The Volokh Conspiracy

Climate Scientists, Unfiltered

Jonathan H. Adler • November 20, 2009 4:48 pm

Someone hacked into the computers at the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit, downloaded various files and e-mails posted on the web. Now the climate blogosphere is all atwitter over whether the resulting disclosures are a scandal or much ado about nothing. Excerpts and reactions from Roger Pielke Jr., Real Climate, Climate Audit, Watts Up With That, James Delingpole, and Island of Doubt.

Categories: Climate Change, Politicizing Science

137 Comments

RPT says:

I do not have sufficient expertise in the area to comment on the substance of the disclosures, but one might ask those who seek “smoking guns” to disclose their own private correspondence before commenting, in order to equalize the playing field. Otherwise, the crime will be rewarded.

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November 20, 2009, 4:58 pm
Commenter says:

This is huge news, showing the incredible deceitfulness of the Director of the very institution, the CRU, which is being relied upon by the EPA to declare that global warming is happening as a result of carbon dioxide.

In the emails, Phil Jones, Director of the CRU, speaks of taking steps to “hide the decline” in temperature that would undermine his claim that man is causing global warming. The authenticity of those emails is made clear in Jones’ interview with Australia’s Investigate Magazine:

“In an exclusive interview with Investigate magazine’s TGIF Edition, Jones confirms his organization has been hacked, and the data flying all over the internet appears to have come from his organisation. . . .

“In one email dating back to 1999, Jones appears to talk of fudging scientific data on climate change to “hide the decline” . . .

‘I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61–90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.’”. . . .

“TGIF asked Jones about the controversial email discussing hiding “the decline”, and Jones explained he was not trying to mislead. . .

“Jones told TGIF he had no idea what me meant by using the words “hide the decline”.

“That was an email from ten years ago. Can you remember the exact context of what you wrote ten years ago?”
Ian Wishart, Climate Centre Hacked, Investigate Magazine, Nov. 20, 2009, pg. 1 (Volume 2, Issue 50).

The EPA is relying on the CRU in its proposed endangerment finding, which will say that carbon dioxide is the cause of global warming, and thus is subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act.

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November 20, 2009, 5:02 pm
PatHMV says:

This is going to be big. As they say, get out the popcorn.

The “trick’ language may or may not be a smoking gun, in context. But there’s a lot of other stuff in there. One talks about making a .15degC adjustment to data to minimize a “blip” in the sea surface temperature data. It talks about not wanting to make the blip disappear entirely, because it also existed in the land temp data, but says th guy “deliberately chose” the .15 degC figure to best minimize the SST blip without making it disappear.

Leaving issues of intentional, malicious manipulation aside, what is clear beyond doubt in the e-mails is how much of the data for global warming depends on assumptions and interpretations of very dodgy raw data, some of it very scarce raw data, in terms of number of samples.

What’s also clear is how desperate the global warming scare-mongers are to keep the raw data out of the hands of the public. They hide behind claimed confidentiality agreements. But if the raw data isn’t made available to other researchers, than it isn’t reproducible. And if it’s not reproducible, then it’s not science.

The “trick” and “blip” stuff will attract the most mainstream attention, but it’s the rest of the stuff which will sink this crowd.

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November 20, 2009, 5:09 pm
Hans says:

PatHMV is right. If it’s not “reproducible” and “objective”, the manipulated temperature data can’t be relied on by the EPA, and indeed, violates the EPA’s own data-quality guidelines and Information Quality Act standards. See Guidelines for Ensuring and Maximizing the Quality, Objectivity, Utility, and Integrity of Information Disseminated by the Environmental Protection Agency, at pg. 15 (requiring “integrity”), pg. 20 (requiring “reproducibility”) (EPA/260R-02–008, October 2002); see also Office of Management and Budget, Guidelines for Ensuring and Maximizing the Quality, Objectivity, Utility, and Integrity of Information Disseminated by Federal Agencies; Republication, 67 FR 8452, 8453 (Feb. 22, 2002) (requiring “utility,” “objectivity” and “integrity”); id. at 8460 (requiring “integrity” and “reproducibility”).

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November 20, 2009, 5:17 pm
bgates says:

one might ask those who seek “smoking guns” to disclose their own private correspondence before commenting

One might notice that wasn’t asked when Bush Admin emails were being eagerly pored over.

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November 20, 2009, 5:25 pm
Bwahaha says:

Indeed. The ‘trick’ comment can be explained away, but the rest cannot. I’ve talked to several of my friends who are active research scientists (though not in this field). They all agree that people should lose their jobs over this scandal.

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November 20, 2009, 5:26 pm
dearieme says:

It does reveal the elegance of the “consensus” argument. The Global Warming proponents say, essentially, that their opponents must be wrong since there is so little peer-reviewed literature backing them. Now we find out why — the proponents are moving heaven and earth to stop the journals accepting their opponents’ papers. Do have a look, chaps — it’s breathtakingly cynical and deceitful.

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November 20, 2009, 5:38 pm
alkali says:

Finally, the struggling upstart fossil fuel industries will be able to speak up against the devastation wrought by the powerful climatology industry, a/k/a “Big Grad Student.”

