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Comments: 882 +- Politics: Climatic Research Unit Hacked, Files Leaked on Friday November 20, @02:51PM
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by
kdawson
on Friday November 20, @02:51PM
from the playing-dirty dept.
from the playing-dirty dept.
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huckamania was one of many readers to write with the news that the University of East Anglia's Hadley Climatic Research Unit was hacked, and internal documents released. Some discussion and analysis of the leaked items can be found at Watts Up With That. The CRU has confirmed that a breach occurred, but not that all 61 MB of released material is genuine. Some of the emails would seem to raise concerns about the science as practiced — or at least beg an explanation. From the Watts Up link: "[The CRU] is widely recognized as one of the world's leading institutions concerned with the study of natural and anthropogenic climate change. Consisting of a staff of around thirty research scientists and students, the Unit has developed a number of the data sets widely used in climate research, including the global temperature record used to monitor the state of the climate system, as well as statistical software packages and climate models. An unknown person put postings on some climate skeptic websites that advertised an FTP file on a Russian FTP server. Here is the message that was placed on the Air Vent today: 'We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps. We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents.' The file was large, about 61 megabytes, containing hundreds of files. It contained data, code, and emails apparently from the CRU. If proved legitimate, these bombshells could spell trouble for the AGW crowd." Reader brandaman supplied the link to the archive of pilfered data. Reader aretae characterized the emails as revealing "...lots of intrigue, data manipulation, attempting to shut out opposing points of view out of scientific journals. Almost makes you think it's a religion. Anyone surprised?" And reader bugnuts adds, for context: "These emails are certainly taken out of context, whether they are legitimate or fraudulent, which adds to the confusion."
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Some Funny Things About This Event (Score:5, Insightful)
The CRU has confirmed that a breach occurred, but not that all 61 MB of released material is genuine.
Rarely do I have enough time to generate 61 MB (let alone 61 compressed MB) of data, code and e-mails that serves my political/religious purposes. So if this is tampered data or correspondence, there would almost certainly be conflicting items inside such a large repository. I'm not saying it isn't possible, it just decreases the odds that this is a hoax.
'We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps. We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents'
Why? Why a random sampling? If you're going to serve up 61 MB zipped, it might as well be 61 GB zipped. Why not release both sets ("the good stuff.tar.gz" and "everything including the inane 'what's for lunch today?' e-mails.tar.gz")?
It's borderline hilarious that the claim is made that this is 'too important to be kept under wraps' followed immediately by the 'we'll decide what you see' cloaked by the equally hilarious word "random." Random? Really? You want me to believe that you printed everything out and put it on a big spinning wheel, blindfolded yourself and then threw darts at it? I mean, come on. Nothing in the political world is random. You would have done yourself much more justice saying you've released what you feel is relevant.
Being one, I know first hand that hackers are highly disorganized. But come on, why not torrent the whole set or wikileaks it or something? I mean, I'm almost waiting for a high quality Ford Fusion ad in PDF to surface right in the middle of the compressed file saying, "Doesn't this worry you enough to go green?"
RealClimate has a big reply on this (Score:5, Insightful)
Since some of the emails are sent from them, it's worth reading.
Link [realclimate.org]
For the specifics read the whole article. For a general summary, this excerpt will do:
"Since emails are normally intended to be private, people writing them are, shall we say, somewhat freer in expressing themselves than they would in a public statement. For instance, we are sure it comes as no shock to know that many scientists do not hold Steve McIntyre in high regard. Nor that a large group of them thought that the Soon and Baliunas (2003), Douglass et al (2008) or McClean et al (2009) papers were not very good (to say the least) and should not have been published. These sentiments have been made abundantly clear in the literature (though possibly less bluntly).
More interesting is what is not contained in the emails. There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to 'get rid of the MWP', 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. The truly paranoid will put this down to the hackers also being in on the plot though."
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Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this (Score:5, Interesting)
Why the hell didn't you quote the rest? Stacking the deck much? Or are you just fishing for modpoints from the nutjobs 'round here?
Here's the entire quote, along with an explanation about why nothing nefarious was actually going on:
But, you know, way to do *precisely* what that paragraph was meant to highlight. ie, use "cherry-picked and poorly-worded "gotcha" phrases ... pulled out of context" to try and illustrate scientific corruption amongst the science community.
