Climategate

[Schrödinger's Cat]

Originally Posted by JaJae

Of course individual climate scientists are going to protect their professions. That's abundantly clear. I wouldn't expect anything else from them.

He doesn't work as a climate scientist. He is the Director of Climate Science and reports directly to the Chief Executive of the Met Office. If he is being quoted by BBC and CNN, you can be sure it is the official response of the Met Office. I notice that The Times article that you posted didn't actually quote anyone from the Met Office either. In fact, who is their source exactly?

What I said was the Met is second guessing.

Making the data openly available for anyone to look at seems to indicate that they are pretty confident in their position. Of course, they should also do their own analysis of the data so they can point the evidence out for the British public (most of which won't bother to look at the data themselves).

[JaJae]

Willis Eschenbach (skeptic) got a hold of some raw data for Australia to see how they adjust the data they use and he thinks he found a smoking gun.

Here is the adjusted data provided to the UN vs the Raw data.

Clearly we see a rather large adjustment.

YIKES! Before getting homogenized, temperatures in Darwin were falling at 0.7 Celcius per century … but after the homogenization, they were warming at 1.2 Celcius per century. And the adjustment that they made was over two degrees per century … when those guys “adjust”, they don’t mess around. And the adjustment is an odd shape, with the adjustment first going stepwise, then climbing roughly to stop at 2.4C.

They pick five neighboring stations, and average them. Then they compare the average to the station in question. If it looks wonky compared to the average of the reference five, they check any historical records for changes, and if necessary, they homogenize the poor data mercilessly. I have some problems with what they do to homogenize it, but that’s how they identify the inhomogeneous stations.

OK … but given the scarcity of stations in Australia, I wondered how they would find five “neighboring stations” in 1941 …

So I looked it up. The nearest station that covers the year 1941 is 500 km away from Darwin. Not only is it 500 km away, it is the only station within 750 km of Darwin that covers the 1941 time period. (It’s also a pub, Daly Waters Pub to be exact, but hey, it’s Australia, good on ya.) So there simply aren’t five stations to make a “reference series” out of to check the 1936-1941 drop at Darwin.

He then looked at an individual station adjustment to see how they adjusted the data. This is the data set for Darwin station zero. The black line shows the adjustments made to the data. The blue is the raw data and the red is the adjusted data.


His assessment:

Yikes again, double yikes! What on earth justifies that adjustment? How can they do that? We have five different records covering Darwin from 1941 on. They all agree almost exactly. Why adjust them at all? They’ve just added a huge artificial totally imaginary trend to the last half of the raw data! Now it looks like the IPCC diagram in Figure 1, all right … but a six degree per century trend? And in the shape of a regular stepped pyramid climbing to heaven? What’s up with that?

Those, dear friends, are the clumsy fingerprints of someone messing with the data Egyptian style … they are indisputable evidence that the “homogenized” data has been changed to fit someone’s preconceptions about whether the earth is warming.

One thing is clear from this. People who say that “Climategate was only about scientists behaving badly, but the data is OK” are wrong. At least one part of the data is bad, too. The Smoking Gun for that statement is at Darwin Zero.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/0...t-darwin-zero/

[HughRuss]

Just as I assumed a denier blog would jump all over it. Homogenized data are not some magical tricks employed by scientists to deceive. If you know what homogenized means, you can probably guess with a decent level of accuracy what homogenized data are. But, since it's being passed off here as deception by some people's political convictions, let's analyze it a little deeper.

Since data are never perfect, i.e. some data contain holes, some data are sparse, some data do not match the rest of the world data, much of this, especially in climate modeling, is homogenized. The blog JaJae quotes actually quotes a site regarding what exactly homogenization is:

Most long-term climate stations have undergone changes that make a time series of their observations inhomogeneous. There are many causes for the discontinuities, including changes in instruments, shelters, the environment around the shelter, the location of the station, the time of observation, and the method used to calculate mean temperature. Often several of these occur at the same time, as is often the case with the introduction of automatic weather stations that is occurring in many parts of the world. Before one can reliably use such climate data for analysis of longterm climate change, adjustments are needed to compensate for the nonclimatic discontinuities.

And then, unsurprisingly, draws the most ridiculous conclusion from it:

That makes sense. The raw data will have jumps from station moves and the like. We don’t want to think it’s warming just because the thermometer was moved to a warmer location. Unpleasant as it may seem, we have to adjust for those as best we can.

No. From a paper about data homogenization written some time ago:

If the data were “perfect”, the question is not too important. For example, with stations over a continent, one may simply average a number of stations over the required spatial area, or use one station as a sample for the area.

But COADS data are not perfect. They exhibit many sampling limitations, big gaps, and some periods and areas where data are very sparse. It is thus necessary to make best use of all observations.

Which means that errors in instrumentation, inexplicable anomalies in different measuring stations, and scarcity of data warrant an averaging of all data, not just at a single, or a handful of weather stations, as so done in the blog quoted above.

From the same paper

If we simply average observations over an area, we are confronted by severe sampling problems. A month may be colder than the previous year simply because there happened to be no data for the warmer part of its area this particular year. [...] We need a method of averaging which does not introduce additional noise.

It later goes on to explain the process by which data are homogenized.

http://icoads.noaa.gov/Boulder/Boulder.Wright.pdf

What is the long and short of this explanation? Data homogenization isn't what the blog wants you to believe. It is a process employed by much of science for trend fitting, and later model building. In a previous post (link), I have explained just why models are valuable to all of science, and provided an example of how models can, and generally are, quite accurate. SC followed up with another example (link).

[thatguyoverthere]

"Climategate" is collapsing under its own weight. As the days go by, more and more scientists, scientific organizations, and people are realizing what a weak house of cards this "scandal" really is.

Science forgotten in climate emails fuss | Myles Allen | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

It is odd that we still don't take climate change seriously.

Judging from the acres of newsprint being devoted to the subject right now, you might find that remark surprising. But look at the furore over the University of East Anglia emails: environmentalists hand-wringing as if the end of the world had suddenly been brought forward; their opponents crowing that the whole of climate science has to start again from scratch.

Can you imagine this kind of response if the subject of the emails had been something we actually care about, such as health or the economy? The discovery of the HIV virus involved one of the murkiest incidents in the history of science. It's an insult to UEA's Phil Jones and his colleagues to even suggest the comparison, but it serves to make the point. Reporters on the HIV affair always scrupulously stressed that although the integrity of some of the individuals involved was called into question, the evidence that HIV causes Aids was unaffected. People might have died if the public had been misled on that point. Whereas if it's only about climate change …

A colleague working in astrophysics was expressing bemusement to me yesterday about why the reputation of British science was apparently under threat, given that no evidence had actually emerged of scientific misconduct. Her specific question was: "Has anyone found evidence of an error in a published paper or dataset?" If they had, then of course the error would need to be corrected, which happens in science all the time.

If it could be proved that figures had been deliberately altered to give a specific result then it would be very serious, but so far no evidence has emerged from these Climatic Research Unit (CRU) emails of any error in the HadCRUT instrumental temperature record at the centre of the row, never mind proof of deliberate intent to mislead. How often have you heard that repeated, clearly, by the mainstream press reporting on this incident? Even if they were reporting on Berlusconi's sex life they would be more careful. Berlusconi can afford better lawyers than Jones can.

Take, for example, the "trick" of combining instrumental data and tree-ring evidence in a single graph to "hide the decline" in temperatures over recent decades that would be suggested by a naive interpretation of the tree-ring record. The journalists repeating this phrase as an example of "scientists accused of manipulating their data" know perfectly well that the decline in question is a spurious artefact of the tree-ring data that has been documented in the literature for years, and that "trick" does not mean "deceit". They also know their readers, listeners and viewers won't know this: so why do they keep doing it?

What is particularly ironic is that a favourite graph in the climate sceptic community a few years ago entitled "Most accurate global average temperature" did precisely this. It stitched temperatures from the satellite-based temperature record from 1979 onwards together with the surface temperature record before then. At that time the satellite record showed no evidence of warming, so one might call this a handy trick to hide the recent warming in the surface temperature record. Did that make it evil? I wouldn't say so: there were concerns about the impact of incomplete coverage and something called the urban heat island effect on the surface temperature record, so combining the two data sources might have been legitimate, provided it was clear what was done and why. This particular figure has fallen out of favour since an error was discovered in the satellite data processing which, when corrected, revealed the satellites were actually showing warming after all.

