Climategate: Faster and Faster, the Dominos Fall
The Climategate files were made public just a month ago, and the email messages that were revealed have already had real impact. The emails show us scientists being petty and political, even corrupt. Suppressing dissenting science and perhaps even violating the law to prevent data from being shared with the rest of the world. They show us people with failings, egos against egos. But the emails themselves aren’t enough to call the overall science of CO2-driven, human-caused climate change into question.
The Climategate emails, however, make up only five percent of the Climategate files. The other 95 percent, the programs and data and documents, are where the real story is hiding. That story has begun to come out, in several independent analyses of the data we have, using hints from the emails and from other files and raw data that is available from other sources.
A story is beginning to take shape. This story broke into the world media Wednesday. An article in RIA Novosti, the Russian state-owned news service, states:
On Tuesday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office inExeter (Devon, England) had probably tampered with Russian-climate data.
The article reports that the IEA had taken a new look at the data used in the Intergovernmental Panel for Climatic Change (IPCC) reports. These reports, which became the basis for warnings of dramatic human-caused global warming that led to calls for extensive regulation and to the current climate change conference in Copenhagen, are based on world temperature estimates using measurements from thousands of reporting sites throughout the world.
Novosti reported that the data used for temperature measurements in Russia appeared to have been carefully chosen from the warmest reporting sites. If an average were taken over all Russian reporting sites, then there was little or no warming to report.
Using only the sites chosen for the IPCC reports, Russia instead showed significant warming, with a “hot spot” over Eastern Siberia.
This story turned out to fit neatly with some of the CRU emails. As Steve McIntyre discusses at Climate Audit, one email from Phil Jones to Michael Mann says:
Recently rejected two papers (one for JGR and for GRL) from people saying CRU has it wrong over Siberia. Went to town in both reviews, hopefully successfully. If either appears I will be very surprised, but you never know with GRL.
So here’s a puzzle. What papers is Jones referring to, and how did they claim CRU had it “wrong over Siberia”?
While the Novosti report has gotten the most attention, it’s not the only such report. The Climategate files forced the UK Meteorological Office to make at least part of their raw data available. One of the first was Willis Eschenbach, at Watts Up With That. Read the whole discussion and also Eschenbach’s answer to a critique published in the Economist for the details, but here is the “money shot”:
In this figure, the blue line is the raw data. The black line is the adjustments that had been applied to that data, and the red line is the result following the adjustments.
I think you are being too measured. This research deserves to be condemned. The burden of proof is not on the critics but on the scientists. They are making wild claims. They should be able to back them up.
I remain amazed that no liberal American news organization is covering these continuing new revelations about Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, NYT, AP, LA Times, WaPO, whichever you watch or read, all of this would be news to you. What an incredible abdication of responsibility to their own readers/viewers. It’s like they’re purposely flushing their credibility down the toilet. Do they really believe their readers/viewers will never find out?
Hmph! Interesting, but apparently you haven’t heard Al Gore’s response to these malicious, stolen, hacked files. The voice of integrity and absolute honesty says they out of context and don’t change anything! What are we to do? If we deny him, we are deniers! — and who can stand having that prestige erasing name applied to them! Its worse than being called a racist….I’ll hang with Al until hell freezes over. I will not be a denier!
WOW!!! What a surprise!
OMG — I totally forgot and rewrote the exact same thing twice…must be getting too hot in here…
Charlie as you well know this movement is a religion it will not die until the IDOL ( the golden calf) is destroyed. All this is marxism turned from red to green to gain the same result, control!
klrtz1:
“It’s like they’re purposely flushing their credibility down the toilet. Do they really believe their readers/viewers will never find out?”
They either -
a) Don’t Care.
b) Consciously accept and embrace their role as the mainstream propaganda arm of the DNC.
c) Believe that if push comes to shove, they’ll receive bail-out money as an industry to big (and ‘important’) to fail, or….
d) All of the above.
Great news! Sarkozy just killed Copenhagen!
” Let’s go back to the KYOTO agreement” BBC News few minutes ago.
Thank G-D for this good Jew(Read Gibson’s article yesterday in which he accuses Lieberman of being a bad Jew)
Normally, I would rejoice at reading this expose. Then some commenter had to remind me that the MSM is still blocking this info. Many Americans will be hearing the message, but will their numbers be enough? Methinks they may be too few.
“Until the data is re-examined, fully, openly, and transparently, it is impossible to conclude how much of a contribution to global climate change humans have made, or whether that contribution has been made by human-generated CO2.”
That is the absolute solution to AGW controversy. Liberals will fight to keep that from ever happening though. They are too smart and we are too stupid so we should just keep our mouths shut and our wallets open.
“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!”
Snow today,four inches in Hopenhagen. Previously,there has been snow for a week,by leftist green snow climatechange flakes.
Curtis M:
e. The MSM flushed away their credibility so long ago that protecting it does not even occur to them.
Dr. Richard Keen, really? Do you guys know how unscientific a scientist he is? And that the author of this article is a computer scientist (not a climate scientist or anything of the kind)? And that even the charts your skeptics display show a warming trend? And that this “PDO” has been shown not to be responsible for this warming trend? And that in EVERY camp there are a few bad eggs? Do you really want to find answers to this complicated question, or do you just want to point fingers at Evil Liberals?
So you’re saying global warming is in fact caused by humans–but the humans involved are the climatologists, not the CO2 emitters…
Those graphs are the killer;
As Boss Tweed said of Nast:
“My voters can’t read, but they
can see his D*** cartoons.”
From Blue to Red
in four easy steps.
