Stolen from Paradox:
http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2009/11/20/hacked-sensitive-documents-lifted-from-hadley-climate-center/ (http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2009/11/20/hacked-sensitive-documents-lifted-from-hadley-climate-center/)
QuoteThe Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain was hacked yesterday, apparently by Russian black hats, and thousands of sensitive documents, including emails from climate scientists dating back a decade, were posted online. More here.
Officials at Hadley, a leading global-warming research center, have apparently confirmed to an Australian a Kiwi publication that the documents are genuine.
The whole affair has much of the blogosphere alight. Blogs skeptical of man-made global warming see blood in the water.
Some of the old emails from scientists made public apparently make references to things like "hid[ing] the decline," referring to global temperature series and different ways to slice and dice climate data.
In all, it seems there are more than 3,000 files in the hacked folders, which have been reposted in various places on the Internet.
The big Copenhagen summit had lost a lot of its appeal in recent days, as world leaders kept dialing down expectations for the climate talks. Maybe this will spice things up.
QuoteKeith,
Thanks for your consideration. Once I get a draft of the central and southern siberian data and talk to Stepan and Eugene I'll send it to you.
I really wish I could be more positive about the Kyrgyzstan material, but I swear I pulled every trick out of my sleeve trying to milk something out of that. It was pretty funny though – I told Malcolm what you said about my possibly being too Graybill-like in evaluating the response functions – he laughed and said that's what he thought at first also. The data's tempting but there's too much variation even within stands. I don't think it'd be productive to try and juggle the chronology statistics any more than I already have – they just are what they are (that does sound Graybillian). I think I'll have to look for an option where I can let this little story go as it is.
Not having seen the sites I can only speculate, but I'd be optimistic if someone could get back there and spend more time collecting samples, particularly at the upper elevations.
Yeah, I doubt I'll be over your way anytime soon. Too bad, I'd like to get together with you and Ed for a beer or two. Probably someday though.
Cheers, Gary
You know this is what I hate in the whole global warming business: I am treated like a heretic for voicing DOUBTS, and here is yet more proof of these fuckers twisting the research to make end's meet.
lol here is another good one, where apparently one of them bullshits around to avoid publishing data which they gathered and obviously did not prove their point, but around the end he does sort of admits this:
QuoteTo: Keith
Subject: IN STRICTEST CONFIDENCE
Content-Type: multipart/mixed;
boundary="————090305040400060007010009″
Dear Keith – I do hope your recovery continues apace, in spite of the recent nonsense. I
really have had no intention to bother you with work stuff, and had strongly encouraged
Mike and Gavin to contact Tim and/or Tom putting a response on RlCl. So, I'm really
reticent to raise something else, but must.
What's going on? 21st September I got an email from Tom M that contained the following
para, among other more general discussion:
"Keith has been complained at by Climate Audit for cherry picking and not using your
long Indigirka River data set. Not used because we did not have the data. Please, could
we have the data? We will make proper aknowledgement/coauthorship if we use the data."
I replied pretty much straight away thus: "Hi Tom – please find the Esper article in
question attached. The so-called Indigirka River data set is not yet available because
it has not been published. I am currently working on that with Russian colleagues, and
was indeed in Switzerland the week before last to work with one of them on specifically
this. All being well, there will be an accepted manuscript before next summer, and at
that point I will make the data freely available. Once we get to that point, I'll let
you know, of course. Cheers, Malcolm" .
So far, no direct response to this email from Tom.
This morning I get an email from Anders Moberg, telling me that you had asked him for
the "Indigirka data". I've waited a couple of hours before writing this email so as to
try to be constructive. To be sure that you understand what that dataset is and is not,
please read the attached 2006 Moberg corrigendum.
Once again, the actual data are unpublished, in spite of having been discussed in the
Russian literature by Siderova et al. A large proportion of the raw data are not yet in
the public domain, and so you would not be able to critically evaluate the chronology as
a possible climate proxy. Why can that not be said – adequate metadata not available,
please see Moberg corrigendum? By the way, a 600-year reconstruction is available
(Hughes et al 1999, also attached), and all those raw data are at the ITRDB.
As you know, it is my intention to friendly, cooperative and open, but I'm determined to
get some scientific value from all the years of work I've invested in the Yakutia work,
and in cooperation with Russia in general. Releasing these data now would be too much.
Cheers, Malcolm
–
Malcolm
Good enough for me! Let's go ditch our nuclear and "alternative energy" plants for some dirty coal, and remove the environmental standards from cars!
Irrefutable proof of the Anthropogenic Global Warming Super-Duper Major-Mega International Socialist Conspiracy! :yes:
Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on November 21, 2009, 08:07:57 AM
Good enough for me! Let's go ditch our nuclear and "alternative energy" plants for some dirty coal, and remove the environmental standards from cars!
We don't need the EPA to dictate environmental standards. The free market can do that just fine, thank you very much.
Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on November 21, 2009, 08:07:57 AM
Good enough for me! Let's go ditch our nuclear and "alternative energy" plants for some dirty coal, and remove the environmental standards from cars!
:rolleyes: see, that is the problem: why debate in extremes? I have no problem with finding alternative energy sources, I have problems with an entire new industry and religion growing out of the collective guilt we are so fond of but lost when most of us realized that the New Testament is just a fantasy novel.
Quote from: Fate on November 21, 2009, 08:09:23 AM
Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on November 21, 2009, 08:07:57 AM
Good enough for me! Let's go ditch our nuclear and "alternative energy" plants for some dirty coal, and remove the environmental standards from cars!
We don't need the EPA to dictate environmental standards. The free market can do that just fine, thank you very much.
True enough, without a free market we would not even be using steam machines. Look at post-medieval China to see what faboulous results an overgrown state produced.
has the source material been verified, or is Tamas and his ilk just being hoaxed?
... I am not sure where the "guilt" thing comes from. Tam, you are projecting again.
Fuck the planet.
Quote from: Ed Anger on November 21, 2009, 08:18:15 AM
Fuck the planet.
I have a book for you.
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fambalaj.files.wordpress.com%2F2009%2F07%2F50ways_to_fuck_the_planet1.jpg&hash=d66057ca2981e3f760b1823ec48ae0e3eda8f2f5)
Quote from: saskganesh on November 21, 2009, 08:17:45 AM
has the source material been verified, or is Tamas and his ilk just being hoaxed?
... I am not sure where the "guilt" thing comes from. Tam, you are projecting again.
lol no. Look at the over-the-top dark greens and their ideas of humaniy ruining the world and living in sin, and point out major differences from similar christian ideas. You can't
And as you see, my link is from the Wall Street Journal, and supposedly the Guardian and the Telepgraph also reported on it, so did, lastly and definetly least, so did Fox News
Quote from: Tamas on November 21, 2009, 08:23:40 AM
Quote from: saskganesh on November 21, 2009, 08:17:45 AM
has the source material been verified, or is Tamas and his ilk just being hoaxed?
... I am not sure where the "guilt" thing comes from. Tam, you are projecting again.
lol no. Look at the over-the-top dark greens and their ideas of humaniy ruining the world and living in sin, and point out major differences from similar christian ideas. You can't
However, in this case we are not talking about the over-the-top dark greens. We're talking about climate scientists.
Oh there are so many beautiful emails indicting the leadership of the church of global warming:
QuoteDear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,
Once Tim's got a diagram here we'll send that either later today or
first thing tomorrow.
I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps
to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from
1961 for Keith's to hide the decline. Mike's series got the annual
land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land
N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999
for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with
data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.
Thanks for the comments, Ray.
Cheers
Phil
There's evidence of widespread fraud, discussions of how to circumvent FOIA requests in order to hide said fraud, discussions on how to surpress dissent as well as casual fantasies of wishing violence on dissenrters. In short, the leadeship of the global warming church are a bunch of unethical and deranged crooks.
Quote from: Tamas on November 21, 2009, 08:14:24 AM
Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on November 21, 2009, 08:07:57 AM
Good enough for me! Let's go ditch our nuclear and "alternative energy" plants for some dirty coal, and remove the environmental standards from cars!
:rolleyes: see, that is the problem: why debate in extremes? I have no problem with finding alternative energy sources, I have problems with an entire new industry and religion growing out of the collective guilt we are so fond of but lost when most of us realized that the New Testament is just a fantasy novel.
Putting on my "serious hat" for a moment - at this point I really can't care less whether Global warming exists, if it's man-made, etc. It's been politicized all to hell and back, which means rational discourse is now out of the question. Personally I prefer cleaner technologies and methods, even if they're slightly more expensive, because I like a clean environment and I dislike pollution (and currently living in a city who's pollution hangs over it in a haze on some days, I can definitely say environmental controls are a good thing). The problem is that as a result of the aforementioned politicizing, environmentalism is now an "issue" dominated by binary, black and white thinking and extremes, and global warming is a part of it.
Anyway, that rant doesn't have much to do with my trollish post or the thread, it's just what's was on my mind.
Quote from: Hansmeister on November 21, 2009, 09:16:26 AM
Oh there are so many beautiful emails indicting the leadership of the church of global warming:
QuoteDear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,
Once Tim's got a diagram here we'll send that either later today or
first thing tomorrow.
I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps
to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from
1961 for Keith's to hide the decline. Mike's series got the annual
land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land
N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999
for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with
data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.
Thanks for the comments, Ray.
Cheers
Phil
There's evidence of widespread fraud, discussions of how to circumvent FOIA requests in order to hide said fraud, discussions on how to surpress dissent as well as casual fantasies of wishing violence on dissenrters. In short, the leadeship of the global warming church are a bunch of unethical and deranged crooks.
I assume there's clear evidence that none of these emails have been altered what so ever. We can trust unnamed Russian hackers to be above aboard in this respect, correct?
Yeah well who would not like cleaner energy sources, it's not like I am not in shock and awe over the fact that people actually manage to live in Budapest everytime I go there and smell around.
But the religious craze over global warming has a very real danger of causing overregulation, which in turn causes economical slowdown, which in turn results in tech research slowdown, which is of course in turn helps the current energy sources stick around for longer. All the while the non-christian non-guilt-oriented major players catching up to the first world.
And no, regulation does not help the research of cleaner energy. Just that together with the religious zeal, it helps the selling of otherwise totally uncompetitive energy sources like solar collectors and the like. Give me my nuclear power plants, and give me cold fusion.