Perhaps the most concrete example of journalists claiming to reveal "problems" with the CRU temperature record was a report on Newsnight (widely redistributed) in which a software engineer criticised computer code contained in the leaked email package. Neither of the two pieces of code Newsnight examined were anything to do with the HadCRUT temperature record at all, which is actually maintained at the Met Office. Newsnight's response, when I challenged them on this, was: "Our expert's opinion is that this is climate change code." Presumably, then, the quality of the code I use to put together problems for our physics undergraduates shows that we should not trust results from my colleagues who work on the Large Hadron Collider on the grounds that "it is all physics code". Newsnight have declined to retract the story.

One can understand the blogosphere reacting as it has done, but why has mainstream journalism collectively decided to treat the story in this way? The bottom line is that journalism deals not in facts, but in "narratives". And the narrative of the fallen idol is clearly a great way to fill the airwaves – witness the reality television industry.

So the narrative journalists have collectively decided upon is that a few scientists may have manipulated their data, and either (a) it doesn't matter because the evidence for human influence on climate is so strong or (b) this shows the whole edifice is now crumbling, depending on their editor's predilections. And George Monbiot laments that the high priests of his climate change religion have let him down. All without any evidence that any number, anywhere, is actually wrong. Journalists, who always find numbers irritating, are revelling in the fact that they are back in the driving seat. By making the story about the individual scientists, rather than scientific results, they can go back to reporting on the story as they see fit without being constrained by scientific evidence.

This is all particularly painful for those of us who know and have the deepest respect for Jones and his colleagues. Our instinct, of course, is to stand up and defend his integrity. But we know that if we do so, journalists weave this into their chosen narrative as "scientists circling the wagons to defend their own". The Times report accompanying the statement released yesterday by UK climate scientists was a case in point: rather than simply reporting the boring story that scientists agree there is nothing wrong with the data after all, they had to go and hunt out a "human interest" angle of some scientist who claimed that he felt pressured by the Met Office into signing the statement (ridiculously – many of us who signed spend our professional lives annoying the Met Office).

Even the senior figures in the World Meteorological Organisation are letting themselves get swept along, pointing out that even if we leave out the CRU dataset the evidence for human influence on climate is still strong. While true, this misses the point. If we allow personal attacks on individual scientists or criticism of irrelevant software to be used as an excuse to discount data that people don't like, it will be open season. Presumably they will be hunting through the emails of someone involved in the Nasa temperature series next, and so it will go on.

None of us can imagine what Phil Jones is going through, and all of us know that it might be our turn next. For all I know someone is already sorting through my emails on a Russian web server. But for the record, if they do decide to pick on me, I don't want people out there defending my integrity. I want people out there defending my results. Because we are scientists, and this is what we do.

[thatguyoverthere]

"Climategate" - the non-story of the decade!

Questions and answers on the climate e-mail controversy - Politics AP - MiamiHerald.com

Questions and answers on the climate e-mail controversy
BY RENEE SCHOOF
MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS
WASHINGTON -- People who argue that global warming is bogus say that the controversy over leaked e-mails by climate scientists proves that they're right. Their argument claims that the 2007 international review of climate science is a fraud.

Scientists involved in the dispute and others say that nothing in the e-mails undermines the work of thousands of scientists over the past 30 years who've concluded that the Earth is warming.

What the critics call "Climategate" continues to heat up the dispute in Congress and on the Internet, however.

Here's a look at the key issues:

Question: What's at the heart of the controversy?

Answer: A key charge by people who disagree with the main body of scientific research on climate science is that the leak of climate researchers' e-mails and documents throws into question the finding of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007.

Some of the scientists involved in the e-mails were among the thousands of scientists who've participated in four IPCC reviews.

The IPCC concluded in 2007 that warming was unequivocal. It said the evidence included increased temperatures of the air and ocean waters, the melting of snow and ice and rising sea level. The IPCC also said that there was a probability of greater than 90 percent that most of the rise in temperatures since the 1950s was due to the increase of greenhouse gases, mainly from burning coal, oil and natural gas.

Q: What happened, and who's involved?

A: Someone took e-mails from a server at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit in the United Kingdom. The e-mails are between the unit's scientists and other climate scientists. Many are routine, but some have raised questions about the behavior of some scientists.

The Climatic Research Unit is one of several research centers that collect air temperatures over land and sea around the globe. Scientists use the data to determine a global average. The main U.S. centers are NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. All have produced similar results about warming. The U.S. government sites are not part of the e-mail controversy.

Q: One of the e-mails talked about using a "trick" to "hide the decline." Is that fraud?

A: Scientists say they use the word "trick" to mean a clever and legitimate way to use data. In this case this use of data was discussed openly in scientific reports.

The e-mail was from Phil Jones, the director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. Jones has stepped aside as director for the course of an investigation being conducted by Muir Russell, a former senior British civil servant.

In a 1999 e-mail, Jones wrote: "I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e. from 1981 onwards) amd (sic) from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."

Jones says it referred to a 1999 diagram about climate change over 1,000 years.

Temperature records with thermometers begin in the mid-19th century. To get an understanding of earlier temperatures over hundreds of years, scientists use proxy data from things such as tree rings and ice cores.

The "trick" simply meant using two sets of data together to show temperature trends, said Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University, the "Mike" in the e-mail. "It was all out in the open in our Nature article," he said.

So what was "the decline?"

It didn't mean declining temperatures.

Jones said his e-mail discussed the use of proxy data up until 1960 and actual temperature records after 1961. That refers to work by Keith Briffa and colleagues; Briffa is copied in on the e-mail.

Briffa's group used tree-ring density records that don't accurately reflect temperature changes after about 1960, when the ability of some kinds of tree rings to show temperature changes started to decline.

Mann's work showed that climate warming in the 20th century surpassed anything in the relatively stable millennium before. The National Academy of Sciences examined Mann's work and other reconstructions of temperature data, including Briffa's. It concluded the warming trend in the 20th century that they found was plausible.

Q: What do scientific research organizations say about the controversy?

A: The IPCC's Working Group 1, which produced the part of the 2007 report that looks at the physical science of climate change, said in a statement last Friday that it "firmly stands behind the (report's) conclusions."

"The body of evidence is the result of the careful and painstaking work of hundreds of scientists worldwide. The internal consistency from multiple lines of evidence strongly supports the work of the scientific community, including those individuals singled out in these e-mail exchanges, many of whom have dedicated their time and effort to develop these findings in teams of Lead Authors within the production of the series of IPCC Assessment Reports during the past 20 years."

The American Geophysical Union, an international organization of scientists who study Earth and space, said the e-mails were being used to distort the scientific debate "about the urgent issue of climate change." It said it stood by its own 2007 statement that human activity was contributing to a warming of the climate.

Q: Does one of the e-mails show private doubts about warming?

A: The critics cite an e-mail on this issue from Kenneth Trenberth, a senior scientist and the head of the climate analysis section of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

"The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate."

The comment referred to the inability of observations from satellites and on Earth to account for where all the energy has gone, Trenberth said. He wrote about this in a report this year that looked at how much heat went into the land, oceans and ice, along with changes in greenhouse gases and clouds.

"We can track this well for 1993 to 2003, but not for 2004 to 2008," he said. "It does not mean that global warming is not happening. On the contrary, it suggests that we simply can't fully explain why 2008 was as cool as it was, but with an implication that warming will come back, as it has."

A major La Nina, a Pacific Ocean circulation pattern of cool waters, was under way in 2008. Since June 2009, an El Nino, a pattern of warm waters, has begun. The highest sea surface temperatures on record were recorded this July, he said.

Q: Does one of the e-mails show that scientists tried to block publication of scientists with opposing views?

The e-mail that critics cite on this matter is one from Mann in 2003: "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."

According to Mann, the e-mail was in response to a paper by Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. They wrote an article that challenged the view that late 20th-century temperatures were unusually high. Climate Research published it.

The editor in chief, Hans von Storch, and other editors resigned in protest. Von Storch said the article didn't meet quality standards and the review process had been faulty.

The publisher, Otto Kinne, put out a statement after the controversy saying that the journal "should have been more careful and insisted on solid evidence and cautious formulations before publication."

The article nonetheless was evaluated and briefly commented on in the 2007 IPCC report.

"The entire report-writing process of the IPCC is subjected to extensive and repeated review by experts as well as governments," IPCC Chairman R.K. Pachauri said in a statement. He added that no individual or small group could exclude a peer-reviewed paper from assessment or stress a finding that isn't consistent with many other investigations.

[thatguyoverthere]

Even factcheck.org, a fact-checking website endorsed by no less a conservative figurehead than former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney himself, says "Climategate" is unfounded!