I think they thought that “The rise
would begin real soon now, and we
will fudge just a little bit in
anticipation.”; After _four_ step-
wise corrections, they had to know
they were lying.
But… but… but…
The debate is over.
People who deny AGW are akin to Holocaust Deniers, plus, they’re DUMB, and THEY SMELL.
What’s next? Is the American Pollution Monster going to be ruined and punished, or not?
And are you seriously telling me that Global Governance dead?
Wasn’t that was the whole point of voting for Barrack Hussain Obama in the first place…?
Everyone keeps asking why the MSM refuses to cover the scandal surroundeing the Hadley CRU e-mails and documents. This article:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/04/the_media_and_reporting_on_the.html
and others like it explain why. The major media organizations have invested massively in the climate change hysteria and are not going to change their narrative until forced to by circumstances.
Morton Doodslag:
“The debate is over”
The debate is only beginning – that’s what makes AGW proponents nervous (and apparently angry…..)
#3 Brad,
Heh. Given the Motley CRU’s propensity for error, that is how it could end up.
Stop with the pussy footen around. We don’t have to re-examine anything. We have already spent over 70 billion dollars on this fraud and if there was an even an inkling of AGW proof these scammers would not have had to cook the books. This whole hoax is about global environmental socialism and re-distribution of our wealth. it has nothing to do with climate. All you have to do is look who is attending the conference. All global socialist’s/communists with their hands out. Chaves, Obama, Clinton, Kerry to name a few of the scammers. These socialist democrat frauds despise our country. Their reaction to the emails tells the true story of the AGW fraud. To defeat global environmental socialism we must defeat the enablers, namely the socialist democrats, in the next elections and boot their non american commie rear ends all the way to cuba and retake possession of this country.
Sorry Folks, the Soviet of Copenhagen, led by the Great Helmsmen Chavez and Obama,
has decided
that your opinions are dictated by greed, racism, and capitalistic psychosis.
We believe also that many of you are disgustingly white and many others are Uncle Toms who have no shame left.
Generously, the World Government offers to treat you all, and for free, in the new facility to be soon opened in Illinois,
“Area 666″.
There, you will discover that you don’t know what you know and that you will know what you don’t. A new, great, change.
After that, your remains will be donated to some charitable organization, to be used for transplants.
You will then live eternally in the hearts (and corneas, etc.) of the proletarians of the world.
BARAK HUSSEIN OBAMA MMMHHH MMMHHHH MMMHHH
Here are a couple more examples.
http://www.c3headlines.com/2009/12/climategate-switzerlands-adjusted-temperature-data-produces-a-global-warmingtype-hockey-stick-out-of.html
My apologies for terribly oversimplifying things, but in statistics, one can never prove the hypothesis (e.g. that there is global warming). One only can “fail to disprove the null hypothesis,” which in this case, would be stating that there is no sufficient statistical grounds to disprove the theory that manmade CO2 is causing warming.
When approached from statistics, the evidence that has been provided so far absolutely and fundamentally indicates that there is significant evidence that challenges the hypothesis. Any modest test would show that the claim fundamentally can not be made of “failing to disprove” the mankind caused CO2 link.
Oh, and if I hear another research state “the data was discarded because it was shown to be invalid by the model,” I’m going to scream. These people need to be held to the same rigor that the financial professionals have under Sarbanes-Oxley. Sign your report and attest to your science. Be shown to be cooking the books and go to jail for 25 years.
1. Steve:
I think you are being too measured. This research deserves to be condemned. The burden of proof is not on the critics but on the scientists. They are making wild claims. They should be able to back them up.
you summed it up nicely. but they will just continue to ignore the truth.
““It’s like they’re purposely flushing their credibility down the toilet. Do they really believe their readers/viewers will never find out?””
Yes. Because econuts have been lying and getting away with it for half a century, ever since Silent Spring.
———————————
mecharlie:
“And that the author of this article is a computer scientist (not a climate scientist or anything of the kind)?”
And the basis of Climate Alarmism is computer “models” of the atmosphere- which were always suspect, but which now are shown to be completely worthless: at best GIGO, and at worst, black-box programming designed to produce a preordained output.
“And that even the charts your skeptics display show a warming trend?”
Yep. Of course it’s warming. Has been for 350 years. There has been a long *linear* temperature climb from the bottom of the Little Ice Age. The question is whether it’s unprecedented, exponential, or outside the range of natural variability- and there’s *no* uncorrupted evidence to the contrary.
“And that in EVERY camp there are a few bad eggs?”
Ahem. Jones, Wigmore, Mann, Santer, Briffa, Schmidt, Schneider: these are not “a few bad eggs,” they are the big guns, the High Priests of Climatology, the guys who write the IPCC reports, the guys who ‘adjust’ the data and run the computer models. Contrary to the spin, there aren’t “thousands of scientists,” there are about sixty. That’s all: a close-knit cabal acting in collusion. If these guys are crooks, the warm-mongers got *nuthin.* (of course, Mann was exposed as a fraud long ago).
This isn’t complicated. When someone is cooking the books then they are up to something that the rest of us aren’t going to like. One dosen’t have to be a scientists of any particular stip to smell a rat this big.
These guys have been cooking the books.
@13 mistercharlie: I am a climate scientist and this article is well written inside the context. There is no trend statiscally significan in the graphs the “deniers” show since is all part of the natural variability and, in order to assess its significance, more data is needed. In nature there are many long-term variabilities you should distinguish FIRST,(not only the 10-years Pacific oscillator; there is even astronomical forcing of 18 years periodicity. So you need more data before to say some observed variablity is actually a “trend”.