Quote from: Fate on November 21, 2009, 09:32:44 AM
Quote from: Hansmeister on November 21, 2009, 09:16:26 AM
Oh there are so many beautiful emails indicting the leadership of the church of global warming:
QuoteDear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,
Once Tim's got a diagram here we'll send that either later today or
first thing tomorrow.
I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps
to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from
1961 for Keith's to hide the decline. Mike's series got the annual
land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land
N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999
for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with
data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.
Thanks for the comments, Ray.
Cheers
Phil
There's evidence of widespread fraud, discussions of how to circumvent FOIA requests in order to hide said fraud, discussions on how to surpress dissent as well as casual fantasies of wishing violence on dissenrters. In short, the leadeship of the global warming church are a bunch of unethical and deranged crooks.
I assume there's clear evidence that none of these emails have been altered what so ever. We can trust unnamed Russian hackers to be above aboard in this respect, correct?
Yeah I mean surely fabricating/editing 3000 e-mails then having the original and supposed source of them confirm said letters is easy work which totally worth the slight upheveal it will cause.
These are vague enough that people are going to read into them what they will. They talk about "hide the decline," but decline to ever mention a decline of
what exactly. Tamas' source is not actually the WSJ, but one of its blogs, and in quoting, he left out a pretty telling strikeout:
Quotean Australian a Kiwi publication
These people weren't even sure of who "confirmed" the material?
How many news outlets pushed initial coverage of the "balloon boy"? Sure, I heard it on the news, so it must be true. :rolleyes:
Knowing the typical method of "confirmation," I'm not buying it. All the reporting I've seen is on blogs, and how many of them actually have Dr. Jones' phone number? If you go to the CRU's website, it's got a huge banner saying that the site is still running from a cache on an emergency server, so some of the information is out of date. If the server was that badly crashed, how would they have gotten an email response from Dr. Jones?
Quote from: DontSayBanana on November 21, 2009, 10:05:41 AM
These are vague enough that people are going to read into them what they will. They talk about "hide the decline," but decline to ever mention a decline of what exactly.
I take it that reading comprehension is not a skill taught in NJ. :(
Quote from: Tamas on November 21, 2009, 09:35:40 AM
Yeah I mean surely fabricating/editing 3000 e-mails then having the original and supposed source of them confirm said letters is easy work which totally worth the slight upheveal it will cause.
I'm surprised at how much faith you put in unidentified Russian hackers. These sure sound like stand up guys. Think I can trust them with my credit card information?
I'm sure the Russians have no vested interest in spreading misinformation about Global Warming. It's not like their economy is dependent on natural gas and petroleum exports. No way, no how.
Quote from: garbon on November 21, 2009, 10:43:54 AM
I take it that reading comprehension is not a skill taught in NJ. :(
Cut the shit; what I'm saying is there's so much jargon I couldn't make heads or tails of those emails without taking them to a climatologist. For all I know, they're correcting data to make a model calculable. The blog Tamas quotes already put a correction in because they screwed up on the origin of the source, and with the unit's website down, I don't think it's possible that Joe Blogger could have gotten a non-fabricated confirmation from the unit itself.
Not exactly a smoking gun, but the Handley folks have got some splainin to do.
Quote from: DontSayBanana on November 21, 2009, 11:01:29 AM
Cut the shit; what I'm saying is there's so much jargon I couldn't make heads or tails of those emails without taking them to a climatologist. For all I know, they're correcting data to make a model calculable. The blog Tamas quotes already put a correction in because they screwed up on the origin of the source, and with the unit's website down, I don't think it's possible that Joe Blogger could have gotten a non-fabricated confirmation from the unit itself.
Of course in the absence of other evidence, contextual clues like "hide" and "trick" don't really make the writer seem pleasant.
Quote from: Ed Anger on November 21, 2009, 08:18:15 AM
Fuck the planet.
Time enough for the Earth, in the grave.
Quote from: garbon on November 21, 2009, 11:28:48 AM
Of course in the absence of other evidence, contextual clues like "hide" and "trick" don't really make the writer seem pleasant.
Not necessarily. I focused on that "hide the decline" because "decline" could also be a synonym for "deterioration;" it could even be that the author of that email was sugarcoating his results to avoid causing alarm. There's just not enough contextual evidence for the layman to be sure either way of what the email is talking about.
Whenever you end up on Hans' side, you need to stop and re evaluate your position. Think about it, Tamas. Has Hans EVER been right?
Quote from: Tamas on November 21, 2009, 08:03:32 AM
lol here is another good one, where apparently one of them bullshits around to avoid publishing data which they gathered and obviously did not prove their point, but around the end he does sort of admits this:
lol you really do buy into the :tinfoil: explanations, don't you?
What this scientist does is say that, until he publishes his work, he is not going to publish the data that supports it. This is a stance so outrageous that prety much every scientist in the world does it (the conspiracy is, indeed, that vast).
Why not publish the raw data in advance of getting the research published? Because then one can be scooped by someone unscrupulous who doesn't give a shit about peers reviews and the like.
This isn't to say that there are not some interesting (and probably damning) things in the emails. It is just to say that one needs to evaluate each piece of info on its own, and not read it in the way that supports a pre-determined conclusion (which is, after all, what you are accusing these guys of doing, right?) If the info can be explained without necessitating a vast world-wide conspiracy, then the explanation without the conspiracy is the likeliest to be true.
Over 3000 e-mails and those are supposed to be the most damning? I don't think they much at all about anything, and even if they did have poor methodology it's just one place.
Quote from: Hansmeister on November 21, 2009, 09:16:26 AM
Oh there are so many beautiful emails indicting the leadership of the church of global warming:
(snip)
There's evidence of widespread fraud, discussions of how to circumvent FOIA requests in order to hide said fraud, discussions on how to surpress dissent as well as casual fantasies of wishing violence on dissenrters. In short, the leadeship of the global warming church are a bunch of unethical and deranged crooks.
Er, no, that is evidence of nothing of the sort.
That doesn't mean that "the leadeship [sic] of the global warming church" are not "a bunch of unethical and deranged crooks," of course. The could even be a bunch of Dick Cheneys for all I know. It just means that there is no evidence here of them being even normally unethical, let alone Dick-level-unethical.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 21, 2009, 11:11:07 AM
Not exactly a smoking gun, but the Handley folks have got some splainin to do.
Or the WSJ blogger does. This smells of bullshit; "officials at Hadley, a leading global-warming research center, have
apparently confirmed to
an Australian a Kiwi publication that the documents are genuine" just reeks of "USS Make Shit Up." That statement is less credible than a Hansmeister statistic.
Quote from: grumbler on November 21, 2009, 12:25:26 PM
Or the WSJ blogger does. This smells of bullshit; "officials at Hadley, a leading global-warming research center, have apparently confirmed to an Australian a Kiwi publication that the documents are genuine" just reeks of "USS Make Shit Up." That statement is less credible than a Hansmeister statistic.
:yes: It's the Internet equivalent of "A friend told me they heard this; I'm not making this up." Sure, the blogger might not be making it up, but "
an Australian a Kiwi publication" has got a lot of credibility to verify British emails that were forwarded by Russian hackers.
Quote from: grumbler on November 21, 2009, 12:25:26 PM
Or the WSJ blogger does. This smells of bullshit; "officials at Hadley, a leading global-warming research center, have apparently confirmed to an Australian a Kiwi publication that the documents are genuine" just reeks of "USS Make Shit Up." That statement is less credible than a Hansmeister statistic.
If the documents are all faked then the whole issue is resolved by a simple statement from Hadley.
I woulf flunk all of these russian guys for not properly citing sources, making up stuff, and generally poor essay writing.
Is this the Hadley Centre?
The reports I've said don't have it as the Hadley Climate Centre which is part of the Met Office, but the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit - which possibly feeds data into the Hadley Centre.
Here's the only UEA statement so far:
http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/2009/nov/homepagenews/CRU-update
Edit: Looked around a bit more apparently the CRU and Hadley Centre are more or less totally separate and it doesn't like they've collaborate much so yeah, it's just the CRU :)
Put the tinfoil away, Tamas. Its all over. ;)
QuoteThe volume of material published and its piecemeal nature makes it impossible to confirm what proportion is genuine. We took immediate action to remove the server in question from operation and have involved the police in what we consider to be a criminal investigation.
Apparently, Dr. Jones only confirmed the one email and put it into context (the only "fake" temperatures are the ones we already knew to be fake- the old ones that had been extrapolated rather than observed). Considering he's already confirmed and clarified that email, it sounds as though other "smoking gun" emails are suspected to be fake.
Quote from: DontSayBanana on November 21, 2009, 01:11:43 PM
QuoteThe volume of material published and its piecemeal nature makes it impossible to confirm what proportion is genuine. We took immediate action to remove the server in question from operation and have involved the police in what we consider to be a criminal investigation.
Apparently, Dr. Jones only confirmed the one email and put it into context (the only "fake" temperatures are the ones we already knew to be fake- the old ones that had been extrapolated rather than observed). Considering he's already confirmed and clarified that email, it sounds as though other "smoking gun" emails are suspected to be fake.
I think it is far too early to conclude that. Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence.
Quote from: DontSayBanana on November 21, 2009, 01:11:43 PM
Apparently, Dr. Jones only confirmed the one email and put it into context (the only "fake" temperatures are the ones we already knew to be fake- the old ones that had been extrapolated rather than observed). Considering he's already confirmed and clarified that email, it sounds as though other "smoking gun" emails are suspected to be fake.
I draw the opposite conclusion. They've looked through at least some of the emails and have not found any fakes, otherwise they would have mentioned it.
As long as Dr. Phil was going to debunk this particular email, I wish he would have explained what he meant by "hide the decline."
I rather imagine that the emails are legitimate. However, I haven't seen anything damning in them, so I'll file this away as a non-issue.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 21, 2009, 01:22:56 PM
Quote from: DontSayBanana on November 21, 2009, 01:11:43 PM
Apparently, Dr. Jones only confirmed the one email and put it into context (the only "fake" temperatures are the ones we already knew to be fake- the old ones that had been extrapolated rather than observed). Considering he's already confirmed and clarified that email, it sounds as though other "smoking gun" emails are suspected to be fake.
