Climategate

[JaJae]

Even the NY Times is getting in on the action...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/sc...gewanted=print

E-Mail Fracas Shows Peril of Trying to Spin Science

By JOHN TIERNEY
If you have not delved into the thousands of e-mail messages and files hacked from the computers of British climate scientists, let me give you the closest thing to an executive summary. It is taken from a file slugged HARRY_READ_ME, which is the log of a computer expert’s long struggle to make sense of a database of historical temperatures. Here is Harry’s summary of the situation:

Aarrggghhh!

That cry, in various spellings, is a motif throughout the log as Harry tries to fight off despair. “OH [EXPLETIVE] THIS!” he writes after struggling to reconcile readings from weather stations around the world. “It’s Sunday evening, I’ve worked all weekend, and just when I thought it was done I’m hitting yet another problem that’s based on the hopeless state of our databases. There is no uniform data integrity. ...”

Harry, whoever he may be, comes off as the most sympathetic figure in the pilfered computer annals of East Anglia University, the British keeper of global temperature records. While Harry’s log shows him worrying about the integrity of the database, the climate scientists are e-mailing one another with strategies for blocking outsiders’ legal requests to see their data.

While Harry is puzzling over temperatures — “I have that familiar Twilight Zone sensation” — the scientists are confidently making proclamations to journalists, jetting to conferences and plotting revenge against those who question the dangers of global warming. When a journal publishes a skeptic’s paper, the scientists e-mail one another to ignore it. They focus instead on retaliation against the journal and the editor, a project that is breezily added to the agenda of their next meeting: “Another thing to discuss in Nice!”

As the scientists denigrate their critics in the e-mail messages, they seem oblivious to one of the greatest dangers in the climate-change debate: smug groupthink. These researchers, some of the most prominent climate experts in Britain and America, seem so focused on winning the public-relations war that they exaggerate their certitude — and ultimately undermine their own cause.

Consider, for instance, the phrase that has been turned into a music video by gleeful climate skeptics: “hide the decline,” used in an e-mail message by Phil Jones, the head of the university’s Climatic Research Unit. He was discussing the preparation of a graph for the cover of a 1999 report from the World Meteorological Organization showing that temperatures in the past several decades were the highest of the past millennium.

Most of the graph was based on analyses of tree rings and other “proxy” records like ice cores and lake sediments. These indirect measurements indicated that temperatures declined in the middle of the millennium and then rose in the first half of the 20th century, which jibes with other records. But the tree-ring analyses don’t reveal a sharp warming in the late 20th century — in fact, they show a decline in temperatures, contradicting what has been directly measured with thermometers.

Because they considered that recent decline to be spurious, Dr. Jones and his colleagues removed it from part of the graph and used direct thermometer readings instead. In a statement last week, Dr. Jones said there was nothing nefarious in what they had done, because the problems with the tree-ring data had been openly identified earlier and were known to experts.

But the graph adorned the cover of a report intended for policy makers and journalists. The nonexperts wouldn’t have realized that the scariest part of that graph — the recent temperatures soaring far above anything in the previous millennium — was based on a completely different measurement from the earlier portion. It looked like one smooth, continuous line leading straight upward to certain doom.

The story behind that graph certainly didn’t show that global warming was a hoax or a fraud, as some skeptics proclaimed, but it did illustrate another of their arguments: that the evidence for global warming is not as unequivocal as many scientists claim. (Go to nytimes.com/tierneylab for details.)

In fact, one skeptic raised this very issue about tree-ring data in a comment posted in 2004 on RealClimate, the blog operated by climate scientists. The comment, which questioned the propriety of “grafting the thermometer record onto a proxy temperature record,” immediately drew a sharp retort on the blog from Michael Mann, an expert at Penn State University:

“No researchers in this field have ever, to our knowledge, ‘grafted the thermometer record onto’ any reconstruction. It is somewhat disappointing to find this specious claim (which we usually find originating from industry-funded climate disinformation Web sites) appearing in this forum.”

Dr. Mann now tells me that he was unaware, when he wrote the response, that such grafting had in fact been done in the earlier cover chart, and I take him at his word. But I don’t see why the question was dismissed so readily, with the implication that only a tool of the fossil-fuel industry would raise it.
Mann was part of the tree ring research and was the scientist who assisted to hide the decline on that graph. He knew the real data and he knew what was being done to the graph. He's a liar and the author here is too kind to Mann.

