bets on the idea that the market will rise over time, on average. At least, that's true of those of us who invest in the stock market for our retirement.
Similarly, despite the uncertainties of the climate models my judgement is that we understand the system well enough to place some informed bets on what the future 50 years hold in store.
YMMV. Some people also avoid the stock market too. I suspect Megan has some of her retirement stash there, or would if she were paid better.
"However, we think we understand it well enough that as a society we place major long-term bets on the idea that the market will rise over time, on average. At least, that's true of those of us who invest in the stock market for our retirement"
What if, instead of having numbers everyone agrees on, Rupert Murdoch was the only source of "adjusted" Dow figures? Would you be just as confident?
And in the long term the earth has had several ice ages and warming periods with much higher temperatures and carbon dioxide concentrations. I never hear a pinnacle of Western Civilization explain what ended the last ice age or the medieval warming period.
"Megan is very clear in her recommendations about how much money to invest with these people: zero. Curious that she thinks we should invest a huge amount of tax money in a different clump of computer models."
Hey, if models could accurately predict our booming housing markets....
http://www.masterresource.org/2009/11/simple-model-leaves-expensive-climate-models-cold/
Some interesting thoughts regarding climate modeling.
Anyone that has followed this in detail the last 10 years would have to come to the conclusion that the AGW camp was guilty of broad confirmation and assimilation bias- if one were honest with themselves, that is. As a scientist, I know how hard it is to fight these problems, and the truth is that most of us don't do a very good job by ourselves- we get invested in our prior results and hypotheses, and data that contradicts these gets viewed with extra suspsicion by ourselves, gets treated with extra rigor, and is far more likely to be discarded as erroneous without any real justification (we just know the data is wrong because it is telling us something we don't want to hear). It takes people without our biases to keep us honest.
My hope is that this episode will cause a broad release of all the models, data, and other methods. However, I am not particularly hopeful. I suspect governments the world over are just too-invested in this paradigm to take any chance at more openess. I strongly suspect that you will, in fact, see a doubling down on concealment, and, after a month or two, a broad-ranging attack at all levels on those who question the seriousness of AGW.
REL, I don't oppose posting anonymously (believe it or not, "Johnny Longtorso" isn't my real name), but if we are to accept your personal credentials and cede the debate to your personal expertise, shouldn't we know who you are, or is your name and resume to be kept as secret as Mann's raw data?
REL, I'm afraid you are wasting your time here. These commenters have their theories, don't confuse them with the facts. You are asking them for evidence? Hah, that's just proof that you are part of the vast left wing conspiracy to hide the truth that you can pour vast amounts of carbon into the atmosphere without any effect on the climate.
The fact, of course, is that even if every particle of data produced by the East Anglia CRU was shown to be false,this, among many other lines of evidence is true:
An Audubon Society study released Tuesday found that more than half of 305 birds species in North America, a hodgepodge that includes robins, gulls, chickadees and owls, are spending the winter about 35 miles farther north than they did 40 years ago.
The purple finch was the biggest northward mover. Its wintering grounds are now more along the latitude of Milwaukee, Wis., instead of Springfield, Mo.
Bird ranges can expand and shift for many reasons, among them urban sprawl, deforestation and the supplemental diet provided by backyard feeders. But researchers say the only explanation for why so many birds over such a broad area are wintering in more northern locales is global warming.
Over the 40 years covered by the study, the average January temperature in the United States climbed by about 5 degrees Fahrenheit. That warming was most pronounced in northern states, which have already recorded an influx of more southern species and could see some northern species retreat into Canada as ranges shift.
"This is as close as science at this scale gets to proof," said Greg Butcher, the lead scientist on the study and the director of bird conservation at the Audubon Society. "It is not what each of these individual birds did. It is the wide diversity of birds that suggests it has something to do with temperature, rather than ecology."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29104238/wid=18298287
I guess now that the CRU data has been "proven" to be false, them damn communist birds are going to move their ranges back to where God intended them to be. Also, chemists will have been found to be dead wrong about the properties of carbon. The Artic ice cap will have been found not to be thinning, because, as we know, geologists don't know what the hell they are doing. Climatologists can't measure increases in global temperatures over time because of course it is impossible to make such measurements. The AGW deniers say so, therefore it must be true. And so on.
In other news, because the Piltdown man has shown to be a hoax, ALL evolutionary theory has been shown to be a hoax.
http://www.allaboutcreation.org/piltdown-man.htm
As you can see, the creationists have been using this eminently rational line of argument long before the AGW skeptics.
stonetools,
I'm reluctantly concluding you are correct. Up above, Mr. "Longtorso" thinks it is suspicious that one of my comments lacks a "reply" tag. I guess he thinks I've hacked the Atlantic sever when in fact it appears that the system they use only allows threads to go a few comments deep. I can't think of better evidence of the conspiratorial mindset of some of the people in the contrarian community.
I hope that my posts will help some lurkers look past all the heated comments. And that they will be of use to Megan.
Actually, I said 'weird'. I doubt REL had any ability to do anything about that either way. Care to address the actual point I made below that?
stonetools,
Part of the problem is that while some of what you say above is correct or (in unprovable) perfectly reasonable, and some is not. For example, the evidence about the Arctic ice cap is dependent in large part upon controversial satellite data -- it is not clear that the correct algorithms have been applied to interpret the raw data. Visual observations also sometimes contradict remotely gathered data.
Advocates and deniers of global warming* (anthropogenic or not) tend to be emotionally invested in their viewpoints, and often latch indiscriminately onto evidence of wildly varying quality as supporting their position; this is related to so-called confirmation bias.
Me, I think we're seeing some degree of global warming, and of alteration of air and ocean chemistry, both of which are consistent with increases in CO2 emission and plausibly associated with human activity. I also think many of the arguments advanced for changing human activity reach far beyond what is supported by the reliable data now available. Climate change demands intensive study and could yet justify some of the broader actions that some people (e.g. Al Gore) demand, but the harms of overreacting now are at least as great as those of underreacting.
* I use these terms not to cast aspersions, but to distinguish both from skeptics or the unconvinced
We are also seeing planetary warming on Mars and Pluto. Is there another factor which may be effecting Earth, Mars and Pluto?
red: Yes, I am aware of those. And Neptune. Certainly solar variance may play a role. It may even be well-addressed in the professional literature; I'm not equipped to follow it without investing more time than I've deemed reasonable so far. The non-professional (and usually sycophantic) literature has ignored it to date. So I don't really know. Though I'd be happy to see Megan take enough professional interest to invest in acquiring the ability to seriously evaluate the matter. (Feel free to forward this to your M.E., Megan.)
"Certainly solar variance may play a role."
Wait ... let me get this straight. So you're saying that the sun "may" play a role in rising temperature?
The mind reels.
I rather doubt the migration patterns of birds are going to convince the largest CO2 emitter on earth (China) that it should scrap its coal burning electric plants and replace them with nuclear (posing the very tangible risks of proliferation and nuclear meltdown.) Do you have any hard evidence that climate change of the magnitude described in the various IPCC reports will likely result in ecological catastrophes rivaling these?
You maybe wrong abbout that:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/26/AR2009112600519.html
China announced Thursday that it will lower its carbon emissions relative to the size of its economy by as much as 45 percent by 2020, the official New China News Agency reported, and that Premier Wen Jiabao will participate in international climate negotiations in Copenhagen next month
Apparently the Chinese government accepts AGW and thinks the future consequences are serious. They at least aren't arguing that AGW is a hoax, to be dismissed as the output of some vast conspiracy by scientists-which is what most commenters here are claiming
Yes, and Canada signed Kyoto however many years ago.
Announcements are worth the paper they are written on, ie. nothing.
Derek
100% of all such promises have been broken. Maybe its a trend?
And 100% of you's are incredibly trusting and naive.
Is this inference at all fair? You do realize that China is the single largest exporter of renewable power equipment (solar panels, wind turbines etc) facing a massive overbuild and plummeting prices in these very markets?
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-11/23/content_12526775.htm
Do you realize that China already pockets billions of dollars in subsidies from schemes like the UN's CER? Why on earth wouldn't they be open to more of the same? Is it so hard to fathom that hard cash might be a better motivator than some nebulous chickadee migration statistics?
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601130&sid=a0H9j2n5XgUs
"The United Nations’ flagship emissions-trading program is too complicated for some developing countries and benefits China most, according to an Asian Development Bank official."
"Climatologists can't measure increases in global temperatures over time because of course it is impossible to make such measurements."
It is not impossible to measure temperature, nor is it impossible to measure it accurately. It is also not impossible to measure it meaningfully. US NCDC established clear guidelines for the design and location of temperature measuring stations, suitable for collecting temperature data which was meaningful from a global average temperature perspective.
The NCDC guidelines were intended to avoid measurement conditions which would bias the measurements, including: installations on or adjacent to buildings, parking structures, parking lots, airport runways, machinery, etc. These installation conditions are capable of introducing a positive bias of as much as 5C on measurements taken at such stations. That is not to suggest that the measurements taken at these stations are not accurate measurements of the temperatures at these sites, merely that they are not representative of local climate, but rather of the very localized microclimate created by these heat sources and sinks.
It is not surprising to learn that the temperatures on building roofs in downtown locations, or the temperatures adjacent to the runways at major airports, are higher than temperatures in rural locations, away from major heat sources and sinks. This might actually be useful information, though not for assessing climate.
The surveys taken by the volunteers participating in the surface stations project (www.surfacestations.org) document the location and condition of temperature measuring stations in the US; and, assess the likely measurement error resulting from differences between actual station location and maintenance and the NCDC guidelines. These surveys document expected errors of greater than 2C, on average, based on surveys of ~82% of the US stations.
The data collected from these stations confirms that these affected microclimates are warmer than adjacent rural areas; and, that they continue to warm relative to general conditions in the climactic region. Again, this might actually be useful information, though not for assessing climate.
We clearly know how to measure temperatures meaningfully and accurately. We are demonstrably not doing so, however. One wonders why.
Thank you, for making this point. I do not believe that most people understand how error prone our measurements are, based largely on land use change and UHI. When a group then uses tree ring proxy to deny the MWP in order to draw a hockey stick, manipulates the "peer review" process to block entrance into the debate, and then disparages those that disagree with them because they haven't been through the "peer review" process, there is reason for distrust. Add a good dose of money for grants plus added government control of almost all activities, and you have a real reason for deception. Sprinkle on top human ego invested in a particular theory. I'm not a scientist, but I am a trial attorney. Maybe I'm a cynic instead of a skeptic, but anytime a scientist says a relatively recent theory [remember, in the 70s we were warned of global cooling] is "settled science" which cannot be questioned, the hair on the back of my neck sticks up.
Hare-razing denier that I am, I find the Audubon report rather soothing. It appears that the bulk of birds are flexible enough in their migratory instincts to be able to adjust to climate change. This would also suggest to me that they evolved with the capacity to adapt to changing climate patterns, whatever their cause -- presumably not all coal-fired SUVs and such.
So let's all drink one for the birds!