I draw the opposite conclusion. They've looked through at least some of the emails and have not found any fakes, otherwise they would have mentioned it.
As long as Dr. Phil was going to debunk this particular email, I wish he would have explained what he meant by "hide the decline."
My guess would be that this refers to the apparent decline in the very most recent (1999) data from "April-Sept for NH land N of 20N" which disagreed with the (projections using actual pre-'99?) temps from both land and sea in "Mike's data."
Agree, though, that this phrase is key and ignoring it is just asking people to see his message as a Potemkin debunking.
Here is a short summary of all the questionable stuff so far, the list will surely grow as people pour through more and more of this:
Quote■Phil Jones writes to University of Hull to try to stop sceptic Sonia Boehmer Christiansen using her Hull affiliation. Graham F Haughton of Hull University says its easier to push greenery there now SB-C has retired.(1256765544)
■Michael Mann discusses how to destroy a journal that has published sceptic papers.(1047388489)
■Tim Osborn discusses how data are truncated to stop an apparent cooling trend showing up in the results (0939154709). Analysis of impact here. Wow!
■Phil Jones describes the death of sceptic, John Daly, as "cheering news".
■Phil Jones encourages colleagues to delete information subject to FoI request.(1212063122)
■Phil Jones says he has use Mann's "Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series"...to hide the decline". Real Climate says "hiding" was an unfortunate turn of phrase.(0942777075)
■Letter to The Times from climate scientists was drafted with the help of Greenpeace.(0872202064)
■Mann thinks he will contact BBC's Richard Black to find out why another BBC journalist was allowed to publish a vaguely sceptical article.(1255352257)
■Kevin Trenberth says they can't account for the lack of recent warming and that it is a travesty that they can't.(1255352257)
■Tom Wigley says that Lindzen and Choi's paper is crap.(1257532857)
■Tom Wigley says that von Storch is partly to blame for sceptic papers getting published at Climate Research. Says he encourages the publication of crap science. Says they should tell publisher that the journal is being used for misinformation. Says that whether this is true or not doesn't matter. Says they need to get editorial board to resign. Says they need to get rid of von Storch too. (1051190249)
■Ben Santer says (presumably jokingly!) he's "tempted, very tempted, to beat the crap" out of sceptic Pat Michaels. (1255100876)
■Mann tells Jones that it would be nice to '"contain" the putative Medieval Warm Period'. (1054736277)
■Tom Wigley tells Jones that the land warming since 1980 has been twice the ocean warming and that this might be used by sceptics as evidence for urban heat islands.(1257546975)
■Tom Wigley say that Keith Briffa has got himself into a mess over the Yamal chronology (although also says it's insignificant. Wonders how Briffa explains McIntyre's sensitivity test on Yamal and how he explains the use of a less-well replicated chronology over a better one. Wonders if he can. Says data withholding issue is hot potato, since many "good" scientists condemn it.(1254756944)
■Briffa is funding Russian dendro Shiyatov, who asks him to send money to personal bank account so as to avoid tax, thereby retaining money for research.(0826209667)
■Kevin Trenberth says climatologists are nowhere near knowing where the energy goes or what the effect of clouds is. Says nowhere balancing the energy budget. Geoengineering is not possible.(1255523796)
■Mann discusses tactics for screening and delaying postings at Real Climate.(1139521913)
■Tom Wigley discusses how to deal with the advent of FoI law in UK. Jones says use IPR argument to hold onto code. Says data is covered by agreements with outsiders and that CRU will be "hiding behind them".(1106338806)
■Overpeck has no recollection of saying that he wanted to "get rid of the Medieval Warm Period". Thinks he may have been quoted out of context.(1206628118)
■Mann launches RealClimate to the scientific community.(1102687002)
■Santer complaining about FoI requests from McIntyre. Says he expects support of Lawrence Livermore Lab management. Jones says that once support staff at CRU realised the kind of people the scientists were dealing with they became very supportive. Says the VC [vice chancellor] knows what is going on (in one case).(1228330629)
■Rob Wilson concerned about upsetting Mann in a manuscript. Says he needs to word things diplomatically.(1140554230)
■Briffa says he is sick to death of Mann claiming his reconstruction is tropical because it has a few poorly temp sensitive tropical proxies. Says he should regress these against something else like the "increasing trend of self-opinionated verbiage" he produces. Ed Cook agrees with problems.(1024334440)
■Overpeck tells Team to write emails as if they would be made public. Discussion of what to do with McIntyre finding an error in Kaufman paper. Kaufman's admits error and wants to correct. Appears interested in Climate Audit findings.(1252164302)
■Jones calls Pielke Snr a prat.(1233249393)
■Santer says he will no longer publish in Royal Met Soc journals if they enforce intermediate data being made available. Jones has complained to head of Royal Met Soc about new editor of Weather [why?data?] and has threatened to resign from RMS.(1237496573)
■Reaction to McIntyre's 2005 paper in GRL. Mann has challenged GRL editor-in-chief over the publication. Mann is concerned about the connections of the paper's editor James Saiers with U Virginia [does he mean Pat Michaels?]. Tom Wigley says that if Saiers is a sceptic they should go through official GRL channels to get him ousted. (1106322460) [Note to readers - Saiers was subsequently ousted]
■Later on Mann refers to the leak at GRL being plugged.(1132094873)
■Jones says he's found a way around releasing AR4 review comments to David Holland.(1210367056)
■Wigley says Keenan's fraud accusation against Wang is correct. (1188557698)
■Jones calls for Wahl and Ammann to try to change the received date on their alleged refutation of McIntyre [presumably so it can get into AR4](1189722851)
■Mann tells Jones that he is on board and that they are working towards a common goal.(0926010576)
■Mann sends calibration residuals for MBH99 to Osborn. Says they are pretty red, and that they shouldn't be passed on to others, this being the kind of dirty laundry they don't want in the hands of those who might distort it.(1059664704)
■Prior to AR3 Briffa talks of pressure to produce a tidy picture of "apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data". [This appears to be the politics leading the science] Briffa says it was just as warm a thousand years ago.(0938018124)
■Jones says that UK climate organisations are coordinating themselves to resist FoI. They got advice from the Information Commissioner [!](1219239172)
■Mann tells Revkin that McIntyre is not to be trusted.(1254259645)
■Revkin quotes von Storch as saying it is time to toss the Hockey Stick . This back in 2004.(1096382684)
■Funkhouser says he's pulled every trick up his sleeve to milk his Kyrgistan series. Doesn't think it's productive to juggle the chronology statistics any more than he has.(0843161829)
■Wigley discusses fixing an issue with sea surface temperatures in the context of making the results look both warmer but still plausible. (1254108338)
■Jones says he and Kevin will keep some papers out of the next IPCC report.(1089318616)
■Tom Wigley tells Mann that a figure Schmidt put together to refute Monckton is deceptive and that the match it shows of instrumental to model predictions is a fluke. Says there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model output by authors and IPCC.(1255553034)
■Grant Foster putting together a critical comment on a sceptic paper. Asks for help for names of possible reviewers. Jones replies with a list of people, telling Foster they know what to say about the paper and the comment without any prompting.(1249503274)
■David Parker discussing the possibility of changing the reference period for global temperature index. Thinks this shouldn't be done because it confuses people and because it will make things look less warm.(1105019698)
■Briffa discusses an sceptic article review with Ed Cook. Says that confidentially he needs to put together a case to reject it (1054756929)
■Ben Santer, referring to McIntyre says he hopes Mr "I'm not entirely there in the head" will not be at the AGU.(1233249393)
■Jones tells Mann that he is sending station data. Says that if McIntyre requests it under FoI he will delete it rather than hand it over. Says he will hide behind data protection laws. Says Rutherford screwed up big time by creating an FTP directory for Osborn. Says Wigley worried he will have to release his model code. Also discuss AR4 draft. Mann says paleoclimate chapter will be contentious but that the author team has the right personalities to deal with sceptics.(1107454306)
Nothing to see here, move along. :lmfao:
Powerlineblog has an analysis of a series of exchanges:
A fascinating, hot-off-the-presses story emerges from the emails that were hacked yesterday from the University of East Anglia's Hadley Climatic Research Centre. It is one of many exchanges that shed light on the priority that the global warming alarmists give to politics and career advancement over science.
The story began when Steve McIntyre, the same researcher who was largely responsible for destroying Michael Mann's "hockey stick" graph purporting to show unprecedented warming in the 20th century, turned his attention to a famous article published by Keith Briffa of East Anglia's CRU in 2000. This article analyzed the diameters of tree rings, including rings from an area called Yamal in Siberia, and conveniently generated another hockey-stick shaped graph. You can read an account of the ensuing controversy here. McIntyre's work appeared to show that Briffa had cherry-picked trees in order to get the result he was looking for. One fact that this story highlights is that global warming alarmists publish their results in scientific journals, but refuse to make the underlying data publicly available so that the validity of their analyses can be checked.
McIntyre's revelations caused a firestorm of controversy, in response to which the alarmist community circled its wagons to fend off the threat from an outsider. This process can be clearly seen in the East Anglia emails.
The alarmists' effort to respond to McIntyre was complicated by the fact that Briffa had been ill and undergone surgery, and was then recuperating. So several of them wrote to Briffa's co-author, Tim Osborn, for advice on how to respond to McIntyre's critique. Osborn replied on September 29, 2009:
QuoteHi Mike and Gavin, thanks for your emails re McIntyre, Yamal and Keith. I'll pass on your best wishes for his recovery when I next speak to Keith. He's been off almost 4 months now and won't be back for at least another month ....
Regarding Yamal, I'm afraid I know very little about the whole thing -- other than that I am 100% confident that "The tree ring data was hand-picked to get the desired result" is complete crap. Having one's integrity questioned like this must make your blood boil....
Apart from Keith, I think Tom Melvin here is the only person who could shed light on the McIntyre criticisms of Yamal. But he can be a rather loose cannon and shouldn't be directly contacted about this....
So: these scientists don't really have any idea whether McIntyre's critique of Briffa's work is correct or not. Even Briffa's co-author professes ignorance. There is one person they could approach who could "shed light on the McIntyre criticisms of Yamal." But they don't do it. Why? Because "he can be rather a loose cannon and shouldn't be directly contacted...." In other words, his loyalty to the cause of climate alarmism may not be absolute. This is much like the case noted here where Michael Mann, one of the recipients of the above email, warns against sharing information with a scientist named Andy because he is "not as predictable as we'd like."
