Climategate

[Stylerod]

Originally Posted by Schrödinger's Cat

You didn't actually quote the best part (shame on you):

"Jones was not in charge of the CRU when the data were thrown away in the 1980s, a time when climate change was seen as a less pressing issue. The lost material was used to build the databases that have been his life’s work, showing how the world has warmed by 0.8C over the past 157 years."

Getting rid of raw data is bad, but they (Jones et al.) cant hardly be blamed for the loss of it. I would've liked this article to be a bit less biased, but it is The Times. Of course, they fail to say that the official press releases also said "95% of the raw station data has been accessible through the Global Historical Climatology Network for several years". You don't see this article actually say what data was lost or its relevance; that part is extremely important. The article is also wrong when it says, "it means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years." It is as if they have never heard of comparative analysis, that there are other research teams that have independently reached a similar result.

It is too early to really comment further. We'll see how this story pans out.

Ok, so they "say" it was deleted in the 80's. How do we know? I mean, how long has it taken them to admit this little fopaux?

And how wonderful of them to tell us the world is coming to an end because of humans being here but still feel the need to hide 5% of the data. And of course, by 5% it could really mean 50%. Who would know and how could we ever find out?

[Schrödinger's Cat]

Originally Posted by JaJae

I believe in anthropogenic global warming. I believe the climate of this planet is on a warming cycle. I also believe we should act to prevent pollutants and attempt to manage our impact on this planet.

That is a stark contrast to what you were saying not too long ago. What changed your mind about AGW? You used to deny everything, including the fact that the planet was warming.

Why do you say "warming cycle"? In order for the Earth to start cooling again, we'd need one of the major drivers of climate change to decrease (solar irradiance or CO2). That is not even factoring in feedbacks. Do you have any evidence that such downward trend is likely over the long term?

I do not believe we need to destroy our economy to save the planet.

I am not aware of anyone who actually does.

[Schrödinger's Cat]

Originally Posted by Stylerod

Ok, so they "say" it was deleted in the 80's. How do we know?

If you are going to accept from that source that any data was "thrown out", then why are you just now so skeptical of them about when they said it happened?

"How do we know?" That is my point exactly. You are too eager to jump over this breaking news without even having all the facts yet. Let the facts come out and then we can see what has happened. It has yet to even been connected to anything to do with any lasted research at CRU. Most of the research done that is of any relevance to current science is in the 2000s, and that is constantly being revised and improved. Just hold your horses, buddy.

[JaJae]

Originally Posted by Stylerod

Ok, so they "say" it was deleted in the 80's. How do we know? I mean, how long has it taken them to admit this little fopaux?

And how wonderful of them to tell us the world is coming to an end because of humans being here but still feel the need to hide 5% of the data. And of course, by 5% it could really mean 50%. Who would know and how could we ever find out?

Schrodinger is confused or not informed of what took place at the CRU. Jones is claiming the data was deleted in the merge. However, there have been FOI requests for the data for some time. During this time he stalled and played games preventing the release. Thus, was a part of the cover-up regarding the deleted data. We have to take the CRU at their word as to when the data was destroyed.

Secondly, as Jones was having difficulty warding off the FOI request this past summer he deleted his public data directory. It was at this time people began to realize he was headed into damage control.

Keep in mind the entire purpose the CRU was founded was to maintain comprehensive data of surface temperatures on this planet. This is why they are such an important site for the global warming debate. Their entire number one purpose was to create and maintain raw data. Purging that data long long ago makes no sense. Saying it wasn't important back them is ignorant. That's what they were founded to do. Imagine if CERN deletes their raw data and then says sorry, atomic information wasn't important at the turn of the century... Bullshit. That's what they were founded to do. Collect data, not collect and destroy their raw data.

Also keep in mind if this data was deleted a long time ago, why has it been kept a secret until recently... especially with all the requests for the data?

This is also a relevant point in reference to recent Jones data purge...