“Climategate” | FactCheck.org

“Climategate”
Hacked e-mails show climate scientists in a bad light but don't change scientific consensus on global warming.
December 10, 2009

Summary
In late November 2009, more than 1,000 e-mails between scientists at the Climate Research Unit of the U.K.’s University of East Anglia were stolen and made public by an as-yet-unnamed hacker. Climate skeptics are claiming that they show scientific misconduct that amounts to the complete fabrication of man-made global warming. We find that to be unfounded:
The messages, which span 13 years, show a few scientists in a bad light, being rude or dismissive. An investigation is underway, but there’s still plenty of evidence that the earth is getting warmer and that humans are largely responsible.
Some critics say the e-mails negate the conclusions of a 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but the IPCC report relied on data from a large number of sources, of which CRU was only one.
E-mails being cited as "smoking guns" have been misrepresented. For instance, one e-mail that refers to "hiding the decline" isn’t talking about a decline in actual temperatures as measured at weather stations. These have continued to rise, and 2009 may turn out to be the fifth warmest year ever recorded. The "decline" actually refers to a problem with recent data from tree rings.
Analysis
Skeptics claim this trove of e-mails shows the scientists at the U.K. research center were engaging in evidence-tampering, and they are portraying the affair as a major scandal: "Climategate." Saudi Arabian climate negotiator Mohammad Al-Sabban went so far as to tell the BBC: "It appears from the details of the scandal that there is no relationship whatsoever between human activities and climate change." He said that he expected news of the e-mails to disrupt the U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen this month. An article from the conservative-leaning Canada Free Press claims that the stolen files are proof of a "deliberate fraud" and "the greatest deception in history."
Missing the Mark
We find such claims to be far wide of the mark. The e-mails (which have been made available by an unidentified individual here) do show a few scientists talking frankly among themselves — sometimes being rude, dismissive, insular, or even behaving like jerks. Whether they show anything beyond that is still in doubt. There are two investigations underway, by the U.K.’s Met Office and East Anglia University, and the head of CRU, Phil Jones, has "stepped aside" until they are completed. However, many of the e-mails that are being held up as "smoking guns" have been misrepresented by global-warming skeptics eager to find evidence of a conspiracy. And even if they showed what the critics claim, there remains ample evidence that the earth is getting warmer. Even as the affair was unfolding, the World Meteorological Organization announced on Dec. 8 that the 2000-2009 decade would likely be the warmest on record, and that 2009 might be the fifth warmest year ever recorded. (The hottest year on record was 1998.) This conclusion is based not only on the CRU data that critics are now questioning, but also incorporates data from the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). All three organizations synthesized data from many sources. Some critics claim that the e-mails invalidate the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world scientific body that reaffirmed in a 2007 report that the earth is warming, sea levels are rising and that human activity is "very likely" the cause of "most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century." But the IPCC’s 2007 report, its most recent synthesis of scientific findings from around the globe, incorporates data from three working groups, each of which made use of data from a huge number of sources — of which CRU was only one. The synthesis report notes key disagreements and uncertainties but makes the "robust" conclusion that "warming of the climate system is unequivocal." (A robust finding is defined as "one that holds under a variety of approaches, methods, models and assumptions, and is expected to be relatively unaffected by uncertainties.") The IPCC has released a statement playing down the notion that CRU scientists skewed the world body’s report or kept it from considering the views of skeptical scientists:
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: The entire report writing process of the IPCC is subjected to extensive and repeated review by experts as well as governments. Consequently, there is at every stage full opportunity for experts in the field to draw attention to any piece of literature and its basic findings that would ensure inclusion of a wide range of views. There is, therefore, no possibility of exclusion of any contrarian views, if they have been published in established journals or other publications which are peer reviewed.
The facts support this assertion. In one 2004 e-mail that’s come under much scrutiny, Jones wrote of two controversial papers that "Kevin and I will keep them out [of the IPCC report] somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!" But both papers under discussion, Kalnay and Cai (2003) and McKitrick and Michaels (2004), were cited in one of the three working group reports from which the 2007 IPCC report is synthesized.
Mixed Messages
The 1,000-plus e-mails sometimes illustrate the hairier side of scientific research. Criticisms of climate change are sometimes dismissed as "fraud" or "pure crap," as in this 2005 e-mail from CRU Director Phil Jones. Other messages, like a 2007 e-mail from Michael Mann of Penn State University, show indignation at being the target of skeptics’ ire. Some of the e-mails are in bad form; for instance, climate scientist Benjamin Santer of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory makes a crack about "beat[ing] the crap out of" opponent Pat Michaels.
Claims that the e-mails are evidence of fraud or deceit, however, misrepresent what they actually say. A prime example is a 1999 e-mail from Jones, who wrote: "I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e., from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline." Skeptics claim the words "trick" and "decline" show Jones is using sneaky manipulations to mask a decline in global temperatures. But that’s not the case. Actual temperatures, as measured by scientific instruments such as thermometers, were rising at the time of the writing of this decade-old e-mail, and (as we’ve noted) have continued to rise since then. Jones was referring to the decline in temperatures implied by measurements of the width and density of tree rings. In recent decades, these measures indicate a dip, while more accurate instrument-measured temperatures continue to rise.
Scientists at CRU use tree-ring data and other "proxy" measurements to estimate temperatures from times before instrumental temperature data began to be collected. However, since about 1960, tree-ring data have diverged from actual measured temperatures. Far from covering it up, CRU scientists and others have published reports of this divergence many times. The "trick" that Jones was writing about in his 1999 e-mail was simply adding the actual, measured instrumental data into a graph of historic temperatures. Jones says it’s a “trick” in the colloquial sense of an adroit feat — "a clever thing to do," as he put it — not a deception. What’s hidden is the fact that tree-ring data in recent decades doesn’t track with thermometer measurements. East Anglia Research Professor Andrew Watson explained in an article in The Times of London:
Watson: Jones is talking about a line on a graph for the cover of a World Meteorological Organisation report, published in 2000, which shows the results of different attempts to reconstruct temperature over the past 1,000 years. The line represents one particular attempt, using tree-ring data for temperature. The method agrees with actual measurements before about 1960, but diverges from them after that — for reasons only partly understood, discussed in the literature.
Other quotes that skeptics say are evidence of "data manipulation" actually refer to how numbers are presented, not to falsifying those numbers. For instance, in one e-mail climate scientist Tom Crowley writes: "I have been fiddling with the best way to illustrate the stable nature of the medieval warm period." Crowley is referring to the best way to translate the data into a graphic format. We’re the first to admit that charts and graphs can give a false or misleading impression of what data actually show. In the past, for instance, we’ve criticized a pie chart used by some liberals to make military spending look like a much larger slice of the federal budget than it really is. In fact, it’s been a major contention of climate change skeptics that a so-called "hockey stick" chart, so named because it shows a steep climb in temperatures in the last few decades, exaggerates the true extent of warming. That claim is contradicted by climate scientists, including the creator of one of the most contended "hockey stick" charts, and we make no judgment about that dispute here. We simply note that "fiddling" with the way data are displayed — even in a way that some may see as misleading — is not the same thing as falsifying the numbers. Much has also been made of the scientists’ discussion of Freedom of Information Act requests for their raw data. In fact, the vast majority of CRU’s data is already freely available. According to the University of East Anglia, a small amount of the data is restricted by non-publication agreements. Discussion of British FOIA requests in the stolen e-mails show scientists bristling at demands that they supply records of their own correspondence, computer code and data to people whose motives they question. In one e-mail about a request for data and correspondence, Santer writes critically of Steven McIntyre, a Canadian science blogger who runs the Climateaudit.org Web site:
Ben Santer e-mail, Nov. 12, 2009: My personal opinion is that both FOI requests [for data related to a 2008 paper and for correspondence dating back to 2006] are intrusive and unreasonable. Steven McIntyre provides absolutely no scientific justification or explanation for such requests. … McIntyre has no interest in improving our scientific understanding of the nature and causes of climate change. He has no interest in rational scientific discourse. He deals in the currency of threats and intimidation. We should be able to conduct our scientific research without constant fear of an "audit" by Steven McIntyre; without having to weigh every word we write in every email we send to our scientific colleagues.
It’s clear from the e-mails that there are people with whom the scientists would rather not share. What’s less clear is whether any deliberate obstruction actually occurred — that’s one of the subjects of the East Anglia investigation. Some e-mails refer to long discussions with lawyers and university officials about what the scientists may, or must, make available and to whom. In others, scientists let their critics know directly that data are freely accessible, or mention that they’ve already sent the information along, though they may not fulfill their opponents’ every informational wish. Climate change skeptics also say that the e-mails prove they’ve been excluded from peer review. In one e-mail, for example, climate scientist Tom Wigley of the University Corporation for Academic Research writes: "If you think that [Yale professor James] Saiers is in the greenhouse skeptics camp, then, if we can find documentary evidence of this, we could go through official AGU channels to get him ousted." Saiers later departed from the journal in question (Geophysical Research Letters, or GRL). However, Saiers says he isn’t a warming skeptic and that Wigley had nothing to do with his departure. When another professor (and blogger) asked Saiers about the Wigley e-mail, Saiers responded: "I stepped down as GRL editor at the end of my three-year term. … My departure had nothing to do with attempts by Wigley or anyone else to have me sacked." Investigators are still sifting through 13 years’ worth of CRU e-mails looking for evidence of impropriety. But what’s been revealed so far hasn’t shaken the broad scientific consensus about global warming. In an open letter to Congress posted on Climate Science Watch and other sites, 25 leading climate scientists (including eight members of the National Academy of Science) wrote:
Letter to Congress from U.S. scientists, Dec. 4: The body of evidence that human activity is the dominant cause of global warming is overwhelming. The content of the stolen emails has no impact whatsoever on our overall understanding that human activity is driving dangerous levels of global warming. … Even without including analyses from the UK research center from which the emails were stolen, the body of evidence underlying our understanding of human-caused global warming remains robust.
Confusing the Public
News converage of the e-mails and the various claims about what they supposedly show may have contributed to public confusion on the subject. A Dec. 3 Rasmussen survey found that only 25 percent of adults surveyed said that "most scientists agree on global warming" while 52 percent said that "there is significant disagreement within the scientific community" and 23 percent said they were not sure. The truth is that over the 13 years covered by the CRU e-mails, scientific consensus has only become stronger as the evidence for global warming from various sources has mounted. Reports from the National Academies and the U.S. Global Change Research Program that analyze large amounts of data from various sources also agree, as does the IPCC, that climate change is not in doubt. In advance of the 2009 U.N. climate change summit, the national academies of 13 nations issued a joint statement of their recommendations for combating climate change, in which they discussed the "human forcing" of global warming and said that the need for action was "indisputable." Leading scientists are unequivocally reaffirming the consensus on global warming in the wake of "Climategate." White House science adviser John Holdren said at a congressional hearing on climate change: "However this particular controversy comes out, the result will not call into question the bulk of our understanding of how the climate works or how humans are affecting it." The American Association for the Advancement of Science released a statement "reaffirm[ing] the position of its Board of Directors and the leaders of 18 respected organizations, who concluded based on multiple lines of scientific evidence that global climate change caused by human activities is now underway, and it is a growing threat to society." The American Meteorological Society and the Union of Concerned Scientists have also reiterated their positions on climate change, which they say are unaffected by the leaked e-mails.
– by Jess Henig