Funny you should drag evolution into this, since a person versed in that art back when Climate Change was not in vogue would readily explain the behavior of these birds in reasonable, but unfalsifiable, terms of competition for food and reproductive advantage associated with adapting to a broader range of climates.
But since Climate Change is currently vogue and people are interested in watching average temperatures, we instead get this behavior explained in reasonable, but unfalsifiable, terms of how global warming is driving range shifts.
So far as I can tell, the ONLY scientifically testable claim in that article is that bird populations will shift ranges in response to a multiyear trend in average temperatures. Even this isn't tested against falsifying alternatives; given the many lingering questions about how, exactly, birds choose and follow migratory routes (I'm not up to date on recent avian science, but I recall that even the earth's magnetic field has been proffered for debate), there is still plenty of room for alternate theories that are outside of the current popular narrative.
In any case, assuming arguendo that temperature is definitive here, that says exactly nothing about how the temperature changes arose or whether they will continue: a couple decades of declining temperatures, or even one unusually cold winter, might well send them back south again. But in the context of a pop-sci media article, it naturally becomes a tale of woe and intrigue in the name of Settled Science, starting right from a lede premised upon the coal mine canary.
Classic.
"The current pause in the T increase is not outside the uncertainties of the model predictions"
http://rebootcongress.blogspot.com/2009/11/eric-s-raymond-on-east-anglia-crus.html
...My point is that the data fails to meet the criteria the alarmists themselves have set. That is, they’ve been quite willing to interpret a short-period temperature rise between 1975 and 1998 as indication that we’re on a long-term trend with that slope, but when we get a decade of flatness after that they ignore it. It’s not responsive and not honest to point out that a decade is too short to mean anything unless you’re also willing to dismiss the previous 23 years....
All,
Today is a day off, I have a family to hang out with, and the Atlantic system will only let comments go so deep. So here are some parting thoughts from me. Take them for what you think they are worth...
Johnny and movertyperguy: Why should I lift my anonymity? So that some of the less savory folks posting here, and perhaps some of those reading, can harass me? If I choose someday to go into punditry or some other line of work where these sorts of discussions would be a major part of my life then I'd gladly speak openly. Until then, I have a day job and a family and no desire to be dragged into a world of argumentative muck full time. So please take my comments here for what you feel they are worth. If my anonymity detracts from their value in your opinion, so be it.
More to the point, why do want to shift the discussion this way? To turn this into a battle of credentials because you aren't versed enough in the facts to hold up the argument?
Johnny: Re: Courtillot (French scientist), I've already said that I disagree with CRU's approach to data access. Other compilations have a different attitude (GISS, NOAA). Courtillot is a good paleomag guy (his primary field). However, given the objectively poor quality of his work on climate (thoroughly hashed in print, at Real Climate, and elsewhere), I would not put much stock in his T compilations.
Re: New Zealand, from the post you linked its not possible to reach your conclusion. Instrumental records need to be calibrated, etc., so "raw data" is not necessarily better than processed data. That's why raw data is not usually released willy-nilly in most fields. If you took a look at raw data from even the simplest instrumental experiment, epidemiological study, etc., and ignored the other data used to calibrate that raw data, you'd be led astray in most cases.
Re: "travesty", yes, it is a "travesty" that we can't explain the current T flatness in the sense that it is unfortunate that the models don't do a better job (i.e., tighter errors) over short timescales. This has been Moburg's point, too.
Re: Current T pause, the models predict an increasing trend with some error bars. Nothing we have seen as yet goes outside those error bars. So where is anyone not being "honest" in the scientific literature or the IPCC reports? I will agree with you that many in what you call the "alarmist" camp went overboard at times in their public pronouncements, and have understated the current pause. But none of that amounts to falsifying the current understanding of where we are headed.
altoids: As best I can see, that code you posted pertains, yet again, to how to cope with the 1960-onward tree ring record which everyone accepts is problematic because it doesn't agree with anything else.
To come back to the main point:
Many of you guys (and many more readers) are alleging a conspiracy involving cooked data, deliberate fraud, etc. My point is that while there is evidence of some bad behavior, etc., I don't agree with you that the conspiracy you imagine really exists. I've explained why. You are free to disagree.
Megan asked originally why the climate science community isn't mounting a better defense. After these exchanges, I'm convinced that it is because a defense would require that scientists act like political pundits. That is really hard because in engaging such arguments one is compelled to take sides; it is very hard to remain balanced when people are accusing you of being a "conspirator", etc. This cuts against the training and temperament that makes for a good scientist or scholar.
I wish you all a happy holiday weekend.
"I'm convinced that it is because a defense would require that scientists act like political pundits. "
Why should they stop now?
It seems to me that many Warmies confuse the hypothesis with "Science". Hypotheses are disproven all the time, yet science marches on.
Sorry for the lengthy reply below, but I think that REL needs to understand that she does not carry a single point she makes beyond their refutation in the blogosphere.
Your argument would be stronger, as would the case for warming, if the Kiwis would defend their adjustments. They don't. You seem to believe that they don't need to, and the New Zealand farmers should just pay their sheep fart taxes and shut up already. I say here is the perfect opportunity to shut us ignorant skeptics up, yet they don't do it. Failure to provide evidence which one side controls, in this case the reason for the adjustments, means that an impartial observer may infer that the side that is hiding something is hiding something detrimental to their case.
We are talking about a decade here. Exactly how long are the warmies allowed to be wrong and still be considered to be right in the long run? In your answer, please acknowledge that they are asking for trillions of dollars.
Boy, it sure would be cool if they hadn't "lost" that impossible to reproduce historical climate data so that we could judge for ourselves. We go back to the legal principle that if one side destroys evidence, the judge or jury may infer malfeasance. Your answer assumes your result in your premises, btw.
So data that disagrees with the output of uncertain models based on code that is documented to be garbage should be thrown out? I guess the Michaelson Morley experimental results should have been thrown out because they did not agree with the current at the time understanding of physics? Einstein was a crank then, right? Usually, scientists love data that disagrees with accepted theory, since it presents an opportunity to gain new knowledge, except in "Climatology", of course.
I am interested in your explanation of how the historical data was lost is in no way connected with the 'scientists' in questions expressed desire to cover their tracks by destroying evidence.
So remaining balanced "cuts against their training as a scientist or a scholar"? I am just trying to understand the above, because it sounds like a bunch of hand waving to me.
moptop,
Interesting that you concluded I am female. I wonder why that is. It happens that you are wrong. Your intuitive powers have failed you on this matter just as much as on climate change. ;-)
Kiwis - I thought I saw a statement in fact defending this just a little while ago. Clearly this is an evolving story. If it turns out to be an issue that amounts to more than a hill of beans I'll be surprised. We'll see.
"Travesty" - Take a look at the model predictions in the IPCC report and elsewhere if you want to know the timescales involved before there would be a problem. The lack of T increase over a decade is not outside the uncertainties. Two decades would become an issue.
Lost data - There is no evidence that data have been lost or destroyed. Jones made a rash statement that he would rather delete a file than turn it over in a FOI request. There's no evidence he actually did delete anything (he obviously didn't delete his emails, eh?). And even if the CRU record was lost, the raw data from which CRU assembles it's composite are still with their original sources, there are other composite records - GISS, NOAA, others - that you can inspect if you wish.
1960 onward - Are you not reading? The trouble with the post-1960 tree ring record is not that it disagrees with models. It is that it disagrees with all other MEASUREMENTS. This is why we regard it as a suspect type of measurement. It may tell us something interesting about how trees respond to rising CO2 or T, but that's another story.
Balance - ok, now I am convinced you are not reading carefully. The meaning of my comment, which I don't think is that hard to see, is that it difficult for a good scientist or scholar to simplistically take sides in a debate on a complex topic. We tend to try to carefully weigh both sides. That's not the nature of these sorts of debates. Self-evidently.
If we have reached the point that we are arguing over what I wrote then this debate is over.
Maybe I'm missing something here. My background is a little more in financial modeling. When I have model that is contradicted by measurements, I'll usually assume that the model itself needs to be recalibrated. That is, I'll initially assume that the in-sample predictions (results) are flawed. Why are we to assume that the pre-1960 temperature results from tree rings are okay, but the model goes off post-1960?
Ummm, further evidence of the cluelessness of REL
See this news article from back in Sept, prior to the leak of these emails
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZTBiMTRlMDQxNzEyMmRhZjU3ZmYzODI5MGY4ZWI5OWM=
Eventually, Steve got an academic in the climate field to request the raw data. That academic received the famous "dog ate my homework" reply from Jones.
I feel a distinction should be made here between "climate scientists" and their more traditionally-named "meteorolofists" and "climatologists". When I was taught high school science in the 60s only the last two existed. "Climate Science", in my experience, was a field minted specifically for people who believed in AGW, even if they didn't actually know a lot about the weather. It should surprise only the terminally gullible, therefore, to hear the endless mantra that "the overwhelming body of scientists endorses AGW" - it would be astonishing if any didn't.
What I am waiting to hear is an analysis of what happens if you subject the accepted body of AGW science and do a "degrees of separation" analysis on it, removing all literature connected with these guys - what are you left with?
And when is one of the scientists they have defamed going to take them to court, where they will face something rather more challenging than their "peer review" process?
Fabrigate!
REL,
How can you trust the "Calibrators of raw data" when they are surreptiously sinking all opposition to their theories while profiting from it?
This is more then simple "bad behaviour". Keeping people out of journals by force? Torpedoing editors behind the scenes? An inability to reproduce data.
Sir Francis Bacon is spinning in his grave over this. This is why they aren't mounting a better defense. There is none. It violates every tenet of scientific approach. And I'm afraid quoting RealClimate is not helping your argument, sir. You might as well quote the BBC, or NBC for that matter.
I have assumed good faith on your part, but it is clear now that you have a superficial understanding of the severity of the activities outlined in the CRU files.
It's not just the tree ring data. It's the deliberate removal of the medieval warm period. It's the addition of arbitrary "correction" time series without justification. It's the misrepresentation of said data in their papers. They have chosen different time-series from different data sets, without scientific justification, and without disclosure. They are virtually taping together the temperature anomaly graph they want to see. (For interested parties, see comment November 27, 2009 1:24 PM)
I have laid out the case in plain view here. You cannot plead ignorance, only willful neglect. Further discussion is fruitless.
I agree with you that REL doesn't have a clue.
Megan,
This is how they twist everything. Small cliques of elites socially validate the work they want to see presented to the masses. It has nothing to do with Truth and is only used to garner power. "Perception is reality" by a factor of ten.
ClimateGate resembles the "JournoList" web group. Even the recent health care "reform" arm-twisting is like the march to Copenhagen.
It is sixth-grade style peer pressure at the highest levels. Sadly, all the "climateers" have been pre-selected to lean towards AGW. They have killed dissent in climate science, in the classroom, in academia, in newsrooms, and even within the opposition party where McCain et al are concerned.
The further we stray from Truth, the harder the consequences for mankind in the long run for the left and the right. They may win their perception war, but it will come at a terrible cost to humanity if they succeed.
Climate skeptics seem to be doing OK. What have the climateers accomplished other than write a few books and sign a few meaningless treaties? The "Truth" is we've done absolutely nothing to prevent it.