Despite having no idea what the facts are, the alarmists don't hesitate to formulate a position. Thus, on the next day, September 30, Osborn writes:
QuoteKeith's temporarily come in to get a handle on all this, but it will take time. Likely outcome is (1) brief holding note that no cherry-picking was done and demonstrating data selection is defendable by our time tomorrow; (2) longer piece with more evaluation etc. in around a week. No point is posting something that turns out to be wrong.
That's good enough for Osborn's fellow alarmists. Michael Mann replies:
Quotegreat--thanks Tim, sounds like we have a plan. in our post, which we'll target for tomorrow as well, we'll simply link to whatever CRU puts up and re-iterate the sentiment of the temporary short response (i.e. that there was no cherry-picking, a careful and defensible selection procedure was used) and we'll mostly focus on the broader issues, i.e. that any impact of this one series in the vast array of paleoclimate reconstructions (and the importance of the paleoclimate reconstructions themselves) has been over-stated, why these sorts of attacks are not legitimate science, etc.
Note that the alarmists are willing to denounce McIntyre's work as "not legitimate science" even though, at this point, they still have no idea whether his analysis was right or wrong. That is not, however, what they tell the outside world. On September 29, Andrew Revkin, environmental reporter for the New York Times, wrote to Mann asking about McIntyre's critique:
Quoteneedless to say, seems the 2008 pnas paper showing that without tree rings still solid picture of unusual recent warmth, but McIntyre is getting wide play for his statements about Yamal data-set selectivity.
Has he communicated directly to you on this and/or is there any indication he's seeking journal publication for his deconstruct?
Mann, ignorant of the facts, responds by slandering McIntyre:
QuoteHi Andy, I'm fairly certain Keith is out of contact right now recovering from an operation, and is not in a position to respond to these attacks. However, the preliminary information I have from others familiar with these data is that the attacks are bogus.
It is unclear that this particular series was used in any of our reconstructions (some of the underlying chronologies may be the same, but I'm fairly certain the versions of these data we have used are based on a different composite and standardization method), let alone any of the dozen other reconstructions of Northern Hemisphere mean temperature shown in the most recent IPCC report, which come to the conclusion that recent warming is anomalous in a long-term context.
So, even if there were a problem w/ these data, it wouldn't matter as far as the key conclusions regarding past warmth are concerned. But I don't think there is any problem with these data, rather it appears that McIntyre has greatly distorted the actual information content of these data.
Given what is said in the other emails, that last attack on McIntyre appears to be simply fabricated out of whole cloth. Mann concludes by buttering up Revkin:
QuoteFortunately, the prestige press doesn't fall for this sort of stuff, right?
mike
Of course not! Revkin replies, "Thanks heaps."
At the same time they were issuing these assurances to outsiders, however, the alarmists' internal communications were much more equivocal. On September 30, the day after he corresponded with Revkin, Mann asked Tim Osborn to confirm that a key 2006 paper co-authored by Osborn and Briffa was untainted by what is implicitly acknowledged to be Briffa's bad Yamal data:
QuoteAnd Osborn and Briffa '06 is also immune to this issue, as it eliminated any combination of up to 3 of the proxies and showed the result was essentially the same (fair to say this Tim?).
Osborn's reply is hedged at best, and includes a rather insouciant admission that he is "amazed" that the journal Science agreed to publish his paper in the first place:
QuoteMike,
yes, you're right: figs S4-S6 in our supplementary information do indeed show results leaving out individual, groups of two, and groups of three proxies, respectively. It's attached.
I wouldn't say we were immune to the issue -- results are similar for these leave 1, 2 or 3 out cases, but they certainly are not as strong as the case with all 14 proxies.
Certainly in figure S6, there are some cases with 3 omitted (i.e. some sets of 11) where modern results are comparable with intermittent periods between 800 and 1100. Plus there is the additional uncertainty, discussed on the final page of the supplementary information, associated with linking the proxy records to real temperatures (remember we have no formal calibration, we're just counting proxies -- I'm still amazed that Science agreed to publish something where the main analysis only involves counting from 1 to 14!
:-)).
But this is fine, since the IPCC AR4 and other assessments are not saying the evidence is 100% conclusive (or even 90% conclusive) but just "likely" that modern is warmer than M[edieval] W[arm] P[eriod]. ...
So, this Yamal thing doesn't damage Osborn & Briffa (2006), but important to note that O&B (2006) and others support the "likely" statement rather than being conclusive.
Cheers
Tim
This strikes me as a damning commentary on the entire alarmist enterprise. Meanwhile, not only are Briffa's data flawed and seemingly cherry-picked, the assumptions on which the tree-ring studies are based may be bogus in the first place. The email collection includes these two messages from a plant scientist, both within the last 60 days:
QuoteDear Professor Briffa, my apologies for contacting you directly, particularly since I hear that you are unwell. However the recent release of tree ring data by CRU has prompted much discussion and indeed disquiet about the methodology and conclusions of a number of key papers by you and co-workers.
As an environmental plant physiologist, I have followed the long debate starting with Mann et al (1998) and through to Kaufman et al (2009). As time has progressed I have found myself more concerned with the whole scientific basis of dendroclimatology. In particular;
1) The appropriateness of the statistical analyses employed
2) The reliance on the same small datasets in these multiple studies
3) The concept of "teleconnection" by which certain trees respond to the "Global Temperature Field", rather than local climate
4) The assumption that tree ring width and density are related to temperature in a linear manner.
Whilst I would not describe myself as an expert statistician, I do use inferential statistics routinely for both research and teaching and find difficulty in understanding the statistical rationale in these papers. As a plant physiologist I can say without hesitation that points 3 and 4 do not agree with the accepted science.
There is a saying that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof". Given the scientific, political and economic importance of these papers, further detailed explanation is urgently required.
Yours sincerely,
Dr. Don Keiller.
Tree ring studies are vitally important to the conclusions reached by the U.N.'s IPCC report, which is the main foundation for the claim that anthropogenic global warming has been "proved." That being the case, one would think that Briffa, one of the two or three primary authors of the tree ring studies, would have a ready response to these very basic questions. But no: he did not reply to Dr. Keiller's email. That prompted this second inquiry from Dr. Keiller:
QuoteDear Professor Briffa, I am pleased to hear that you appear to have recovered from your recent illness sufficiently to post a response to the controversy surrounding the use of the Yamal chronology; ([5]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/yamal2009/cautious/cautious.htm) and the chronology itself; ([6]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/yamal2009/)
Unfortunately I find your explanations lacking in scientific rigour and I am more inclined to believe the analysis of McIntyre ([7]http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7588) Can I have a straightforward answer to the following questions
1) Are the reconstructions sensitive to the removal of either the Yamal data and Strip pine bristlecones, either when present singly or in combination?
2) Why these series, when incorporated with white noise as a background, can still produce a Hockey-Stick shaped graph if they have, as you suggest, a low individual weighting?
And once you have done this, please do me the courtesy of answering my initial email.
Dr. D.R. Keiller
Again, one might assume that if the science surrounding global warming is settled, the alarmists would have good answers to such basic questions, and certainly would be willing to engage in debate in a spirit of open-minded inquiry. Such, however, is not the case. Phil Jones of East Anglia advised Briffa against trying to respond to the plant scientist on October 20:
QuoteKeith,
There is a lot more there on CA now. [I'm pretty sure CA is Climate Audit, a web site where McIntyre posts.] I would be very wary about responding to this person now having seen what McIntyre has put up.
You and Tim talked about Yamal. Why have the bristlecones come in now. [1]http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7588#comments
This is what happens - they just keep moving the goalposts. Maybe get Tim to redo OB2006 without a few more series.
Cheers
Phil
As far as I can tell from the email archive, Briffa never did respond to the plant scientist. Jones's email warning Briffa to be "very wary about responding to this person now having seen what McIntyre has put up" was written just three weeks ago. It, along with the rest of the email archive, makes an utter mockery of the alarmists' claim that the science of global warming is settled in their favor.
On the contrary, the conclusion an observer is likely to draw from the CRU archive is that the climate alarmists are making up the science as they go along and are fitting facts to reach a predetermined conclusion rather than objectively seeking after truth. What they are doing is politics, not science. When I was in law school, this story was told about accountants: A CEO is going to hire a new accountant and summons a series of candidates. He asks each applicant, "What is two plus two?" The first two candidates answer, "Four." They don't get the job. The third responds, "What do you want it to be?" He gets hired. The climate alarmists' attitude toward data appears to me much the same as that fictional accountant's attitude toward arithmetic.
Nothing to see here, move along. :lmfao:
Again the Hadley Centre and the University of East Anglia's CRU are totally separate bodies :mellow:
Oh Shel, not like Hans is going to start paying attention to facts now.
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 21, 2009, 05:12:42 PM
Again the Hadley Centre and the University of East Anglia's CRU are totally separate bodies :mellow:
Sorry, but I have to choose to believe you or believe PowerLine, and they have posted actual analysis featuring actual quote-mining and unwarranted assumptions. All you have is the university's web site. Since PowerLine believes in their cause enough to be highly partisan hacks on the issue, they must be correct.
Quote from: Hansmeister on November 21, 2009, 04:50:00 PM
Here is a short summary of all the questionable stuff so far, the list will surely grow as people pour through more and more of this:
Quote<snip bullshit list of "facts">
Nothing to see here, move along. :lmfao:
The problem is you don't have
facts, you have
interpretations. Your list is bullshit until it's corroborated.
Quote from: DontSayBanana on November 21, 2009, 11:32:19 PM
Quote from: Hansmeister on November 21, 2009, 04:50:00 PM
Here is a short summary of all the questionable stuff so far, the list will surely grow as people pour through more and more of this:
Quote<snip bullshit list of "facts">
Nothing to see here, move along. :lmfao:
The problem is you don't have facts, you have interpretations. Your list is bullshit until it's corroborated.
A valid point, but if there really is malfeasance on their part, why would they corroborate it?