[thatguyoverthere]

"Climategate" is getting buried like something you might find in a cats' litter box.

Open Letter to Congress from U.S. Scientists on Climate Change and Recently Stolen Emails (posting from Climate Science Watch)

Open Letter to Congress from U.S. Scientists on Climate Change and Recently Stolen Emails

Posted on Monday, December 07, 2009

“In the last few weeks, opponents of taking action on climate change have misrepresented both the content and the significance of stolen emails to obscure public understanding of climate science and the scientific process,” said 25 U.S. scientists, including eight members of the National Academy of Sciences, in a December 4 Open Letter to Congress. “We would like to set the record straight. The body of evidence that human activity is the dominant cause of global warming is overwhelming. The content of the stolen emails has no impact whatsoever on our overall understanding that human activity is driving dangerous levels of global warming.” See Details for full text of the Open Letter and list of signers.

December 4, 2009

An Open Letter to Congress from U.S. Scientists on Climate Change and Recently Stolen Emails

As U.S. scientists with substantial expertise on climate change and its impacts on natural ecosystems, our built environment and human well-being, we want to assure policy makers and the public of the integrity of the underlying scientific research and the need for urgent action to reduce heat-trapping emissions. In the last few weeks, opponents of taking action on climate change have misrepresented both the content and the significance of stolen emails to obscure public understanding of climate science and the scientific process.

We would like to set the record straight.

The body of evidence that human activity is the dominant cause of global warming is overwhelming. The content of the stolen emails has no impact whatsoever on our overall understanding that human activity is driving dangerous levels of global warming. The scientific process depends on open access to methodology, data, and a rigorous peer-review process. The robust exchange of ideas in the peer-reviewed literature regarding climate science is evidence of the high degree of integrity in this process.

As the recent letter to Congress from 18 leading U.S. scientific organizations, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Meteorological Society, states:

“Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver. These conclusions are based on multiple independent lines of evidence, and contrary assertions are inconsistent with an objective assessment of the vast body of peer-reviewed science. ... If we are to avoid the most severe impacts of climate change, emissions of greenhouse gases must be dramatically reduced.”

These “multiple independent lines of evidence” are drawn from numerous public and private research centers all across the United States and beyond, including several independent analyses of surface temperature data. Even without including analyses from the UK research center from which the emails were stolen, the body of evidence underlying our understanding of human-caused global warming remains robust.

We urge you to take account of this as you make decisions on climate policy.

Signed:
(* Member of National Academy of Sciences)
(Institutional affiliation for identification purposes only)

David Archer, Ph.D.
Professor, Department of the Geophysical Sciences
University of Chicago
Chicago, IL

William C. Clark, Ph.D.*
Harvey Brooks Professor of International Science, Public Policy, and Human Development
John F. Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA

Peter C. Frumhoff, Ph.D.
Director of Science and Policy
Chief Scientist, Climate Campaign
Union of Concerned Scientists
Cambridge, MA

Inez Fung, Ph.D.*
Professor of Atmospheric Science
Co-Director, Berkeley Institute of the Environment
University of California
Berkeley Berkeley, CA

Neal Lane, Ph.D.
Professor, Rice University
Former Director, National Science Foundation
Former Director, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
Houston, TX

Michael MacCracken, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist for Climate Change Programs
The Climate Institute
Washington, DC

Pamela Matson, Ph.D.*
Professor, School of Earth Sciences
Stanford University
Stanford, CA

James J. McCarthy, Ph.D.
Alexander Agassiz Professor of Biological Oceanography
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA

Jerry Melillo, Ph.D.
Senior Scientist and Director Emeritus
The Ecosystems Center
Marine Biological Laboratory
Woods Hole, MA

Edward L. Miles, Ph.D.*
Bloedel Professor of Marine Studies and Public Affairs
School of Marine Affairs
Co-Director, Center for Science in the Earth System, JISAO
University of Washington
Seattle, WA

Mario J. Molina, Ph.D.*
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
University of California, San Diego
Nobel Laureate, Chemistry San Diego, CA

Ellen Mosley-Thompson, Ph.D.*
Director, Byrd Polar Research Center
Professor of Geography and University Distinguished Scholar
The Ohio State University
Columbus, OH

Gerald R. North, Ph.D.
Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Sciences and Oceanography
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX

Michael Oppenheimer, Ph.D.
Albert G. Milbank Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs
Department of Geosciences and
Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ

Jonathan T. Overpeck, Ph.D.
Co-Director, Institute of the Environment
Professor, Department of Geosciences
Department of Atmospheric Sciences
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ

Ronald G. Prinn, Ph.D.
TEPCO Professor of Atmospheric Science
Director, Center for Global Change Science
Co-Director, Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, MA

Alan Robock, Ph.D.
Distinguished Professor
Rutgers University
President, Atmospheric Sciences Section, American Geophysical Union
Chair-Elect, Atmospheric and Hydrospheric Sciences Section, American Association for the Advancement of Science
New Brunswick, NJ

Benjamin D. Santer, Ph.D.
Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Livermore, CA

William H. Schlesinger, Ph.D.*
President, Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies
Millbrook, NY

Daniel P. Schrag, Ph.D.
Sturgis Hooper Professor of Geology
Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering
Director, Harvard University Center for the Environment
Cambridge, MA

Drew Shindell, Ph.D.
Senior Scientist
NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
New York, NY

Richard C. J. Somerville, Ph.D.
Distinguished Professor Emeritus and Research Professor
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
University of California, San Diego
La Jolla, CA

Warren M. Washington, Ph.D.
Senior Scientist
National Center for Atmospheric Research
Boulder, CO

Donald J. Wuebbles, Ph.D.
The Harry E. Preble Professor of Atmospheric Sciences
Department of Atmospheric Sciences
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Urbana, IL

Carl Wunsch, Ph.D.*
Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physical Oceanography
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, MA

[thatguyoverthere]

It doesn't end there! Does anyone else who isn't already a blind partisan need any more proof that "Climategate" is just a bunch of overblown hooey?

