Climategate and the First Rule of Holes
All right, class, what’s the First Rule of Holes? That’s right: “If you are in one, stop digging.”
Events this weekend suggest that this isn’t covered in the usual climatology graduate program.
You may recall the ongoing Climategate scandal (or if not, then pop over to the PJTV Climategate roundup page and check it out). There are many details, but the short summary is that the Climategate files contain emails, program code, and climate data that suggest a small group of climate scientists massaged the data in order to make a stronger case for CO2-driven global warming than the data really supports; conspired to prevent their data from being released under the freedom of information laws in the U.S. and UK; and went to great lengths to control publications about climate science, so that dissenting scientists weren’t published in the “peer-reviewed” literature, and so that journalists were properly identified and disciplined in order to make sure the correct views were presented.
Of those, the attempt to subvert peer review and control the discussion are probably the biggest offenses, at least from a scientist’s point of view; as I argued a few days ago, those are violations of the social contract that underlies the whole of science.
You might imagine that once the scandal was well and truly launched, there would be some attempt to recover — and certainly there have been some. The UK Meteorological Office announced it was making all the raw data it holds available to outside researchers, while they started a three-year project to reevaluate that data in light of the questions raised by the emails. The National Climatic Data Center announced an open-access data policy. Mike Hulme, one of the CRU climate inner circle, wrote a limited mea culpa in the Wall Street Journal in which he allowed that the sense of the science being “settled” was overstated and itself unscientific.
When you are in one, it is best to stop digging… Not if you want the hole big enough to stash your billions confiscated by your friendly govts. from the unfortunates who still have their jobs.
From the National Academy of Sciences, Here is the crux of climategate (assuming the reader is familiar with the FOIA and the “lost” source data aspects of the issue):
Ensuring the Integrity, Accessibility, and
Stewardship of Research Data in the Digital Age
ISBN: 978-0-309-13684-6 National Academy of Sciences.
http://www.nap.edu/html/12615/12615_EXS.pdf
Data Access and Sharing Principle: Research data, methods, and other information integral to publicly reported results should be publicly accessible.
Recommendation 5: All researchers should make research data, methods, and other information integral to their publicly reported results publicly accessible in a timely manner to allow verification of published findings and to enable other researchers to build on published results…
Data Stewardship Principle: Research data should be retained to serve future uses.
Data that may have long-term value should be documented, referenced, and indexed so that others can find and use them accurately and appropriately. Curating data requires documenting, referencing, and indexing the data so that they can be used accurately and appropriately in the future.
Recommendation 9: Researchers should establish data management plans at the beginning of each research project that include appropriate provisions for the stewardship of research data.
The solution to this problem — as with so many others — is honesty.
At the minimum, the CRU utterly failed in the Data Access and Data Stewardship principles. Unforgivable.
Problem is that the alphabet news sources are still covering this up. They are doing everything they can to deflect and discredit the information leaked from the CRU.
Remember:
The issue is never the issue.
The issue is control.
This just gives us average folk more impetus to vote out every single politician who believes in this hoax. If we don’t, we’ll truly become a third-world power in a matter of months, broke and starving in the streets because our own government won’t allow us to produce the things that we once did.
Is this what we voted for?
If, in the forthcoming elections, each party candidate were asked: “Do you intend to give taxpayers money to other countries and inflict further long term damage on the economy, on the basis of a proven fraud?” How would people experiencing hardship, unemployment and knowing that further tax increases were iminent would respond to waffle. How would people respond to a candidate who claimed that falsified data and unjustifiable “correction factors” justified actions which affect them and their famillies directly? Saul Alinsky said to freeze the target and personalise it. The opportunity here is to freeze any candidate who supports any measure based upon discredited data and algorthms as nothing more than a socialist who wishes to take money and jobs from Americans, to give to third world criminals, who will still hate the western democracies, no matter how much of our wealth our leaders give away. As unemployment rises and taxes and utility bbills increase, voters will become more cynical about leaders who inflict further hardship on their electorate for the sake of a fraudulent graph generated by a fraudulent computer program, written to the specification of a politically motivated scientific fraudster.
Climategate is a non-news item because it was not discovered by the lame stream media.
Bloggers in their underwear are not educated serious journalists.
Millions of under informed, emailing, donuts and Coffey drinking bloggers should be eliminated, thereby shutting off their breathing out dangerous CO2 greenhouse
gasses into our oxygen depleted warming climate changed environment.
Now..
