I don't see how the astonishing climate change e-mail scandal is anything but a disaster for the global warming community. This thing really does make one doubt what one had accepted as scientifically true, because the consensus was reported as overwhelming. Excerpt:
And the newly disclosed private exchanges among climate scientists at Britain's Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia reveal an intellectual circle that appears to feel very much under attack, and eager to punish its enemies.
Wanna read all the files hacked out of the University of East Anglia's computer? Here ya go.
Karl Denninger has been reading them. Excerpt:
It gets better. Another message, this one allegedly from 2000:It was good to see you again yesterday - if briefly. One particular thing you said - and we agreed - was about the IPCC reports and the broader climate negotiations were working to the globalisation agenda driven by organisations like the WTO. So my first question is do you have anything written or published, or know of anything particularly on this subject, which talks about this in more detail?
Oh, so it's not about the planet getting warmer, but rather is a convenient means of advancing an agenda that has already been pre-determined?
That's chilling (no pun intended). Honestly, I don't know what to believe now about this stuff. I mean, seriously, read this:
A partial review of the emails shows that in many cases, climate scientists revealed that their own research wasn't always conclusive. In others, they discussed ways to paper over differences among themselves in order to present a "unified" view on climate change. On at least one occasion, climate scientists were asked to "beef up" conclusions about climate change and extreme weather events because environmental officials in one country were planning a "big public splash."The release of the documents has given ammunition to many skeptics of man-made global warming, who for years have argued that the scientific "consensus" was less robust than the official IPCC summaries indicated and that climate researchers systematically ostracized other scientists who presented findings that differed from orthodox views.
Since the hacking, many Web sites catering to climate skeptics have pored over the material and concluded that it shows a concerted effort to distort climate science. Other Web sites catering to climate scientists have dismissed those claims.
The tension between those two camps is apparent in the emails. More recent messages showed climate scientists were increasingly concerned about blog postings and articles on leading skeptical Web sites. Much of the internal discussion over scientific papers centered on how to pre-empt attacks from prominent skeptics, for example.
Fellow scientists who disagreed with orthodox views on climate change were variously referred to as "prats" and "utter prats." In other exchanges, one climate researcher said he was "very tempted" to "beat the crap out of" a prominent, skeptical U.S. climate scientist.
In several of the emails, climate researchers discussed how to arrange for favorable reviewers for papers they planned to publish in scientific journals. At the same time, climate researchers at times appeared to pressure scientific journals not to publish research by other scientists whose findings they disagreed with.
One email from 1999, titled "CENSORED!!!!!" showed one U.S.-based scientist uncomfortable with such tactics. "As for thinking that it is 'Better that nothing appear, than something unacceptable to us' ... as though we are the gatekeepers of all that is acceptable in the world of paleoclimatology seems amazingly arrogant. Science moves forward whether we agree with individual articles or not," the email said.
More recent exchanges centered on requests by independent climate researchers for access to data used by British scientists for some of their papers. The hacked folder is labeled "FOIA," a reference to the Freedom of Information Act requests made by other scientists for access to raw data used to reach conclusions about global temperatures.
Many of the email exchanges discussed ways to decline such requests for information, on the grounds that the data was confidential or was intellectual property. In other email exchanges related to the FOIA requests, some U.K. researchers asked foreign scientists to delete all emails related to their work for the upcoming IPCC summary. In others, they discussed boycotting scientific journals that require them to make their data public.
So much for disinterested science, and just-the-facts. I'm not ready to say that man-made climate change is a hoax, but I'd say those hackers did us all a great service by lifting the veil on those nasty sh**s in labcoats.
UPDATE: I'm not saying that I no longer believe that climate change is occurring, and that mankind has a lot to do with this. I find it hard to believe that so much data have been faked. Still, I am saying that I'm not sure what to believe, because my faith in the integrity and the honesty of climate scientists has been shaken by this.