AAAS - AAAS News Release - "AAAS Reaffirms Statements on Climate Change and Integrity"

AAAS Reaffirms Statements on Climate Change and Integrity
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has reaffirmed the position of its Board of Directors and the leaders of 18 respected organizations, who concluded based on multiple lines of scientific evidence that global climate change caused by human activities is now underway, and it is a growing threat to society.

“The vast preponderance of evidence, based on years of research conducted by a wide array of different investigators at many institutions, clearly indicates that global climate change is real, it is caused largely by human activities, and the need to take action is urgent,” said Alan I. Leshner, chief executive officer of AAAS and executive publisher of the journal Science.

AAAS expressed grave concerns that the illegal release of private emails stolen from the University of East Anglia should not cause policy-makers and the public to become confused about the scientific basis of global climate change. Scientific integrity demands robust, independent peer review, however, and AAAS therefore emphasized that investigations are appropriate whenever significant questions are raised regarding the transparency and rigor of the scientific method, the peer-review process, or the responsibility of individual scientists. The responsible institutions are mounting such investigations.

AAAS is not itself an investigative body, Leshner emphasized, but the Association will carefully evaluate the conclusions of appropriate authorities who have been asked to review the emails. Selectively publicized language in messages exchanged over a number of years among several scientists has been interpreted by some to suggest unethical actions such as data manipulation or suppression.

“AAAS takes issues of scientific integrity very seriously,” Leshner said. “It is fair and appropriate to pursue answers to any allegations of impropriety. It’s important to remember, though, that the reality of climate change is based on a century of robust and well-validated science.”

The AAAS Board of Directors asserted in a statement issued 9 December 2006 that “the scientific evidence is clear: global climate change caused by human activities is occurring now, and it is a growing threat to society.” Clear evidence of climate change is based upon “accumulating data from across the globe” that reveals “a wide array of effects: rapidly melting glaciers, increases in extreme weather, rising sea levels, shifts in species ranges, and more,” the AAAS Board reported. Reliable sensor data show an upturn in average temperatures for at least the past 30 years.

The AAAS Board noted that “the pace of change and the evidence of harm have increased markedly over the last five years. The time to control greenhouse gas emissions is now.”

AAAS joined the leaders of 17 other leading organizations in signing a letter sent 21 October 2009 to the U.S. Senate, emphasizing based upon rigorous research that human-induced climate change is ongoing and will have broad impacts on society—including the global economy and the environment.

4 December 2009

[thatguyoverthere]

The Great "Climategate" pile-on! This bullshit scandal is getting absolutely DEMOLISHED.

One more, just one more for my all-time favorite forum thread, the thread that finally, finally put the last nail in the coffin of global warming deniers. You guys had a great run, but science and history are leaving you in the dust!

It couldn't happen to a nicer group of folks! I look forward to all of you continuing to ignore every post in favor of more personal insults, because apparently that's all you got!

Impact of CRU Hacking on the AMS Statement on Climate Change

Impact of CRU Hacking on the AMS Statement on Climate Change
AMS Headquarters has received several inquiries asking if the material made public following the hacking of e-mails and other files from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia has any impact on the AMS Statement on Climate Change, which was approved by the AMS Council in 2007 and represents the official position of the Society.

The AMS Statement on Climate Change continues to represent the position of the AMS. It was developed following a rigorous procedure that included drafting and review by experts in the field, comments by the membership, and careful review by the AMS Council prior to approval as a statement of the Society. The statement is based on a robust body of research reported in the peer-reviewed literature. As with any scientific assessment, it is likely to become outdated as the body of scientific knowledge continues to grow, and the current statement is scheduled to expire in February 2012 if it is not replaced by a new statement prior to that.

The beauty of science is that it depends on independent verification and replication as part of the process of confirming research results. This process, which is tied intrinsically to the procedures leading to publication of research results in the peer-reviewed literature, allows the scientific community to confirm some results while rejecting others. It also, in a sense, lessens the impact of any one set of research results, especially as the body of research on any topic grows. The AMS plays an important role in the scientific process through its peer-reviewed publications, as well as through its many other activities, such as scientific conferences. The Society strives to maintain integrity in the editorial process for all its publications.

For climate change research, the body of research in the literature is very large and the dependence on any one set of research results to the comprehensive understanding of the climate system is very, very small. Even if some of the charges of improper behavior in this particular case turn out to be true — which is not yet clearly the case — the impact on the science of climate change would be very limited.

The AMS encourages ethical behavior in all aspects of science and has established a record of affirming the value of scientists presenting their research results “objectively, professionally, and without sensationalizing or politicizing the associated impacts” (see AMS Statement on the Freedom of Scientific Expression).

Keith L. Seitter, CCM
Executive Director

AMS Information Statement on Climate Change

Climate Change
An Information Statement of the American Meteorological Society
(Adopted by AMS Council on 1 February 2007) Bull. Amer. Met. Soc., 88

pdf version

The following is an Information Statement intended to provide a trustworthy, objective, and scientifically up-to-date explanation of scientific issues of concern to the public at large.

Background
This statement is consistent with the vast weight of current scientific understanding as expressed in assessments and reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the U. S. National Academy of Sciences, and the U. S. Climate Change Science Program. All these reports recognize the uncertainties in climate projections, and identify the scientific work needed to reduce those uncertainties. Although the statement has been drafted in the context of concerns in the United States, the underlying issues are inherently global in nature.

This summary of the current state of scientific understanding is based on the peer-reviewed scientific literature. We are grateful to our members who contributed considerable scientific help in its preparation. A few members offered alternative views on climate change or put quite different emphases on the uncertainties of climate projections. In the last fifteen years, scientific debates of this kind have stimulated much new research which deepened considerably our understanding of climate, and reduced the uncertainties in our projections. The scientific process of debate and investigation is the lifeblood of science; this essential process must continue.

How is climate changing?
Climate is changing in many ways. Global mean temperatures have been rising steadily over the last 40 years, with the six warmest years since 1860 occurring in the last decade. Regionally, the warming trend is greatest in northern latitudes, over land, and at night. Decreases in Arctic sea ice have been observed. Most studies indicate that ice loss has recently accelerated at the margins of Greenland and the West Antarctic ice sheet, whereas the East Antarctic ice sheet and the Greenland interior appear to be gaining mass. In the U.S. most of the observed warming has occurred in the West and in Alaska. However, there are regional variations in the signature of climate change, with warming in the western U.S. but little or no annual temperature change in the southeast U.S. in recent decades. Temperature rises have significant hydrologic effects. Freezing levels are rising in elevation, rain occurs instead of snow at mid-elevations, spring maximum snowpack is decreasing, snowmelt occurs earlier, and the spring runoff that supplies over two-thirds of the western U.S. streamflow is reduced.

Evidence for warming is also observed in seasonal changes with earlier springs, longer frost-free periods and longer growing seasons, and shifts in natural habitats and in migratory patterns of birds.

Sea levels are generally rising around the world and glaciers are generally in retreat. A component of sea level rise is attributed to expansion due to a long-term increase in ocean heat content. The impacts of even small rises in sea level on coastal zones are expected to be severe, particularly in conjunction with storm surges associated with vigorous weather systems.

Why is climate changing?
Climate has changed throughout geological history, for many natural reasons such as changes in the sun’s energy received by Earth arising from slow orbital changes, or changes in the sun’s energy reaching Earth’s surface due to volcanic eruptions. In recent decades, humans have increasingly affected local, regional, and global climate by altering the flows of radiative energy and water through the Earth system (resulting in changes in temperature, winds, rainfall, etc.), which comprises the atmosphere, land surface, vegetation, ocean, land ice, and sea ice. Indeed, strong observational evidence and results from modeling studies indicate that, at least over the last 50 years, human activities are a major contributor to climate change.

Direct human impact is through changes in the concentration of certain trace gases such as carbon dioxide, chlorofluorocarbons, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone, and water vapor, known collectively as greenhouse gases. Enhanced greenhouse gases have little effect on the incoming energy of the sun, but they act as a blanket to reduce the outgoing infrared radiation emitted by Earth and its atmosphere; the surface and atmosphere therefore warm so as to increase the outgoing energy until the outgoing and incoming flows of energy are equal. Carbon dioxide accounts for about half of the human-induced greenhouse gas contribution to warming since the late 1800s, with increases in the other greenhouse gases accounting for the rest; changes in solar output may have provided an augmentation to warming in the first half of the 20th century.