Additionally, I’m a skeptical. But even if CRU is not lying to us, I’d say that PUBLIC policy should not be based on NON PUBLIC datasets and methods. Period.
#13: Yes, I’m a computer scientist, which is to say a breed of mathematician. I also did years and years of simulation. I’ve got exactly the background to understand this stuff.
As far as your “point” about Keen, the Pielkes, von Horst, Zorita, Soon, McIntyre, McKittrick, and the dozens of others, the thing in science is that you show your work. Anyone can replicate their results.
No one — not even the climate clique themselves — can replicate their results.
The pro global warming scientists are criminals.
I fear you are being too kind Charlie. A calm reasoned reaction and call for newer more rigorous science is all well and good and that is certainly required at this point–there are still many unanswered questions about climate data, its inherent validity, variables and their interactions/relationships, causes and causal significance, methodologies and etc. The real issue, however, is not just the flawed science but the dishonesty and the political malfeasance that so easily resulted. It is the scientific scandal of the century certainly but the political extension (by politicians, bureaucrats, and the self-serving elite) has been absolutely criminal and corrupt. It is despicable at best, and the punishment should be severe.
mistercharlie writes:
“Do you really want to find answers to this complicated question, or do you just want to point fingers at Evil Liberals?”
Having caught dishonest scientists, we want to point fingers at them. We will be satisfied when they are prosecuted in courts of law.
As to your other question, we would love to find answers to all the important questions about global warming. Obviously, to find those answers we must engage in decades of data collection because our existing trove has been corrupted beyond usefulnes by some of the scientists and maybe outrightly destroyed.
Anything else you would like to ask?
Actually you misquoted Auric Goldfinger,Charlie….he said “Once is happenstance…”…not ‘accident’.
#30 Mike: I see your point, but honestly, there seem to be plenty of over-caffeinated people writing about this whole mess with lots of exclamation points. I prefer to stick to what I think I can justify with crisp logic.
A lot of the things you’re saying may well be true; we can’t prove them.
Yet.
RE #2/klrtz1:
[...] no liberal American news organization is covering these continuing new revelations about Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, NYT, AP, LA Times, WaPO, whichever you watch or read, all of this would be news to you. What an incredible abdication of responsibility to their own readers/viewers. It’s like they’re purposely flushing their credibility down the toilet. [...]
I found only in last week’s LA Times a piece about this situation in an opinion piece written by Tim Rutten (the paper’s moralist in-chief) – the funny side of that worthless article was Rutten’s indignation vis-a-vis… the rottenness of those who hacked the CRU computers, lawless act completely removing any incriminating validity of the information in those e-mails. “Stolen! Stolen!” – my!
… as far as the MSM losing credibility… I kind of of suspect that that for long has gone down the toilette -
RE #28/misterYY RE @13 mistercharlie:
[...] There is no trend statiscally significan in the graphs the “deniers” show since is all part of the natural variability and, in order to assess its significance, more data is needed. In nature there are many long-term variabilities you should distinguish FIRST [...] before to say some observed variablity is actually a “trend”. [...]
… paging the milankovich cycles… paging the milankovich cycles… milankovich cycles, report asap to the referrence desk… milankovich cycles report asap to the referrence desk…
#32: Hah, no quotation marks and “accident” and “happenstance” are synonyms.
Thought you had me, didn’t you?
… and a little Health Care bill side-bar (freshly from LA Times):
“Franken shuts down Lieberman on Senate floor/December 17, 2009/ 1:54 pm
Democratic Sen. Al Franken has taken the unusual step of shutting down Sen. Joe Lieberman on the Senate floor.
Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, is the target of liberal wrath over his opposition to a government-run insurance plan in the healthcare overhaul bill.
Franken, of Minnesota, was presiding over the Senate today as Lieberman spoke about amendments he planned to offer to the bill. Lieberman asked for an additional 30 seconds to finish — a routine request — but Franken refused to grant the time.
Lieberman, appearing taken aback, said he’d submit the rest of his statement in writing. Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona came to his friend Lieberman’s defense and criticized Franken’s behavior as inappropriate.’
it is unfortunate but most of the people in the world and half the people in the USA have not heard or know anything about the global warming scam/fraud.
the author of this piece and pajama media FOX news and conservative blogs are the only ones trying to educate the world. I applaud them and hope they can get a wider audience because there is a lot riding on this.
Charlie, this is conspiracy to defraud the federal government (intentional falsificaiton of data and analysis by persons using federal research grants to do so, for the purpose of receiving more research grants) perpetrated by fraudulent emails across state and international borders, i.e., wire fraud. That brings in the civil racketeering statute (18 United States Code 1961, et seq). The universities, colleges and research institutes employing the conspirators have to consider that a requirement to refund the research grants they received for fraudulent climate change research.
Plus the victims of retaliation by the perpetrators can sue both the perps and the colleges, universities and institutes employing the perps for injury in victims’ trades and businesses. For treble damages plus, more importantly, reasonable attorney fees. 18 U.S.C. 1964(c).
The perps better lawyer up and shut up. Plus it will be delightful, when the lawsuits against the EPA’s regulation of CO2 emissions start, the perps claim 5th Amendment self-incrimination privileges upon being questioned as witnesses concerning the scientific validity of the EPA’s claims that CO2 is a dangerous pollutant
This is not zealotry. This is criminal fraud. And it’s the doomies’ tar baby. They can’t let go of it, but attempts to defend it will result in them being tarred with the crook label too.
I have many liberal colleagues at work. They are well-meaning and sincere folk. I reckon their squishy sentimentality and refusal to confront the dark side of human nature is rooted in youthful idealism that never matured into healthy scepticism leavened by real-world experience. They are weaklings, but that doesn’t make them bad people.