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Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this (Score:5, Insightful)
When you read a large number of the e-mails, it becomes clearer and clearer just how much their data must be massaged and adjusted in order to reach the results they have. I don't say that their adjustments are good or bad, simply that the mere making of so many free-hand adjustments reduces the possibility that their conclusions are in fact correct. It's very hard to tell, without digging into the raw data which they won't release, how much of the claimed warming is really real, and how much shows up only because of the assumptions and conclusions and adjustments they have chosen to use.
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Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this (Score:5, Insightful)
He says he chose the
Sure sounds like he's free-handing it to me.
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Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this (Score:5, Insightful)
I cant think of any context that would transmute
written "hide the decline"
into
meaning "correct an error"
Feel free to provide a context, a hypothetical context, a flat our fairytale if you like. But make us believe that a self-respecting scientist uses the word "hide" when they mean "correct" and "*the* decline" when they mean "*an* error". This would not happen if the scientist was a dyslexic mutant with Tourette's.
"Hide the decline" means covering a statistical trend and that is truly nefarious and unworthy of any scientist, no matter whose money sponsors the labcoats at this particular place. Even a real error correction would've needed more explanation on what exactly was the noise or error and what was the signal or trend, to make sure it wasn't the other way around.
Futzing results of statistical analysis is a great boo-boo in any but all cases and we caught AGW red-handed.
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Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this (Score:5, Informative)
Since you didn't bother to do any research before tossing around allegations of lying, nor bothering to figure out what exactly "Mike's Nature trick" actually was, let me.
A quick google search of "michael nature global temperature" points to : "Global-scale temperature patterns and climate forcing over the past six centuries" [nature.com] by Michael E. Mann [wikipedia.org], Raymond S. Bradley & Malcolm K. Hughes from Nature 392, 779-787 (23 April 1998) | doi:10.1038/33859
This was a a seminal article in the climatetology community. Mann et al took tree core samples and estimated the global temperature by measuring the spacing between tree rings. (Big rings are caused by rapid growth, which is in turn caused by warmer temperatures. Small rings, slow growth, cooler temperatures.) The fact that tree ring sizes are dependent on temperature has been a long established fact.
Let me now quote the abstract of this article in full:
Mann et al tried to create an accurate record of the global temperature by augmenting the estimated temperatures from the tree ring data with actual measured temperatures from 1981 and 1961 since these are actual known temperatures. This is known as "the MBH98 reconstruction".
Now hang on. Here's where your allegation of "systematic suppression of data" falls all apart.
In 2003, Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick published (*gasp*) Corrections to the Mann et. al. (1998) Proxy Data Base and Northern Hemispheric Average Temperature Series [ingentaconnect.com], whose abstract reads:
So the worldwide conspiracy of climatetologists breaks down when they behave like scientists, and try to duplicate each others' work, fail to, and publish corrections, and warnings saying, "Hey! You this data set we've all been using? It might be wrong."
Thus begins The Hockey Stick Controversy [wikipedia.org], named after the shape of the curve at the very end of MBH98 reconstruction. Far from being suppressed, it's investigated quite thoroughly
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Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this (Score:5, Insightful)
what kind of a comment is that? Global warning has been debated so hotly it would be wonderful to see data that doesn't have a hand driven one way or the other by government. Those of us who aren't global warming specialists don't know what to believe other than to be concerned. implying that this person has a part of it is like saying that someone is interested in politics. Like it or not, these types of things involve every person on the planet, so, you know , everyone's interested.
I personally don't know what any of the truths are (note: I don't expect to be swayed completely in either direction by anyone posting here). But I think something's lost in all of this.
I don't know if humans are causing global warming... But if I emit less, and pollute the air less, I get to breathe cleaner air right? Also, how about we think about reducing energy usage to save on the energy bill?
That's good enough for me. I don't need to hear that we're destroying the environment (or not, or frankly whatever). I like paying less often at the pump, and I like not spending as much a month on my electric/gas bill. I also don't mind separating my trash.
Maybe I should've just said, "Can't we all just get along?"
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Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this (Score:5, Informative)
Because "Can't we all just get along?" doesn't really go well with "Let's use force against individuals to make them comply."