Quote from: jimmy olsen on November 22, 2009, 12:05:26 AM
A valid point, but if there really is malfeasance on their part, why would they corroborate it?
Sheer idiocy. Anyway, I'm just pointing out that Hans is jumping the gun yet again.
I guess it is funny sometimes to see how some people react to their religious views being questioned :)
Quote from: derspiess on November 22, 2009, 01:46:34 PM
I guess it is funny sometimes to see how some people react to their religious views being questioned :)
Indeed. And that's why I don't think that this is particularily serious or interesting. A bunch of climatologists talking shit about other folks, along with some talk about data sets. Who cares?
Quote from: derspiess on November 22, 2009, 01:46:34 PM
I guess it is funny sometimes to see how some people react to their religious views being questioned :)
I think it's funny when people get confused about what religion is and what it is not.
Quote from: saskganesh on November 22, 2009, 02:23:41 PM
Quote from: derspiess on November 22, 2009, 01:46:34 PM
I guess it is funny sometimes to see how some people react to their religious views being questioned :)
I think it's funny when people get confused about what religion is and what it is not.
I call 'em as I sees 'em. Environmentalism (Global Warming in particular) has become a religion for many people these days.
Quote from: derspiess on November 22, 2009, 02:30:42 PM
Quote from: saskganesh on November 22, 2009, 02:23:41 PM
Quote from: derspiess on November 22, 2009, 01:46:34 PM
I guess it is funny sometimes to see how some people react to their religious views being questioned :)
I think it's funny when people get confused about what religion is and what it is not.
I call 'em as I sees 'em. Environmentalism (Global Warming in particular) has become a religion for many people these days.
Without a doubt. But not for the people who wrote these emails. These aren't a bunch of ignorant Greenpeace assholes. These are the guys who understand the science.
Quote from: derspiess on November 22, 2009, 02:30:42 PM
Quote from: saskganesh on November 22, 2009, 02:23:41 PM
Quote from: derspiess on November 22, 2009, 01:46:34 PM
I guess it is funny sometimes to see how some people react to their religious views being questioned :)
I think it's funny when people get confused about what religion is and what it is not.
I call 'em as I sees 'em. Environmentalism (Global Warming in particular) has become a religion for many people these days.
And a Conspiracy theory amongst others.
Quote from: derspiess on November 22, 2009, 02:30:42 PM
I call 'em as I sees 'em. Environmentalism (Global Warming in particular) has become a religion for many people these days.
One of many religions. Football, television, the movies, music, the internet, Languish... pretty much everything has turned into a religion for somebody. That environmentalism has as well isn't surprising at all. Anti-environmentalism is a religion for some people. Hell, anti-religion-ism is a religion for some people on Languish! :lol:
QuoteNovember 24, 2009 11:40 AM
Congress May Probe Leaked Global Warming E-Mails
A few days after leaked e-mail messages appeared on the Internet, the U.S. Congress may probe whether prominent scientists who are advocates of global warming theories misrepresented the truth about climate change.
Sen. James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, said on Monday the leaked correspondence suggested researchers "cooked the science to make this thing look as if the science was settled, when all the time of course we knew it was not," according to a transcript of a radio interview posted on his Web site. Aides for Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican, are also looking into the disclosure.
The leaked documents (see our previous coverage) come from the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in eastern England. In global warming circles, the CRU wields outsize influence: it claims the world's largest temperature data set, and its work and mathematical models were incorporated into the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2007 report. That report, in turn, is what the Environmental Protection Agency acknowledged it "relies on most heavily" when concluding that carbon dioxide emissions endanger public health and should be regulated.
Last week's leaked e-mails range from innocuous to embarrassing and, critics believe, scandalous. They show that some of the field's most prominent scientists were so wedded to theories of man-made global warming that they ridiculed dissenters who asked for copies of their data ("have to respond to more crap criticisms from the idiots"), cheered the deaths of skeptical journalists, and plotted how to keep researchers who reached different conclusions from publishing in peer-reviewed journals.
One e-mail message, apparently from CRU director Phil Jones, references the U.K.'s Freedom of Information Act when asking another researcher to delete correspondence that might be disclosed in response to public records law: "Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise." Another, also apparently from Jones: global warming skeptics "have been after the CRU station data for years. 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." (Jones was a contributing author to the chapter of the U.N.'s IPCC report titled "Detection of Climate Change and Attribution of Causes.")[
In addition to e-mail messages, the roughly 3,600 leaked documents posted on sites including Wikileaks.org and EastAngliaEmails.com include computer code and a description of how an unfortunate programmer named "Harry" -- possibly the CRU's Ian "Harry" Harris -- was tasked with resuscitating and updating a key temperature database that proved to be problematic. Some excerpts from what appear to be his notes, emphasis added:
"I am seriously worried that our flagship gridded data product is produced by Delaunay triangulation - apparently linear as well. As far as I can see, this renders the station counts totally meaningless. It also means that we cannot say exactly how the gridded data is arrived at from a statistical perspective - since we're using an off-the-shelf product that isn't documented sufficiently to say that. Why this wasn't coded up in Fortran I don't know - time pressures perhaps? Was too much effort expended on homogenisation, that there wasn't enough time to write a gridding procedure? Of course, it's too late for me to fix it too. Meh.
I am very sorry to report that the rest of the databases seem to be in nearly as poor a state as Australia was. There are hundreds if not thousands of pairs of dummy stations, one with no WMO and one with, usually overlapping and with the same station name and very similar coordinates. I know it could be old and new stations, but why such large overlaps if that's the case? Aarrggghhh! There truly is no end in sight... So, we can have a proper result, but only by including a load of garbage!
One thing that's unsettling is that many of the assigned WMo codes for Canadian stations do not return any hits with a web search. Usually the country's met office, or at least the Weather Underground, show up – but for these stations, nothing at all. Makes me wonder if these are long-discontinued, or were even invented somewhere other than Canada!
Knowing how long it takes to debug this suite - the experiment endeth here. The option (like all the anomdtb options) is totally undocumented so we'll never know what we lost. 22. Right, time to stop pussyfooting around the niceties of Tim's labyrinthine software suites - let's have a go at producing CRU TS 3.0! since failing to do that will be the definitive failure of the entire project.
Ulp! I am seriously close to giving up, again. The history of this is so complex that I can't get far enough into it before by head hurts and I have to stop. Each parameter has a tortuous history of manual and semi-automated interventions that I simply cannot just go back to early versions and run the update prog. I could be throwing away all kinds of corrections - to lat/lons, to WMOs (yes!), and more. So what the hell can I do about all these duplicate stations?... "
As the leaked messages, and especially the HARRY_READ_ME.txt file, found their way around technical circles, two things happened: first, programmers unaffiliated with East Anglia started taking a close look at the quality of the CRU's code, and second, they began to feel sympathetic for anyone who had to spend three years (including working weekends) trying to make sense of code that appeared to be undocumented and buggy, while representing the core of CRU's climate model.
One programmer highlighted the error of relying on computer code that, if it generates an error message, continues as if nothing untoward ever occurred. Another debugged the code by pointing out why the output of a calculation that should always generate a positive number was incorrectly generating a negative one. A third concluded: "I feel for this guy. He's obviously spent years trying to get data from undocumented and completely messy sources."
Programmer-written comments inserted into CRU's Fortran code have drawn fire as well. The file briffa_sep98_d.pro says: "Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!" and "APPLY ARTIFICIAL CORRECTION." Another, quantify_tsdcal.pro, says: "Low pass filtering at century and longer time scales never gets rid of the trend - so eventually I start to scale down the 120-yr low pass time series to mimic the effect of removing/adding longer time scales!"
It's not clear how the files were leaked. One theory says that a malicious hacker slipped into East Anglia's network and snatched thousands of documents. Another says that the files had already been assembled in response to a Freedom of Information request and, immediately after it was denied, a whistleblower decided to disclose them. (Lending credence to that theory is the fact that no personal e-mail messages unrelated to climate change appear to have been leaked.)
For its part, the University of East Anglia has posted a statement calling the disclosure "mischievous" and saying it is aiding the police in an investigation.
The statement also quotes Jones, CRU's director, explaining his November 1999 e-mail, which said: "I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline." Jones said that the word trick was used "colloquially as in a clever thing to do" and that it "is ludicrous to suggest that it refers to anything untoward."
Also unclear is the ultimate impact of the leak, which came before next month's Copenhagen summit and Democratic plans for cap and trade legislation.
On one hand, over at RealClimate.org, Gavin Schmidt, a modeler for the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has been downplaying the leak. Schmidt wrote: "There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research ... no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no 'marching orders' from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords."
On the other, groups like the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute, the target of repeated derision in the leaked e-mails, have said: "We have argued for many years that much of the scientific case for global warming alarmism was weak and some of it was phony. It now looks like a lot of it may be phony."
ScienceMag.org published an article noting that deleting e-mail messages to hide them from a FOI request is a crime in the United Kingdom. George Monbiot, a U.K. activist and journalist who previously called for dramatic action to deal with global warming, wrote: "It's no use pretending that this isn't a major blow. The emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging."
Complicating matters for congressional Republicans who'd like to hold hearings is that East Anglia, of course, is a U.K. university. The GOP may intend to press the Obama administration for details on how the EPA came to rely on the CRU's predictions, and whether the recent disclosure will change the agency's position. Another approach lies in e-mail messages discussing grants from the U.S. Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to East Anglia; one says: "We need to show some left to cover the costs of the trip Roger didn't make and also the fees/equipment/computer money we haven't spent otherwise NOAA will be suspicious."
The irony of this situation is that most of us expect science to be conducted in the open, without unpublished secret data, hidden agendas, and computer programs of dubious reliability. East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit might have avoided this snafu by publicly disclosing as much as possible at every step of the way.
Quote from: derspiess on November 22, 2009, 02:30:42 PM
Quote from: saskganesh on November 22, 2009, 02:23:41 PM
Quote from: derspiess on November 22, 2009, 01:46:34 PM
I guess it is funny sometimes to see how some people react to their religious views being questioned :)
I think it's funny when people get confused about what religion is and what it is not.
I call 'em as I sees 'em. Environmentalism (Global Warming in particular) has become a religion for many people these days.