However, there are wolves among the sheep. I’m careful to draw a distinction between liberals and leftists. The leftist is a conniving, malicious, false-faced corrupter of all that is true, good, and noble. He deals in lies because his agenda is always hidden. The truth is always his first target. Liberals are fond of proclaiming their non-violent stance in all confrontations, but leftist leaders do violence to the truth on a daily basis. Who will defend the truth?
Thank you, Mr. Martin, for taking a stand on behalf of the truth. The truth must be known because no edifice can stand for long on a foundation of lies. Ask the soviets, if you can still find one. So with no authority vested in me by God or any other authority, I summarily award you a silver star for the pursuit of truth. Wear it proudly. Or keep it in your heart. Al Gore’s medals are destined someday to be found in a landfill. I think your efforts will stand the test of time rather better.
40. ~Paules:
I have many liberal colleagues at work. They are well-meaning and sincere folk. I reckon their squishy sentimentality and refusal to confront the dark side of human nature is rooted in youthful idealism that never matured into healthy scepticism leavened by real-world experience. They are weaklings, but that doesn’t make them bad people.
However, there are wolves among the sheep. I’m careful to draw a distinction between liberals and leftists. The leftist is a conniving, malicious, false-faced corrupter of all that is true, good, and noble. He deals in lies because his agenda is always hidden. The truth is always his first target. Liberals are fond of proclaiming their non-violent stance in all confrontations, but leftist leaders do violence to the truth on a daily basis. Who will defend the truth?
PAULES …you will find your liberal (well meaning and a bit soft)friends standing with and supporting the leftist when push comes to shove.
…it is a common mistake of well meaning conservatives.
I stopped believing in AGW, when a respected scientist from another field said it was OK, to exagerate the data to promote awareness…HA….I have just finished working on climate data for selecting the best site for an observatory and this was done rigourously. 5 years, more than 5 sites around the world…and I would say caractirizing the sites was one of the best done in the history of sitetesting, but if you are going to convince me that precision of more than +- 1C is available even today..mmm…I think you are being very optimistic.
Mistercharlie, without data to support your assertions, you are essentially the practitioner of a religion. For the sake of your credibility in the future, take a look at where this is going, start moderating your position for a few years, and then latch on to the next anti-capitalist “cause” masquerading as science. It’s not about people or about experts. It’s simply data. And based on everything I have read, you appear to be on the Hindenberg, my friend.
I am a geochemist by training. It has been clear for some time that the data was being manipulated. At this point it is worthless. There should have been transparency from the beginning. Now we have to start over.
I have long thought that the whole idea of a global average temperature is misguided. It is not a reproducible number and has error too great for it too have any use.
Future climate science should be focused on whether or not CO2 is a greenhouse gas. At present it does not look like it has much effect on climate when compared to solar and other factors.
Note that the left leaning scientists won’t even discuss that possibility because the whole anti-business agenda falls apart if CO2 is not a GHG.
#39 Tom: This is not zealotry. This is criminal fraud.
Well, I’m not a lawyer, but I don’t see any reason it can’t be both.
#44 DanW: Let’s try for a little clarity here. On the global temp thing, it is a perfectly well-defined concept, it’s just hard to make a precise measurement. That’s okay as long as we keep proper track of our error bars. And the physics of greenhouse effect and greenhouse gases is very well established experimentally and used all over. The thing is that when we try to then extend that to effects that are, at best, right at the edge of the precision to which we’re capable of measuring, in a system as complex as climate, we’re getting on shaky ground. Once again, that doesn’t keep us from doing science, but it does mean that we need to preserve a little humility about what we say.
“this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal….”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Charlie, an agreement to act in concert to use fraudulent means to obtain money from the government is a criminal conspiracy to defraud the government. Mere zealotry is not criminal. Criminal fraud is rarely zealotry (usually it’s about money). Zealotry in the furtherance of criminal fraud is criminal fraud.
As usual the ground rules shift with the sands of debate with mistercharlie and his ilk. When the argument was consensus among scientists the thousands of “authorities” Al Gore & Co. cited included every possible type of “scientist” – including family medicine practitioners, dentists, and anyone else they could find who had an advanced degree in any subject which could even tenuously be categorized as “science” – merely to swell the numbers. The argument, weak as it was, was that the science on AGW was settled, and one only need look at this [impressive] list of [experts] for proof. Now that the top “climate science” experts have been legitimately questioned (at best) or exposed as frauds (at worst), all of the sudden the the AGW alarmists would have us believe that only people qualified to ask questions are other “climate scientists” – numbering in the hundreds (and all in agreement with them), at most.
In support of Charlie Martin, it seems to me (with my meager and unfinished legal education – a year away from my JD) that data is data, statistics is a discipline which is applied to data, computers are now used in the application of statistics, that “climate science” relies on the use of computer application of statistics to data in order to reach its conclusions, and that people who understand how to use computers in the application of statistics to data are uniquely qualified to judge whether or not the process has been corrupted, regardless whether the data concerns economic models, climate models, or any other models. My understanding is that such checking is especially warranted becuase the CRU computer models were cobbled together by grad students – not in computer science, but in “climate science” – and, brilliant as they may be, computer science was not their actual area of expertise. Kind of like a deep sea oceanographer who wants to visit the Mariana Trench having his grad student research assistants cobble together a submarine for him (the difference being that the ocenaographer probably wouldn’t do this because his own life would be at stake, not just economic policy affecting the allocation of trillions of dollars/euros/yen/ yuan/etc. over the next decades. Review by persons with relevant expertise carries a lot more credibility in my mind than “poetry” written by Al Gore or vague, unsubstantiated attacks on sceptics merely for being sceptics.