I find all these arguments against prevention curious. It's like we're all smokers convinced we won't get lung cancer and the tobacco companies would never mislead us. Why would they harm their customers? Surely there are plenty of smokers who live full and productive lives. Surely we'll be just like them. There's nothing to worry about so why bother trying to prevent something that might not even happen.
As many have also said, we are perfectly willing to sacrifice the lives of our soldiers and spend hundreds of billions of dollars in the off chance some terrorist might nuke NYC. Surely if it make sense to prevent such an unlikely event it makes sense to take some precautions to prevent climate change.
No, apparently not.
Case in point, this reply in no way addresses the issues of the science and consists entirely of rhetorical arguments in which the poster assumes the underlying science is settled and correct.
A couple of thoughts for Neal to think about.
If the hypothesis is wrong, we are wasting trillions of dollars which could be better spent. Keeping oil in the ground in the US which our economy sorely needs. etc.
If the hypothesis is correct, it is still likely that we were on a long term slide into an ice age, based on historical patterns, and we may have avoided that real catastrophe.
None of the observational evidence points to the extreme warming warned of by divinity school dropout Gore et al. Hence the need felt to sex it up.
These are what you call real arguments. Notice that none of them consist entirely of appeals to emotions like fear.
No one is afraid of climate change. We're having a debate about risk and prevention. Nothing wrong with that. 60+ years ago no one thought there was any risk to smoking tobacco. Now we know. That's how it will work with climate change.
In the next reply EgonE is worried about control. I'm sorry, but that reaction is rather silly.
The market will find alternatives, as you suggest. And the market will judge the worthiness of prevention too. That's the point of our spirited debate. What to do.
@Neal,
60 years ago, no one worried about giant purple chicken robots being sent back from the future to force us to eat more pinto beans, either.
And, boy! Is our collective face red now, huh?
The AGW myth is different than the war against terrorism. Islamic terrorism is a threat (capability + intent), and we spend money going to war to reduce both their capability and their intent.
Plus, we didn't go to war until after thousands died from their direct actions.
Where is the intent of the climate to kill us all? No intent = no threat, by the analogy you set up. Moreover, the climate hasn't done anything to cause thousands of human deaths.
There are literally millions of possible doomsday scenarios. Are you arguing we spend trillions to prevent each one?
No? Then discussing why this scenario is hype based on fraud BEFORE spending another dime is the only reasonable course.
Find a new analogy. This one stinks on ice.
It is a much bigger problem then just looking for clean alternatives Neal. They are going to use this to control what we eat, whether we are allowed to reproduce (read John Holdren Science czar), how much we are taxed, what industries are winners and what industries are losers. Far too much control for a scientific argument this flimsy.
When I read Ian Harry Harris' HARRY_READ_ME.txt I see a hopelessly flawed database, and a lot of "manual intervention" by people with a skewed sense of fairness in this debate. Mann made global warming to be sure.
The free market will find alternatives when alternatives are cost-effective. (i.e. when oil tops $150/barrel people start putting corn oil in their Diesel engines). Anything else is a waste of capital. Alternatives will come, but we do not have to force the issue artificially to get there. They are closer to room temperature superconductors.
Sorry, they are closer to room temperature superconductors and they did all that without the artifical urgency of global warming. False AGW hysteria will waste resources in the end.
Does anyone know or have a link to the actual scene in Downfall? I love these clips (the TO one is hilarious), but I always wonder what they're saying...
Klug,
Here is the original.
Link
Megan,
You do have the expert training in one area to weigh the arguments. You know the difference between a rhetorical argument and a logical one. The climate is a physical system and does not care about rhetoric. Think about that.
Megan,
they can't mount a more compelling defense because AGW is a myth and you believe in a fantasy on the level with piltdown man.
The reason AGW gets a lot of "confirmed believers" of our host's type is that the basic premise is so clear and the logic seems simple. We have all seen greenhouses. We all know greenhouses get hot. We can all easily look up the recorded and replicable facts that CO2 is a gas whose chemical properties do have a greenhouse effect. We all know man's production of CO2 has grown large since the industrial revolution. ERGO, AGW seems like a natural thing to believe in, especially once a hockey stick or two shows up on a graph from a convincingly credentialed science-type. In other words, the AGW bandwagon got so strong because it appeals to much that we already "know" directly from personal experience.
Unless you then did your homework and noted the stubborn "doesn't add up" features (the hot periods don't really correspond to the highest CO2 periods, clear historical proof of Northern warmness such that Greenland was nice and inhabitable and England produced lush wines, much of the temperature sensing apparatus is in ever-growing asphalt islands, etc etc), and let's face it only nerds do homework voluntarily, there would be no reason to disbelieve. All that's even before any of the more nuanced arguments come in about complexity of climate systems, the difficulty in convincingly measuring a global average, the difficulty in convincingly measuring a global "normal", the relative importance of solar flux, clouds, oceans, cows, etc etc.
So, confirmed believers, let's have some testimony. What was the moment you can recall being convinced and what fact or factor did the trick? Is there a chain of links between that moment and the "CRU" crowd?
Oh look. The New Zealanders adjusted the temperatures to account for the .8C cooling that would be expected to occur from raising the elevation from 3 meters above sea level to 127 meters. Of course, what they don't tell you is that in this case of one of the stations that showed so much warming, the thermometer was moved to a *roof top* think about the movie "The Hangover", next to *air conditioner vents." Air conditioners work by pumping heat out of the inside of buildings, and venting that heat to the atmosphere outside of the buildings.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/27/more-on-the-niwa-new-zealand-data-adjustment-story/
http://climateprogress.org/2009/11/27/%C2%AD-climategate-judith-curry-open-letter-to-graduate-students-young-scientists-climate-research-hacked-cru-emails/
The dam is cracking. I think this is exactly the right position for AGW believers to take. Who would have thought - the best way to do climate science is the way we do all other science! From the editorial: Take the “high ground:” engage the skeptics on our own terms (conferences, blogosphere); make data/methods available/transparent; clarify the uncertainties; openly declare our values.
I am heartened that there are young climate scientists who are disturbed by this. They are in a position to understand the weaknesses of climate modeling, and at the beginning of their careers, they have nothing to lose, and everything to gain by challenging the AGW orthodoxy with their own independent research.
Ultimately, nothing said on this blog will matter, certainly not comment #143064. This argument will be won or lost in the coffee rooms of science departments. If AGW does not acquit itself, expect to see the rest of science slowly edging away. AGW slides will start disappearing from presentations on new fuel cell or solar cell technology, or energy-efficient lighting.
Indeed, Curry's essay is excellent. She is precisely correct that the closed attitude of the Jones/CRU circle is a problem - which was one of the points I made in my original post. altoids, I am glad we can agree on this, at least.
Well, I'm glad we can agree on something. Curry believes that transparency will silence the critics, I think it will simply aid them. But either way, we want the same thing - more transparency.
I still can't fathom that you find nothing wrong with the CRU files. If one of my project collaborators told me to delete files, and asked me to ask other people to delete files, alarms bells would go off in my head. My first thought would be that I am a unwitting party to scientific fraud.
But, given your unconcern for obvious and blatant data manipulation, I have no expectations.
I'm still unsure why people who believe Evil Corporations are plotting behind our backs, and that Bush/Cheney conspired us into a war in Iraq, dismiss charges of AGW dishonesty as "conspiracy theories".
Shelby,
I owe you a response.
"1) Just to be clear, it appears your contention that none of what we're seeing "has anything to do with cooking data" is based chiefly on your own investigation and finding no fire beneath the smoke, and secondarily on your personal assessment of some of the people involved. Is that accurate?"
Correct. I feel I know this field well enough to understand the issues involved. I can understand why someone further afield would feel less sanguine about the science. This is why I disagree with the CRU's approach to openness about data.
"2) I am no expert on scientific or academic fraud, but from what I know, large numbers of researchers and/or groups are at best an imperfect check on the potential problems (fraud, groupthink, cognitive bias). This is especially so when an important part of the overall group's work goes on under a screen of deliberate secrecy, as is apparently the case here. (I've seen some allegations from other scientists that every bit of the CRU's work has been fully and publicly disclosed, but that seems to me incorrect.) It is this secrecy that most strongly suggests (a) a problem exists with the data, and (b) the data's proponents know it."
I agree that there is no place for secrecy, even in the face of obnoxious critics. See my original post on this point. However, I do not believe that there has been secrecy about CRU data within the climate research community, and this is not so small and insular a community. Moreover, CRU is not the only game in town on this topic. T reconstructions have been generated by other groups, independently (go to the GISS site, for example) which tell the same story. That's replication. That's the way fraud and error are caught most often.
"3) Despite some insistent commenters here, not everyone responding with alarm to CRU data release believes it demonstrates actual fraud. I think it is deeply problematic, moreso than you do, especially regarding any political or policy implications. But it needn't be fraudulent to be a serious problem; groupthink and cognitive bias are sufficient to justify renewed skepticism of the CRU's data."
Please go back to my original post. I was quite critical of Jones' attitude. I believe I said that someone of his instincts, as shown in the emails, shouldn't be running CRU. How much more "deeply problematic" do you want me to see it? If you want me to say this undercuts the credibility of the climate research enterprise, then I'm sorry but I cannot because there are other records than CRU's, so their behavior doesn't undercut the overall effort.
"4) Finally, what is science without replicability? Can anyone now replicate the CRU's work in a transparent manner? If not, do you think it retains any value? And are the "parallel compilations" to which you refer addressed to the same paleohistorical geography and chronology; that is, can they effectively substitute for corrupted CRU data?"
There are parallel compilations, certainly, of the period being argued about so fiercely in the wake of the "hide the decline" business - i.e., the post-1960 record. That's precisely why I see this as more of a PR debacle than a substantive one. If all of climate science depended on one compilation from the University of East Anglia then this would be a very sorry science indeed. But that's not the case.
"I feel I know this field well enough to understand the issues involved."
Identify yourself and let us judge your credentials for ourselves if you insist on appealing to them. If not (which is your right), then stop making references to your expertise.
Johnny - You are very amusing. I've mentioned my profession to provide some context for my comments, but I haven't resorted to arguments from authority. Instead, I've given you and other specific arguments, and responded to the specifics you and others have raised. Yet, you seem obsessed to know who I am so that you can "judge my credentials".
I'm curious. Let's say it turned out that I have impeccable credentials from top-flight scientific institutions, a long publication record in first-rate research journals, etc. Would that somehow persuade you of anything? Will you state here that if I had such credentials it would persuade you of anything - other than that I am part of the cabal in which you seem to believe? After all, the consensus view is driven largely by researchers with impeccable credentials and long publications records in good places, right? Their credentials don't seem to persuade you of anything. Why would mine?
It doesn't take impressive credentials to recognize that you are fishing for something else.
"Would that somehow persuade you of anything?"
For some reason, you seem to think that should.
Johnny is absolutely correct; REL continues to appeal to his personal knowledge of the people involved and to his unique training allowing him insights none of the rest of us could possibly have.
REL: "I feel I know this field well enough to understand the issues involved. I can understand why someone further afield would feel less sanguine about the science."