Contempt for critics is evident over and over again in the hacked e-mail messages, as if the scientists were a priesthood protecting the temple from barbarians. Yes, some of the skeptics have political agendas, but so do some of the scientists. Sure, the skeptics can be cranks and pests, but they have identified genuine problems in the historical reconstructions of climate, as in the debate they inspired about the “hockey stick” graph of temperatures over the past millennium.
The hockey stick graph was also a creation of Mann... are we noticing a pattern here? This author is very kind to not point that out.

It is not unreasonable to give outsiders a look at the historical readings and the adjustments made by experts like Harry. How exactly were the readings converted into what the English scientists describe as “quality controlled and homogenised” data?

Trying to prevent skeptics from seeing the raw data was always a questionable strategy, scientifically. Now it looks like dubious public relations, too.

In response to the furor over the climate e-mail messages, there will be more attention than ever paid to those British temperature records, and any inconsistencies or gaps will seem more suspicious simply because the researchers were so determined not to reveal them. Skeptical bloggers are already dissecting Harry’s work. As they relentlessly pore over other data, the British scientists will feel Harry’s pain:

Aarrggghhh! There truly is no end in sight.

[kinggovernor]

Originally Posted by JaJae

Even the NY Times is getting in on the action...

wow they came out earlier and said they didn't think the story was fit for print

[Swift]

Originally Posted by HughRuss

This example is not analogous to the current debate, and you're clownish attempts to link it as such are annoying.

But your justification of people driving 7mpg cars is a justification for getting rid of raw data?

[HughRuss]

Originally Posted by Swift

But your justification of people driving 7mpg cars is a justification for getting rid of raw data?

You've mistaken explanation with justification.

[Swift]

Originally Posted by HughRuss

You've mistaken explanation with justification.

So what's your justification?

[HughRuss]

Originally Posted by Swift

So what's your justification?

I'm not going to justify their actions, it isn't my job.

[JaJae]

As a result of "Climategate" Al Gore has bailed on his Copenhagen, despite having sold thousands of tickets where people would have been granted a photo op.

Former Vice President Al Gore on Thursday abruptly canceled a Dec. 16 personal appearance that was to be staged during the United Nations' Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, which begins next week.

As described in The Washington Times' Inside the Beltway column Tuesday, the multimedia public event to promote Mr. Gore's new book, "Our Choice," included $1,209 VIP tickets that granted the holder a photo opportunity with Mr. Gore and a "light snack."

Berlingkse Media, a Danish group coordinating ticket sales and publicity for the event, said that "great annoyance" was a factor in the cancellation, along with unforeseen changes in Mr. Gore's program for the climate summit. The decision affected 3,000 ticket holders.

"We have had a clear-cut agreement, and it is unusual with great disappointment that we have to announce that Al Gore cancels. We had a huge expectation for the event. . . . We do not yet know the detailed reasons for the cancellation," said Lisbeth Knudsen, CEO of Berlingske Media, in a statement posted by the company.

No explanation has been given other than that "great annoyance." Once again Gore runs from possible critics and tough questions. No prophet for you in Copenhagen... The great savior is running from the conference with his tail between his legs.

[Swift]

Originally Posted by HughRuss

I'm not going to justify their actions, it isn't my job.

Ok. So why are the explanations?

Originally Posted by HughRuss

The data in question was deleted before AGW was considered a serious threat. Before there was any green revolution. Back in the '80s when you can drive a 7 mpg car, and be considered the guy with the biggest penis.

You're acting as if they deleted the data to cover something up, as if they are interested only in one thing and that's deceiving the public.

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.

but whatever.

[Salty Dog]

Conservatives can't wrap their heads around "climate change" because:

1. Al Gore is a pompus ass and unfortunately, is its leading speaker. (I'm with you there) ie..any Liberal blowheart who endorses it subsequently creates 3 conservatives who oppose it.
2. The Republican Party doesn't endorse it because it strangles the very sector they receive most of their endorsements and donations from.
3. It isn't in the Bible as said told.
4. Prefer the argument that it's a natural process because it's the answer with the least amount of strings attached.