Which brings me to my final point, at least for now: consistent with the left’s playbook in all controversies, but particularly with questions re AGW, mistercharlie first, before making any cogent argument, attacks those who don’t agree with him and, without supporting evidence or reasoning but merely with a vague and implied accusation (“Dr. Richard Keen, really?) seeks to sow subconcious doubt. This is a cheap and intellectually dishonest tactic that has been going on for far too long with too great success and which should be relegated to the dustbin of legitimate argument by round condemnation and challenge every time it appears. If a proponent attacks his opponent he should be held to providing some substantive basis for his attack or lose significant credibility from the start.
Faster, Climategate, spill, spill!
#45 Charlie “…On the global temp thing, it is a perfectly well-defined concept, it’s just hard to make a precise measurement.”
Do we really know that the concept of global temperature is well defined? If sensors are at different latitudes, elevations and unevenly spaced across the globe, the individual measurements can be precise but is the average temperature meaningful? If you want to know if real estate prices are going up or down do you take the average of all the prices across different regions or do you look at the difference at each region?
HatlessHessian:
“Oh, and if I hear another research state “the data was discarded because it was shown to be invalid by the model,” I’m going to scream.”
Thank you!!! I have been screaming for years that models PROVE nothing. They can only predict from past occurances. And in a model as big as the climate of our planet, there is no way all of the variables can be quantified. What they really mean is that the data does not fit the preconceived outcome and therefore cannot be used. I work with models of topography and would never even think to throw out data because “it was shown to be invalid by the model”. If it doesn’t fit, check the model first, then the data.
When the Watergate tapes were released (back in ’74?), they became the final nail in Richard Nixon’s Presidency because they revealed him to be a corrupt politician who discussed things like hush money and who willingly obstructed justice. Once those tapes became public, Nixon’s “silent majority” no longer supported him. He was disgraced and forced to resign, even though the public agreed with most of his policies.
These leaked AGW emails and files are similar to the Watergate tapes. They reveal the “science” behind AGW initiatives has been sloppy, possibly deliberately deceptive, and definitely politically corrupted. They reveal that the “scientists” within the AGW establishment have cherry picked their data, stone-walled legimate requests for information, and have acted like a power-hungry cartel in obstructing criticism.
Like Nixon, the AGW establishment has disgraced itself. It’s credibility is shot. The public cannot be blamed for disbelieving their unsubstantiated claims, even if those claims may be “fake but accurate”.
The AGW community needs to start over and build a firewall between the scientists and the politicians.
Non of this will be of any relevance at all when THE REAL CLIMATE CHANGE PROBLEM ARRIVES:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPwGX3EnDWc
@ 48. GCA
Exactly why I cut to the chase on this: if Boeing built its planes with code like this, would you fly in them? No? Then why are you asking us to spend trillions of our euros on this?
52) Doug-
That’s why it should be called Climaquiddick.
A -gate is when a corrupt republican politician is scrutinized by a diligent press, the facts are rooted out and he’s hounded out of office.
A -quiddick is when a corrupt democratic politician is discovered but the press diligently covers it up and praises the perpetrator who keeps his elected office for life.
#45: “On the global temp thing, it is a perfectly well-defined concept,”
Incorrect. Since climate is – overall – water behavior, should the weighing factor for the average be relative humidity? One can think of different factors, say, specific latent heat (not quite the same as relative humidity), total heat capacity (at constant pressure), etc..
In a non-equilibrium system, overall temperature is ill-defined.
“And the physics of greenhouse effect and greenhouse gases is very well established experimentally and used all over.”
Not quite correct. Any discussion of greenhouse effect with no mention of its interaction with water dynamics is – at best – incomplete. And water dynamics is still being worked on.
Cherry picking tree ring data is one thing, but the smoking gun is still the source code which has everything you need to convict someone of fraud. The problem is people are scientifically illiterate. They are lawyers, accountants, business people, journalists, etc. but they didn’t pay attention in science class or were given poor instruction in the public schools. Here’s an article that explains the source code for dummies — even a journalist can understand it:
http://beforeitsnews.com/story/0000000000000790
Leaving aside the required suspension of disbelief, the political correctness inertia, the scientific posturing & grandstanding, and the rush of the “South” to capitalize on the “North’s” lucrative post-colonial guilt (no, I don’t experience post-colonial guilt), we have also here a deliberate, active attempt at grabbing political, harnessing power by the UN – an attempt at hypnotising the North in a sort of guilty submission to a righteous planetary community -
No way – am I the only one who actively resists the idea of getting guidance, marching orders and tax payment deadlines from Somalia, Zimbabwe, Tonga or other wise islands?
And this is a chief objective of the UN in this affair Copenhagen affair –
PS – I just remembered a last year’s LA Times piece that rhasodized about the beauty of some Somalis UN human rights compliance officers inspecting “sites” in the country (Los Angeles included), and righteously ticketing left and right -
God! What an idiocy – no wonder LA Times loved it -
#36. Oddjob will be around to have a talk with you. Merry Christmas, Sir.
Now that Gitmo will be empty, I have a suggestion. These people need to go to jail.