Carbon dioxide concentration is rising mostly as a result of fossil-fuel burning and partly from clearing of vegetation; about 50% of the enhanced emissions remain in the atmosphere, while the rest of the Earth system continues to absorb the remaining 50%. In the last 50 years atmospheric CO2 concentration has been increasing at a rate much faster than any rates observed in the geological record of the past several thousand years. Global annual-mean surface temperatures are rising at a rapid rate to values higher than at any time in the last 400 (and probably in the last 1000) years. Once introduced in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide remains for at least a few hundred years and implies a lengthy guarantee of sustained future warming. Further, increases in greenhouse gases are nearly certain to produce continued increases in temperature. Such changes in temperature lead to changes in clouds, pressure, winds, and rainfall in a complex sequence of further effects.

Human activity also affects climate through changes in the number and physical properties of tiny particles (aerosols) suspended in the atmosphere, and through changes in the land surface. Aerosols arise from dust, sea salt, and air pollution. They absorb and redirect radiation emitted by the sun and Earth. They also modify the ability of clouds to reflect sunlight and to form precipitation. Most aerosols originating from human activity act to cool the planet and so partly counteract greenhouse gas effects; this effect will diminish as clean-air legislation leads to reduced emissions of fine aerosols. Stratospheric aerosols emitted by occasional large sulfur-rich volcanic eruptions can cause temporary (1–3 years) reductions in surface temperature. By contrast, carbon soot from wildfires and biomass burning warms the planet, so that decreases in soot would reduce warming. Aerosols have much shorter lifetimes in the atmosphere than most greenhouse gases and exhibit large regional variations in concentration and properties. A deeper understanding of their global and regional roles is a high priority for climate science.

Changes in the land surface also change the surface water and energy budgetsand act to redirect the incoming solar energy. Humans alter land surface characteristics through irrigation practices, removal and reintroduction of forests, agricultural changes to vegetative cover, reduction of soil water recharge by soil compaction, and modification of heat storage by cities and reservoirs. Many of these lead to changes in the reflectivity of the surface. Although net global effects are not expected to be large, such changes can have significant effects on regional and local climate patterns.

The interaction of all these effects on climate is complex. For example, decreases of stratospheric ozone have likely contributed to the recent contraction and intensification of the polar vortex around Antarctica, producing warming in the Antarctic Peninsula, the northern most peninsula that points toward South America, and cooling over Antarctica. As a further example, the east–west difference in U.S. temperature trends may be tied to the spatial patterns of global ocean warming, or to differences in aerosol distribution and effects, or to natural climate variations that affect atmospheric circulation, cloudiness, and precipitation within the nation. Accurate characterization of the influence of each of the greenhouse gases, of aerosols, of oceans and natural climate variability, and of land-surface influences, along with their combined effects, is a high priority for the climate science research community.

How can climate change be projected in the future?
Climate will continue to change due to natural and human causes. The most comprehensive projections of future climate rely on numerical models of the climate system, of which there are many. Climate models are complex computer codes based on measurements and on fundamental physical laws of motion, thermodynamics, and radiative transfer. These are expressed in mathematical equations representing changes of winds in the atmosphere; currents in the ocean; exchanges of heat and moisture between the atmosphere and Earth’s surface; the release of latent heat by condensation during the formation of clouds and raindrops; and the absorption of sunshine and emission of infrared radiation.

Climate models were developed from weather forecast models through coupling with models of the ocean, land surface and vegetation, cryosphere, etc., so as to represent the complexity of the climate system. Changes in the means and extremes of temperature and precipitation in response to increasing greenhouse gases can be projected over decades to centuries even though the timing of individual weather events cannot be projected. Unlike daily weather forecasts, there is limited historical basis of experience on which to judge the accuracy of climate projections. Confidence must be assessed by other methods. These include inferences from prehistoric paleoclimate evidence, and careful process-study observations of the causal chain between energy flow changes and climate pattern responses. A useful demonstration of the validity of current climate models is their ability to reproduce the global mean temperature changes of the 20th century when (and only when) they include all known natural and human-induced climate forcings.

Weather predictions beyond a few days are nowadays based on ensembles of simulations that estimate the range of probable outcomes. The same ensemble concept is used for projections of climate change, where uncertainty arises from the limitations of models and from the emission scenarios used to represent the effects of human activity. Model limitations include uncertainties in the way in which processes that operate at scales smaller than the resolved scale of the model are represented, as well as those that arise from components of the Earth system not currently included in models. Among the most important uncertainties are changes in clouds, which can either cool or warm the climate. Recent satellite evidence rules out the possibility that cloud changes could offset most greenhouse warming and suggests that they might even add to it. The emission scenarios used to drive the climate model projections are uncertain since they depend on socioeconomic responses to climate change; these uncertainties have been factored into future assessments.

How will climate change in the future?
There will be inevitable climate changes from the greenhouse gases already added to the Earth system. Their effect is delayed several decades because the thermal inertia of the oceans ensures that the warming lags behind the driving forcing. For the next several decades there is a clear consensus on projected warming rates from human influences among different models and different emission scenarios.

Many of the trends observed in recent decades are projected to continue. The model projections all show greater warming in northern polar regions, over land areas, and in the winter season, consistent with observed trends. However, considerable uncertainty still exists in the degree to which the land will warm more than the oceans, and this contributes significantly to uncertainties in future projections of global sea level rise. Nevertheless, where coastal elevations are low, small rises lead to large inland intrusions of sea water. In the coming century, these rises are expected to accelerate as the oceans absorb more heat and the melting of land ice-sheets increases. With its large mass and high capacity for heat storage, the ocean will continue to slowly warm to great depths and thus expand for several centuries. Moreover, paleoclimatic observations and ice-sheet modeling indicate that the melting of the Greenland and possibly the West Antarctic ice sheets will eventually cause global sea level to rise on the order of meters if warming continues at its present rate beyond the 21st century.

Confidence in projections is higher for temperature than other elements, such as rainfall. The atmospheric water content is likely to increase globally in line with warmer temperatures and consequently the global hydrological cycle will accelerate. However, changes in precipitation patterns will differ considerably by region and by season. In some regions, the accelerated hydrological cycle will act to reinforce existing patterns of rainfall, leading to persistent droughts and floods. In other regions, the greater warming at high latitudes and over land will change the large-scale atmospheric circulation, leading to significant regional shifts in the patterns of rainfall. For example, annual precipitation for the U.S. is projected to rise across the northern states, and decrease across the southern states.

Precipitation is expected to become more intense (i.e., precipitation rates and total precipitation in storms will increase), with implications for water resource management and flooding. Moreover, continued warming also implies a net long-term reduction of winter snow accumulations (in favor of rain), and thus a reduced spring snowpack, with consequently deficient dry-season river flows; widespread retreat of mountain glaciers will also eventually lead to reduced dry-season flows. Prolonged episodes of wet and dry conditions could both become more frequent, an outcome seemingly paradoxical but physically plausible. Drought is projected to increase over the continental interior and particularly the southwest U.S. However, natural decadal time-scale variations in world ocean conditions can cause similar effects. Paleoclimatic observations suggest that droughts lasting decades are possible, and that these prolonged droughts could occur without warning.

Weather patterns will continue to vary from day to day and from season to season, but it is likely that the frequency of extreme weather will change. A growing body of recent scientific work suggests that hurricanes have become more intense over the last several decades. There is evidence both for and against the existence of a detectable anthropogenic signal in the tropical cyclone climate record to date. Though hurricanes are projected to intensify with further warming of sea surface temperatures, significant uncertainty remains as to how other influences on hurricane strength will change in the future. Midlatitude storm tracks are likely to shift poleward, with fewer but more intense storms.

Longer-term variations such as El Niño and La Niña will also continue to occur but the intensity and frequency of occurrence may change. Climate change should be assessed on the basis of changes over long time periods. It should not be assessed on a single unusual weather event, nor even on several years of anomalous weather. Heat waves and cold snaps, and the weather conditions giving rise to them, will continue to occur, but there will be proportionately more extreme warm periods and fewer cold periods. Projections for fewer frost days (those with minimum temperature below freezing) and longer growing seasons are consistent with observed changes in the second half of the 20th century over most areas of the U.S., particularly the West. Drier conditions in summer, such as those expected over the southern U.S. and southern Europe, will contribute to more severe episodes of extreme heat. Critical temperature thresholds above which ecosystems and crop systems (e.g., food crops such as rice and wheat) suffer increasingly severe damage are likely to be exceeded more frequently. On the other hand, longer growing seasons and CO2 fertilization enhancing plant growth may potentially lead to some benefits.