I'd love it if the argument was "hey, why don't you guys think about reducing your pollution, it will benefit your pocketbook and your health". Unfortunately, what's being argued is more like "you will adhere to our rules regarding pollution reduction, or we will hurt your pocketbook or your health."
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Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this (Score:5, Insightful)
This just in, Physiscists have no idea what causes gravity, Geologists can't tell from the shape of a planet what it's composed of, Astronomers don't know for certain how the Earth formed around the Sun.
You mistake the argument.
1. The Earth has warmed slightly - With solid records for only the last 150 years, (some of which may be questionable, see surfacestations.org) we don't know if this is unprecedented.
2. CO2 has risen since we've been measuring it. With only 100 odd years of instrumental record, we don't know if this is unprecedented.
3. Climate is hideously complex to model. We don't know what all the sources of CO2 are, nor where all the sinks are. Added to this is the intrinsicly chaotic form of weather in general.
4. We don't know what effect water, temperature, ice, etc. has on the total feedback of the system. It could be positive, it could be negative. We don't know. All the computer models are leaning positive (as heat goes up, heating goes up.) Recent studies are showing that it may be negative.
5. Arctic ice was declining in the early half of the decade. We don't know if this is unprecedented, as we only really have 30 years of records from satellites.
6. There is good evidence that a large part of the CO2 delta in the atmosphere comes from C14 poor sources. (Ancient carbon > 50,000 years old.) This could be from fossil fuels, or it could be from prehistoric sources such as melting permafrost. Again, this cannot be proven one way or the other.
Now, here's the leap you need to make (pick one):
1) CO2 increases from man are *CAUSING* the warming. (This is a hypothesis.)
2) CO2 increases in general are *CAUSED BY* warming (A lot of the proxy data for >150 years ago shows this.)
3) The warming is a natural process, but the CO2 has enhanced it to some extent. (This is arguably the most likely.)
4) The warming is a natural cycle, the CO2 increase has nothing, or very little to do with it. (It's a coincidence.)
Choose one of the above.
A physicist can't point at a some squiggle in a particle accelerator and say "that's the gravity particle" any more than a Pastafarian can point at the Great Noodly Appendage pushing down the apple on Newton's head and say, "That's proof of my theory." Gravity is a fact, the cause of gravity is a theory.
You're talking about an AGW bias, as if it were a fact. The equivalent "fact-bias" would be stating they have "a pro-thermometer bias." The idea that Anthropogenic CO2 is the sole cause of any warming is where the debate is.
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Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this (Score:5, Insightful)
The Earth has warmed slightly - With solid records for only the last 150 years
CO2 has risen since we've been measuring it. With only 100 odd years of instrumental record
Why do you discount the ice core data?
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Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this (Score:5, Insightful)
You can have billions of data points over several millenia and the only thing you can hope to prove is a strong correlation between A=CO2 levels and B=global temperature.
But you cannot prove or disprove that A causes B, B causes A - or an unknown C causes A and B. Because of the scientific method, you only have a hypothesis, which can only be judged from the quality of the predictions it made.
And here we come full circle: the theory of global warming predicts a global temperature increase over the next few decades. And then scientists urge us to do something to counter that. With large amounts of money and maybe even a reduction in our quality of life. Let's call this strategy of repentance R and the opposite strategy, doing absolutely nothing and keep on sinning S.
Now we can bring game theory into the fray:
Player Mankind M against Global Warming Theory(tm) W.
Mankind can play strategy SIN or REPENT while Global Warming can play the strategies HOT or NOT.
Now let's look at the payoff matrix:
(S, H) = it's now hot, Global Warming was right, but we saved billions of Dollars, Euros, Yuan and Rubles that happily multiplied on compound interest all those years. Let's spend the money on building dams, counter-desertificaton and storm shelters. And pour some money into researching fusion, we need it. Mankind will suffer, but certainly recover. Countries that pursued Repent anyway will now have a severe disadvantage.
(S, N) = it's cool, Global Warming was wrong. We saved uncounted billions of dollars and are probably on the way of building the spaceship for the Alpha Centauri victory condition. Countries that pursued Repent anyway now have a severe disadvantage.