His arguments are appeals to authority and unique circumstance and have no place in a scientific debate. The fact that he refuses to provide any independently verifiable way to establish his alleged unique credentials is very revealing.
REL: Transparency is the scientists only friend.
I know who REL is, and I'll vouch for the fact that REL knows whereof REL speaks, and has very good credentials. REL is also not part of the CRU clique. Having blogged anonymously for some time, I can attest that there are very good reasons for anonymity beyond sock-puppeting, and that should be respected. You can decide not to trust REL without knowing who s/he is, but there's no particular reason that s/he should out him or herself.
Megan McCardle Wrote: "I know who REL is, and I'll vouch for the fact that REL knows whereof REL speaks, and has very good credentials. REL is also not part of the CRU clique. ... there's no particular reason that s/he should out him or herself."
Yes there is a good reason: he appeals to his authority but refuses to divulge that authority. That is a very good reason that he should be transparent about his identity.
He says that we should trust him because he knows a lot more about this than we do - but we have no way of verifying that. It is also very strange that you claim to know a lot about this random commenter.
You vouch for him ... as if we can trust you." But, you have avowed an unproven "believe in AGW" and therefore your opinions on this matter are tainted by your self-professed bias.
Science doesn't depend on vouching for people, or trusting them. It depends on transparency, openness and not hiding behind pseudonuyms or data walls.
If REL is above reproach, let him tell us who he is, what degrees he holds, how he was trained, where he works ... who he associates with, who his friends are, how much money he may have at stake in the debate. We need to see his past comments, to see if they square with his present comments. We need to determine whether grants he holds might be influencing his opinions.
I do not trust him for one fking moment - precisely because he requires vouching for.
He claims to be a taxpayer-paid professor and scientist, yet he hides behind you ... and hides behind an anonymity that isn't required in Science. An anonymity that is dangerous.
Megan, the fact that REL feels he must hide his true identity tells us a lot about his motivations and about how corrupt the "science" you claim to "believe in" has become. The fact REL refuses to tell us who he is is the very reason the "science" can no longer be trusted.
How is it, by the way, that you know who REL is? He is obviously not a random commenter ... since you admit you know who he is and are willing to vouch for him and help assist him in keeping his identity a secret.
London Times Headline: Climate change data dumped
"SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.
It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.
The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6936328.ece
What I find most annoying is the proclaimed high degree of certainty in a global climate system that has more than just the trace gas CO2 influencing it. Reducing changes in the climate system down to the influence of human-released carbon dioxide is fatuously unicausal, considering how young the scientific field is, and how weakly understood the other influencing factors (forcings) are -- including human factors and factors that have yet to be identified.
Even if every global temperature compilation shows an unambiguous correlation between rising CO2 levels and rising temperatures starting only in the 1850s and rising constantly from there, the rush to declare causality should still be accompanied with a healthy dose of scientific skepticism.
The human tendency to believe oneself to have a whole, complete understanding of the world is certainly a factor that leads to bias here. Some aspects of academia reinforce this, such as the hierarchy of authority that is hard-fought and hard to earn, the imperative to publish, and the tendency for skeptics to remove themselves from a line of inquiry where their skepticism is shunned.
The whole idea that the data are all in and we MUST ACT NOW!!! obstructs rational thought. Which leads many to conclude that this is intentional rather than accidental.
I don't subscribe to the wilder theories of my fellow sceptics who see a thrust to a "world government" behind the AGW scam. But your "why CO2" question is a good one. As one old enough to remember the global cooling scare, I have watched the chemical "betes noir" - CO, methane, SO2, etc fade as the internal combustion engine proved able to eliminate them. The last one standing, the one that HAS to be emitted, is CO2. Gases like SO2 and methane, with their much higher greenhouse influence, burp out both steadily and episodically in seismic events, but the focus, with a few digressions about sheep farts, is all on CO2.
The AGW scam is the creature of a small clique of Druidical parascientists given credence, money and power by a gullible, ill-educated public and a supine, lazy, incompetent mainstream media that has decided that everything feels so good it must be bad.
REL,
Thank you for your responses. Without going into detail at the end of a long and often tedious thread, I insist that the extent of equivalent investigations remains unclear to me and other critics -- it is not evident to us that what the CRU has most prominently advanced is indeed strongly supported elsewhere. As always, I remain open to evidence that I am wrong.
I don't think that your criticisms of the CRU group suffice. Their "attitude" is certainly problematic, and I do think it undercuts their credibility. The extent to which it "undercuts the credibility of the climate research enterprise" is ambiguous, depending chiefly on how one views -- and understands -- the C.R.E. in its totality. I don't know enough about it to be more than skeptical, which mean it has yet to justify its claims, in my view.
This ties back to your contention about parallel compilations. My principal interest is in the pre-1900 era, especially since the last major glaciation. It is not clear to me how much of that data is independent of the CRU; that is the most important factor for me in deciding how much this hullabaloo about the CRU matters, and I still cannot figure it out. Hence my frustration. Thank you for engaging me, however, and I hope you continue to do so.
Regards,
Shelby
Moreover, CRU is not the only game in town on this topic. T reconstructions have been generated by other groups, independently (go to the GISS site, for example) which tell the same story. That's replication.
GISS is being run by a guy who has called for war crimes trials for skeptics, compared coal trains to Auschwitz, gets arrested outsidfe coal plants, and once worked on a campaign against emissions on the basis they were causing global cooling. I guess he could be less objective, but it's hard to see how.
So, what independent reconstructions actually exist? What surface station records are they built from? I am very skeptical of this claim.
If all of climate science depended on one compilation from the University of East Anglia then this would be a very sorry science indeed
This is the most widely cited of them. It's a grievous blow indeed.
"and I am a confirmed believer in AGW. So why can't, or won't, the climate change community mount a more compelling defense?"
Sigh. You prefaced your question with the answer.
"and I am a confirmed believer in AGW. So why can't, or won't, the climate change community mount a more compelling defense?"
Because you can't defend the indefensible.
and I am a confirmed believer in AGW.
The trouble is in our stars, not in ourselves.
All right, I bit. I skimmed the AR4 report. No humble person could hope to disprove the thing, because it is not one theory but dozens of theories compiled from hundreds of sources -- a scattershot approach. Checking the sources would entail getting access to the Journals, not an easy thing. It looks like unambiguous conclusions drawn from ambiguous data. Man is causing climactic havoc. Nevertheless, the whole assemblage seems held together by the assertion that global mean surface temperatures have risen by an estimated 0.74 degrees Celsius in the past hundred years, mostly in the past 20 years. In a classic graphical distortion, one hundred years is charted on an X axis and tenths of a degree C on its Y axis. This shows a very alarming zig, zag, ZIG, upwards at the right. If, in fact, mean surface temperatures have cooled in the last ten years, then that graph will be wrong, show no alarming trend, and the whole thing resolves to just a summary of research avenues. The contention, that while we can't predict the weather a few days out we can predict the climate decades out, will fall apart. Possibly, that is why no better defense has been mounted to respond to the leaked internal communications.
"...it is not one theory but dozens of theories compiled from hundreds of sources -- a scattershot approach"
It appears "scattershot" to you because there are many lines of evidence and logic. The AR4 attempts to bring all these threads together into one document. The material is organized in as logical and coherent a way as one could hope for given the many hundreds of studies that are synthesized. The upshot is that all these threads point in more-or-less the same direction. It's unfortunate you miss this forest for the trees.
"Checking the sources would entail getting access to the Journals, not an easy thing."
Go to a university library. It's all there. They'll usually let you in freely, and the copier machines are readily available. If you know a student at any nearby university, he or she could help you access nearly any article as a PDF. It's really not that hard to get this material. No harder than in any other area of research. If you don't want to go to the primary literature, or you live too far away from a good university library, then you need to depend on those who try to synthesize the literature. I challenge you to find a more thorough and comprehensive synthesis than the IPCC effort.
"It looks like unambiguous conclusions drawn from ambiguous data."
Nearly all conclusions are properly hedged with error bars, qualifying language, etc. The conclusions are drawn carefully to take known ambiguities into account.
"In a classic graphical distortion"
How is what you describe a "distortion"?
"If, in fact, mean surface temperatures have cooled in the last ten years, then that graph will be wrong, show no alarming trend, and the whole thing resolves to just a summary of research avenues."
How is this so? I don't follow your logic. If the graph is unfairly set up to emphasize the appearance of T change, as you seem to believe, then it would also emphasize a T decrease if it had happened. In fact, T has not fallen. It has stopped increasing, for now. But we are still in very warm times, historically speaking. Since you have the AR4 report then you can read about the many lines of evidence.
"The contention, that while we can't predict the weather a few days out we can predict the climate decades out, will fall apart."
It should not be so difficult to understand that it can be harder to predict short term variations in a complex system than long term variations. An analogy: Can you predict with confidence if the stock market will be up or down tomorrow, or next week? No. Yet, most of us are convinced from logic and experience that we can predict with pretty good confidence that it will be higher in 30 years than today. Do you keep your retirement savings under a mattress because it's hard to pick the stock market week-to-week? That's the analogy to your statement that if we can't predict the weather we can't predict long-term climate change.
While recognizing that these research avenues are new, even nascent, of course they are legitimate, and recognition of the work entailed is warranted. Your reply is just. Regarding the graph I spoke of, the visual distortion is in grading temperature variation in tenths of degrees, deliberately I suppose to accentuate the variance. Where the report suffers is in the certitude of its conclusions, which appear to the reader to be without dissent. Thank you for these arguments.
I looked at the New Zealand experience, where a Dr. Salinger is said to have adjusted or weighted the raw weather station data, to show what looks to me as a graph nearly identical to that the report shows for the whole world. This group says that graphing the actual raw data shows no trend at all in over 150 years when they did it independently. REL, you have said yourself that the data must be adjusted or weighted. How do you do that? Is it at someone's discretion? There are, of course, statistical methods for determining if data has just been invented or made up.
http://nzclimatescience.net/images/PDFs/global_warming_nz2.pdf
Apparently the synthesis of the original data upon which the temperature trends were calculated is what remains. The CRU has admitted that the original data has been discarded and therefore cannot be examined independently. It is probably lamentable that all of the subsequent research which has used the AR4 report as a primary source is no longer supported by this original data in record.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6936328.ece
"the head of the UN's climate experts is ridiculous."
Pachaury is a railway engineer by trade, a technocrat who climbs up the ladder in India the only way technocrats advance in the indian bureaucracy...... brownnose your way to the top, no original thinking.. sorry no thinking required.
what did you expect??
I am a confirmed believer in AGW. So why can't, or won't, the climate change community mount a more compelling defense?
If you weren't a "confirmed believer" in theories based on tainted data and contrived models, you wouldn't be wondering why they can't mount a more compelling defense.
Your posting on this story is uncharacteristically vapid. Get out of the tank, Megan, and smell the coffee.
It goes round and round,
and it comes out here:
Distinguish between understanding, explaining,
documenting, and predicting complex system behavior.
Note that a human personality is a complex system. :)
A person with understanding in one field, who can cannot
convincingly explain that understanding to his peers in
other fields, _or_ make predictions which agree with
documented real-world events, has no expert status.