Sustained global economic growth is increasing not only long-lived greenhouse gases in the atmosphere but is also leading to increases in shorter-lived species which affect both climate and air quality such as aerosols and low-level ozone. Air quality is likely to become a major issue affecting human health and life expectancy. Increasing urbanization will exacerbate the urban heat island effect and lead to a greater number of days with poor air quality. In some locations, surface ozone concentrations are projected to rise above levels considered harmful to humans, plants and other ecosystems.

The Earth system is highly interconnected and complex, with many processes and feedbacks that are just beginning to be detected and understood. The continued ability of the biosphere to take up carbon at its current rate is uncertain; the issue is whether the soil and land vegetation will become a source rather than a sink of carbon as the planet warms. The portion of increased carbon dioxide absorbed by the world ocean is making the ocean more acidic, with negative implications for shell- and skeleton-forming organisms and more generally for ocean ecosystems. There are indications that regions of permafrost, for example in Alaska, are already melting with the potential to release massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. Such an event has the potential to produce abrupt and catastrophic changes in climate. These processes are only now being quantified and introduced into climate models, and remain a large source of uncertainty.

Final remarks
Despite the uncertainties noted above, there is adequate evidence from observations and interpretations of climate simulations to conclude that the atmosphere, ocean, and land surface are warming; that humans have significantly contributed to this change; and that further climate change will continue to have important impacts on human societies, on economies, on ecosystems, and on wildlife through the 21st century and beyond. Focusing on the next 30 years, convergence among emission scenarios and model results suggest strongly that increasing air temperatures will reduce snowpack, shift snowmelt timing, reduce crop production and rangeland fertility, and cause continued melting of the ice caps and sea level rise. Important goals for future work include the need to understand the relation of climate at the state and regional level to the patterns of global climate and to reverse the decline in observational networks that are so critical to accurate climate monitoring and prediction.

Policy choices in the near future will determine the extent of the impacts of climate change. Policy decisions are seldom made in a context of absolute certainty. Some continued climate change is inevitable, and the policy debate should also consider the best ways to adapt to climate change. Prudence dictates extreme care in managing our relationship with the only planet known to be capable of sustaining human life.

[This statement is considered in force until February 2012 unless superseded by a new statement issued by the AMS Council before this date.]

"Climategate" - R.I.P.

[Dispatcher]

[HughRuss]

We all know Burgundy is a liberal Obamatard, but this might be one of his best write ups.

Originally Posted by AP IMPACT: Science not faked, but not pretty

LONDON – E-mails stolen from climate scientists show they stonewalled skeptics and discussed hiding data — but the messages don't support claims that the science of global warming was faked, according to an exhaustive review by The Associated Press.

The 1,073 e-mails examined by the AP show that scientists harbored private doubts, however slight and fleeting, even as they told the world they were certain about climate change. However, the exchanges don't undercut the vast body of evidence showing the world is warming because of man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

The scientists were keenly aware of how their work would be viewed and used, and, just like politicians, went to great pains to shape their message. Sometimes, they sounded more like schoolyard taunts than scientific tenets.

The scientists were so convinced by their own science and so driven by a cause "that unless you're with them, you're against them," said Mark Frankel, director of scientific freedom, responsibility and law at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He also reviewed the communications.

Frankel saw "no evidence of falsification or fabrication of data, although concerns could be raised about some instances of very 'generous interpretations.'"

Some e-mails expressed doubts about the quality of individual temperature records or why models and data didn't quite match. Part of this is the normal give-and-take of research, but skeptics challenged how reliable certain data was.

The e-mails were stolen from the computer network server of the climate research unit at the University of East Anglia in southeast England, an influential source of climate science, and were posted online last month. The university shut down the server and contacted the police.

The AP studied all the e-mails for context, with five reporters reading and rereading them — about 1 million words in total.

One of the most disturbing elements suggests an effort to avoid sharing scientific data with critics skeptical of global warming. It is not clear if any data was destroyed; two U.S. researchers denied it.

The e-mails show that several mainstream scientists repeatedly suggested keeping their research materials away from opponents who sought it under American and British public records law. It raises a science ethics question because free access to data is important so others can repeat experiments as part of the scientific method. The University of East Anglia is investigating the blocking of information requests.

"I believe none of us should submit to these 'requests,'" declared the university's Keith Briffa. The center's chief, Phil Jones, wrote: "Data is covered by all the agreements we sign with people, so I will be hiding behind them."

When one skeptic kept filing FOI requests, Jones, who didn't return AP requests for comment, told another scientist, Michael Mann: "You can delete this attachment if you want. Keep this quiet also, but this is the person who is putting FOI requests for all e-mails Keith (Briffa) and Tim (Osborn) have written."

Mann, a researcher at Penn State University, told The Associated Press: "I didn't delete any e-mails as Phil asked me to. I don't believe anybody else did."

The e-mails also show how professional attacks turned very personal. When former London financial trader Douglas J. Keenan combed through the data used in a 1990 research paper Jones had co-authored, Keenan claimed to have found evidence of fakery by Jones' co-author. Keenan threatened to have the FBI arrest University at Albany scientist Wei-Chyung Wang for fraud. (A university investigation later cleared him of any wrongdoing.)

"I do now wish I'd never sent them the data after their FOIA request!" Jones wrote in June 2007.

In another case after initially balking on releasing data to a skeptic because it was already public, Lawrence Livermore National Lab scientist Ben Santer wrote that he then opted to release everything the skeptic wanted — and more. Santer said in a telephone interview that he and others are inundated by frivolous requests from skeptics that are designed to "tie-up government-funded scientists."

The e-mails also showed a stunning disdain for global warming skeptics.

One scientist practically celebrates the news of the death of one critic, saying, "In an odd way this is cheering news!" Another bemoans that the only way to deal with skeptics is "continuing to publish quality work in quality journals (or calling in a Mafia hit.)" And a third scientist said the next time he sees a certain skeptic at a scientific meeting, "I'll be tempted to beat the crap out of him. Very tempted."

And they compared contrarians to communist-baiting Sen. Joseph McCarthy and Somali pirates. They also called them out-and-out frauds.

Santer, who received death threats after his work on climate change in 1996, said Thursday: "I'm not surprised that things are said in the heat of the moment between professional colleagues. These things are taken out of context."

When the journal, Climate Research, published a skeptical study, Penn State scientist Mann discussed retribution this way: "Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal."

That skeptical study turned out to be partly funded by the American Petroleum Institute.

The most provocative e-mails are usually about one aspect of climate science: research from a decade ago that studied how warm or cold it was centuries ago through analysis of tree rings, ice cores and glacial melt. And most of those e-mails, which stretch from 1996 to last month, are from about a handful of scientists in dozens of e-mails.

Still, such research has been a key element in measuring climate change over long periods.

As part of the AP review, summaries of the e-mails that raised issues from the potential manipulation of data to intensely personal attacks were sent to seven experts in research ethics, climate science and science policy.

"This is normal science politics, but on the extreme end, though still within bounds," said Dan Sarewitz, a science policy professor at Arizona State University. "We talk about science as this pure ideal and the scientific method as if it is something out of a cookbook, but research is a social and human activity full of all the failings of society and humans, and this reality gets totally magnified by the high political stakes here."

In the past three weeks since the e-mails were posted, longtime opponents of mainstream climate science have repeatedly quoted excerpts of about a dozen e-mails. Republican congressmen and former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin have called for either independent investigations, a delay in U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulation of greenhouse gases or outright boycotts of the Copenhagen international climate talks. They cited a "culture of corruption" that the e-mails appeared to show.

That is not what the AP found. There were signs of trying to present the data as convincingly as possible.

One e-mail that skeptics have been citing often since the messages were posted online is from Jones. He says: "I've just completed Mike's (Mann) trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (from 1981 onward) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."

Jones was referring to tree ring data that indicated temperatures after the 1950s weren't as warm as scientists had determined.

The "trick" that Jones said he was borrowing from Mann was to add the real temperatures, not what the tree rings showed. And the decline he talked of hiding was not in real temperatures, but in the tree ring data which was misleading, Mann explained.

Sometimes the data didn't line up as perfectly as scientists wanted.

David Rind told colleagues about inconsistent figures in the work for a giant international report: "As this continuing exchange has clarified, what's in Chapter 6 is inconsistent with what is in Chapter 2 (and Chapter 9 is caught in the middle!). Worse yet, we've managed to make global warming go away! (Maybe it really is that easy...."

But in the end, global warming didn't go away, according to the vast body of research over the years.