Agreed, and that's why I've become very wary and suspect at the extreme views on climate change, greening, all the whole movement. We all want greener, cleaner, but some of the groups pushing things seem to have it as their ideology, way of life, hatred of the way things are now, want everyone to radically change. And follow the money trail - some groups or industries stand to make a lot of money on the climate change industry.
We'll see where this goes. At least some in Congress are calling for an investigation.
Hopefully, good sense in the Democratic majority will keep Congress out of this. Then again, if there's one thing that Congressmen love, both Democrat and Republican, it's to meddle.
Quote from: KRonn on November 25, 2009, 09:04:44 AM
Quote from: derspiess on November 22, 2009, 02:30:42 PM
Quote from: saskganesh on November 22, 2009, 02:23:41 PM
Quote from: derspiess on November 22, 2009, 01:46:34 PM
I guess it is funny sometimes to see how some people react to their religious views being questioned :)
I think it's funny when people get confused about what religion is and what it is not.
I call 'em as I sees 'em. Environmentalism (Global Warming in particular) has become a religion for many people these days.
Agreed, and that's why I've become very wary and suspect at the extreme views on climate change, greening, all the whole movement. We all want greener, cleaner, but some of the groups pushing things seem to have it as their ideology, way of life, hatred of the way things are now, want everyone to radically change. And follow the money trail - some groups or industries stand to make a lot of money on the climate change industry.
We'll see where this goes. At least some in Congress are calling for an investigation.
I suppose it's easier to dismiss a view when you paint all its followers as extremists. :huh:
Quote from: KRonn on November 25, 2009, 09:04:44 AM
And follow the money trail - some groups or industries stand to make a lot of money on the climate change industry.
Because, of course, there's no money at all to be made by letting industries pollute freely, right?
Care to say which elements form this "climate change industry" that you talk about?
I love the argument that there is this giant conspiracy of people who all universally hate Western culture and want to destroy it, and they ahve chosen this as the best means of doing so.
The only thing this data shows is that science is messy, and done by human beings. None of it proves anything beyond that.
Oh noes, "casual" references to violence - because none of us have ever joked around about the desire to kick someone in the nuts or something! Gosh no!
This is *exactly* like creationism - the attempts to discredit science by pointing out that the process isn't perfect, or even fails at times, all without any actual credible counter-hypothesis. This amounts to "Hey, some scientists said they wanted to punch me in the face, therefore the entire body of data and rigorous analysis is bunk! Fer sure! Praise Jaysus!"
Quote from: derspiess on November 22, 2009, 01:46:34 PM
I guess it is funny sometimes to see how some people react to their religious views being questioned :)
Pot.Kettle.Black.
Quote from: Tamas on November 21, 2009, 09:34:45 AM
Yeah well who would not like cleaner energy sources, it's not like I am not in shock and awe over the fact that people actually manage to live in Budapest everytime I go there and smell around.
But the religious craze over global warming has a very real danger of causing overregulation, which in turn causes economical slowdown, which in turn results in tech research slowdown, which is of course in turn helps the current energy sources stick around for longer. All the while the non-christian non-guilt-oriented major players catching up to the first world.
And no, regulation does not help the research of cleaner energy. Just that together with the religious zeal, it helps the selling of otherwise totally uncompetitive energy sources like solar collectors and the like. Give me my nuclear power plants, and give me cold fusion.
Tamas, this is crap. There is nothing religious about global warming. Do you ahve some kind of evidence or something to show that the entirety of the scientific community has all somehow been afflicted with religious mania, and decided to fabricate massive amounts of data to create a completely fictitous theory to explain things that are not actually happening, all in perfect harmony...to what end, exactly?
What are they hoping to gain from this vast conspiracy?
I would compare this conspiracy claim to the Protocols of Zion, but actually, THAT is a lot more believable, since it at least postulated a conspiracy among some small set of secret people - while your "religious mania" theory demands that we believe in a much larger, more sweeping, and more importantly, amazingly effective lie to decieve the entire world for absolutely no discernible reason.
Quote from: Warspite on November 25, 2009, 09:23:10 AM
Quote from: KRonn on November 25, 2009, 09:04:44 AM
Quote from: derspiess on November 22, 2009, 02:30:42 PM
Quote from: saskganesh on November 22, 2009, 02:23:41 PM
Quote from: derspiess on November 22, 2009, 01:46:34 PM
I guess it is funny sometimes to see how some people react to their religious views being questioned :)
I think it's funny when people get confused about what religion is and what it is not.
I call 'em as I sees 'em. Environmentalism (Global Warming in particular) has become a religion for many people these days.
Agreed, and that's why I've become very wary and suspect at the extreme views on climate change, greening, all the whole movement. We all want greener, cleaner, but some of the groups pushing things seem to have it as their ideology, way of life, hatred of the way things are now, want everyone to radically change. And follow the money trail - some groups or industries stand to make a lot of money on the climate change industry.
We'll see where this goes. At least some in Congress are calling for an investigation.
I suppose it's easier to dismiss a view when you paint all its followers as extremists. :huh:
Nope, I said some of the groups and spokespersons. As I said, we all want cleaner greener, but most of us aren't so wrapped up or fanatical and are more even tempered in dealing with the issue.
Quote from: The Larch on November 25, 2009, 09:35:53 AM
Quote from: KRonn on November 25, 2009, 09:04:44 AM
And follow the money trail - some groups or industries stand to make a lot of money on the climate change industry.
Because, of course, there's no money at all to be made by letting industries pollute freely, right?
Care to say which elements form this "climate change industry" that you talk about?
Sheesh, look around a bit I guess! Al Gore stands to make lots of money, already has. General Electric is in the midst of things because they're looking to make money of new ideas, technology, some probably coming out of Cap and Trade, which GE supports.
Quote from: KRonn on November 25, 2009, 10:06:54 AM
Nope, I said some of the groups and spokespersons. As I said, we all want cleaner greener, but most of us aren't so wrapped up or fanatical and are more even tempered in dealing with the issue.
While there are certainly some fanatics out there, they exist on both sides of the issue, of course. So why not simply ignore them? They don't really matter.
What strikes me as "fanatic" though is the attempt to paint the "other guy" as a whole as some kind of extremist, and makes me think the person doing so is in the "fanatic" camp themselves, since they clearly are not interested in actual discussion - after all, you cannot have a reasonable discussion with religious fanatics, can you?
Good lord, three posts in a row from Berkut that had me nodding. The cosmic order must be balancing itself out in some terrible ways somewhere else.
Didn't we just have a thread about the UK courts determining that climate change proponents or groups, could be classified as a religion? :huh:
Quote from: KRonn on November 25, 2009, 10:09:00 AM
Quote from: The Larch on November 25, 2009, 09:35:53 AM
Quote from: KRonn on November 25, 2009, 09:04:44 AM
And follow the money trail - some groups or industries stand to make a lot of money on the climate change industry.
Because, of course, there's no money at all to be made by letting industries pollute freely, right?
Care to say which elements form this "climate change industry" that you talk about?
Sheesh, look around a bit I guess! Al Gore stands to make lots of money, already has. General Electric is in the midst of things because they're looking to make money of new ideas, technology, some probably coming out of Cap and Trade, which GE supports.
So your claim is the Al Gore, for example, is involved in the GW debate because he is going to make a bunch of money from it, but only if he can convince people that GW is happening. Is that right?
Do you know how the Gore family became stinking rich?
Quote from: Berkut on November 25, 2009, 10:10:01 AM
Quote from: KRonn on November 25, 2009, 10:06:54 AM
Nope, I said some of the groups and spokespersons. As I said, we all want cleaner greener, but most of us aren't so wrapped up or fanatical and are more even tempered in dealing with the issue.
While there are certainly some fanatics out there, they exist on both sides of the issue, of course. So why not simply ignore them? They don't really matter.
What strikes me as "fanatic" though is the attempt to paint the "other guy" as a whole as some kind of extremist, and makes me think the person doing so is in the "fanatic" camp themselves, since they clearly are not interested in actual discussion - after all, you cannot have a reasonable discussion with religious fanatics, can you?
I honestly feel that we've been pushing the whole debate of how we're destroying the planet too far, and pursuing policies based on that too far.
Quote from: KRonn on November 25, 2009, 10:10:42 AM
Didn't we just have a thread about the UK courts determining that climate change proponents or groups, could be classified as a religion? :huh:
Fuck, you got us. You are right. The entire thing is bunk.
Fucking UK courts - I knew they would be the downfall of our Grand Plan to become rich by convincing the West to control pollution.
Foiled again!
Quote from: KRonn on November 25, 2009, 10:13:31 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 25, 2009, 10:10:01 AM
Quote from: KRonn on November 25, 2009, 10:06:54 AM
Nope, I said some of the groups and spokespersons. As I said, we all want cleaner greener, but most of us aren't so wrapped up or fanatical and are more even tempered in dealing with the issue.
While there are certainly some fanatics out there, they exist on both sides of the issue, of course. So why not simply ignore them? They don't really matter.
What strikes me as "fanatic" though is the attempt to paint the "other guy" as a whole as some kind of extremist, and makes me think the person doing so is in the "fanatic" camp themselves, since they clearly are not interested in actual discussion - after all, you cannot have a reasonable discussion with religious fanatics, can you?
I honestly feel that we've been pushing the whole debate of how we're destroying the planet too far, and pursuing policies based on that too far.
How so? Who is "we"?
How does casting those who don't agree with you as religious fanatics helping your argument that we should do less about global climate change?
No doubt some scientists pursue their favourite theories with an un-scientific enthusiasm - some will even commit concious fraud, just to bolster their pet theories, or to get grant money, tenure or other honours and perks. People are fallible, self-interested, invested in their projects, have social and political axes to grind, etc.
The beauty of science is that it "works" anyway, because ultimately it's not a few individuals, but a process. The truth will out, eventually, no matter what any person or sets of persons does.
Quote from: Berkut on November 25, 2009, 10:14:44 AM
Quote from: KRonn on November 25, 2009, 10:13:31 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 25, 2009, 10:10:01 AM
Quote from: KRonn on November 25, 2009, 10:06:54 AM
Nope, I said some of the groups and spokespersons. As I said, we all want cleaner greener, but most of us aren't so wrapped up or fanatical and are more even tempered in dealing with the issue.
While there are certainly some fanatics out there, they exist on both sides of the issue, of course. So why not simply ignore them? They don't really matter.