(R, H) = it's now hot, but we don't know if Global Warming was right OR an unkown variable O (let's call it "Sun Output" just for kicks) was the reason. We spent billions and lost the equivalent of Earth's weight in Gold in missed compound interest. Anyway, we didn't spend enough so we lack the funds to build enough dams and shelters. Those few countries that bailed out of the plan now CAN build dams and shelters and will gain the upper hand.
(R, N) = it's cool now but we spend billions of dollars and missed a lot of compound interest. We either did enough or global warming was weaker than expected or the unkown variable C was decreasing as well. Spaceship victory condition is delayed for several centuries. Those few countries that bailed out of the plan will gain the upper hand.
As the scientific method can only disprove, (S, N) provides the only definite answer: Warming was wrong. All other outcomes are unreliable:
(S, H) could mean Global Warming was right or variable O was the reason
(R, H) could mean Global Warming was right, but we did too little, too late OR variable O was the reason.
(R, N) could mean Global Warming was right and we did enough OR Global Warming was wrong and we wasted oodles of money.
to That means
- even in 20 or 30 years, we will not know for sure if global warming was right.
- those who didn't pursue a Repent strategy will always have outpaced those who did
- defect is the dominant strategy for different factions of Mankind
- we either need a New World Order to force everyone in line or the defectors will laugh at us in any possible outcome.
Great. Just great.
I leave it as an exercise to the reader to map out a more complex scenario with two players, Mankind and Warming, where Mankind can "Repent" or "Sin", but Warming can play "Hot from CO2", "Hot from the Sun" or "Cold either way". I doubt the payoff matrix favors insane spending to Repent.
Anyway, the latest predictions I heard of our holy climate priests were an increase of 2 degrees centigrade in 2100. (no, not 2010). If the global temperature was a random walk with a delta of -0.1, 0 and +0.1 every year, we can and will obtain much greater deltas just by chance alone.
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Re:RealClimate has a big reply on this (Score:5, Insightful)
Good God, who made you up? Grant money flows to scientists whose results are published by respected journals, and cited by other scientists. Apparently, you missed the emails where the following was written:
"This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the "peer-reviewed literature". Obviously, they found a solution to that-take over a journal! So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering "Climate Research" as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board...What do others think?"
"I will be emailing the journal to tell them I'm having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor.""It results from this journal having a number of editors. The responsible one for this is a well-known skeptic in NZ. He has let a few papers through by Michaels and Gray in the past. I've had words with Hans von Storch about this, but got nowhere. Another thing to discuss in Nice !"
Yes, this sounds like the scientific method at its best - try to shut up and demean anyone who disagrees with you, ensure that they aren't published or cited, and hence are shut out of the grant money gravy train. Meanwhile, hide your data from public view, and privately chat about how you manipulated it.
I'm no authority on whether AGW exists or doesn't, but the actions of those who claim it is true certainly don't fill me with any confidence.
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Re:Some Funny Things About This Event (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if the emails say horrible things, it really doesn't help us much to find out about the truth.....these leaks will only help us if it helps us get access to the data.
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Re:Some Funny Things About This Event (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Some Funny Things About This Event (Score:5, Insightful)
The climate change denialists are a coalition of christian fundamentalist young earth creationists who see science as a threat to their religious beliefs, and tobacco companies who see science as a threat to their business plan. I think it is very likely that they would be motivated enough to create 61MB of hoax documents to further their cause
Comments like these bug me. Allow me to wax non-eloquent.
I could go on talking about it, but that's enough. As for tobacco companies, I wouldn't know.
And by the way... what do you think about Al Gore (and the rest)? He seems to be doing ok with his business plan. Or do you think that "corruption" is only on one side of this debate? That if you believe that humans are causing global warming you are obviously free from corruption ... and hypocrisy and greed and ... ?
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Utter bullshit. (Score:5, Insightful)
Reading random chunks of leaked data and E-mail is not the way science is done, nor policy made.
Let's see ALL the data, and let's not see the E-mail at all -- E-mail isn't data.
Otherwise, STFU, this isn't helping anything.
Re:Utter bullshit. (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone else reveling in the irony of the hackers cherry-picking data to support their pre-conceived premises? :)
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Re:Utter bullshit. (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, I read many of the emails last night.