Under U.K. Freedom of Information Act, once FOI requests have been made for information, public authorities are not permitted to "alter, deface, block, erase, destroy or conceal any record held by the public authority, with the intention of preventing the disclosure by that authority of all, or any part, of the information to the communication of which the applicant would have been entitled."

So in essence Jones violated the FOI Act by purging public data. Jones is not a man who cares about following or cooperating with FOI laws, as his e-mails from this hack show. The only thing we have to go by here is Jones's word regarding the data deletions. You can call me unconvinced regarding his integrity on data. Anyone who is defending his actions as director of the CRU after all of this has come to light clearly has an agenda that is not scientific...

As I've said from the start, the CRU has not been an ethical scientific organization, this data breach is going to hurt them because it exposes their mindset and their attitude towards providing the public with good data/science. And in light of all their pending issues it is going to hurt them. This data deletion is only the first issue that will come from this. In reality, the credibility of these "scientists" should be completely shot at this point. It's absolutely amazing that people continue to defend them. If they were involved in any other scientific field that hasn't been taken over by politics they would be out on their ass by now and the entire scientific community and public would want their heads. Yet people's biases are clearly coming into play here.

[HughRuss]

Originally Posted by JaJae

Also keep in mind if this data was deleted a long time ago, why has it been kept a secret until recently... especially with all the requests for the data?

I'd have to say that they were worried about the deniers jumping all over the deletion of said data as a cover up --much like they are now. Scientists have been fighting the corporate denial machine for 2 decades now, and such an oversight would cause further skepticism where there ought to not be any.

[Schrödinger's Cat]

Originally Posted by JaJae

Schrodinger is confused or not informed of what took place at the CRU.

That might well be the case, which is why I always ask you to back up your assertions with evidence.

[Stylerod]

Originally Posted by HughRuss

I'd have to say that they were worried about the deniers jumping all over the deletion of said data as a cover up --much like they are now. Scientists have been fighting the corporate denial machine for 2 decades now, and such an oversight would cause further skepticism where there ought to not be any.

Couldn't they have admitted the data was gone before Gore started talking about the world coming to an end ("Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb. We have just 10 years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tailspin." -Al Gore )? I mean, it's THOSE extreme claims that make people say "Prove it. Where are your sources?" Of course, to do that would mean you are a "denier" () and a nutcase. And it took someone stealing emails for them to finally admit to the truth? They WERE trying to hide something, and if they are willing to lie about that, what else are they willing to lie about? I mean lets face it. These guys are like rock stars now. They are getting all the fame, all the money. It's a good life for someone to scare people into thinking that man is ending the world. Why would they want to let people challenge that?

[Scrum]

Behold the Al Gore bottleneck!

Prove the Gore used a bad graph and suddenly thousands of scientists are involved in an anti-capitalist conspiracy!

[JaJae]

Originally Posted by Stylerod

I mean lets face it. These guys are like rock stars now. They are getting all the fame, all the money. It's a good life for someone to scare people into thinking that man is ending the world. Why would they want to let people challenge that?

That's exactly right. These so-called scientists have built their career around the idea that if we don't stop pumping so much CO2 into the atmosphere this planet is going to explode. They have sold the public on the idea that CO2 is the driving force behind climate on this planet that overshadows all else. Yet despite more CO2 getting pumped into the atmosphere as a result of India and China industrialization we are not seeing the forecasted results.

The solution is clearly simple... lie, destroy, and manipulate. That is what they have clearly done at CRU. If the planet is not following on the path they have laid out for us their would be no crisis. Without a crisis and you would find a lot of scientists without funding. Scientists without funding = working at McDonalds. Plain and simple. There would still be climatology, and there would still be research, but there would not be as many people working in this field.

I know someone currently working at CERN. Pays like shit, but it's a job and they take care of him while he's there. Once he's done at that job he has to hope to find funding or a position at another site. The other alternative is to hope he can find a job teaching. But even then he has to do research in his field.