Tiger Woods mother in laws possible nervous breakdown because of 10 or more sexy blonds
blowingmassagingstrokingcarrying his 9 iron is a true journalists media whore attention story that we can all sink our teeth into.This is a great political scandal and it will only be cleared up through politics. It is obvious those still supporting AGW in light of the emails have a political/financial agenda and despise this country. These frauds are more than willing to stab america in the back in the name of global environmental socialism. We now have the ammunition to challenge and defeat them in debate. make no mistake about it AGW is history. The socialist democrats who continue to ignore this game changing evidence will pay a heavy political price in the up coming elections
Charlie, I have been following your articles since you seem to have become a regular contributor – very informative and helpful.
I have a lot of respect for the Pielkes and quote their postings often at our web site. One item that neither has really been “honest” about, IMO, is the statement that “anthropogenic CO2 is a major climate forcing.” I always get the feeling they really don’t believe this but they have to say it so they aren’t labeled “deniers.”
They have both been involved in research that suggests there are other major climate forcings just as important, if not more, than anthropogenic CO2. They have both been critical of surface station temperatures, allowing that there is an upward bias for a number of reasons. Also, neither Pielke seems to have much faith in the GCM models that pro-CO2 warmists exclusively rely on. These three positions seem to seriously undercut the “science” behind the CO2 as a major forcing claim they make.
Possibly you can ask some questions of Roger Jr. in your interview that will shed light on their statement about CO2 and human-CO2 caused warming. Do they just “believe” it to stay out of harm’s way (which is fine)? Or, do they believe it because of some actual scientific evidence, other than climate models or heavily adjusted (bogus) surface data?
C3H Editor
Charlie, I have been following your articles since you seem to have become a regular contributor – very informative and helpful.
I have a lot of respect for the Pielkes and quote their postings often at our web site. One item that neither has really been “honest” about, IMO, is the statement that “anthropogenic CO2 is a major climate forcing.” I always get the feeling they really don’t believe this but they have to say it so they aren’t labeled “deniers.”
They have both been involved in research that suggests there are other major climate forcings just as important, if not more, than anthropogenic CO2. They have both been critical of surface station temperatures, allowing that there is an upward bias for a number of reasons. Also, neither Pielke seems to have much faith in the GCM models that pro-CO2 warmists exclusively rely on. These three positions seem to seriously undercut the “science” behind the CO2 as a major forcing claim they make.
Possibly you can ask some questions of Roger Jr. in your interview that will shed light on their statement about CO2 and human-CO2 caused warming. Do they just “believe” it to stay out of harm’s way (which is fine)? Or, do they believe it because of some actual scientific evidence, other than climate models or heavily adjusted (bogus) surface data?
C3H Editor
The holes begin in their corrupt Marxist ideology through the Trojan Horse called Global Warming; the holes are growing larger & looking more like jagged teeth of a mouth as they are swallowed whole by a hideous, clandestine monster:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxAp_k4It34
#9/10: thanks for the kind words. I’ve actually been a regular PJM contributor/corespondent pretty much since the first, although I laid off a while after the election, just out of exhaustion.
I’ll make sure to ask Pielke Jr your question, but without putting words in his mouth I think I can answer in part. Note that they always put it in terms of climate forcings, ie, one of the number of inputs to the system that equilibrates at some average temperature: at some particular time t, there is solar radiation in and thermal radiation out, and the net gives the average temperature at that instant. We know, from good physical models that *are* predictive, that the CO2 content of the atmosphere accounts for about 33°C higher temperature than we would otherwise have, so it *is* a major forcing. If everything else held constant, adding 3 percent in anthropogenic GHG would then account for around a 1°C anthropogenic warming.
The problem comes in when we realize everything else *isn’t* constant. Humans do things that would lead to net cooling as well — adding smoke that blocks incoming sunlight, for example. Paving over grasslands, decreasing the average albedo, adding more heating. But then more heating apparently leads to more cloud cover, which *increases* the average albedo. And so on.
The point is that increasing a forcingwon’t necessarily increase the equilibrium temperature by the same amount; the net effect of humanity is just not well understood.
Real scientists invite criticism; charlatans and frauds avoid it like the plague.
By this, a real “Peer review” would be heavily weighted towards opposing viewpoints.
In sum, it’s more like internal political polls.
Nice article, Charlie. The satire rings true. The weasels are scattering. How fun!