Many are bland as hell. There's a few juicy ones, which have already been highlighted. The attitude that came across from reading email after email is that these people beleive they are doing science. They are well intentioned and don't mean to be pushing an agenda. However some of the emails indicated a desire to please governments and the IPCC. It was not as the AGW skeptics would have you believe that these scientists are forcing the policy, rather, it seems they are trying to do science that both pleases the governing bodies while still remains science.
But I think there should be no consideration of what pleases whomever. It should just report the facts. But that's hard to do when you're funded by them.
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Re:Utter bullshit. (Score:5, Insightful)
Email isn't science but that doesn't mean it isn't interesting. If the email says "Hey Bob, your algorithm didn't produce the level of warming we were expecting, we need you to rework it so it is in line with our expectations" that would say a lot about how the 'science' is being done. Furthermore, random chunks of data isn't science, but it does have the possibility of revealing any number of things, anything from numbers not matching what is published to problems with software to inconsistent data.
I'm not saying that is what the leaked information says, nor am I saying that the leak is real; there isn't enough information to know that yet. But your instant dismissal of this because it isn't every piece of data ever collected is a little disconcerting in my opinion.
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They flipped Finnish data upside down (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Utter bullshit. (Score:5, Insightful)
If the email says "Hey Bob, your algorithm didn't produce the level of warming we were expecting, we need you to rework it so it is in line with our expectations" that would say a lot about how the 'science' is being done.
What if the person sending the email to Bob is someone testing Bob's algorithm in a controlled test scenario where the outcome is already known, and therefore the algorithm not meeting expectations actually means that the algorithm is wrong and needs to be reworked? Then the quote wouldn't be quite the smoking gun, would it?
That's why context is essential.
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Re:Utter bullshit. (Score:5, Insightful)
Believe it or not (I know you won't) but not everyone who disagrees with you is on some big oil company's payroll. You are just as bad a conspiracy theorist as anyone else here.
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Re:Utter bullshit. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Utter bullshit. (Score:5, Insightful)
They are hiding behind alleged confidentiality agreements they supposedly have with scientists who, according to them, provided some of the data. But they won't even so much as identify, as best I can tell today, those scientists, so that the data could be requested from them directly. Scientists who refuse to release raw data when serious questions are raised about their conclusions are not real scientists, and their work is entitled to no credibility whatsoever. As for due time, the House has passed an enormous "cap and trade" bill based on the conclusions of the global warming scare crowd... these scientists who refuse to release their data. I've got no problem waiting for more research... so long as we don't enact massive tax increases and other major interference in the economy while we wait. They are the ones demanding immediate action, however, so they have no right to say "let's wait for more data and more research" before releasing the data which they claim supports their fatalistic conclusions.
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Data deletion and evading the law - "New Science" (Score:5, Insightful)
They go as far as telling others to delete information that (I reckon) could be incriminating.
"
> Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?
> Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis.
>
> Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t
> have his new email address.
>
> We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.
>
> I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature
> paper!!"
CA is the principal "climate sceptic" website.
Of course, much effort is also dedicated to avoiding Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
"PS I’m getting hassled by a couple of people to release the CRU station temperature data.
Don’t any of you three tell anybody that the UK has a Freedom of Information Act !"
And so on.
Of course, they also find time to gloat of the death of "sceptics", etc. etc. All classy stuff.
"Science" indeed.
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Re:Utter bullshit. (Score:5, Informative)
Let's see ALL the data, and let's not see the E-mail at all -- E-mail isn't data.
You do realize that some of the emails are about hiding data from public view, obstructing freedom of information requests, and campaign to discredit a peer reviewed journal that published something that disagreed with their public stance, right?
If there is one thing I know for sure, its that at least one of the skeptics is entirely open about the data and methodology (with source code, only free tools, etc..) he uses, and he even seeks input from anyone willing to help via his blog. That man is Steve McIntyre.
Publicly funded scientists should be forced to open up their data and methodology, with prison terms for them if they don't. Its time they stopped using public money to boost their own careers while playing fast and loose in their good ol' boy club of like-minded conspirators.
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Re:Utter bullshit. (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's see ALL the data, and let's not see the E-mail at all -- E-mail isn't data.
You do realize that some of the emails are about hiding data from public view, obstructing freedom of information requests, and campaign to discredit a peer reviewed journal that published something that disagreed with their public stance, right?