The problem with climatology is that the global warming alarmism has artificially inflated the funding into this science. Once that's over, so will be the gravy train. If you read over some of these e-mails from the leak, a common theme is fear the CRU scientists have of counter-opinion from skeptics. Not even when they're fixing the data, but in general. They have prevented the release of certain data that they feel will be misconstrued, even when they were right! It just didn't show the alarmism to the level they wanted. They could clearly back up their premise, but they were so afraid that the skeptics would hurt their reputation and thus hurt their field.

The theme of most of these e-mails shows that CRU was working the data/evidence around the debate and not around the science. And if needbe they intentionally manipulated the evidence to promote their political agenda whether it be through the use of carefully selected data points or altered data rules to create hockey stick graphs. The only reason to do this is to keep funding by promoting the alarmism.

[HughRuss]

Originally Posted by Stylerod

Couldn't they have admitted the data was gone before Gore started talking about the world coming to an end ("Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb. We have just 10 years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tailspin." -Al Gore )?

Al Gore != CRU != Al Gore != CRU

Originally Posted by Stylerod

I mean, it's THOSE extreme claims that make people say "Prove it. Where are your sources?" Of course, to do that would mean you are a "denier" () and a nutcase.

Quit making a strawman of the argument. The scientists making claims in regards to AGW provide evidence. For somebody to deny that evidence without anything to support their suppositions besides political ideology ARE nutcases.

[JaJae]

Originally Posted by HughRuss

Quit making a strawman of the argument. The scientists making claims in regards to AGW provide evidence. For somebody to deny that evidence without anything to support their suppositions besides political ideology ARE nutcases.

REALLY???

Warming will 'wipe out billions'

Published Date: 29 November 2009
By Jenny Fyall
MOST of the world's population will be wiped out if political leaders fail to agree a method of stopping current rates of global warming, one of the UK's most senior climate scientists has warned.

• Experts fear billions could die as result of climate change. Picture: Getty Images

Professor Kevin Anderson, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change, believes only around 10 per cent of the planet's population – around half a billion people – will survive if global temperatures rise by 4C.

Anderson's warning comes just eight days before global leaders meet in Copenhagen for the most crucial talks on climate change reversal since the Rio summit in 1992. Current Met Office projections reveal that the lack of action in the intervening 17 years – in which emissions of climate changing gases such as carbon dioxide have soared – has set the world on a path towards potential 4C rises as early as 2060, and 6C rises by the end of the century.

Anderson, who advises the government on climate change, said the consequences were "terrifying".

"For humanity it's a matter of life or death," he said. "We will not make all human beings extinct as a few people with the right sort of resources may put themselves in the right parts of the world and survive.

"But I think it's extremely unlikely that we wouldn't have mass death at 4C. If you have got a population of nine billion by 2050 and you hit 4C, 5C or 6C, you might have half a billion people surviving."

Efforts at the Copenhagen summit, which starts on 7 December, will focus on action to instead keep temperature rises to no more than 2C – generally accepted as the threshold for dangerous climate change. However, with growing pessimism that a binding agreement on emissions reduction targets will be reached, Anderson warned time was running out.

If ambitious global targets for reductions have not been set by the end of next year, he believes it will be too late to stop emissions rising beyond 2C.

Last week, Britain and France urged the wealthiest nations to set aside $10 billion annually over the next three years to help poorer countries reduce the output of greenhouse gases.

Scotland has set a 42 per cent emissions reduction target for 2020 but Anderson pointed out that even if this was achieved by rich nations throughout the world, it would only give a 60 per cent chance of avoiding a 2C global temperature increase.

Despite pessimism over the past few weeks he was optimistic a legal agreement can still be reached at Copenhagen. He believes leaders are deliberately trying to lower expectations to increase the impact of any success at the summit.