I lost my faith in the Republican "view" of the environment when Bush 43 hired former NJ Gov. Christie Whitman as head of the EPA in 2001. She not only managed to completely fuck up her job while in office under him, but this is the same lady who actually allowed New York to dump its chemical and medical waste within 50 miles off New Jersey coastlines.


My take on "climate change" has always been the same. Open a science book and read for yourself. It is possible because of human emissions, pollution etc and over population. And there's one thing we naive race of beings are good at, destroying the shit out of the environment.


Fuck you Al Gore.

[thatguyoverthere]

Originally Posted by Salty Dog

Conservatives can't wrap their heads around "climate change" because:

1. Al Gore is a pompus ass and unfortunately, is its leading speaker. (I'm with you there) ie..any Liberal blowheart who endorses it subsequently creates 3 conservatives who oppose it.
2. The Republican Party doesn't endorse it because it strangles the very sector they receive most of their endorsements and donations from.
3. It isn't in the Bible as said told.
4. Prefer the argument that it's a natural process because it's the answer with the least amount of strings attached.

Very well said, good post. It has the bonus benefit of being true as well.

The Al Gore "bottleneck" mentioned earlier is likely the primary reason deniers believe what they believe above all else. If Al Gore says it's so, the deniers must deny it. If Al Gore can be proven wrong, it proves global warming wrong.

It always amuses me that the ones who complain the most about the politicization of climate science are completely and utterly unable to separate Al Gore from the discussion. I'm willing to say that if anyone looks through the volumes of global warming threads on this forum, the ones who bring up Al Gore first and most often while trying to make a point about climate change are the deniers.

Anyone doubt that's true? Just look at the search tags on this very thread! Al Gore was a part of framing this particular discussion from the very beginning even though "Climategate" has nothing at all to do with him.

[Schrödinger's Cat]

Originally Posted by thatguyoverthere

It always amuses me that the ones who complain the most about the politicization of climate science are completely and utterly unable to separate Al Gore from the discussion. I'm willing to say that if anyone looks through the volumes of global warming threads on this forum, the ones who bring up Al Gore first and most often while trying to make a point about climate change are the deniers.

It is a lot easier to paint global warming as a "liberal hoax" than it is educate oneself on the science. They can't argue based on the science because they don't even have introductory-level knowledge of the subject matter.

YouTube - 6. Climate Change -- Those hacked...

[Stylerod]

Originally Posted by Schrödinger's Cat

It is a lot easier to paint global warming as a "liberal hoax" than it is educate oneself on the science. They can't argue based on the science because they don't even have introductory-level knowledge of the subject matter.

Al Gore, and others, crying "The sky is falling" is a turn off when their goal is to control all industry in the world. And it takes years to find out of the science is correct or incorrect. Him using Hurricane Katrina as a scare tactic to make his point has gone nowhere now that we have had two seasons with almost no hurricane activity. Now scientists have found that:

"The melting and freezing of moisture on top of Kilimanjaro appears to be part of “a natural process of dry and wet periods.” The present melting is not the result of “environmental damage caused by man.”

Half-precessional dynamics of monsoon rainfall near the East African Equator : Abstract : Nature

You guys take everything every "global warming scientist" says as truth (almost like a religion) yet time after time we find out after more studies are completed that they were wrong. Or, with the emails, that they are willing to hide, destroy and change data to make their points.

You make your pompous posts about people not understanding science yet the scientists that are trying to scare everyone seem to make a LOT of mistakes.

[HughRuss]

Originally Posted by Stylerod

Al Gore, and others, crying "The sky is falling" is a turn off when their goal is to control all industry in the world. And it takes years to find out of the science is correct or incorrect. Him using Hurricane Katrina as a scare tactic to make his point has gone nowhere now that we have had two seasons with almost no hurricane activity. Now scientists have found that:
Half-precessional dynamics of monsoon rainfall near the East African Equator : Abstract : Nature

You guys take everything every "global warming scientist" says as truth (almost like a religion) yet time after time we find out after more studies are completed that they were wrong. Or, with the emails, that they are willing to hide, destroy and change data to make their points.

And you take every right wing talking point as gospel. The link you quoted does not say that at all. After searching for a while and finding the same 2 paragraphs on each website, I tracked down the writeup from the right-wing deniers.