Wisdom is the summarized results of statistical analysis of
millenia of documented observation of human behavior, which
does not have all that much variation; There is nothing new
under the sun. Two variations on the wisdom applicable here:
"If a man speaks to you of his honor, make him pay cash."
"Methinks the Lady doth protest too much."
Ten bonus points for identifying and explaining the
relevance of the following quote: "Hump ? What hump ?"
""If a man speaks to you of his honor, make him pay cash.""
Beautiful!
Not clear if it was first from Lazarus Long. Either way, it's true.
Ham. Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel?
Pol. By the mass, and ’tis like a camel, indeed.
Ham. Methinks it is like a weasel.
Pol. It is backed like a weasel.
Ham. Or like a whale?
Pol. Very like a whale.
Or not that hump, Gene Wilder, but it works. . .
The likeliest explanation for the migration of birds is that they all started at the equator. Then non-A GW made it advantageous to begin moving a little north and south with the seasons. Over time, a little became a lot. So, now they're in Pennsylvania.
I bring this up because it serves as a reminder that the world has usually been a lot colder than it is right now. The normal state of the Earth, with its' present continental configuration, is Ice Age.
We also know, without much doubt, that the world has been a lot hotter than it is, and a lot colder, and these variations occurred without any help from us, because we weren't around. Also, there is good evidence that the CO2 level has at times been much higher than it is today, apparently as a result of warmer temperatures(the ocean releases CO2 when it heats up).
Given that the world has seen much higher temperatures accompanied by much higher CO2 levels than currently obtain, and those conditions were then followed by Ice Ages, what are we to make of the claim that increasing levels of CO2 will lead to runaway, irreversible Global Warming? Why didn't it happen the last ten times? Is anyone seriously suggesting that there will be no more Ice Ages? We should be so lucky!
Karl Marx was a "scientist", and he had a clever model explaining how the world works. There are still plenty of "confirmed believers" for that pack of lies, too. As a scientific programmer, I have very little confidence in computer models of even simple systems, like economics. The idea that anyone has a working model of the Earth's climate strikes me as flatly ridiculous. Can I see the documentation? Open-source the thing, why don't they, and let's have a look at the code.
Hide the decline....
From the CRU code file osborn-tree6/briffa_sep98_d.pro , used to prepare a graph purported to be of Northern Hemisphere temperatures and reconstructions.
;
; Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!
;
yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)*5.+1904]
valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,- 0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,$
2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor
if n_elements(yrloc) ne n_elements(valadj) then message,’Oooops!’
;
yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,timey)
This, people, is blatant data-cooking, with no pretense otherwise. It flattens a period of warm temperatures in the 1940s 1930s — see those negative coefficients? Then, later on, it applies a positive multiplier so you get a nice dramatic hockey stick at the end of the century.
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1447
For some reason, there has always been this small, vocal minority of people who refuse to believe in AGW no matter the evidence. These people claim the mantle of objectivity. But almost without exception, they are politically conservative and/or associated with businesses who have lots of money to lose if AGW were true. It is very hard to believe that these people are "objective."
These people never provide any real evidence for the real warming that we have seen in recent history. What they like to do is jump on any mistakes made by climate scientists and waive it around as truth that AGW is a failed theory and a big hoax. They try to convince a largely unknowledgable public that if a scientific theory is wrong in its details, it must be completely wrong.
When you point out that the science is being developed, they claim that is BS. When you point out that climate science, like all science, doesn't get things right the first time but can only advance through trial and error, they claim that the scientists are acting religiously, that they believe the theory no matter what the data said.
Of course, EVERY scientific discipline has experienced fits and starts. It took physics half a century to synthesize EM theory into Maxwell's laws . . . and those laws worked really well. Except at small levels. So then quantum mechanics was born. But it took twenty years before they even arrived at the Schroedinger equation, and another 20 before there quantum dyanmics and EM were synthesized.
At Los Alamos, when building the bomb, the team of the world's greatest physicists made several false starts in enriching the uranium. The process they arrived at, with UF6, was almost an accident.
It was once thought that processor clock speeds about 700 MHz were not feasible. That turned out to be not true. But of course, that mistake didn't mean the entire field of VLSI was bogus. It just meant that the theory wasn't fully worked out yet.
But with climate science, it has always been: either the science is exactly right in all details at the beginning, or it is a big hoax. No serious person could believe that, which is why those who do believe it are written off as cranks, justifiably.
Frankly, I see no different whatsover between the arguments of AGW deniers and the AGW deniers.
There is the same lack of scientific credentials, which somehow proves their point because they are "objective"-not like the scientists, who are "biased" towards the "prevailing" consensus.
There is the same specious appeal to "common sense" ( I haven't seen dogs evolving into cats-where is the evidence of evolution?Compare that with "Hey temperatures go up and down all the time. That proves that there is no global warming".
There is the same insistence that there is a controversy ("teach the controversy-let's hear both sides)
There is the same insistence that the scientific community is engaged in a vast conspiracy to hide the truth . (The creationists insist that there are many examples of scientific labs hiding evidence that "evolution doesn't work" and that scientists produce fake evidence proving evolutionary theory. See http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/wells/haeckel.html).
There is the same insistence that the proponents must be perfect on all points- whereas the deniers need present no positive evidence in favor of their claim. Where is the evidence that the earth is 6000 years old? Creationists don't need any, just like AGW deniers don't need evidence of their claims.
There is the same hand-waving away of evidence("birds changing their migratory patterns? That must be because birds are always changing their migratory patterns. That's how birds are. Take my word for it. After all, I'm not one of those biased scientists who study bird migratory patterns,I just pulled my explanation out of my behind, so you should believe me."
You can't really argue against creationists, since they know creationism is true, regardless of any arguments. I fear that AGW deniers are the same .
You can't really argue against creationists, since they know creationism is true, regardless of any arguments. I fear that AGW promoters are the same .
I have a questions for all AGW faithful-
what would make you think that AGW is not true.
If the answer is nothing, then you have religious faith, not an understanding of science.
If you two are quite done reciting your chatechism and denouncing the heretics, can we move on to productive discussion?
First; I believed in AGW till fairly recently. Recently I've been convinced that the supposed experts are cooking the data on a rather steady boil. Huge corrections on radiosonde data was one thing. I figured the corrections agreed with the IPCC data and the explanation sounded reasonable, so at least they were corroborated by data from another source. Then we find the IPCC pronouncement has no peer reviewable data to back it up.
Then, politically, you had SO MANY political proponents of AGW refusing to consider nuclear power and being some of its worst, though most subtle opponents. We can't do nuclear fuel reprocessing! And then we'll complain about the waste from lack of reprocessing! And then we'll tighten regulatory restrictions on nuclear plants! And then we'll complain about how long they take to build! And then we won't even start building!
Bah.
And now this, with deliberate subversion of the peer review process. I no longer trust 'climate scientists' as experts. Climate science by consensus is dead. They hockey stick has been shown to be bogus, calling into question all those papers from other fields which cite it. When they can show tropospheric warming in excess of land warming (required for greenhouse warming) without making HUGE corrections to the raw data set that completely alter the conclusion (and actually release their raw data set!!!), then I will happily re-consider their bona-fides.
stonetools compared AGW skeptics to creationists. While I think the comparison is bogus, there is one similarity. If Neo-Darwinists hadn't been so focused circling their wagons against the villanous creationists and rallying for 'consensus' they would have been quicker to notice things like epigentic inheritance, which, it is hard to believe, they didn't ever see effects of prior to the discovery of a material mechanism for it.
They would have said "There is far more data in the genetic code than is likely to be created by mutations whose occurrence is unbiased throughout the genome. (and yes, many attempted lay calculations for this kind of thing are riddled with errors. That's not an excuse to dismiss the exercise entirely ) There must be other mechanisms at work."
Heck, the theory that life was formed based on chiral clay (which is itself a biological product) is more evidence of just what kind of stupid theories some scientists will rally around when they feel they need to promote a sense of 'consensus' and certainty against an external enemy. Science fails miserably when blended half and half with politics. Because you'll never get political action if you have to say "well, we just don't know yet." Reasoned debate and humility, not shutting detractors out of scientific journals, is the proper 'scientific' mindset.
REL wins the thread. And it wasn't even close. That is all. Go home now.
Based on what, claiming that email and code comment admissions of cooking the books aren't really cooking the books, and claiming a non-existent plethora of other data (that, if exists, then why would the East Anglia folks bother with their lies)?
Oh, yea, we have to understand "the context" when they admit wrongdoing in a forum us cattle weren't expected to see. We, being the cattle, are too stupid to understand "the context" so we must, once again, just trust Our Betters and hand over the entire economy to them.
A check of Gerty's IP address reveals that he is posting from the same IP as was REL.
I checked it, and this is not true.
"I am open to being convinced that I should not care about hacked information, and I am a confirmed believer in AGW. So why can't, or won't, the climate change community mount a more compelling defense?"
Not to belabor the obvious but the spokesman didn't have a better argument he could make. He doesn't have the slightest idea which data is real and which is bogus anymore than the guys at East Anglia do. Indeed, since the leak we have also found out that data in New Zealand and elsewhere has also been cooked. All the spokesman can do is resort to the logical fallacy of appealing to authority. "Because we say so", he explains.
I can't fault him, that method has been more than sufficient for the AGW movement to this point. None of this has anything to do with science and never did. Very few of them publish their data or their models and the East Anglia idiots can't reproduce their own results using their own data with their own computer programs!
Anyone who is surprised at the recent turn of events simply hasn't been paying attention. If you have a workable theory you publish the data, results and methods and see if they can be replicated. There is no ethical motive for doing otherwise in government funded research of this sort... so by definition their motives are unethical. We won't even mention the FOIA avoidance, rigging of the peer review process, tax evasion and outright fraud revealed in the e-mails.
All of this is obvious. And yet, people with no training in science at all run around making inane statements like "I am a confirmed believer in AGW" as if it carries any more weigh than someone saying "I am a confirmed believer in Jesus Christ." Well goody for you! But frankly madame, I don't give a fig for what you believe... I care only for what you can prove!
As for the CRU matter itself:
1. The scientists behaved unethically. I don't think anyone denies that.
2. McIntyre the mining industry magnate (a business that stands to lose a lot of $$ under cap-and-trade) has been waging an ideological war on two fronts. First, he has been going after CRU. Second, he has been trying to convince people that CRU is the linchpin, that if CRU's data was wrong, the entire science dies.
3. Of course, as anyone slightly conversant in the field knows, there is a TON of data all consistent with global warming that is independent of CRU data, and independently verified. Thus, even if CRU is complete crap, that doesn't affect the validity of the theory. Unless you also think that all the other scientists are also cooking data. That's patently implausible.
4. Climate deniers have cooked more data than Jones and Mann could ever hope to.
5. Making a case based on comments in code is ridiculous. I have been a computer programmer in several shops, and programmers always talk in an informal language that might not make sense to outsiders.