"The worst possible result at Copenhagen is a bad deal where the world leaders have to come home and say it's a good deal when its rubbish," he added.

"That's the real danger – that they will feel under pressure to sign up to anything. That could lock us into something bad for the next ten years."

Stewart Stevenson, Scotland's climate change minister, who will also be attending the summit, said: "Even quite moderate predictions do suggest that we will have vast movements of people around the world particularly on the borders of desert regions and that associated with that will be loss of life."
Warming will 'wipe out billions' - Scotsman.com News

The centre, named after the 19th century UK scientist John Tyndall (b. Ireland) and founded in 2000, has six core partners: the University of East Anglia, University of Manchester, University of Southampton, University of Oxford, University of Newcastle, and the University of Sussex. Funding is provided by the Natural Environment Research Council, the Economic and Social Research Council, and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

Explain how that is based on sound science or is this just more typical bullshit political alarmism? He believes 8.5 billion people could die within the next 40 years if legislation isn't passed in Copenhagen.

Side note: the CRU is a partner of his organization. His name is involved in some of the e-mails that were leaked. This is a mainstream scientist. You guys are kidding yourselves if you think these people are any better than the skeptics or the people paid off by oil companies.

[JaJae]

Here is another good summary.

For anyone who doubts the power of the Internet to shine light on darkness, the news of the month is how digital technology helped uncover a secretive group of scientists who suppressed data, froze others out of the debate, and flouted freedom-of-information laws. Their behavior was brought to light when more than 1,000 emails,and some 3,500 additional files were published online, many of which boasted about how they suppressed hard questions about their data.

The emails, released by an apparent whistle-blower who used the name "FOI," were written by scientists at the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in England. Its scientists are high-profile campaigners for the theory of global warming.

The findings from East Anglia have been at the core of policy reports by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC does not do its own research but compiles information relating to climate change. It has declared the evidence that the globe is warming to be "unequivocal," a claim routinely cited by lawmakers in the U.S. and elsewhere as authoritative.

The IPCC stresses honest science. According to its Web site, its goal is to "assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation."

The panel, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore, now faces the inconvenient truth that it relied on scientists who violated scientific process. In one email, the Climate Research Unit's director, Phil Jones, wrote Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University, promising to spike studies that cast doubt on the relationship between human activity and global warming. "I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report," he said. He pledged to "keep them out somehow—even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"

In another email exhange, Mr. Mann wrote to Mr. Jones: "This was the danger of always criticizing 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."

Other emails include one in which Keith Briffa of the Climate Research Unit told Mr. Mann that "I tried hard to balance the needs of the science and the IPCC, which were not always the same," and in which Mr. Jones said he had employed Mr. Mann's "trick" to "hide the decline" in temperatures. A May 2008 email from Mr. Jones with the subject line "IPCC & FOI" asked recipients to "delete any emails you may have had" about data submitted for an IPCC report. The British Freedom of Information Act makes it a crime to delete material subject to an FOI request; such a request had been made earlier that month.

Over the weekend, East Anglia officials disclosed they had disposed years ago of the historic weather data underlying their analysis. This may be one reason they've fought information requests. They say they'll release the data they still have some time next year.

The emails showed how the global-warming group stifled dissent. They controlled the peer-review process, keeping opposing views unpublished, then cited "peer review" as evidence of their "consensus." One of the dissident scientists, Roger Pielke of the University of Colorado, wrote on his blog that the emails show the "collusion to suppress other scientifically supported views of the climate system, and the human role within it, is a systemic problem with the climate assessment process."

These disclosures have led to some soul-searching. "Opaqueness and secrecy are the enemies of science," wrote George Monbriot, a leading British environmentalist. "There is a word for the apparent repeated attempts to prevent disclosure revealed in these emails: unscientific." Demetris Koutsoyiannis, a hydraulic engineer who has written on climate change, wrote that scientists who suppressed others "must have felt that this secrecy was their best weapon: to censor differing opinions, to develop 'trick' procedures, to 'balance' the needs of the IPCC, and even to 'redefine' peer review."