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November 20, 2009, 5:57 pm
Joe T. Guest says:

Oh boy. The Pope of Scientific Orthodoxy — the one who I’ve assumed enforces the popular maxim that There Is No Arguing With Scientific Troof — is sure going to be pissed when he finds out about this one...

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November 20, 2009, 6:00 pm
bystaner says:

alkali: Finally, the struggling upstart fossil fuel industries will be able to speak up against the devastation wrought by the powerful climatology industry, a/k/a “Big Grad Student.”

I don’t think this is about speaking up. The fossil fuel industry is big and has probably lied in the past, but that doesn’t change the fact that these people are engaging in deceit. If we both jaywalk, but only I get caught, I shouldn’t escape punishment because you got away with it.

That being said, the fact that dishonest people will lie to advance their agenda really shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.

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November 20, 2009, 6:02 pm
Spankowitz says:

I understand there are specific references to procedures for deleting material such that it will no longer be available for FOI requests. Can anyone link to some support for that claim? If true, it sure doesn’t sound very sciency.

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November 20, 2009, 6:07 pm
kdackson says:

This is scientific misconduct, pure and simple. If I had done anything like this while working towards my PhD in engineering, I would have been kicked out of grad school and good luck trying to find a job.

Indeed, other scientists at the NIH were fired for similar stuff. Adjusting data, without good reason is what we used to refer to as a “dry lab” (generating the data without doing the actual lab work). Well theory says it should be this, and we have to give some statistical valid variability so it does not look too faked, so we’ll fudge it, and damn!

And by good reason, you SHOW YOU DAMN WORK as to why and how you did it. Total transparancy, because if you can’t defend it to a third party, it is indefensible

Problem is when you modify the data to match your own theory. Then it becomes a sef-fulfilling prophecy.

Gee, wonder why these people would not release their raw data to the public?

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November 20, 2009, 6:09 pm
h2u says:

The most damning emails are those where Phil Jones asks Mann to delete emails relating to AR4! What. The. Heck! You can’t make this stuff up.

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November 20, 2009, 6:43 pm
Steve says:

All the transparent silliness regarding the use of words like “trick” and “hide” makes me pretty dubious that there is anything noteworthy here. Sounds like more people trying to score points in the court of public opinion that they can’t seem to score through the actual process of science.

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November 20, 2009, 7:15 pm
SenatorX says:

I understand there are specific references to procedures for deleting material such that it will no longer be available for FOI requests. Can anyone link to some support for that claim? If true, it sure doesn’t sound very sciency.

You can read some of that and a few others here.

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November 20, 2009, 7:26 pm
kdackson says:

Steve:

Even if the words “trick” and “hide” are in the e-mails of the “scientists” themselves?

You know, the guys who are ~~manufacturing~~ “correcting” data to support their own theory.

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November 20, 2009, 7:27 pm
Brett says:

Even if the words “trick” and “hide” are in the e-mails of the “scientists” themselves?

Why don’t you actually listen to what the scientists in question had to say about it:

No doubt, instances of cherry-picked and poorly-worded “gotcha” phrases will be pulled out of context. One example is worth mentioning quickly. Phil Jones in discussing the presentation of temperature reconstructions stated that “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” The paper in question is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) Nature paper on the original multiproxy temperature reconstruction, and the ‘trick’ is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear. Scientists often use the term “trick” to refer to a “a good way to deal with a problem”, rather than something that is “secret”, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all. As for the ‘decline’, it is well known that Keith Briffa’s maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the “divergence problem”–see e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678–682). Those authors have always recommend not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while ‘hiding’ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is ‘hidden’ in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens.

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November 20, 2009, 8:05 pm
Ryan Waxx says:

Steve: All the transparent silliness regarding the use of words like “trick” and “hide” makes me pretty dubious that there is anything noteworthy here.Sounds like more people trying to score points in the court of public opinion that they can’t seem to score through the actual process of science.

Certain people are so mind-chokingly biased that the use of a video showing an AGW scientist burning a barrelful of CD’s labeled “original data” plus a full confession would make you pretty dubious that there’s anything noteworthy there.

But yes, lets pretend that conspiracies to evade FOIA requests casts doubt on the people asking for the data. Up is down, war is peace, we have always been at war with Oceania...

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November 20, 2009, 8:13 pm
RPT says:

Pretty amazing position you are taking there, Hans. So much for the rule of law. There are certainly a lot of people here who are gloating over the alleged fruits of what appears to have been a pretty serious crime.

Somewhat different than the circumstances with the Bush administration emails, wouldn’t you say? And this comes out the same week as the National Archives goes to work on Bob Haldeman’s notes re the 18 minute gap tape? This is internal information that is being used to attack the credibility of people taking a certain position in a public debate.

Imagine what juicy information could be gotten if only one could hack into the computers of those on the other side of the public debate on any issue? Better than breaking in to their offices! Make enough noise with the initial spin and the fact of the crimes will be drowned out.

I hope Prof. Kerr weighs in on this cyber crime issue.