None of the e-mails flagged by the AP and sent to three climate scientists viewed as moderates in the field changed their view that global warming is man-made and a threat. Nor did it alter their support of the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which some of the scientists helped write.

"My overall interpretation of the scientific basis for (man-made) global warming is unaltered by the contents of these e-mails," said Gabriel Vecchi, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist.

Gerald North, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, headed a National Academy of Sciences study that looked at — and upheld as valid — Mann's earlier studies that found the 1990s were the hottest years in centuries.

"In my opinion the meaning is much more innocent than might be perceived by others taken out of context. Much of this is overblown," North said.

Mann contends he always has been upfront about uncertainties, pointing to the title of his 1999 study: "Northern Hemisphere Temperatures During the Past Millennium: Inferences, Uncertainties and Limitations."

Several scientists found themselves tailoring their figures or retooling their arguments to answer online arguments — even as they claimed not to care what was being posted to the Internet

"I don't read the blogs that regularly," Jonathan Overpeck of the University of Arizona wrote in 2005. "But I guess the skeptics are making hay of their (sic) being a global warm (sic) event around 1450AD."

One person singled out for criticism in the e-mails is Steve McIntyre, who maintains Climate Audit. The blog focuses on statistical issues with scientists' attempts to recreate the climate in ancient times.

"We find that the authors are overreaching in the conclusions that they're trying to draw from the data that they have," McIntyre said in a telephone interview.

McIntyre, 62, of Toronto, was trained in math and economics and says he is "substantially retired" from the mineral exploration industry, which produces greenhouse gases.

Some e-mails said McIntyre's attempts to get original data from scientists are frivolous and meant more for harassment than doing good science. There are allegations that he would distort and misuse data given to him.

McIntyre disagreed with how he is portrayed. "Everything that I've done in this, I've done in good faith," he said.

He also said he has avoided editorializing on the leaked e-mails. "Anything I say," he said, "is liable to be piling on."

The skeptics started the name-calling said Mann, who called McIntyre a "bozo," a "fraud" and a "moron" in various e-mails.

"We're human," Mann said. "We've been under attack unfairly by these people who have been attempting to dismiss us as frauds as liars."

The AP is mentioned several times in the e-mails, usually in reference to a published story. One scientist says his remarks were reported with "a bit of journalistic license" and "I would have rephrased or re-expressed some of what was written if I had seen it before it was released." The archive also includes a request from an AP reporter, one of the writers of this story, for reaction to a study, a standard step for journalists seeking quotes for their stories.

___

Associated Press writers Jeff Donn in Boston, Justin Pritchard in Los Angeles contributed to this report. Troy Thibodeaux in Washington provided technical assistance. Satter reported from London, Borenstein from Washington and Ritter from New York.

AP IMPACT: Science not faked, but not pretty

[garbagemanlb]

Originally Posted by HughRuss

We all know Burgundy is a liberal Obamatard, but this might be one of his best write ups.


AP IMPACT: Science not faked, but not pretty

[Salty Dog]

I find it amusing someone can hack into the email accounts of these guys but they can't retype or reword any of the emails to fit their agenda.

[HughRuss]

Originally Posted by Salty Dog

I find it amusing someone can hack into the email accounts of these guys but they can't retype or reword any of the emails to fit their agenda.

The hackers were Russian, so clearly they do not understand English.

[thatguyoverthere]

Originally Posted by Salty Dog

I find it amusing someone can hack into the email accounts of these guys but they can't retype or reword any of the emails to fit their agenda.

I still find it incredible that they stole 160mb of data from a period of over 10 years, they posted over 1,000 e-mails, but after all that it's still only about a page and a half of shady statements by less than half a dozen scientists that are grabbing attention. And NO evidence of data falsification.

Some "scandal".

[thatguyoverthere]

Originally Posted by HughRuss

We all know Burgundy is a liberal Obamatard, but this might be one of his best write ups.


AP IMPACT: Science not faked, but not pretty

Wow, it just never ends, does it? "Climategate" definitely is, and continues to be, day after day, the most anemic "scandal" that I think I've ever seen in my life. Notice how all the good folks here who thought that this actually meant something can't manage to raise a peep in response now?

Pretty pathetic, but absolutely no surprise.

[Stylerod]

Originally Posted by HughRuss

We all know Burgundy is a liberal Obamatard, but this might be one of his best write ups.


AP IMPACT: Science not faked, but not pretty

That's a pretty good write up and proves that the scientists were worried about people double checking their data and purposely avoided sharing it. If their results were air tight they wouldn't have worried about giving it away. Also I think we all knew this: "concerns could be raised about some instances of very 'generous interpretations." It's in their best interest to exaggerate on the side of bad.

It's not ever yet. Now that is seems that they have no choice but to share data this will go on for some time as groups try to recreate their findings. If they did nothing wrong they should have nothing to worry about.

[Schrödinger's Cat]

Originally Posted by Stylerod

That's a pretty good write up and proves that the scientists were worried about people double checking their data and purposely avoided sharing it.

The people making the FOI requests weren't academic researchers trying to recreate the findings; they were amateurs that were repeatedly harassing these scientists. The frustration and reluctance of Jones is understandable. Academic research units can get all of the raw data for free without having to make FOI requests.

Most of the data has been available to the public for a long time. The raw data that isn't available cannot be given to third parties, regardless of an FOI request, due to agreements with the NMSs. And regardless of the frustrations and opinions individuals may have expressed to their peers in private emails, the individual researchers actually have little control over that.

If their results were air tight they wouldn't have worried about giving it away.

You are ignoring that I have already provided many scientific papers (scattered throughout the various threads) which have recreated the findings of Mann and the CRU researchers (e.g., Briffa, Jones) for the studies that they are wrongly suspected "fudging the data" for. The onus is on you to show otherwise.

The availability of CRU data for other researchers to recreate the findings of CRU is not an issue. Not only did other researchers recreate the CRU findings, they did it years ago with independent data sets.

It's in their best interest to exaggerate on the side of bad.

Where are these exaggerations exactly?

[Swift]

Originally Posted by thatguyoverthere

Wow, it just never ends, does it? "Climategate" definitely is, and continues to be, day after day, the most anemic "scandal" that I think I've ever seen in my life. Notice how all the good folks here who thought that this actually meant something can't manage to raise a peep in response now?

Pretty pathetic, but absolutely no surprise.

hmmm. There's still something I'm not quite getting here.

Despite the uncertainties noted above, there is adequate evidence from observations and interpretations of climate simulations to conclude that the atmosphere, ocean, and land surface are warming; that humans have significantly contributed to this change; and that further climate change will continue to have important impacts on human societies, on economies, on ecosystems, and on wildlife through the 21st century and beyond.

So, the article says that climate change happens all the time due to natural causes. But in 150 short years(a blip on the timeline of the existence of this planet) man has changed the entire climate of the whole planet just by burning what was ALREADY there.

But fine. Now that humans are just the most horrible things to happen to the planet. What should we do about it? go back to 1830's "technology"?

[thatguyoverthere]

Originally Posted by Swift

So, the article says that climate change happens all the time due to natural causes. But in 150 short years(a blip on the timeline of the existence of this planet) man has changed the entire climate of the whole planet just by burning what was ALREADY there.

NO ONE denies that the earth's climate changes naturally. What was ALREADY there might have gotten into the environment without man burning it. The thing is, WITH man, we're putting it into the environment much, much faster than nature and society can adapt. In the last 150 years we've put enough CO2 into the atmosphere to match levels from 15 million years ago.

Originally Posted by Swift

But fine. Now that humans are just the most horrible things to happen to the planet. What should we do about it? go back to 1830's "technology"?

We're not the most horrible things on the planet. But come on, we can't expect that we can pump gigatons of pollutants into the atmosphere year after year, decade after decade without it having any effect on the environment.

In my personal opinion, we should do nothing about it. Debating climate change deniers has convinced me that a little mass extinction might do us some good. I don't have any kids and I'm not going to be alive when things get really bad, so what do I care?

If I was to advocate some sort of action to mitigate the negative effects of climate change, I agree with the late Michael Crichton. The money and effort would be better spent directly helping those who will be most affected.

It's like two guys on a leaky boat. One of them wants to write a letter to the boat company complaining about the leak, and then write another letter to the government asking them to impose better regulations on the construction of future boats. That's all well and good, but the second guy who is putting on a lifejacket and grabbing a bucket to start and bail the water might be the smarter guy in the short run.

But, what we should do about it is the only debate left. In the end "Climategate" has in no way changed the fact that the planet is warming, human activity is significantly contributing, and if left unchecked the risks could be serious.