What strikes me as "fanatic" though is the attempt to paint the "other guy" as a whole as some kind of extremist, and makes me think the person doing so is in the "fanatic" camp themselves, since they clearly are not interested in actual discussion - after all, you cannot have a reasonable discussion with religious fanatics, can you?
I honestly feel that we've been pushing the whole debate of how we're destroying the planet too far, and pursuing policies based on that too far.
How so? Who is "we"?
How does casting those who don't agree with you as religious fanatics helping your argument that we should do less about global climate change?
Again, I didn't say everyone was a fanatic! Do you even see what I've posted? The UK courts have allowed climate change to be classified a religion, as I said before. That's a bit concerning to me. Do I need to say things over, to respond to your same posts, said differently?
I don't even have a strong view either way, and what I've said is pretty moderate. So I don't understand what the fuss even is.
If this hacking and what these climatologists have said is all blown out of proportion, we'll know soon enough one way or another, whether our esteemed Congress does look into it all or not.
Quote from: KRonn on November 25, 2009, 10:20:12 AM
I don't even have a strong view either way, and what I've said is pretty moderate. So I don't understand what the fuss even is.
QuoteAgreed, and that's why I've become very wary and suspect at the extreme views on climate change, greening, all the whole movement. We all want greener, cleaner, but some of the groups pushing things seem to have it as their ideology, way of life, hatred of the way things are now, want everyone to radically change. And follow the money trail - some groups or industries stand to make a lot of money on the climate change industry.
Calling the "whole movement" "extreme", casting the science as "ideology", "hater of the way things are now", claiming that there is a general motivation of "money" behind it - these are not "moderate" views in the least.
Trying to wrap yourself in the cloak of "moderacy" while you make comments that are rather nutbar is not very honest. A "moderate" view does not include attempting to claim that GW is in general motivated by some nefarious cabal trying to make money, push their ideology, and destroy your way of life.
:lol:Enjoy KRonn.
I don't see how anyone can take climate science seriously anymore now that we know that some guy from East Anglia called someone else a "prat". Clearly this critical piece of information demolishes decades of research done by hundreds of scientists across the globe.
Quote from: Berkut on November 25, 2009, 09:56:50 AM
Quote from: derspiess on November 22, 2009, 01:46:34 PM
I guess it is funny sometimes to see how some people react to their religious views being questioned :)
Pot.Kettle.Black.
Berkut.Missed.ThePoint.
What is the point?
Quote from: Razgovory on November 25, 2009, 03:18:38 PM
What is the point?
That people who listen to science rather than Rush are too religious, I think.
Quote from: Berkut on November 25, 2009, 03:20:38 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on November 25, 2009, 03:18:38 PM
What is the point?
That people who listen to science rather than Rush are too religious, I think.
I honestly don't know what the fuck any of you are talking about.
Quote from: Razgovory on November 25, 2009, 03:21:14 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 25, 2009, 03:20:38 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on November 25, 2009, 03:18:38 PM
What is the point?
That people who listen to science rather than Rush are too religious, I think.
I honestly don't know what the fuck any of you are talking about.
This is why I continue to use Toilet Paper.
I'm glad my ignorance is keeping your ass clean.
Quote from: Razgovory on November 25, 2009, 03:29:05 PM
I'm glad my ignorance is keeping your ass clean.
:D
Global warming one of the issues I have formulated no real opinion about. Like abortion, jesus and the continued existence of Ashton Kutcher.
No one is safe from Berkut it seems. :P
In case anyone is interested:
QuoteOne particular, illegally obtained, email relates to the preparation of a figure for the WMO Statement on the Status of the Global Climate in 1999. This email referred to a "trick" of adding recent instrumental data to the end of temperature reconstructions that were based on proxy data. The requirement for the WMO Statement was for up-to-date evidence showing how temperatures may have changed over the last 1000 years. To produce temperature series that were completely up-to-date (i.e. through to 1999) it was necessary to combine the temperature reconstructions with the instrumental record, because the temperature reconstructions from proxy data ended many years earlier whereas the instrumental record is updated every month. The use of the word "trick" was not intended to imply any deception.
Phil Jones comments further: "One of the three temperature reconstructions was based entirely on a particular set of tree-ring data that shows a strong correlation with temperature from the 19th century through to the mid-20th century, but does not show a realistic trend of temperature after 1960. This is well known and is called the 'decline' or 'divergence'. The use of the term 'hiding the decline' was in an email written in haste. CRU has not sought to hide the decline. Indeed, CRU has published a number of articles that both illustrate, and discuss the implications of, this recent tree-ring decline, including the article that is listed in the legend of the WMO Statement figure. It is because of this trend in these tree-ring data that we know does not represent temperature change that I only show this series up to 1960 in the WMO Statement."
http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/2009/nov/homepagenews/CRUupdate
So the tree ring data in fact doesn't go up like the theory predicts. That doesn't really help their case much.
:o
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 25, 2009, 05:44:00 PM
So the tree ring data in fact doesn't go up like the theory predicts. That doesn't really help their case much.
One particular set of data. It is neither new or unknown. So I don't see how it harms their case much, whatever their case may be, beyond the enraged howlings of the superficially informed.
It is my understanding that when dealing with masses of data and statistics you do not, in fact, get unequivocal neat graphs like the ones we like to see on CNN and Fox and so on.
Quote from: KRonn on November 25, 2009, 10:13:31 AM
I honestly feel that we've been pushing the whole debate of how we're destroying the planet too far, and pursuing policies based on that too far.
What policies in particular have gone too far? What is too far and what do you think should be done, policy-wise, to deal with climate change?
Quote from: KRonn on November 25, 2009, 10:10:42 AM
Didn't we just have a thread about the UK courts determining that climate change proponents or groups, could be classified as a religion? :huh:
Did we? :unsure:
Can I see a link?
Quote from: jimmy olsen on November 25, 2009, 06:48:02 PM
Quote from: KRonn on November 25, 2009, 10:10:42 AM
Didn't we just have a thread about the UK courts determining that climate change proponents or groups, could be classified as a religion? :huh:
Did we? :unsure:
Can I see a link?
http://languish.org/forums/index.php?topic=2904.0
Quote from: Jacob on November 25, 2009, 06:05:04 PM
One particular set of data. It is neither new or unknown. So I don't see how it harms their case much, whatever their case may be, beyond the enraged howlings of the superficially informed.
It is my understanding that when dealing with masses of data and statistics you do not, in fact, get unequivocal neat graphs like the ones we like to see on CNN and Fox and so on.
Help! I'm being KRonned! :D
It doesn't seem to be one particular set of data. Your link shows that the decline of the tree ring data is a well known and documented phenomenon. It also shows that they have an explanation for it. My question then is, if the post 1960 data is off, how can they have faith in the pre 1960 tree ring data?
The relevance of your second paragraph to the topic eludes me.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 25, 2009, 06:54:50 PMHelp! I'm being KRonned! :D
I'd never KRonn you :cry:
QuoteIt doesn't seem to be one particular set of data. Your link shows that the decline of the tree ring data is a well known and documented phenomenon. It also shows that they have an explanation for it. My question then is, if the post 1960 data is off, how can they have faith in the pre 1960 tree ring data?
I don't know, though I expect it's not so much "have faith in" as "understand and explain". I'm sure that if you dig a bit you can find it. As they say "RU has published a number of articles that both illustrate, and discuss the implications of, this recent tree-ring decline, including the article that is listed in the legend of the WMO Statement figure."
I don't really want to get drawn into debating something neither of us know very much about on technicalities we don't understand, but I thought the reason they have "faith" in the pre 1960s tree ring data is because it fits - the pre 1960s tree rings match very closely other records of temperatures where they exist. It's only after 1960 that they don't match and, presumably it's been investigated and explained like they say.
QuoteThe relevance of your second paragraph to the topic eludes me.
It was a "in real life and actual science you don't get 100% consistent data all the time, so a bit of divergence here and there is not necessarily a big deal" thing. It was not aimed specifically at your narrow argument, but rather at some of the more hysterical conclusions and expectations that characterise the debate elsewhere.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 25, 2009, 06:54:50 PM
It doesn't seem to be one particular set of data. Your link shows that the decline of the tree ring data is a well known and documented phenomenon. It also shows that they have an explanation for it. My question then is, if the post 1960 data is off, how can they have faith in the pre 1960 tree ring data?
The relevance of your second paragraph to the topic eludes me.
I suggest you read the papers, if you're curious.
Quote from: Jaron on November 25, 2009, 06:52:05 PM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on November 25, 2009, 06:48:02 PM
Quote from: KRonn on November 25, 2009, 10:10:42 AM
Didn't we just have a thread about the UK courts determining that climate change proponents or groups, could be classified as a religion? :huh:
Did we? :unsure:
Can I see a link?
http://languish.org/forums/index.php?topic=2904.0
:lol:
L.
Quote from: KRonn on November 25, 2009, 09:04:44 AM
Agreed, and that's why I've become very wary and suspect at the extreme views on climate change, greening, all the whole movement. We all want greener, cleaner, but some of the groups pushing things seem to have it as their ideology, way of life, hatred of the way things are now, want everyone to radically change. And follow the money trail - some groups or industries stand to make a lot of money on the climate change industry.
We'll see where this goes. At least some in Congress are calling for an investigation.
Makes more sense to disect it here Berkut. Note the bolded part, and the all important qualifier "some." No where does KRonn say everybody who is green is a nutter, nor does he ever say the extremism of some of the groups proves that all climate change science is all bullshit. That's all your fabrication. He even goes on to repeat several times in this thread that he's only talking about some groups and some people. But you don't pay attention, you go on with your STRAWMAN STRAWMAN STRAWMAN.
He is clearly using the fact that some people are nutjobs in an attempt to dismiss the general case - otherwise, what is his point? Just that some individual people are nuts? That is exactly what *I* said - so how could that be a STRAWMAN STRAWMAN STRAWMAN? I think you are the one with the hay and torch here.
Further, what would the courts decision have to do with anything? No matter what they ruled, it would not change anything as far as someone nothing that some people involved in the climate change debate are a bit nuts, so why even bring it up to "prove" that in fact climate change proponents are a religion?