This unseemly business reveals another flaw. Why are scholars who review papers allowed to remain anonymous? Reforming scientists and lawmakers might put the question more concretely: How many of the anonymous reviewers who spiked skeptical scientific papers over the years are the people who wrote these emails detailing how they abused peer review to block contrary evidence?

Science was one of the first disciplines to insist on transparency in order to foster competition in data and ideas. In the case of global warming, transparency is better late than never, as policy makers now have the chance to review the facts. Facing up to high-profile flaws is hard for any profession, but honest scientists will cheer how in our digital era eventually the truth will out, and will accept that no scientific hypothesis can be viewed as sacred or can be proved in secret.

Gordon Crovitz: The Web Discloses Inconvenient Climate Truths - WSJ.com

[HughRuss]

Originally Posted by JaJae

REALLY???

Yes, really. I'm waiting for a denier to not misquote, misuse, or completely neglect scientific data.

Originally Posted by JaJae

Explain how that is based on sound science or is this just more typical bullshit political alarmism? He believes 8.5 billion people could die within the next 40 years if legislation isn't passed in Copenhagen.

Well, first, it's in the next 50 years, but no matter. Either A: He is basing what he is saying off of models projecting such increases in temperatures --in fact, the only thing you should be disputing here is whether that model's predictions are viable, not whether or not a 5C increase in temperature would not drastically alter the climate so much that it would indeed cause massive extinctions in ALL species; or B: He is flying off the handle.

Originally Posted by JaJae

Side note: the CRU is a partner of his organization. His name is involved in some of the e-mails that were leaked. This is a mainstream scientist. You guys are kidding yourselves if you think these people are any better than the skeptics or the people paid off by oil companies.

And you're kidding yourself if you think these scientists are only interested in maintaining funding for their research. You're kidding yourself even more if you think only alarmism gets funding.

[thatguyoverthere]

I suspect few will believe this, but I want to say, sincerely, from the very bottom of my heart, that this has been (and continues to be), my all-time favorite thread ever in history. Not just on this forum, but in my whole time anywhere on the internet. Absolutely no joke.

If Christmas this year makes me feel 1/10th as good as this thread has, it might just be the best Christmas ever. In other words, this thread is like Christmas Day X 10. This thread has lifted a troublesome burden from my soul and put a spring in my step. It's like seeing through new eyes. I feel reborn and I've felt that way all day. It is truly remarkable.

For me, it's been an incredible journey of many long months discussing and researching this topic, and for all the frustration, in the end I'm immensely grateful for having had gone on it. It's taught me a great deal about critical thinking and logic. I think I'm a better person overall for having experienced it. I wish I could give everyone who has posted on this thread a great big hug.

If it hadn't been for the hackers, this thread would never have existed, so in one way I'm actually thankful that they did did their low down dirty thievery, violating peoples right to privacy the way they did. Good job, crooks! Secondly, who would have ever thought that the final nail in the deniers coffin (IMHO) would come from their own actions? It almost gives me chills when I think how poetic life can sometimes be, as if it were actually modeling itself after great art. Maybe there really is a God. If so, He sure does work in mysterious ways!

To me, "Climategate" has resolutely revealed how thin the deniers' case really is, from top to bottom. It's astounding. First, they steal a bunch of data. When you have to steal stuff to make your case, your case is pretty damn weak. So, that's a bad start right there. The hackers then released less than half of what they hacked. That's an indicator that they likely cherry-picked favorable info. And then, when you think about it, 60 megabytes is still a lot in documents. But after all this publicity, all this time, all this mad fervor and hype, somehow we still get the same few pages of years old dodgy email about how to make a graph. You'd think if there was more there, there would be... well, a little more there. Methinks that the largest amounts of data doesn't favor the deniers nearly as well as the parts getting the most publicity. Methinks that the bad email we've seen is the very worst of it, and if THAT'S the worst they could get, if THAT'S the best that the climate deniers can do to support their argument, it's all a laugh. They have virtually nothing. That's why I think it's the final nail in the deniers' coffin.