UPDATE.2: Tyler Cowen says he doesn't think this episode proves much other than that you shouldn't put things in e-mail that you don't want exposed, and that some scientists engage in a form of discourse that harms their cause. Personally, it's not changed my mind that global warming is happening and that mankind's emissions have a lot to do with it, but it has changed my certainty about that conclusion, and, frankly, pissed me off that scientists would mess around with data to reach particular conclusions. I know, I know, it shouldn't be surprising that scientists turn out to be -- surprise! -- human beings. But the entire scientific enterprise depends on disinterested empiricism, and this scandal strikes a blow against the confidence laymen have in that aspect of science. It's why things like the Jayson Blair scandal hurts journalism as a whole, not just the integrity of The New York Times. People shouldn't be surprised to learn that journalists can be unethical, and can falsify or spin data to reach a predetermined conclusion, but if enough people come to believe that sort of thing is normative, or at least tolerated, it erodes the basis for journalism's authority. Another analogy: no one who knows anything about human nature and church governance can be shocked, exactly, when it's revealed that clerics can be just as corrupt as anybody else. But the credibility and authority of a church or religious organization depends greatly on the shared belief that the clergy are, in the main, incorruptible. For scientists, the standard of incorruptibility is honesty regarding the gathering, presentation and analysis of data.
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The program always produces a hockey stick because it's basically hard coded into the program.
DavidTC, back in the 1970's and 1980's a lot of people believed that acid rain was a threat to lakes in New York and forests in the Appalachian mountains. The EPA funded a multi year study to determine if that was true or not. When the actual science showed that "acid rain" was at most a small environmental irritant rather than a catastrophe, what did EPA do? Why, they went ahead with regulation anyway. So midwestern utilities have spent billions to solve a problem that is not much of a problem.
The point is, "the acid rain crisis" wasn't real, but government agencies acted as though it was. Now we have the "global warming crisis" that depends almost entirely on computer models that clearly are defective, possibly intentionally so. These models uniformly have failed to predict, a fundamental rule of the scientific method is that if you can't make accurate predictions, you don't have a valid hypothesis.
Going beyond the computer modeling/database issue (and no, the actual data doesn't have to be in there, it could be deleted, it could have been destructively merged, lots of things could have happened to it) we have the increasingly clear evidence of deliberate academic fraud.
* Emails in which efforts are made to prevent any alternative or skeptical authors from publishing. This matters because the standard line from the AGW supporters has been "Well, none of these skeptics are being published in refereed journals". Combine that with deliberate efforts to keep them from being published and what we have is a one-sided debate, which never serves science. See the rise and fall of T.D. Lysenko for a very extreme example.
* Deliberate withholding of data and modeling software. It is a fundamental part of science that all experimental methods and data must be published, in order that experiments can be repeated by others. Indeed, if an experiment is not repeatable, it calls into doubt the original work. Repeatability is critical to science. Holding back experimental data, altering databases (as we have seen at GISS) without explanation, and refusing to publish model codes subverts the very basis of peer review. It indicates something to hide.
Increasingly, supporters of AGW are acting more and more like priests, and less and less like scientists. It is ironic that defenders of AGW call themselves "reality based" when reality itself has falsified the IPCC scenarios at some confidence interval.
Basically I have this to say to supporters of AGW:
You are free to hold your own opinion, but not free to hold your own facts.
Does wet pavement cause rain? No, but rain does cause wet pavement! The fact that a garden hose can ALSO cause wet pavement does NOT prove that if it rains, the pavement will not get wet!!!
And evaporation from wet pavement does provide atmospheric moisture for future rainfall. If there were no evaporation, there would be no clouds, therefore no rain, and all the crops would wither and die.
Don't mistake analogies for proof. Analogy can illustrate, but because one scenario is true (or false), does not show another is therefore true (or false).
The EPA found that acid rain had little or no effect?
http://www.epa.gov/acidrain/effects/
"Acid rain causes acidification of lakes and streams and contributes to the damage of trees at high elevations (for example, red spruce trees above 2,000 feet) and many sensitive forest soils. In addition, acid rain accelerates the decay of building materials and paints, including irreplaceable buildings, statues, and sculptures that are part of our nation's cultural heritage. Prior to falling to the earth, sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxide (NOx) gases and their particulate matter derivatives—sulfates and nitrates—contribute to visibility degradation and harm public health."
As for this paranoid nonsense about the "hockey stick" being caused by a computer program, it can be seen perfectly well in a simple manual placement of temperature readings on a graph, by hand, using nothing but numerical data.
There are reasons to suspect computer models. Large complex models involving all kinds of assumed variables can be very very far removed from reality. A simple chart of temperature readings does not contain such variables.