Pajamas Media Dutch: Gore Wrong on Snows of Kilimanjaro

The most important part of your quote "The present melting is not the result of “environmental damage caused by man.”" Is covered in the very first paragraph of the PUBLISHED study.

The melting snow cap of Mount Kilimanjaro has its existence not only due to cold, but mainly to the large amount of rain that fell at the beginning of the Holocene, about 11,000 years ago. Regular melting of the ice cap on the highest mountain in Africa shows part of a natural process of dry and wet periods, and not just the result of environmental degradation that man inflicts.

NWO - Kilimanjaro dankt sneeuwmuts aan natte periode 11.000 jaar geleden

Translated from the Dutch. Evidently, the person who wrote the article which you are quoting (not the link you provided) doesn't know how to read Dutch, or his translator is broken, or he is distorting for some nefarious purpose. At any rate, Climatologists do not at all deny that Climate Change --whether it be warming or cooling-- is natural, in fact, it clearly IS natural, as has been published in every single climatologist piece of research. The claim is that man's additions to the climate, especially in GHGs, is altering the climate to cause warming enough to melt the icepack on Mt Kilimanjaro.

Really changes the tenor once you understand what climatologists actually say about the environment, huh?

[Forthgoing]

I believe Global Cooling and Warming are caused by natural Earth and Sun cycles and not by mankind.

[HughRuss]

Originally Posted by Forthgoing

I believe Global Cooling and Warming are caused by natural Earth and Sun cycles and not by mankind.

Thank you for your opinion, but your beliefs have been shown false, and scientific data, not liberal bias, has shown an empirical connection between Greenhouse Gases and the warming of the environment. Further, empirical data has shown that anthropogenic development has added large amounts of GHGs to the atmosphere, most notably CO2 and CH4 (although there are several others, including particulate matter and NOx), that are not completely being naturally fixed out of the atmosphere.

[Salty Dog]

Originally Posted by Forthgoing

I believe Global Cooling and Warming are caused by natural Earth and Sun cycles and not by mankind.

I'm sure the Pacific Garbage Patch is just shit flossed from the teeth of sharks and mermain too.

[Forthgoing]

Originally Posted by HughRuss

Thank you for your opinion, but your beliefs have been shown false, and scientific data, not liberal bias, has shown an empirical connection between Greenhouse Gases and the warming of the environment. Further, empirical data has shown that anthropogenic development has added large amounts of GHGs to the atmosphere, most notably CO2 and CH4 (although there are several others, including particulate matter and NOx), that are not completely being naturally fixed out of the atmosphere.

And thank you for your opinions, but it has been shown that the data and beliefs of the Climategate scientists, Gore and his followers are false.


http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/...bal_warmi.html

American Thinker: Global Warming? Bring it On!

[JaJae]

NASA could be up next...

The fight over global warming science is about to cross the Atlantic with a U.S. researcher poised to sue NASA, demanding release of the same kind of climate data that has landed a leading British center in hot water over charges it skewed its data.

Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said NASA has refused for two years to provide information under the Freedom of Information Act that would show how the agency has shaped its climate data and would explain why the agency has repeatedly had to correct its data going as far back as the 1930s.

"I assume that what is there is highly damaging," Mr. Horner said. "These guys are quite clearly bound and determined not to reveal their internal discussions about this."

The numbers matter. Under pressure in 2007, NASA recalculated its data and found that 1934, not 1998, was the hottest year in its records for the contiguous 48 states. NASA later changed that data again, and now 1998 and 2006 are tied for first, with 1934 slightly cooler.

Researcher: NASA hiding climate data - Washington Times

Second verse, same as the first...

[Forthgoing]

Originally Posted by Salty Dog

I'm sure the Pacific Garbage Patch is just shit flossed from the teeth of sharks and mermain too.

Sharks flossing shit from their teeth, Mermains, mankind caused global warming and cooling may exist in Leftist fantasies, but in reality no such things exist.

[HughRuss]

Originally Posted by Forthgoing

And thank you for your opinions, but it has been shown that the data and beliefs of the Climategate scientists, Gore and his followers are false.

A. Gore != Climatologist. Quit making a strawman of the argument by thinking everything Gore espouses is what the debate (between AGW and non-AGW) really concerns.
B:

Originally Posted by Forthgoing

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/...bal_warmi.html

American Thinker: Global Warming? Bring it On!

This graph does not at all apply to what you are saying.