Some of those emails look bad, sure. But, research is like a rope, not a chain. You break one chain link and the whole thing breaks, but if you break a few strands of rope the rest of the rope still holds. And from what I gather, there has yet been no evidence presented that any scientists falsified data.

It's looking like Climategate is a tempest in a teapot that will only matter to those who haven't been following closely, aren't too smart to begin with, or are already politically opposed to any climate change legislation. I don't think it will have much effect upon scientists or lawmakers at this time. I personally think there will be a global warming tipping point in the relatively near future where people are forced to deal with it much faster than expected, and it probably won't be pretty.

Anyway, what do I care? At the moment the world is perfectly fine with me, all is all right, and there is love all around! I haven't been in this good a mood in a long time. I think I actually might be elated.

Did I mention how much I love this thread and everyone in it? If I haven't, please make a note of it!

[HughRuss]

Originally Posted by thatguyoverthere

I suspect few will believe this, but I want to say, sincerely, from the very bottom of my heart, that this has been (and continues to be), my all-time favorite thread ever in history. Not just on this forum, but in my whole time anywhere on the internet. Absolutely no joke.

You're welcome.

[thatguyoverthere]

Originally Posted by HughRuss

You're welcome.

Well, I would have named name, but I didn't want to embarrass you.

Let's just say, everyone on the thread gets a hug, but some people will get slightly longer hugs than others. You all know who you are.

A word of warning: While I hug you, a few might feel a little global warming somewhere down south of their equator. Because of my carbon emissions. If you do, I would suggest just relaxing and enjoying it, 'cause there aint no law against it yet!

[HughRuss]

Originally Posted by thatguyoverthere

A word of warning: While I hug you, a few might feel a little global warming somewhere down south of their equator. Because of my carbon emissions. If you do, I would suggest just relaxing and enjoying it, 'cause there aint no law against it yet!

Are you hugging people backwards? Because there are several laws against that, most commonly in the red states.

[Schrödinger's Cat]

In regards to the incredibly shoddy story in the Times Online about the CRU getting rid of some raw data in the 1980s...

Please read the entire article.

Climate: Scientists return fire at skeptics in 'destroyed data' dispute -- 10/14/2009 -- www.eenews.net
(Greenwire, 10/14/2009)
Robin Bravender, E&E reporter

Climate scientists are refuting claims that raw data used in critical climate change reports has been destroyed, rendering the reports and policies based on those reports unreliable.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market advocacy group, is arguing that U.S. EPA's climate policies rely on raw data that have been destroyed and are therefore unreliable. The nonprofit group -- a staunch critic of U.S. EPA's efforts to regulate greenhouse gases -- petitioned the agency last week to reopen the public comment period on its proposed "endangerment finding" because the data set had been lost (E&ENews PM, Oct. 9).

But climate scientists familiar with the data insist that the reports are based on sound science and that the data in question was altered as part of standard operating procedure to ensure consistency across reporting stations.

At issue is raw data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, including surface temperature averages from weather stations around the world. The data was used in assessments by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, reports that EPA has used in turn to formulate its climate policies.

Citing a statement on the research unit's Web site, CEI blasted the research unit for the "suspicious destruction of its original data." According to CRU's Web site, "Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites, only the station series after adjustment for homogeneity issues. We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (i.e. quality controlled and homogenized) data."*

Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit, said that the vast majority of the station data was not altered at all, and the small amount that was changed was adjusted for consistency.

The research unit has deleted less than 5 percent of its original station data from its database because the stations had several discontinuities or were affected by urbanization trends, Jones said.