If all he had said was the bolded part, there would be no debate. But that isn't all he said, nor did he say it in some kind of vacuum, but rather in response to and as part of the debate about climate change, and directly in response to claims by others that somehow those who are raising these issues are motivated by some kind of irrational religious fervor.
He then followed that up with the observation that "we" are doing too much to combat climate change. I don't think it is a strawman to then attack his position based on the completely false claim that the UK courts have declared that climate change can be a religion, as if this was somehow meaningful to the debate in general.
Just waiting to see where this all goes. I have reason to be skeptical about what has been presented to us, the over alarmism. We may be going through climate change, I'm not disputing that necessarily, but I'm very skeptical about the way we're going about dealing with it and fearing over it. I don't understand what's so hard about that to understand?
Quote
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6936328.ece
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.
The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. 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.
Related Links
* The great climate change science scandal
* EU figurehead says climate change a myth
The admission follows the leaking of a thousand private emails sent and received by Professor Phil Jones, the CRU's director. In them he discusses thwarting climate sceptics seeking access to such data.
In a statement on its website, the CRU said: "We do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenised) data."
The CRU is the world's leading centre for reconstructing past climate and temperatures. Climate change sceptics have long been keen to examine exactly how its data were compiled. That is now impossible.
Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at Colorado University, discovered data had been lost when he asked for original records. "The CRU is basically saying, 'Trust us'. So much for settling questions and resolving debates with science," he said.
Jones was not in charge of the CRU when the data were thrown away in the 1980s, a time when climate change was seen as a less pressing issue. The lost material was used to build the databases that have been his life's work, showing how the world has warmed by 0.8C over the past 157 years.
He and his colleagues say this temperature rise is "unequivocally" linked to greenhouse gas emissions generated by humans. Their findings are one of the main pieces of evidence used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which says global warming is a threat to humanity.
Quote from: KRonn on November 30, 2009, 11:01:27 AM
Just waiting to see where this all goes.
No you aren't - you have already decided that this is motivated by religious fanaticism, we are "doing too much" already, and the "over alarmism". These are not the words of the careful skeptic, or someone "waiting to see where this all goes". I note a complete lack of skepticism from you towards the other side of the argument.
Quote
I have reason to be skeptical about what has been presented to us,
You do? What are those reasons? The only thing you have pointed out so far is your concern that the IPCC and those types might be religious fanatics - do you have some rational or objective reason to dismiss the scientific conclusions about global warming?
Quote
the over alarmism.
How do you know the alarmism is over? Maybe it is just right - maybe it is not nearly enough. You must have a very solid understanding of the science to be able to conclude that the "alarmism" is "over" - could you share this understanding with the rest of us?
Personally, I am pretty concerned, but have no real idea how concerned I ought to be. The numbers, even from the scientists, seem to be rather tenuous.
I would love to be able to share your certainty.
Quote
We may be going through climate change, I'm not disputing that necessarily, but I'm very skeptical about the way we're going about dealing with it and fearing over it.
What would be a better way for us to go about dealing with and fearing over it? What are you so skeptical about, especially considering that so far we have done almost nothing about it at all, and yet you feel the little that has been done is still too much?
I am not sure I understand your position here. Should we just do absolutely nothing - even stop studying it? I don't see how we could do less than we are other than by stopping doing what we are doing now - which is spend a small amount of money studying it, talking about what we should do, and actually doing nothing, yet you claim your "skepticism" demands that this is "too much".
Quote
I don't understand what's so hard about that to understand?
No worries, your position is perfectly easy to understand - what is hard to understand is you attempt to justify your own faith based response by attempting to pretend that your position is based on reason and "skepticism".
Quote from: Berkut on November 30, 2009, 10:50:45 AM
He is clearly using the fact that some people are nutjobs in an attempt to dismiss the general case - otherwise, what is his point? Just that some individual people are nuts? That is exactly what *I* said - so how could that be a STRAWMAN STRAWMAN STRAWMAN? I think you are the one with the hay and torch here.
This makes probably the third or fourth time, but the strawman is to take KRonn's "some groups" and turn it into "all groups."
QuoteFurther, what would the courts decision have to do with anything? No matter what they ruled, it would not change anything as far as someone nothing that some people involved in the climate change debate are a bit nuts, so why even bring it up to "prove" that in fact climate change proponents are a religion?
I don't think it's a particularly killer point, but the court case strengthens the argument that *some* people are irrational when it comes to climate change.
QuoteIf all he had said was the bolded part, there would be no debate. But that isn't all he said, nor did he say it in some kind of vacuum, but rather in response to and as part of the debate about climate change, and directly in response to claims by others that somehow those who are raising these issues are motivated by some kind of irrational religious fervor.
Up to your old tricks I see. Speesh made the original comment about environmentalism being a modern religion. No, he did not say that [all] those who are raising these issues are motivated by some kind of irrational religious fervor. And KRonn in his response expressly said "some groups."
QuoteHe then followed that up with the observation that "we" are doing too much to combat climate change. I don't think it is a strawman to then attack his position based on the completely false claim that the UK courts have declared that climate change can be a religion, as if this was somehow meaningful to the debate in general.
A person who thinks all climate change scientists are religious nutters would think that *anything* we do to combat climate change is wasted. The corollary of "too much" is less would be better, not let's forget the whole thing.
How convinient, they threw out the raw proof of their theory because they switched buildings. I mean sure that has to be standard modus operandi? Like lawyers throwing out evidences of their cases because they don't want to buy extra shelves.
Quote from: Tamas on November 30, 2009, 12:03:43 PM
How convinient, they threw out the raw proof of their theory because they switched buildings. I mean sure that has to be standard modus operandi? Like lawyers throwing out evidences of their cases because they don't want to buy extra shelves.
You didn't read the entire story, did you?
How convenient.
Quote from: Tamas on November 30, 2009, 12:03:43 PM
How convinient, they threw out the raw proof of their theory because they switched buildings. I mean sure that has to be standard modus operandi? Like lawyers throwing out evidences of their cases because they don't want to buy extra shelves.
It's not entirely accurate:
QuoteCLIMATE: Scientists return fire at skeptics in 'destroyed data' dispute (Greenwire, 10/14/2009)
Climate scientists are refuting claims that raw data used in critical climate change reports has been destroyed, rendering the reports and policies based on those reports unreliable.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market advocacy group, is arguing that U.S. EPA's climate policies rely on raw data that have been destroyed and are therefore unreliable. The nonprofit group -- a staunch critic of U.S. EPA's efforts to regulate greenhouse gases -- petitioned the agency last week to reopen the public comment period on its proposed "endangerment finding" because the data set had been lost (E&ENews PM, Oct. 9).
But climate scientists familiar with the data insist that the reports are based on sound science and that the data in question was altered as part of standard operating procedure to ensure consistency across reporting stations.
At issue is raw data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, including surface temperature averages from weather stations around the world. The data was used in assessments by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, reports that EPA has used in turn to formulate its climate policies.
Citing a statement on the research unit's Web site, CEI blasted the research unit for the "suspicious destruction of its original data." According to CRU's Web site, "Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites, only the station series after adjustment for homogeneity issues. We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (i.e. quality controlled and homogenized) data."
Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit, said that the vast majority of the station data was not altered at all, and the small amount that was changed was adjusted for consistency.
The research unit has deleted less than 5 percent of its original station data from its database because the stations had several discontinuities or were affected by urbanization trends, Jones said.
"When you're looking at climate data, you don't want stations that are showing urban warming trends," Jones said, "so we've taken them out." Most of the stations for which data was removed are located in areas where there were already dense monitoring networks, he added. "We rarely removed a station in a data-sparse region of the world."
Refuting CEI's claims of data-destruction, Jones said, "We haven't destroyed anything. The data is still there -- you can still get these stations from the [NOAA] National Climatic Data Center."
Tom Karl, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., noted that the conclusions of the IPCC reports are based on several data sets in addition to the CRU, including data from NOAA, NASA and the United Kingdom Met Office. Each of those data sets basically show identical multi-decadal trends, Karl said.
Still, CEI's general counsel Sam Kazman remains skeptical of the IPCC's conclusions. The fact that the report relies on several data sets "doesn't really answer the issue," he said.
CEI and Cato Institute senior fellow Patrick Michaels argued that the "destruction of [CRU's] raw data violates basic scientific norms regarding reproducibility, which are especially important in climatology."
Ben Santer, a climate scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, dismissed that argument. "Raw data were not secretly destroyed to avoid efforts by other scientists to replicate the CRU and Hadley Centre-based estimates of global-scale changes in near-surface temperature," he wrote in comments to the advocacy group Climate Science Watch.
Santer said CRU's major findings were replicated by other groups, including the NOAA climatic data center, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and also in Russia.
To take KRonn's suggestion of following the money, the CEI is at least partly funded by the Scaife Foundation, Exxon Mobil, Ford and so on.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 30, 2009, 10:40:37 AM
Quote from: KRonn on November 25, 2009, 09:04:44 AM
Agreed, and that's why I've become very wary and suspect at the extreme views on climate change, greening, all the whole movement. We all want greener, cleaner, but some of the groups pushing things seem to have it as their ideology, way of life, hatred of the way things are now, want everyone to radically change. And follow the money trail - some groups or industries stand to make a lot of money on the climate change industry.
We'll see where this goes. At least some in Congress are calling for an investigation.
Makes more sense to disect it here Berkut. Note the bolded part, and the all important qualifier "some." No where does KRonn say everybody who is green is a nutter, nor does he ever say the extremism of some of the groups proves that all climate change science is all bullshit. That's all your fabrication. He even goes on to repeat several times in this thread that he's only talking about some groups and some people. But you don't pay attention, you go on with your STRAWMAN STRAWMAN STRAWMAN.
Makes more sense to dissect it as follows:
Option 1: "I've become very wary and suspect at
(a) the extreme views on climate change,
(b) greening,
(c) all the whole movement
option 2: "I've become very wary and suspect at the extreme views on"
(a) climate change,
(b) greening,
(c) all the whole movement.
I read it as (a) and so, I believe, did Berkut. It is clear as mud, though, so could be (b) in which case Berkut is a bit off base.
"Some of the groups pushing things seem to have it as their ideology" is a tautology true of literally thousands of things, and isn't very useful to a discussion. I don't think we need to dissect it at all.