A few selected quotes from Richard Feynman:
Now tell me again how this consensus thingy works…
“the CO2 content of the atmosphere accounts for about 33°C higher temperature than we would otherwise have, so it *is* a major forcing. If everything else held constant, adding 3 percent in anthropogenic GHG would then account for around a 1°C anthropogenic warming.”
Not according to Beer’s Law. The impact of increasing GHG declines logarithmically. The CO2 only absorbs IR radiation at certain frequencies. Once those frequencies are saturated, increased levels have no further effect whatsoever. I don’t know how close the current CO2 level is to that, but I suspect it is close. Keep in mind that CO2 is transparent to IR at most frequencies, so it has no effect on the bulk of earth’s radiating heat.
CO2 based GW is a very poor choice to justify any warming.
#13: Mostly, peer review works pretty well; there is a general culture of critical thought and self-correction. That’s what makes the corruption of peer review so insidious.
#16: Yeah, I oversimplified for a quick illustration on horseback, piling a whole bunch of stuff into “everything else constant”. The point still holds, though — the difference between the black body temperature and Earth’s real surface temperature is about 33°C, so greenhouse gases are a major forcing.
Not to beat the dead horse too much, but yes without CO2 we might be 33 cooler. However the first 200 ppm are more important than the next 2000 ppm. So we can assert incremental CO2 at this point is insignificant to global temperature.
Most proponents of AGW will never give up on the concept as it has achieved paradigm status. It is also the principle source of income for some, and the religious faith of a lot more.
The most effective means of getting a believer in AGW to cease believing in it is to induce them to invest, and then lose, a lot of money in a scam which is founded on an assumption of the validity of AGW. Even then most will not renounce their faith.
Well, as Mr Clinton might have said, it all depends on how you define the word “major”. I think that their sin is not making CO2 first on their list of “Thou shall not’s”.
Pielke Sr says that CO2 is a “first order forcing”, and he’s a skeptic because he goes on to say “However, there are also other human contributions to the climate system that are as, or are more important, than the addition of CO2. These include The influence of human-caused aerosols on regional (and global) radiative heating the effect of aerosols on clouds and precipitation, the influence of aerosol deposition (e.g. soot; nitrogen) on climate, and the effect of land cover/ land use on climate.”
P Jr’s take is more like Lomborg’s, as follows:
“1. Human-caused climate change is real and requires attention by policy makers to both mitigation and adaptation – but there is no quick fix; the issue will be with us for decades and longer.
2. Any conceivable emissions reductions policies, even if successful, cannot have a perceptible impact on the climate for many decades.
3. Consequently, costs (whatever they may be) are borne in the near term and benefits related to influencing the climate system are achieved in the distant future.
4. However, many policies that result in a reduction in emissions also provide benefits in the short term unrelated to climate change.
5. Similarly adaptation policies can provide immediate benefits.
6. But climate policy, particularly international climate policy under the Framework Convention on Climate Change, has been structured to keep policy related to long-term climate change distinct from policies related to shorter-term issues of energy policy and adaptation.
7. Following the political organization of international climate change policy, research agendas have emphasized the long-term, meaning that relatively very little attention is paid to developing specific policy options or near-term technologies that might be put into place with both short-term and long-term benefits.
8. The climate debate may have begun to slowly reflect these realities, but the research and development community has not yet focused much attention on developing policy and technological options that might be politically viable, cost effective, and practically feasible.”
I read both of their blogs, don’t always agree with their point of view, but do appreciate that they are at least open and honest about what and why they believe what they do. Both have posted entries that have made me dig even deeper.
Still a lot to learn about our climate, and our world, before we start thinking about how to retool things. Starting with the economy, despite the pretty tax revenue stream it would provide, seems like a really bad idea.
#17: “the difference between the black body temperature and Earth’s real surface temperature is about 33°C, so greenhouse gases are a major forcing.”
But Charlie, isn’t that ALL GHGs? And isn’t CO2 a small fraction (with water vapor the biggie)?
On a related note: how come there is never a ‘first principles’ paper referenced where some physicist of the caliber of Feynman demonstrates in a controlled lab experiment what happens to the radiation sent through a column of atmospheric gases?
Keep up the good work!
#21 Manuel (jeez I love that handle): well, yeah, but see what it says? “A major forcing.” Sure, water is the biggest contributor, but then — assuming the 1°C that seems to be the middle of the range — we’re talking about the difference between 33°C and 34°C, not the whole 33°C. Now, is CO2 the major contributor as the IPCC/CRU guys claim? I don’t think it’s known. But the notion that CO2 isn’t A contributor is just mistaken.