What a disgrace. That is my forst thought when I read the E-Mails and the other documents that were from CRU. Sloppy work practices. Poor maintenance of Data bases. Sloppy and possibly non-sensical computer coe used to process the data. We still do not have the source code for most of the Climate Models. We only have the old and possibly discarded code used to process the data that was used to constsruct the Temperature Record Data sets. The more we dig into the details the more we find that the Leaders in the field of Climate Research have to work habits of an 11 year old who refuses to clean his room. That is a disgrace. How can any reliable conclusion be determined by using data provided by people who cannot even keep good records. Is the rest of the Data Sets so poorly compiled? We do not know because we do not have access to how they did thier work. If this is the Standard that Climate Science has then the entire field should be decertified and rolled back into the various disciplines of Physical Science that still have some pride in thier work.
#50 Steve: Do we really know that the concept of global temperature is well defined?
Yes. Think of it the other way around: what would it mean for the idea of the temperature of the Earth to not be well defined?
If sensors are at different latitudes, elevations and unevenly spaced across the globe, the individual measurements can be precise but is the average temperature meaningful? If you want to know if real estate prices are going up or down do you take the average of all the prices across different regions or do you look at the difference at each region?
You’re arguing that it’s hard to measure precisely, and I agree.
#56 friedfish: Again, you’re arguing that it’s hard to measure precisely, and I agree with that. On the other hand, the lowest recorded temperatures on Earth are in the neighborhood of -90°C, the highest in the neighborhood of +60°C. We can have very high confidence that the average temperature t is somewhere in -90°C ≤ t ≤ 60°C, if only by the mean value theorem. From there, it’s a matter of refining the error bar.
Similarly with greenhouse effects. A perfect blackbody Earth at equilibrium has an easily calculable temperature, and Earth’s temperature is a good bit over that, something like 33°C; this corresponds very closely to calculated greenhouse effect for all the various greenhouse gases: water vapor, CO2, CH4, and so on.m Planetary astronomers do similar calculations for other planets all the time, and get similarly precise correspondence. The issue with anthropogenic climate change is that the effects of an additional 40ppm of CO2 are very small, very nearly in the noise.
#57 CC: We’ve actually covered a good bit of this in PJM before. The missing step to convict is to show that the codes we got in the CG files are the actual codes used to generate the reported results, and that the corrections aren’t, in fact, appropriate. I agree hey look pretty hinky (technical term) but we don’ quiite have the whole chain of inference.
“Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said he ‘still’ smelled satanic sulfur after President Obama spoke at the Copenhagen climate conference Friday.”
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said he “still” smelled sulfur after President Obama made a keynote speech at the Copenhagen climate conference Friday, accusing the American president of carrying same satanic Chavez believes followed Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush.
Chavez, who was not included on the original list of speakers for the final day of the summit, ended the proceedings with bitter references to the Peace Prize-winning Obama as the “Nobel Prize of War.”
“The Nobel Prize of War just finished saying here that he is here to act. Well, show it sir. Don’t leave by the back door,” he said.
Three years after Chavez likened Bush to the devil during a speech at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, the socialist strongman tore into Obama, claiming Friday that “it still smells like sulfur in the world.”
Assembled world leaders cheered on Chavez Wednesday during his first, scheduled speech, a ringing attack on all things capitalist that earned him standing ovations from leaders of the Third World. ”
http://www.foxnews.com/world/unitednations/index.html
#63 Charlie Martin. I’m a trial lawyer and in my opinion a jury would have no trouble connecting the dots based on this record. Defendants with less smoking gun evidence against them than this are sitting in jail right now. Not even a close call.
Yes, charlie, obviously, we can compute an average of temperature data points, but that does not in and of itself make it a meaningful number. For instance if for one year all equitorial deserts become slightly cooler and the polar regions slightly warmer, but slightly less warm than the polar regions, and everything else stayed the same, is it meaningful to say the “earth has cooled”? Strictly peaking, and in an extremely limited sense, this is so, but what real information does it convey? An averaging of temperature like this does not give us “the temperature of the world” for in fact there is really no such thing in an absolute sense. You just have an avaerge on some scale of crude to refined (perhaps) on some arbitray set of time and data points.
Does it really represent the real physical state of “the world”, particularly a state or condition over time, and particularly as it relates to “climate”? Are we not just creating an artifact? (perhaps the very notion of “earth’s climate” in a macro sense is an artifact too,) Remember that here “global temperature” is not temperature per se, or not merely that, it is a key “theoretical” concept of so-called “climate science”, or at least a “key notion”. Some sort of baseline is implied.
So this averaging: In what sense is it meaningful? And what can we deduce from it, and over what interval is it meaningful?
Are we then to take a chunk of time and call this period a baseline? and “historical average”? This becomes less about “error bars” and more about legerdemain. There does not seem not be an “theory” about how to “be careful about errors” for our set collection/assignment is not being guided by much of anything but supposition, and certainly not by a scientific theory (as opposed perhaps to general notions about statistics). It would appear pretty arbitrary.
Obviously there would have to be another bracket of qualification of the data. Something like this: A signifacnt amount of shift in temperatures in a significant amount of places of controlled measurement, over a significant amount of time, would result in some measurement, over a significant period of time would give us a notion of global conidtion.
Famously, this is what the “climate scientists”, purported to do. The problem, of course, is the difficulty of doing this in any meaningful way. The problem is, obviously, because the requirement of “significant” puts forward other practical requirements that are in fact impossible to meet, most especially when one considers the issues of large scale historical time and its impact on records and meaningfully constant instrument conditions. Thus the resorts to statistics and deductions from the so-called “natural record”. The core of this fraud, and I do believe that it is fraud, is this. In the absence of a scientifically meaningful theory applicable to mechanism, instrumentation and measurement, a rather obscure set of deductions were made all round, often with tacit and unexamined assumptions, and then data was framed to meet, willy nilly, a strange menagerie of conclusions, assumptions and deduction that are just as willy nilly patched together as the data. The concepts are not clearly articulated in any meaningful scientific sense yet the conclusions are claimed to be scientifically valid. It was a sort of sympathetic magic.