For instance, I was at a meeting one time explaining a data structure I had designed to the rest of my team. My solution was elegant, except for one manipulation of the data that was needed in order to format the data to fit into the data structure; some of the data needed to be recalibrated and attached in a parallel structure. One of the programmers said "you mean, like duct tape." Indeed, a little like duct tape.
So, for the remainder of the project, that particular aspect of the program was called "duct tape." Because it was easier to say than "recalibrated parallel data structure." It was all over the comments, the documentation. If the program is still being used today, I wonder how many of the programmers know what the duct tape means.
If you just read the comments, you might think that "duct tape" was an admission that the whole thing was falling apart and we were trying to patch it up. Well, not true. You had to understand the context.
Every programmer has had some experience like this. Hell, that sort of language has invaded the popular culture. Where do you think the term "cookies" came from, just to take one example.
So when you see things in code called "fudge factor" or "artificial," that doesn't mean that it is fabricated out of thin air. It is distinctly possible that the process by the fudge factor was "created" was legit, and they called it fudge factor for shorthand.
6. Of course, it's possible that fudge factor means that they invented data. But I certainly don't trust McIntyre and others when they say that. Those guys lost all credibility by their repeated lies throughout the years.
Of course, as anyone slightly conversant in the field knows, there is a TON of data all consistent with global warming that is independent of CRU data
Really? How many proxies do you think exist? How many independent surface station datasets?
Thus, even if CRU is complete crap, that doesn't affect the validity of the theory
Well, it kind of does, because CRU is the most-cited dataset and GCMs are being built against the CRU data. The GCMS are then being used to claim we must spend trillions of dollars. I'm sure you see the problem here.
The ultimate irony is that the so-called skeptics are blithely accepting the "data is cooked" hypothesis without blinking an eye.
You know these people. The ones who claim to be so committed to science that they will not believe in a theory unless the evidence is overwhelmingly conclusive, and that the existence of some contrary data makes the whole theory unproven.
But when they see a few emails and code comments -- 1 MB of information at most cherry-picked from 160 GB KB of information, stripped of context -- they are willing to jump onboard the conspiracy theory with no questions asked.
We're just taking the East Anglia folks' word for it that they cooked the data. You _do_ want us to take their word for things, don't you?
Yes - we know them well. The sad part is they don't understand how research works. We're never going confirm a hypothesis that predicts a future event until that event happens. We have data accumulating along the way - very noisy data - that leads us to a conclusion, but we'll never know until we get there. The skeptics argue that we should not send the patient to the hospital until he's dead. Only then can we know for certain he was ill.
Oops.
Give me one trillion dollars to stop it, or an asteroid will hit Earth and kill everyone. Since you don't know for sure that it _won't_ happen until its too late, get out your checkbook.
All I have to do is predict something bad enough, and you have no choice but to not take the risk I was wrong.
And this is where YOUR paranoia comes into play. No one is asking for you to give up your car and live in a cave. Goodness!
They are asking for something that will cost an average household some thousands of dollars.
Why not research geoengineering and keep growing GDP? Should cost a lot less in the end, whichever way things turn out. Sea level rise doesn't get serious for at least 50 years even if AGW is right. The world economy could be seven times larger by then. That means we could spend twice the entire output of the 2009 economy on a problem if it was serious, and still have living standards far beyond today's.
TallDave and Johnny Longtorso - whatever.
Thousands of dollars for an average household? You mean like how the speculators on Wall Street drove up the price of oil to $147 just for fun while funding our good terrorist friends in Iran and Saudi Arabia?
Really now. Can't all you skeptics at least acknowlege how fun it would be to put the screws to all the crazy people in the middle east? My, that would be worth a few thousand bucks to me. I might even send your kids off to die there just to make their lives miserable.
It's worth it to keep my SUV.
Good night all!
You should compare the amount of oil that was locked in carry trades with the rise in demand from China. One of them is a lot bigger than the other.
Nothing we do is going to make oil less useful.
Neal:
Dunno about everyone else, but I'm all for puttin' the screws to 'em.
I'm therefore in favor of dropping all sorts of restrictions on domestic exploration, refining, and exploitation.
We could put the screws to 'em the old fashioned way: by competing with them to "steal" their monopolistic, cartel-shielded business.
The ultimate irony is that the so-called skeptics are blithely accepting the "data is cooked" hypothesis without blinking an eye.
It's not really a hypothesis when you have actual comments like these stating that they are cooking the data.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/25/climategate-hide-the-decline-codified/
they are willing to jump onboard the conspiracy theory with no questions asked
Do you mean the conspiracy theory documented in the emails where they conspired to suppress skeptics' work? Or some other conspiracy?
I note that those who defend the scientific process for determining AGW despite the leaked e-mails and data accuse those who are think this material undermines the theory are using the word "conspiracy" a lot.
I don't think there was a "conspiracy" to hide the truth about AGW from the world. These scientists did not act in good faith but they sincerely believed they had good intentions. It's more a story of how elaborately intelligent people can delude themselves, and the consequences when they do. I'm sure Jones, Mann, et. al. are in a state of shock and denial at this moment. They're more like Ken Lay than Bernie Madoff. Each step they took toward corrupting the data seemed both small and eminently justifiable given what they thought they were sure of. It's only taken together over a period of years does it look like something that has gone so far astray. They weren't trying to con you and me; they were conning themselves. It continued because of all the positive attention it earned them -- a place at the pinnacle of the world, heroes using their unique skills to save mankind from a disaster. Heady, addictive stuff.
I don't believe it arose from these scientists having socialist leanings or mad power fantasies. There was just no offramp once they got started down this path, so naturally they kept telling themselves they were right.
There was never going to be a phone call from Michael Mann to Al Gore to say, "Mr. Vice President, we've rerun the data and frankly, it doesn't look like CO2 is causing much climate change at all, and very possibly none. We need to notify the public, pull the plug on cap and trade, let everyone back off Kyoto, and quit with the carbon offsets -- there's no need for them, and they're diverting resources that could be used more wisely. Do you want to call the New York Times, or should we?" No one is that brave.
Since the goal is to scare people into supporting a hydrocarbon energy tax, you know it's a bogus problem. If AGW were a real problem (similar to an asteroid impact), they would just outlaw the production and distribution of oil and Nat. gas.
Their religion is dead.
Long live their new religion!
THIS IS WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE WHEN GODS DIE
http://naturalfake.wordpress.com/2009/11/28/this-is-what-it-sounds-like-when-gods-die/
By now the issue has moved beyond any quick solution. All existing AGW data and conclusions are now suspect. The old phrase "fool me one, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me" has come into play. If Professor Mann et al's first hockey stick could be said to be the first incidence of fooling, the release of the issue concerning Yamal in Briffa's paper, the release of the East Anglia archive, concern about reversals of signs in various data, and now the questions raised about the data from New Zealand could be seen as the fooling of the world twice, thrice, and on and on.
To regain and maintain credibility climate science must become like Caesar's wife, beyond reproach.
Besides transparency, perhaps co-authorship of papers should include statisticians and physicists, and certainly any peer review process must include statisticians and physicists who are not part of the climate community.
@ MM: What kind of defense is this ?
Hope you found the answer in the thread. :)
Hint: You don't need to be a weatherman,
______to know which way the wind blows.
Do not be bedazzled by certificated expertise;
You do not need to be a CE to decide.
Their claim that one does is the clearest
evidence of their unbelievability.
Take it personally; Think back to your
dating days, and ask yourself one question:
If one of the AGW guys said "Trust me, I'll
still respect you in the morning." Would you
believe him ?
read the thread Megan, see whose side you would rather be on. Those who appeal to authority and claim that none but the initiated can hope to understand the issues? Those who present hand waving arguments on behalf of unsupportable statements? If so, I wonder why you even write on the subject.
A decade ago Mann & Co got everyone looking at global temps. Mann & Co have since had emails with "hide the decline" and the like leaked, and their code has finally been examined and found wanting, to say the least. Every individual red flag is defended in isolation with "you took that out of context" and dismissed. Enough red flags, and that BECOMES the context. A single reference to a 'trick' in a packet of otherwise unobjectional emails and code wouldn't be an issue and could be defended with "there's a perfectly reasonable explanation". What we have can't be defended that way.
Their calculations were questioned, with demonstrable reasons, before the leak. Their defense was that their work was "Peer Reviewed" by other 'experts'. Wegman discovered just how insular the community was doing the reviewing, and the emails show them gaming the peer review system.
A decade long 'pause' in AGW started right after Mann et al published their work. That means that once Mann got everyone else looking at global temps, and we no longer had to rely on him or his friends for temperature data, the warming he 'found' suddenly stopped. They can't explain that 10 year pause, but dismiss it as not proving anything, but claim a 20ish year long warming spurt they claim to have found is enough evidence to remake the world's economy.
Warmists have been reduced to saying that 'adjusted' data are more accurate than raw data, even when the consistent pattern is older temps are adjusted down and newer ones are adjusted up, with no defense of the adjustments themselves. The adjustments are described as "objective science" and that's that. The same behavior has been seen elsewhere (like in New Zealand), yet they use the existence of other data sets (like New Zealand's) to defend themselves. CRU's adjusted data proves AGW, which justifies NZ adjusting their data, and NZ's adjusted dataset backs up CRU's claims about AGW.
Megan,
Would you invest in the stock market if you had to rely on 'adjusted' Dow averages from your stockbroker when he:
1. Wouldn't tell you where his adjustments came from?
2. Was discovered to be emailing, behind your back, about "tricks to hide the decline" in the prices of stocks he wants to sell you and telling coworkers he'd delete data before giving it to you?
3. Was using modeling code to get his Dow figures that was poorly written and the documenation for the code was "this code sucks" and "sorry this code sucks, but the incoming data sucked more and I had no choice"?
4. Took the stance that you aren't fit to judge any of the above and addressing your complaints would be beneath those who gave the financial advice, for you are a mere 'doubter'?
5. Used a high pressure sales pitch of "YOU GOTTA INVEST _RIGHT_NOW_ OR YOU WILL GO BANKRUPT AND EAT CAT FOOD IN YOUR OLD AGE!!!!!! THERE'S NO TIME TO THINK!!!! ACT NOW!!!!!!!!! OHMYGOD!!!! OHMYGOD!!!! OHMYGOD!!!! OHMYGOD!!!! EEEEEEEKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!"
Still interested in the investment?
I left off
6. Your stockbroker's model hasn't had an accurate prediction in a decade, which is coincidentally the exact same time others have been watching the Dow much more intently looking for the pattern he claims to have found?
PS. If they had gotten their anti-AGW legislation a decade ago under President Gore, who doubts they would be claiming credit for 'stopping' AGW because the lack of warming in the past 10 years was due solely to their left wing political actions and they Saved Us All? Imagine how hot they'd claim 2009 would have been if not for them saving us.
Temperatures lowered or saved!
Megan, good thing your not in an auditor or responsible for reviewing the financials of companies. Where is your professional skepticism? Even a journalist should main this perspective.
Didn't they teach you that at that fancy B school you went to?
Scott wins the thread.
It is the job of a journalist to be skeptical and not to blindly "believe" in shit like this.
And when presented with clear evidence of people "hiding the decline" and using their positions to demonize their opponents, and altering source data ... it is the job of the journalist to alert the general public that these people shouldn't be trusted because they've proven they cannot be trusted.