It seems to me that this would be the point of raising the objection. Its a classic double standard. On the one hand we can freely draw conclusions about the nature of the Earth's changes in temperature using a relatively limited set of data. On the other hand we are forbidden to draw conclusions about the content of these emails because we do not have the complete, unmodified, set of data.
They are smart enough to correctly draw conclusions, but no one else may do so.
Classic stuff, there.
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Lindzen vindicated (Score:5, Informative)
What I want to see (Score:5, Interesting)
The dog ate it? (Score:5, Informative)
Is this the same CRU that when asked to release the original raw data used in its climate analysis claimed it had all been lost?
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2009/08/we-lost-original-data.html [blogspot.com]
Re:The dog ate it? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, it is the same CRU. Fact is, they have refused requests to release data by other scientists (not just Steven McIntyre).
This is a good opportunity for someone to step in and demand that the actual data be released. CRU's claim of having lost data is completely untenable.
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In the spirit of transparency (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre are just about to release their own personal e-mail histories as well.
Anthropogenic Causes (Score:5, Insightful)
Many people who doubted AGW (humans causing the hockey stick graph, or the graph itself) are claiming this is some sort of smoking gun. I claim it's scientists being scientists, and failing at being politicians.
The very fact that this reveals some scientists are doubting some results is exactly what should happen in science. This is why there is a consensus [newscientist.com] among scientists. Doubting is a part of science and skeptics alike, but discovering the reasons for the doubt and changing a viewpoint when good, conflicting data are found are hallmarks of the scientist. Skeptics will cling to disproved data, hoping it somehow becomes true if they believe it hard enough.
There is no doubt that the earth is warmer, but mark my words: some idiot media personality will make claims to the contrary due to this. They thrive on confusion, and there's nothing more confusing (and humorous) than watching scientists wrestle with politics.
Re:Anthropogenic Causes (Score:5, Informative)
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=3771 [climaterealists.com]
Also: "The global surface temperature record, which we update and publish every month, has shown no statistically-significant “global warming” for almost 15 years. Statistically-significant global cooling has now persisted for very nearly eight years. Even a strong el Nino – expected in the coming months – will be unlikely to reverse the cooling trend. More significantly, the ARGO bathythermographs deployed throughout the world’s oceans since 2003 show that the top 400 fathoms of the oceans, where it is agreed between all parties that at least 80% of all heat caused by manmade “global warming” must accumulate, have been cooling over the past six years. That now prolonged ocean cooling is fatal to the “official” theory that “global warming” will happen on anything other than a minute scale. "
- SPPI Monthly CO2 Report: July 2009
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/co2_report_july_09.pdf [scienceand...policy.org]
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Not the doubting... (Score:5, Interesting)
...but the data deletion conspiracies, the conspiring to disrupt the peer review process in various clever ways, the knowing avoidance of Freedom of Information Act Requests, the slurs against "sceptics", including celebrating their deaths, and so on.
And that's just from the emails I have read so far.
"Doubting" indeed. And these assholes have had the nerve to indignantly drape themselves in the flag of science.
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Nothing to see here, move on (Score:5, Informative)
The bar for skeptics is always going to be higher. Otherwise we'd have to rewrite the chemistry textbooks every time some student messes up his lab assignment, because this will produce data that contradicts the theory.
Re:Nothing to see here, move on (Score:5, Insightful)
They aren't discussing the merits of papers. They are trying to get people (journal editors) fired, based on their perceived loyalty (or lack thereof) to 'the cause'.
Of course, that is when they aren't deleting data in order to prevent if from falling into the wrong hands, or conspiring to avoid the law in order to keep their data under wraps. Data that has now sadly been lost forever in a mysterious accidental deletion.
Or celebrating the deaths of "sceptics" (clearly these people are a bunch of dispassionate scientists).
And so on.
If this is Science as Usual (TM), then Science needs serious reform.
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secrecy and data hiding (Score:5, Insightful)
The primary issue is that most climate science has not truly been scrutinize and reviewed. I've been reading the files and it's very damming. It's almost as bad as cold fusion. For example. In note 1075403821.txt Timo Hmeranta states.
One other thing about the CC paper - just found another email - is that McKittrick says it is standard practice in Econometrics journals to give all the data and codes !! According to legal advice IPR overrides this.