So in this sense, the other poster has a point, which I do not think you have addressed: Is the concept of “global temperature” well defined in any scientific sense? I would say that so far as being a core concept of “climate science” it is not a concept that is well defined or understood.
I suggest that it is not, and it certainly cannot be conceptualized as, a simple averaging that only require attention to “error bars”.
(I would go so far as to say from the formal theoretical and empirical standpoints of the so-called “hard sciences: (e.g, physics) “climate science” s not science at all.)
“This is a cheap and intellectually dishonest tactic that has been going on for far too long with too great success and which should be relegated to the dustbin of legitimate argument by round condemnation and challenge every time it appears.”
Ayyyy-men, brother.
——————–
“(I would go so far as to say from the formal theoretical and empirical standpoints of the so-called “hard sciences: (e.g, physics) “climate science” s not science at all.)”
Precisely. They use the language of physics, but in reality they’re just (poor) statisticians- no more hard scientists than sociologists are. It is, in Feynman’s terms, cargo-cult science.
3. brad:
you haven’t heard Al Gore’s response to these malicious, stolen, hacked files. The voice of integrity and absolute honesty says….”
Thanks Brad! Coffee all over my keyboard again!
Charlie,
Many people, particularly liberals, simply do not understand how decimal points make a difference.
“The issue with anthropogenic climate change is that the effects of an additional 40ppm of CO2 are very small, very nearly in the noise.”
#65: Well, I understand it, including the point about precision. When I talk to people like Briggs, or Pielke Sr, they understand me. My understanding serves me well enough to follow the arguments, and even on occasion to contribute.
Perhaps you might want to look up the story about the Zen master serving tea to the professor.
#69 Tom: The question I’d like to see addressed specifically, that I don’t think I’ve ever seen addressed, is wether we can really distinguish an anthropogenic signal from the null hypothesis. It seems, especially with the data as adjusted being questionable, that we may not be able to.
# 62:
“#56 friedfish: Again, you’re arguing that it’s hard to measure precisely,…”
That is not the point I am making. Even if you can measure precisely the temperature at every point on Earth, the simple temperature average is likely to be irrelevant. Climate is an issue of water behavior and it appears that a more relevant measure needs to weigh in the local humidity in the averaging.
Studying different behaviors require different averaging and I see no coherent discussion on this matter.
“A perfect blackbody Earth at equilibrium has an easily calculable temperature, and Earth’s temperature is a good bit over that, something like 33°C;”
You have a misunderstanding of blackbody temperature of a planet. According to NASA,
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet
The Earth’s Black-body temperature is 254.3K or -19o Celcius. Average surface temperature = 288 K (15 C). Where does 33o C come from?
The overall emission of Earth (as seen from space satellites) corresponds roughly to blackbody at -19o C, assuming that the Sun’s radiation impacting Earth is equal to Earth’s emission as a blackbody (accounting for albedo). A reasonable assumption since
after 4 billion years the Earth has not boiled over. But the Earth is NOT at equilibrium and looking at the satellite data, the emission spectrum, although having a very rough outline of a black body, the Earth’s emission spectrum is essentially that of water.
Interestingly, Arhennius studied NOT the Earth’s IR emission but the IR component of moonlight which is just the reflection of the Sun off the Moon’s surface. The Sun’s surface emission is a much better match to a blackbody with some deviations due to helium and hydrogen.
#71: You have a misunderstanding of blackbody temperature of a planet.
You have a reading comprehension problem. Go back and take another shot.
Here’s my question:
how many other “scientists” are doing the same thing?
Not a day goes by without some study or survey or research program sounding the alarm about what we eat, drink, wear, breathe, read, watch, work at or play with. And in almost every case, the “answer” to the “problem” or “crisis” is the same. More money and more power to the state. Some of the money, of course, comes back as research grants to the oh-so-diligent researchers….
How many of these researchers are doing the same thing as the East Anglia climate crew: cooking the books and fiddling the data to “prove” a preselected agenda?
Never mind the jackboots- political hustlers in white coats are fast becoming the number one threat to liberty.
#73: How many other “scientists” are doing the same thing?
More than a few. Particularly in science disciplines generating the studies used to justify rapidly tightening controls over land use and access to water and other natural resources.
The fields of conservation biology and corridor ecology are particularly vulnerable to this sort of activity.
With climate change serving as the overarching “threat”, there are many policy processes that are wedded to the “necessity” of enacting tight controls over human activity in every sphere of life.
As an example, the climate legislation currently before the U.S. Congress (already passed by the House, pending before the Senate) contain language authorizing information systems for wildlife corridor programs. That will include the decision support systems necessary for establishing the continental-scale corridor-buffer systems that will be added to the Y2Y corridor. The Y2Y folks are also working on “adapting to climate change” and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently closed comment on their draft climate change strategy and action plan. These include the implementation of the continental-scale corridor-buffer programs.
Given the close relationships between the science disciplines involved, I’m sure that a good tracing of where the CRU emails lead would cross over into conservation biology, corridor ecology and other related disciplines in fairly short order.
No shortage of things to see, here!
#48 GCA
In this country we mint lots and lots of lawyers. I believe you will be an outstanding one. Keep up the good work and beware the many temptations that will beset you on all sides.