I've done several articles on the IPCC, currently awaiting publication, and I had no previous involvement with climate change science. I was impressed with the fact that the reports are very careful to provide ranges of likely outcomes, sorted out according to different assumptions, rather than saying "this is the timeline, this is what's going to happen." Unfortunately, if almost any of these scenarios are half way correct, by the time we suffer serious damage, a fair number of people will be dead. Not all of us, but enough to matter, at least to those who believe that every individual life is infinitely precious. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
P.S. Is anyone suggesting that Lysenko knew what he was talking about? I know that Joseph Stalin browbeat the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union into making his "science" official doctrine, but I haven't heard that anyone else found merit in his work since. If you don't believe that a frog can become a prince, surely you wouldn't claim that a giraffe can stretch its neck, then pass that feature on to its offspring?
Perhaps some of the posters here should be referenced as "AntiData."
Silarys Jenkins writes:
Does wet pavement cause rain? No, but rain does cause wet pavement! The fact that a garden hose can ALSO cause wet pavement does NOT prove that if it rains, the pavement will not get wet!!!
So to you, it appears there is no difference between correlation and causation. Consider this noted.
The EPA found that acid rain had little or no effect?
That is not what I wrote. Please do not make up things and attribute them to me. Thank you.
http://www.epa.gov/acidrain/effects/
"Acid rain causes acidification of lakes and streams
I'm aware that the EPA continues to ignore science that is inconvenient. That doesn't change the facts that were reported in 1987, much to the dismay of many. Part of the rather depressing story is here:
http://www.sepp.org/Archive/controv/controversies/epavskrug.html
and contributes to the damage of trees at high elevations (for example, red spruce trees above 2,000 feet) and many sensitive forest soils.
In other EPA reports it is determined that red spruce above 2000 feet may or may not be affected by acid rain. The red spruce groves surveyed in the 1980's may have been affected by a particularly hard winter some years before.
This is the trouble with politicized science.
In addition, acid rain accelerates the decay of building materials and paints, including irreplaceable buildings, statues, and sculptures that are part of our nation's cultural heritage. Prior to falling to the earth, sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxide (NOx) gases and their particulate matter derivatives—sulfates and nitrates—contribute to visibility degradation and harm public health."
While this may be true, it has nothing to do with my original statement. The EPA claimed in the late 1970's that acid rain, caused by coal fired powerplants in the Midwest, was acidifying lakes in New York. This hypothesis was tested by soil scientists in the 1980's and found to be false. Furthermore, the EPA then went on to attempt to ruin the reputation of the lead soil scientist for telling the truth in public. The same thing appears to be going on now, in the area of climate science. We have evidence in the email dump that a small clique of scientists made every effort to prevent publication of articles they did not agree with. We have evidence that data was manipulated to provide a predetermined outcome. That is academic fraud.
As for this paranoid nonsense about the "hockey stick" being caused by a computer program, it can be seen perfectly well in a simple manual placement of temperature readings on a graph, by hand, using nothing but numerical data.
First of all, paranoia is a medical diagnosis. Are you claiming that anyone who disagrees with you is mentally ill? What credentials for making medical diagnosis can you provide for us?
Second of all, you are simply wrong. The hockey stick graph in question was created by computer model, using code that was not published and a database that was likewise not published. Please read the report I referenced above.
I've done several articles on the IPCC, currently awaiting publication, and I had no previous involvement with climate change science.
You might consider rewriting them, in view of the ongoing developments. Such as the fact that the East Anglia ECU now admits they "lost" their original data:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6936328.ece
SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.
It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.
The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.
The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.
If you understand science, you should be shocked and astounded by this development. Because it strikes at the very foundation of science itself. It also strongly adds to the facts that point to academic fraud and by the way, given the large sums of money provided in grants to Mann and others, there is thus evidence of very real, felonious, fraud.
P.S. Is anyone suggesting that Lysenko knew what he was talking about?
You miss the point, again. Lysenko's "science" was the officially approved version of genetics. Soviet scientists who did not agree with his mangled version of Lamarckianism were arrested, imprisoned and even executed. No dissent was allowed. All peer review had to follow the Party line. Anyone who didn't follow the Party line could expect a lot of trouble. Do you see why that is a bad thing for science?
Do you see any parallels between Lysenkoism and what is being revealed, day by day, about certain climate "scientists"?
PS: Argumentum ad hominem is a logical fallacy. It proves nothing. Please make a note of this fact.
It would appear from the way the vultures are falling upon each other that the religion of science is as susceptible to heresy as the Spanish Inquisition was...
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