So they are going to hide behind Intelectual Property Rights to keep their data from being reviewed!. Holy Fucking Shit! How can science do that and still remain respectable?
0880476729.txt is interesting: (Score:5, Interesting)
[...header information omitted...]
Subject: Re: ATTENTION. Invitation to influence Kyoto.
Date: Tue, 25 Nov 1997 11:52:09 -0700 (MST)
Dear Eleven,
I was very disturbed by your recent letter, and your attempt to get
others to endorse it. Not only do I disagree with the content of
this letter, but I also believe that you have severely distorted the
IPCC "view" when you say that "the latest IPCC assessment makes a
convincing economic case for immediate control of emissions." In contrast
to the one-sided opinion expressed in your letter, IPCC WGIII SAR and TP3
review the literature and the issues in a balanced way presenting
arguments in support of both "immediate control" and the spectrum of more
cost-effective options. It is not IPCC's role to make "convincing cases"
for any particular policy option; nor does it. However, most IPCC readers
would draw the conclusion that the balance of economic evidence favors the
emissions trajectories given in the WRE paper. This is contrary to your
statement.
This is a complex issue, and your misrepresentation of it does you a
dis-service. To someone like me, who knows the science, it is
apparent that you are presenting a personal view, not an informed,
balanced scientific assessment. What is unfortunate is that this will not
be apparent to the vast majority of scientists you have contacted. In
issues like this, scientists have an added responsibility to keep their
personal views separate from the science, and to make it clear to others
when they diverge from the objectivity they (hopefully) adhere to in their
scientific research. I think you have failed to do this.
[...]
The shame of it (Score:5, Insightful)
isn't that these files and this correspondence got hacked.
The shame of it is that hacking was necessary at all.
Transparency, People. We're debating public policy and making decisions for the benefit of all Mankind. Credibility is only hindered by opacity and closed data.
My heart goes out to those researchers. (Score:5, Insightful)
I feel really bad for these researchers.
I have published only a few papers and would be mortified if my emails got released to the public. I am constantly joking around with other lab denizens about fudging stuff, and removing data that doesn't fit the expectations. The opportunity for out of context quotations is scary to contemplate. Not to mention all of the politically incorrect jokes about such-and-such a graph's sexual orientation.
If one of these guys said anything like that over the years of emails in this dump, they are in some deep shit for nothing. Image someone going through all of the comments for all of the code you have ever written just looking for any tiny detail to prove you're a hack.
"just added one to this variable now it works" = screwed.
"need to go back and fix this" = screwed.
"not sure why this works but it does" = screwed.
"Bob is an idiot, I am just going to comment out his code" = screwed.
Like Cardinal Richelieu said:
“If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him”
Right or wrong, these guys are gonna get the shaft.
Re:Scepticism is universal (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup, Earth's climate has been changing for billions of years and will continue to do so. What Earth hasn't been doing for billions of years is supporting a single species who's civilization utterly depends on stable crop yields, stable weather patterns, and a stable climate. If humans go ahead and alter atmospheric chemistry enough to reduce rainfall and crop yields by 20% across several major agricultural regions, the Earth will be just fine with that. The atmosphere and climate have been changing for millenia. You know who won't be fine with it though?
Us.
As a species humans already appropriate well over half the productive ecological capacity on this planet (estimates I've seen range to as high as 90%), so anything we do to appreciably diminish that ecological capacity will hit one species particularly hard.
Us.
Earth, however, will soldier on, whether with a human population of around 10 billion, a dramatically reduced human population, or no human population at all.
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Re:Oh, yes, this is the conspiracy of all time (Score:5, Insightful)
You sound like you're arguing from information given to you by Al Gore. I'm not sure he's a trustworth source.
Since I think the Polar Bear thing is particularly funny (I think a lot of teen girls think they are so cute, in spite of the fact that they are apparently some of the most aggressive and violent bears), this is certainly not Fox News [ncpa.org]. nor are these folks. [telegraph.co.uk] But with proof like simply SEEING them so far off shore and presuming global warming is the reason, [sciencedaily.com] it's so obvious that any criticism must be wrong! I guess since the food that Polar Bears eat - like seals - are remaining completely stationary while the snow/ice presumably recedes. I've seen reports that polar bears can swim anywhere from 60 to 100s of miles, so apparently they aren't completely sure.