#72: Martin, all I can tell you for sure is that it’s not all of them. This sort of thing might happen to some extent in tenure struggles in computer science, but I’ve never seen anything like this otherwise; in the biomedical sciences, where I had my “real science” work, much less egregious misbehavior has led to firing and “resignations” and the ruin of careers. Both Pielkes, Pat Michaels, Horst von Storch have all commented how this seems just unthinkable from their experience.
On the other hand, read Gary Taubes Good Calories Bad Calories, where he examines a similar pattern in nutrition.
It’s common enough that social scientists have a word for it: “information cascades”. In this case, I think we have a particularly bad cascade, simply because anthropogenic climate change became politically convenient and financially profitable.
The problem now for most folks is, we now know many of the principle scientists providing baseline data for others to do research, corrupted, homogenized, &/or manipulated, the baseline data to fit a specific outcome. Computer models done by non-climate scientists don’t really bother me since many issues go to computer types for the data to be interpreted. What bothers me is that baseline data collected, is incomplete, limited to specific areas rather than entire nations, & has been adjusted based on unidentified formula’s. No one knows how they determined which temperature patterns to use & which were discarded &/or for what reason.
In addition, and just as important if not moreso, there are researchers & data compiled by them that have been suppressed. There are highly qualified scientists whose work would have provided important results enabling truthful results for us to base our actions on, which was discarded or suppressed deliberately. Such actions show a prejudice that is indefensible.
Today, the world’s developed nations are being asked (in the case of Chavez & Mugabe, et. al… demanded) to turn over huge portions of their economic well being, to known thugs. Now why is it we should turn over our wealth & economic future to guys who refuse to allow verification of wealth distribution? Why is it we should buy into this, when we now know the data is corrupt?
Whether the ‘hackers’ acted legally or not is no longer an issue. Few on the left questioned revelations about our military or intel agencies over the years, they just wanted blood for what they considered to be crimes.
Well, we want blood for what we consider to be crimes. Not just minor crimes, but crimes against the human population of the planet. These guys’ actions could end up causing all sorts of world upheaval.
I say, we now have to start over & we must have independent verification of any findings. Otherwise, it all looks like fake or false data designed to steal our ability to live like human beings & enable the undeveloped nations of the world to work w/ us & our capitalist system, so they too can have populations that can raise up their own standards of living!
I holding a PHD in Badmitten See some of my students below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ER_SECCeJrE
As a respected scientist in my field of wacking a birdie have determined that Global Warming (Climate Change) is a FARCE. So there the science is now settled.
Now go let you legislatures know they can stop worrying about it, and trying to come up with new taxes for it.
Charlie, Name dropping or asserting that you “understand something” is hardly a rebuttal, nor is some sophomoric quip about zen and tea.
You still not have addressed the points. You are in fact missing them, and appeals to the “impressions” you may have of “Briggs, or Pielke Sr” “understanding you” is clearly not a reasonable response. Nor can their work be called a meaning “scientific theory” in the sense that we mean such in the hard science. In fact they are part of the problem. The practice more speculation backed by statistics than science. You engage the fallacy of “Appeals to Authority” here: and teeter towards Scientism.
Btw, you really need to stop presenting yourself as some sort of serious professional and “connected” scientist. Your resume, as per linkein, is hardly impressive in this regard. You are merely a small-time, independent software contractor. There is a rather huffy, defensive tone to your reponses. It is as if you defend some sort of professional image you have of yourself that has little bearing in reality. It does no one a service, least of all you.
Please address points rationally and do not imagine that you speak from authority. You have none.
#79 hattip: The argument you’re making is that *everyone else* who does this climate stuff is somehow missing the fallacy you suggest underlies the idea of measuring approximate average temperature. Maybe so, but since the idea, and its sources of error, seem clear to me, I suspect instead your supposed fallacy is crackpottery. Like most crackpots, you’re immensely sure of your crackpottery and impervious to the simple observations that contradict your crackpot notion.
As to my resume, I managed to do the PhD work and spend six years doing science. There’s a limit to what you can put in a 25 word bio.
@80, Charlie, what we have to take on board and as difficult as this may seem, it is non the less fact that even Phd work is governed by what we are allowed to learn. Yes some of us have worked immensely hard over many years, but it is still fact that dogma has ruled our learning. The sooner we face the fact that we have been fooled completely by a superior intelligence the sooner our minds can open to the real equations. Facts are facts and whilst we argue day and night about average temperatures etc, we miss what is really occuring. THIS IS WHAT IS REALLY OCCURING:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPwGX3EnDWc
It seems pretty clear that climate science is very far from being “settled” and as Charlie Martin says, the job now (in respect of climate change) is to get some solid data and analyse it with the best statistical methods and in complete openness, with no particular agenda except that of answering the question: what effect, if any, do human activities have on the climate? (good story, Mr Martin) There also ought to be repercussions for those who knowingly propagated such bad science in the service of fear.
On a broader note though, it bothers me that, first, in the minds of many, the AGW debacle has wrongly undermined the _entire_ ecological movement, and second that even within the comments to this one story it has revived that old and tired left-vs-right (or north vs south) antagonism. While AGW is no longer a supportable argument for reducing our use of oil, for example, there are plenty of other relatively solid reasons for doing so. As for politics, the AGW fiasco is almost certainly not a plot by the ComIntern to paint the world red. (China was one of the big resisters, remember?). More likely it’s a few people looking for self-aggrandisement, research/book/speaking/investment funds, and to spur concerted action on their own personal (perhaps irrational) fears. Do not let the AGW affair degenerate into another blinkered and pointless round of us vs them epithet-slinging, like the health care brouhaha and the ‘war on terror’ while Rome figuratively burns around us _all_.