They are not dispassionate scientists only interested in the truth of the matter. They have revealed themselves to be partisans with an axe to grind practicing the shoddiest sorts of science to be found in the academy.
Rise of sea levels is 'the greatest lie ever told'
...One of his most shocking discoveries was why the IPCC has been able to show sea levels rising by 2.3mm a year. Until 2003, even its own satellite-based evidence showed no upward trend. But suddenly the graph tilted upwards because the IPCC's favoured experts had drawn on the finding of a single tide-gauge in Hong Kong harbour showing a 2.3mm rise. The entire global sea-level projection was then adjusted upwards by a "corrective factor" of 2.3mm, because, as the IPCC scientists admitted, they "needed to show a trend".
When I spoke to Dr Mörner last week, he expressed his continuing dismay at how the IPCC has fed the scare on this crucial issue. When asked to act as an "expert reviewer" on the IPCC's last two reports, he was "astonished to find that not one of their 22 contributing authors on sea levels was a sea level specialist: not one". Yet the results of all this "deliberate ignorance" and reliance on rigged computer models have become the most powerful single driver of the entire warmist hysteria. ...
Nobody at East Anglia admits the data is cooked. YOU infer that from cherry-picked comments you have seen, completely stripped of their context.
"Hide the decline" could mean a lot of things in informal jargon, other than data cooking. REL has explained some of those ways.
Again, if you took comments in code literally, you would find outright fraud in pretty much every large system ever written. Programmers use shorthand that is often colorful and ironic. I've been there, I've done it, I've seen it.
As for a couple of other things:
1. In the last ten years, the earth has warmed. No serious person disputes that. The recent "cooling trend" is not a cooling trend at all. All that is happening is that the rate of warming is decreasing a little bit. If you took calculus, you would know this as a negative second derivative, not a negative first order derivative.
But over a 10 year period, that means almost nothing. The magnitude of the decrease is smaller than random variation. When you believe lies from deniers, this is what happens to you.
2. Nobody denies the MWP. Not MAnn, not anybody else. It's just not a warm period across the globe. It is a regional event. In other words, it's a weather pattern, not a rise in global temperatures. There is a ton of evidence for that. Hundreds of data points. None of them coming out of CRU.
3. Fro instance, on the last thread on this topic, a skeptic poster posted a link to a recent paper on this topic, thinking it was the "nail in the coffin" of the Mann's claims about the MWP. In fact, it was exactly the opposite. The idiots at Clinate Audit posted it as if it was something that showed how full of BS the so-called "warmists" are.
But what the paper said was: 1). there is lots of evidence about the MWP; 2) that the evidence unambigously shows that the MWP was simply a climate anamoly, a regional phenomenon; and 3) more data is needed to confirm this theory to a level approaching certainty. In other words, there probably is no MWP, but we can't be 100% sure.
This was coming from a so-called sketpic!
It would help you to read the actual literature, not summaries from liars.
Again, if you took comments in code literally, you would find outright fraud in pretty much every large system ever written. Programmers use shorthand that is often colorful and ironic. I've been there, I've done it, I've seen it.
I spent 16 years as a developer. I've never written a code comment that says "I'm committing fraud - ha, ha, just kidding". If you find one in TurboTax, you will win millions suing the company behind it.
That code didn't say that either. Again, YOU are inferring that "fudge factor" means fraud. It could be shorthand for a set of corrections that are necessary and perfectly legitimate.
Again, it's amazing how credulous you are about this "cooking the data" theory. There is 100 times more evidence for AGW (taking out the CRU stuff) than there is actual evidence that CRU was doing anything fraudulent with its data. Yet you are willing to jump on that latter story without a secnod thought, because it confirms your "skepticism" about the first.
The code seems to indicate pretty clearly they were "hiding the decline."
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/25/climategate-hide-the-decline-codified/
Even beyond that, the data and code seem rather junky for something that is the foundation of an argument to spend trillions of dollars.
Maybe yes, maybe no. I'm an unserious person and simply do not believe the claim to be a "fact" that can be absolutely confirmed. It seems rather obvious to me that there cannot be one perfect way to measure that on a global scale, and most certainly not by land-based weather stations located close to centers of human population.
Yet I could be persuaded to buy some of the satellite-based readings.
I'm heartened to see that you, too, are unserious.
No one denies the MWP where they can get away with doing so, in other words. So no one can get away with denying the MWP in places where human settlement patterns indicate warmth.
What we are to understand generally then is that if something is warming up, it's evidence of anthropogenic global warming. If something isn't warming up or is actually cooling off, it's evidence of weather that must be discarded as a data point.
This is brilliant stuff. What more could we want from a good comedy routine?
No, that's not what you are to understand. What you probably should do is read a little bit of the literature.
There are lots of data points demonstrating that suring the so-called "MWP" much of the world was cooling. Indeed, places where human settlement patterns show cooling.
No, even Mann now concedes the MWP was global. Some areas were cooler, but overall the globe was warmer.
As I have said, you should read the literature instead of the lies about it.
Here is the abstract from a Mann paper from November, 2009:
Global temperatures are known to have varied over the past 1500 years, but the spatial patterns have remained poorly defined. We used a global climate proxy network to reconstruct surface temperature patterns over this interval. The Medieval period is found to display warmth that matches or exceeds that of the past decade in some regions, but which falls well below recent levels globally. This period is marked by a tendency for La Niña–like conditions in the tropical Pacific. The coldest temperatures of the Little Ice Age are observed over the interval 1400 to 1700 C.E., with greatest cooling over the extratropical Northern Hemisphere continents. The patterns of temperature change imply dynamical responses of climate to natural radiative forcing changes involving El Niño and the North Atlantic Oscillation–Arctic Oscillation.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/326/5957/1256
It's not hard to find this stuff if you try.
muzzybelly,
And as I've said, you should read what you cite more carefully.
"The Medieval period is found to display warmth that matches or exceeds that of the past decade in some regions, but which falls well below recent levels globally."
That doesn't rule out a global MWP, it just says its cooler than now. This is probably wrong, of course (he's still inverting a dataset, and that is according to the original researcher of the dataset), but either way it's a different question than whether there was a global MWP, which Mann does, in fact, concede in his most recent paper:
"...the medieval period appears modestly warmer globally in comparison with the later centuries..."
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/26/mann-has-a-new-paper-he-apparently-discovers-the-medieval-warm-period/
In the last ten years, the earth has warmed. No serious person disputes that.
~~~
What happened to global warming?
By Paul Hudson, Climate correspondent, BBC News
This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.
But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures...
~~~~
Just noting how the BBC has descended into the ranks of the unserious.
Watch Megan as she joins the crew of the ship HMS Demeter sailing from Transylvania to England carrying as cargo several crates of musty earth, all collected from the archives of the CRU and used to promote AGW.
Silly girl.
So why can't, or won't, the climate change community mount a more compelling defense?
Guilty as charged?
Personally, I love the two pronged "I'll defend Mann to the death/we don't need Mann because we have zillions of other raw datasets" defense. If nothing hinges on Mann, and you're forced to concede actions on his part you can't defend and still keep some credibility, then throw the SOB (and every study that depends on him) overboard.
Its like ACORN. You'd think they'd cut their losses, but the overall belief system of "we're the end product of Human Intellectual Progress, and you're not" won't let them admit that their fellow travelers are lying scum (and personally, I'm sick of being pressured to give the left the benefit of the moral doubt - liars lie, end of story).
They have nothing but their own wonderfulness (their morally progressive beliefs, their 'scientific' credentials, their peer review of each others' work) as evidence to force themselves down our throats, so they cannot ever cut their losses when a useful idiot stops being useful. If Mann would lie to get his way, they can't argue "scientists don't lie, end of story" and have to actually defend their assertions.
If your entire worldview, and the basis of your claims to power, rests on your own wonderfulness as the Progressive Result of Thousands of Years of Human Moral and Intellectual Progress, then you cannot, under any circumstances, admit that your coreligionists are less than wonderful. Mann must be defended at all costs.
What in God's name are you talking about? I don't care about Mann. I don't know him. I don't know if he's a good scientist or a bad one; a good man or a bad one. What I do know is that absolutely nothing has been proven about him or anyone else at CRU, save possibly that they were dodging FOI requests.
If that's what they were doing, then yeah, that's pretty bad ethical judgment. Doesn't make the data wrong, or their motives wrong either. Like I have said, there are many good reasons not to want McIntyre to have the data, so he can lie about it like he's lied about everything else.
But when you dodge legal requirements, then you've crossed a line that should not be crossed. If Jones or Mann did that, then they should lose their jobs and, if criminal sanctions are warranted, prosecuted.
Like I have said, there are many good reasons not to want McIntyre to have the data, so he can lie about it like he's lied about everything else.
One of the fundamental reasons that science is different than a religious priesthood is that science is supposed to be reproducible. If you're going to adjust and then hide your raw data, reproducibility goes out the window. Fear of criticism is not even close to a sane, let alone valid excuse.
Utter, fucking nonsense, muzzybelly. You don't get a pass on concealing your data and methods just because you have some critics you don't trust.
And, in any case, show me a single example where McIntyre had lied about his analysis or his dealings with Jones, Mann, or others. A single one will do. I am a regular reader of both ClimateAudit and RealClimate, and I have not seen a single actual example where McIntyre was caught in a lie or even in a mistake that he didn't own up to when it was pointed out to him- not once.
It's not fear of criticism, and it's not critics who you can't trust. It's a desire to prevent denialist liars from polluting public debate any more than they had already.
Again, global warming is just tobacco and creationism redux. Obfuscatation is the goal. Inveinting the idea of "a debate," for public consumption, is the goal.
McIntyre has lied in ways too numerous to count. He has lied about Mann being only the result of PCA applied to red noise (not at all true), lied about the hockey stick depending solely on Mann, lied about the importance of the Yamal tree rings data set, etc. etc.
"...not critics who you can't trust. It's a desire to prevent denialist liars from polluting public debate any more than they had already."
This is languare straight from the Spanish Inquisition of the 15th century.
muzzybelly: I suggest you stop making a fool of yourself.
If a researcher doesn't release his data, he is lying. Until proven otherwise.
I don't care what his name is, what organization, or who is funding.
Having to defend your conclusions from differing points of view, even in the face of hostility is how the sausage is made.
Derek
It's a desire to prevent denialist liars from polluting public debate any more than they had already.
We had to destroy peer review in order to save it? "I can't show you my data because then you will criticize it" is, as mentioned, a pathetically crazy excuse which should be setting off alarm bells even for people who agreed with Mann devoutly. Trying to stifle debate this way makes as much sense as putting out a fire by pouring gasoline on it.
Also, it's not even the story that Mann gave. He said he couldn't show his data because of licensing issues. But you seem to admit you think he lied, and was just trying to avoid criticism. And THEN you turn around and defend him?
But I suppose you think that now neo-darwinists and those discussing the harmfullness of tobacco shouldn't have to present raw data either? Because we KNOW they're right in all instances and the important thing is that we suppress the heritics, not that we actually refine any reproducible models? Even some of the most ardent defenders of AGW who are familiar with the data will agree that their models still need a lot of refining.