To me, the Polar Bear thing is a good example of someone seeing something and it getting blown completely out of proportion and people like Al Gore picking up on it and trying to use it for their own gain. Al Gore does not appear to be struggling financially.
Incidentally, from here [reason.com]:
Gore shows an animation of a polar bear (very reminiscent of the Coca Cola bears) swimming pitifully in the sea trying to haul itself up onto the last piece of ice floating in the Arctic Ocean. In 2002, the World Wildlife Fund issued a report warning that global warming was endangering polar bears. Arctic sea ice is thawing sooner and this means that the bears who hunt seals on the ice have fewer opportunities to feed themselves. This week saw an alarming report that hungry polar bears are turning cannibal. Yet, the WWF report itself found that most bear populations are either stable or increasing (see page 9 of the report). And remember, polar bears evidently survived when Arctic temperatures were warmer 6000 years ago. Of course, if predictions that the entire Arctic Ocean will be ice free in 100 year turn out to be right, then the polar bears will have a problem.
(emphasis mine)
That "ice free" bit was a link to "sciencedaily.com."
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Re:Why is climate science being politicized? (Score:5, Informative)
Hm. Who did An Inconvenient Truth again? Who is pushing for "climate change" legislation? The hype and sensationalism is the fault of conservatives?
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Re:Why is climate science being politicized? (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean soaking the middle class.
The rich will stay rich because they will be collecting transaction fees from the climate exchanges as well as tax credits for green buisnesses.
The poor will be taken care of via transfer payments.
The middle class will pay for all of it.
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Re:A new low for the slashdot anti-intellectualism (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I think the big thing that this data-dump shows is that it's actually a small group of tightly knit e-mail connected individuals that are driving a whole lot of the AGW effort.
Someone else wrote that this is all Exxon Astroturfing going on to make us knock out Copenhagen. In other words, arguing that a global conspiracy of oil-company funded individuals, like a meterologist in California and a retired statistician are all on payroll along with hackers in Russia, and new posters on SlashDot, are all working to convince us of a global conspiracy to promote AGW... These people are somehow secretly communicating behind the scenes, transferring billions of dollars of off-the-books money to individuals, all without anyone being able to point to a money trail.
On the other side, we have three groups, CRU, Mann/RealClimate and GISS, who have been clearly communicating and using their supposedly "neutral" Web Site (RealClimate) to promote one-sided views of the science, and apparently "fudge" the data until it matches their theory. These people openly receive grants of hundreds of millions of dollars every year, and have access to governments, prime ministers, and corporations, all of whose funding depends on perpetuating and establishing AGW as *the* science.
So, you'd have to believe it was all a big plan to release data on a minor Russian FTP site, found by accident on a blog almost no one reads, and then forwarded to a blog that *is* read often, in an un-threaded discussion while the site owner is on a trip overseas. This well coordinated group then uses these actual emails (admitted as valid and real by Phil Jones, head of CRU) to somehow concoct a story that a small group of climate scientists are colluding to support a theory by ignoring the facts, by using their own words to that effect.
On the one hand, you have individuals scanning through, admittedly, purloined emails and saying, "Whoa! What's going on here." Opposite that, you have the post on RealClimate today saying, "Move along, nothing to see here!" Some of those emails involve apparent schemes to transfer US funds overseas to avoid taxation. That alone is "something to see," despite what RealClimate is saying. And that's ignoring whether the science was done according to any standards of ethics.
We're talking millions of dollars in budgets from publicly funded programs. If there's even a hint of malfeasance in these documents, then a serious investigation should be started. I don't care which side is the global conspiracy. Only one side is spending *my money* to perpetrate it. The oil companies can spend however many trillion dollars they want without it coming out of *my* pocket.
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You make it sound like there's only one campaign (Score:5, Insightful)
You forget the massive PR campaign being waged on the side of the GW proponents.
Al Gore's been running around publicizing his new book in advance of Copenhagen.
You know, that book with the massive scientific impossibilities in the picture of what the Earth would look like due to GW.
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Re:simple theory (Score:5, Informative)
Theory 3, the Earth warms, the heat is radiated back out into space. The warmer it gets, the more heat is radiated back into space. Some evidence, for example Lindzen and Choi [leif.org], for low climate sensitivity:
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