"When you're looking at climate data, you don't want stations that are showing urban warming trends," Jones said, "so we've taken them out." Most of the stations for which data was removed are located in areas where there were already dense monitoring networks, he added. "We rarely removed a station in a data-sparse region of the world."

Refuting CEI's claims of data-destruction, Jones said, "We haven't destroyed anything. The data is still there -- you can still get these stations from the [NOAA] National Climatic Data Center."*

Tom Karl, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., noted that the conclusions of the IPCC reports are based on several data sets in addition to the CRU, including data from NOAA, NASA and the United Kingdom Met Office. Each of those data sets basically show identical multi-decadal trends, Karl said.

Still, CEI's general counsel Sam Kazman remains skeptical of the IPCC's conclusions. The fact that the report relies on several data sets "doesn't really answer the issue," he said.

CEI and Cato Institute senior fellow Patrick Michaels argued that the "destruction of [CRU's] raw data violates basic scientific norms regarding reproducibility, which are especially important in climatology."

Ben Santer, a climate scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, dismissed that argument. "Raw data were not secretly destroyed to avoid efforts by other scientists to replicate the CRU and Hadley Centre-based estimates of global-scale changes in near-surface temperature," he wrote in comments to the advocacy group Climate Science Watch.

Santer said CRU's major findings were replicated by other groups, including the NOAA climatic data center, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and also in Russia.

* - It should be noted that the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Norwich collates a lot of data from many sources, but they aren't the originators of that data. If they delete any data in its raw form from their database, that doesn't mean it no longer exists.

[JaJae]

Originally Posted by HughRuss

Well, first, it's in the next 50 years, but no matter. Either A: He is basing what he is saying off of models projecting such increases in temperatures --in fact, the only thing you should be disputing here is whether that model's predictions are viable, not whether or not a 5C increase in temperature would not drastically alter the climate so much that it would indeed cause massive extinctions in ALL species; or B: He is flying off the handle.

Can you point to one model that has been accurate? The funny thing about models is that scientists don't know how all the variables correlate with the climate or whether or not they even have all the variables. So what happens is the models end up coming out like the assumptions of those who program them because they have to constantly be tweaked for accuracy. Nobody knows what accurate is because nobody has the omniscience to correctly predict future climate.

And you're kidding yourself if you think these scientists are only interested in maintaining funding for their research. You're kidding yourself even more if you think only alarmism gets funding.

I didn't say it was all they're interested in, but it sure is motivation to keep them biased. And yes, not only alarmism gets funding, but it is very difficult to get funding if your study is directed to honestly challenge global warming hypothesis. And grad students and even scientists are pressured to provide the data that their superiors want to see. This is clearly evident in the released e-mails and through first hand accounts of climate scientists.

[JaJae]

Originally Posted by thatguyoverthere

I suspect few will believe this, but I want to say, sincerely, from the very bottom of my heart, that this has been (and continues to be), my all-time favorite thread ever in history. Not just on this forum, but in my whole time anywhere on the internet. Absolutely no joke.

This is honestly as much as I've read and have to say I agree. Imagine if the situation were reversed, that climate research was constantly understated by scientists, our media and our politicians. Let's also imagine that you held your same views on the progress and risks of global warming. When a major research facility was hacked showing their unethical behavior, manipulated evidence and corrupt scientific practices how would you respond if I started citing Exxon fucking Mobile press releases to challenge your views? You would probably assume I was borderline retarded. Not the least of the fact that it's off topic, ignorant and pointless to the discussion. The entire premise of the argument is flawed and quite frankly, dumb.

You are not making valid arguments in this thread. Your constant insistence on debating the issue in this manner shows just how juvenile your views on the subject are. The only desire I have to discuss Exxon Mobile press releases on global warming (regardless of which way they support as there have been both) is to mock and laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation. And if you want to use them to champion your perspective, well all the more power to you. It'll be a great conversation of one because I don't think you'll find a sane person on the internet willing to argue such an ignorant and pathetic point.