Sunlight still is the best disinfectant.
I'd be interested to see some kind of citation which supports your assertion that McIntyre is a liar. But in any case, it wouldn't justify subverting the peer review process.
Consider:
We have a large data set of indeterminate, but suspicious, accuracy. The long-term proponents of this data set have been caught fudging the numbers so that the data set shows what they want it to show. Said proponents have admitted to doing so in the "stolen" e-mails. Let's consider it established arguendo that the data set is, by their own admission, bogus.
We are told that there are other data sets which show the same thing as the bogus data set, so it's not important that the bogus data set exists. We could throw that set out entirely, and the other data sets would still show the same thing. By this reasoning, we should remain in hysterics about AGW. Mission accomplished.
The alternative interpretation is that since they show the same results as the cooked data, these other data sets have also been cooked. We just don't have the incriminating e-mails yet - by this point, that's a mere detail. Ergo, the AGW hysteria is unwarranted. It may be happening - there's no way to prove that it's physically impossible - but I'll wait until some uncontaminated data comes along before I'll get excited.
And to answer the obvious question, no, I'm not a climatologist. MIT physics for me. So it's at least arguable that I'd know bad science when I smell it. And at this point, I don't think that I'd call climatology, at least as practiced today, much of a science at all.
And to answer the obvious question, no, I'm not a climatologist. MIT physics for me.
I said it to REL, I may as well say it to you before he does. If you're going to point to a credential to bolster your argument, you really should identify yourself better.
The problem with your "alternative interpretation" is that it can only be true if there is a massive conspiracy at work, involving hundreds of researchers who have no connection to each other and no incentive to be fraudulent.
MIT physics? Pleased to meet you. My name is Robert Oppenheimer.
Actually, a dozen or so environmental activists who are also "climate scientists" all citing each other would suffice. No conspiracy (gosh, that word is popular) necessary, just avergae ordinary everyday groupthink.
And of course, if someone produces some data that disagrees, you can always just turn it upside down like Mann did.
Related to your "conspiracy": Who runs realclimate.org?
"It turns out that Realclimate.org is owned by an outfit that is in essence a non-profit public relations firm called Environmental Media Services (EMS), “dedicated to expanding media coverage of critical environmental and public health issues”, whose Pittsburgh office houses the RealClimate server.[1] ActivistCash.com describes EMS as “the communications arm of leftist public relations firm Fenton Communications.”[2]
EMA’s listed registrant, Betsy Ensley, engages in the objective, non-partisan pursuit of “manag[ing] BushGreenwatch.org, a joint EMS-MoveOn.org public awareness website”.[3] She also apparently ran WomenAgainstBush.org, and former Harvard string theorist (and still-hilarious climate blogger) Lubos Motl notes that when Ensley was campaigning against John Ashcroft her secretary was Kalee Kreider, now Al Gore’s spokesperson.[4] MoveOn is of course in part a George Soros venture, and attentive climate realists recall the kafuffle over Soros supporting Hansen’s alarmism.[5]"
http://biggovernment.com/2009/11/28/climategate-what-are-the-alarmists-so-afraid-of/#more-37586
In case you've never heard of Fenton Communications, they were the folks running the Cindy Sheehan roadshow when she camped out at Bush's ranch.
If we had anything close to an unbiased MSM, they might have looked into stuff like this and said: "Something's fishy." Of course, if any of the above is false, realclimate.org can say so. Somehow, I doubt that will happen.
"... a dozen or so environmental activists who are also "climate scientists" all citing each other would suffice. No conspiracy (gosh, that word is popular) is necessary, just avergae ordinary everyday groupthink."
You mean a very tight-knit network of self-quoting individuals such as this:
http://www.warwickhughes.com/agri/crunet.gif
Climatology is today's Scientology. The only difference is Al had Spencer Weart write his book.
I don't want to know what happens on Al Gore's house boat.
Ms. McArdle, you are "a confirmed believer in AGW"?
I wanted to post a comment but then I realized that no comment is possible. I can't add anything you have not already said.
MIT Physics? Perhaps we know each other. Are you still on campus? It would be nice to know some more AGW-agnostics at MIT.
"... Or I could write it up for Scientific American." Hee-hee.
(sarcasm on) Megan, could it be because the poor under-funded scientists could not afford a few CD's to keep their data? See here.
The money quote: "The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building."
Everyone knows that data on paper is how climate models are run. If this powerfully plausible explanation does not shut up the skeptics, surely nothing will. (sarcasm off)
It's a transparently false argument, that wouldn't withstand a few minutes of scrutiny:
Q: The data was on old tapes and computer cards?
A: Yes, it was bulky and expensive to store, so we threw it out...
Q: But I don't understand...if the data was on old tapes and stacks of computer cards, how were you able to input that data in your sophisticated computer models?
A: We imported the raw data into electronic format.
Q: So why didn't you keep that electronically-formatted data, that you could store for pennies per gigabyte?
A: ...
Bottom line - if they "modeled" or "adjusted" the data, and they used a computer to do it, they must have had, at some point, a computer file containing the raw data. This raw data would have been essentially free to store. If they deleted it, it was for political reasons, not economic. There is no scientific reason to delete data.
"If they deleted it, it was for political reasons, not economic."
Or idiocy. Let's not rule that out completely -- particularly not now that we've seen some of their powers of logical reasoning, in the leaked email and code.
You'll note, however, that that doesn't necessarily help their credibility.
Yes, their dam is breaking, as you have said, altoids. It has reminded me of this exchange from 100 years ago, illustrating that persons can become so invested in a theory as to lose their scruples, risk their reputations, or if not, grounding in reality:
"My dear Jung, promise me never to abandon the sexual theory. That is the most essential thing of all. You see, we must make a dogma of it, an unshakeable bulwark." Jung asked, "A bulwark -- against what?" Freud replied, "Against the black tide of mud. . .of occultism." (Jung, 1963).
The major media cover-up of the East Anglia CRU data breach continues.
Search of ABCNews confirms no documents mention Climategate.
http://abcnews.go.com/search?searchtext=Climategate
Search of CNN confirms no documents mention Climategate.
http://www.cnn.com/search/?query=Climategate&primaryType=mixed&sortBy=date&intl=false
The major media cover-up of the East Anglia CRU data breach continues as of Monday morning 30Nov09.
Search of CBS News confirms no documents mention Climategate.
http://www.cbsnews.com/1770-5_162-0.html?query=Climategate&tag=srch&searchtype=cbsSearch
Movertyperguy,
Honestly there are plenty of news stories on all three of those news services. They just don't use the term "climategate".
Broaden your search terms slightly and you will find plenty (as I just did).
Google "climategate" ... there are 12.1 million hits.
But not even one single hit when searching on CNN? Or ABCNews, or CBSNews?
Not even one hit?
Isn't that interesting. These are not the search terms you're looking for ... move along.
Perhaps major media sources hold themselves to a higher standard in naming scandals than just calling them all Something-gate? Perhaps they're just trying to minimize it, or provoke sympathy for the CRU folks, by calling them "hacked emails" instead of a name that is shorthand for "Scandal of the week". And perhaps you should read the twelfth comment on this page, where I link you to a CNN article discussing this topic. Just because they don't use the same nickname you do doesn't mean they're silent.
When somebody makes a claim to speak from authority as REL does, is quite comfortable defending CRU and the rest of the pro-AGW crowd, and still hides behind the 'revealing my identity would be a Career Limiting Move' smokescreen it makes me suspect two things.
1)That the pro-AGW bias in ‘Climate Science’ and related fields is so profound as to make raising even the mildest questions the basis for banishment from the profession for heresy.
2) That the poster is likely to have commented publicly as a neutral observer or AGW agnostic, and is unwilling to reveal that they accept most AGW claims.
Wow. Clive Crook just weighed in. He appears far more disturbed by the HadCRU mess than most folks in the American MSM.
The rest of the American MSM is instead continuing to bray about the necessity for a global government deal in Copenhagen.
Someone needs to get those 11 AP reporters who so thoroughly fisked Palin's book to start reading the HadCRU epistles -- and opening their own drowsy ink-stained eyes...
The real test of the MSM is not climategate. Political beliefs are generally about seeking status and no one wants to lose face. But are they going to want to reenage the issue and have climategate thrown back in their face when they next trump the "scientific consensus?"
@ Plamus: Paper and magnetic tape
I still have some code, circa 1976,
preserved on punched paper tape;
Just how old _are_ their earliest
data sets ? :)
M. Report:
I cannot claim your long life experience, but I have some college essays saved on floppy disks (grin)
But the again, you and I are not climate scientists, so we're weirdos, and they are... well, climate scientists. On my work computer, I have financial models built in 1999 (backed up) - just because I might some day be questioned on what the (bleep) I was thinking when I modeled this particular company's $20 mm acquisition recommendation. Climate scientists are different - hoi polloi shouldn't, nay may not, nay have absolutely no friggin' place questioning how they came up with their results regarding a few $ trillion worth of global policy decisions.
Ms McArdle:
Your question ("So why can't, or won't, the climate change community mount a more compelling defense?) indicates you may remain open-minded to at least some extent, despite being a self-professed AGW "believer", so I offer the following possibilities.
The promoters of AGW cannot present a compelling defense because they know quite well that the e-mails and documents which have already been leaked are only a small part of the material which may be "out there". Had they concocted a compelling, if highly-creative, defense which fit only the recently-leaked items, then been confronted with an additional collection of their own e-mails disclosing facts which run contrary to their defense of the initial leaks, they would be well & truly caught. Any strident defense proffered today could easily be used to hang the proponents if / when the next collection of e-mails & documents hit the web. For now, strategically, they seem to be best-served in their reliance on the mutual interests of the AGW-friendly legacy media, which seems quite eager to accept their tepid and non-responsive excuses at face value.
The leaked e-mails and documents are exactly what they appear to be and there is no "compelling defense" of that which is indefensible. Dan Rather famously tried to mount a "compelling defense" of the patently indefensible, a defense which boiled down to "sure the documents are all fakes, but they tell the real story regardless of their authenticity." Try as they might, the legacy media types could not sell that pile of scat to the public, so Dan Rather, exposed as an advocate in journalist's guise, had to go.
For those who are true believers in the AGW myth, even a tepid defense is enough. Such believers have faithfully maintained their pristine incuriosity regarding the numerous gaping logic-holes in the AGW theory, so it is not irrational to trust that they will obligingly accept any defense at all as Holy Writ.
None but the most-arrogant of humans would ever suggest that they have devised some Grand Unification Theory of Climate (or any toher scientific discipline for that matter), so it is rational to think it at least possible that the promoters of AGW suffer from a massive dose of hubris. For such individuals, even a weak excuse would be offered up, in their own eyes, as incontrovertible revealed Truth.
Breaking News:
Phil Jones, the world's leading global warming scientist, has been fired by the East Anglia University Climate Research Unit amid allegations he faked global warming data.
An investigation of his work is now being conducted by the University.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j_dt9Bjj5yVV7k1PAyDnVHKvKtgAD9CAM0VG0