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November 20, 2009, 8:19 pm
RPT says:

bgates: one might ask those who seek “smoking guns” to disclose their own private correspondence before commentingOne might notice that wasn’t asked when Bush Admin emails were being eagerly pored over.

Did someone hack into the GWB computers? I missed that.

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November 20, 2009, 8:20 pm
bgates says:

There are certainly a lot of people here who are gloating over the alleged fruits of what appears to have been a pretty serious crime.

And then there are the people denying what appears to be a much more serious fraud on the public. Why are you a climate hoax denialist, RPT?

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November 20, 2009, 8:42 pm
bgates says:

one might ask those who seek “smoking guns” to disclose their own private correspondence before commenting, in order to equalize the playing field

What playing field, and how would the disclosure of further private correspondence equalize it?

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November 20, 2009, 8:44 pm
kdackson says:

Brett:

Very cute indeed. As someone with a PhD in Engineering, I know the conext of “trick”, as in “trick of the trade”.

What I am opposed to is that:

1) They have a vested interest in demonstrating that AGW is real. So any method they develop to “reconstruct” data will by design reinforce that bias. Because a method that does not help your case is less than worthless.

2) They cannot rely on actual data, but must use a method to “reconstruct” data. Please see my comments on “dry lab” above. I don’t know about you, but the phrase “multiproxy temperature reconstruction” sounds like pseudoscience to me (and see below as to WHY).

3) Every good scientist KNOWS that data stands on it own. You just don’t make up crap, unless you have an agenda that requires you to make up crap.

4) These groups fight to keep the raw data secret. This is troublesome on a number of levels.

a) If it’s real science, then the investigators should WELCOME scrutiny, unless they are trying to hide something.

b) The collection of the data was most likely paid for by tax monies, and should be freely available to the public to inspect, unless they are trying to hide something.

As I stated before, if I tried to fudge the data on my MS or PhD thesis, I would have been thrown out of grad school. That is a serious as a lawyer cheating on an exam. There is no tolerance for it. Those caught at it are dismissed and will have serious trouble finding employment.

The funny thing about physical laws is that they tend to be consistent. Why does the tree ring density diverge after 1960? Personally, I don’t know and I don’t care. Because the model is a CORRELATION, and as everyone should know, correlatin does not imply causation.

Essentially, they are taking tree ring data and inferring a temperature. There are a number of problems with this approach, primary is that, unlike in a well designed set of experiments, there is no guarantee that environmental experimental factors are orthogonal (i.e, not co-correlated).

However, I would speculate that the original model was missing some factor (or the factors were somehow cocorrelated and could be corrected through advanced methods) that if the missing factor could be discerned or the cocorrelation removed, it would improve the model.

No need to “hide” anything. But instead of doing the scientifically accepted practice of postulating a reason and testing the hypothesis by using data, they simply choose to correct for it.

I would guess that the problem is that the “missing factor” was not in the data set used to get the original correlation.

Now, I am no expert in AGW, but I am an expert in mathematical modeling, with almost 30 years of experience in the field — everything from modeling acid rain processes to complex chemical reactor modeling. And the whole concept of restructuring the global economy based on a correlation between tree rings and temperature and models that have the value of ZERO within their confidence limits is laughable on its face.

So does this prove they are “frauds”? Probably not, but it does show precisely how sloppy the work actually is and how shallow the attitude of making corrections to non-existent data to prove their agenda.

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November 20, 2009, 8:46 pm
Bob from Ohio says:

Otherwise, the crime will be rewarded.

When liberals leak things to the New York Times, it is “whistleblowing”. When the other side does it, it is a crime.

The East Anglians seem to have falsified data and subverted FOI requests, among other things, but let’s focus on the leak.

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November 20, 2009, 8:46 pm
lucklucky says:

Funny. Suddenly Deep Throat of Watergate fame is bad, those workers that leaked documents of firms that polluted rivers too, leaks by unnamed functionaries that show corruptions, malfeasance etc are now a bad thing...How the world turns...

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November 20, 2009, 8:55 pm
bystaner says:

RPT: Pretty amazing position you are taking there, Hans. So much for the rule of law. There are certainly a lot of people here who are gloating over the alleged fruits of what appears to have been a pretty serious crime. Somewhat different than the circumstances with the Bush administration emails, wouldn’t you say? And this comes out the same week as the National Archives goes to work on Bob Haldeman’s notes re the 18 minute gap tape? This is internal information that is being used to attack the credibility of people taking a certain position in a public debate. Imagine what juicy information could be gotten if only one could hack into the computers of those on the other side of the public debate on any issue? Better than breaking in to their offices! Make enough noise with the initial spin and the fact of the crimes will be drowned out. I hope Prof. Kerr weighs in on this cyber crime issue.

My logic education is rusty, but isn’t the manner in which the emails were obtained irrelevant to what they say (provided it is not some sort of government investigation)? If they had been obtained as a gift from the authors, they would still contain the same words. Not to say that a crime has not been committed, but insinuating that the source of the emails negates the point strikes me as a genetic fallacy. And what does the actions of the National Archives have to do with these (stolen) emails? If they are conducting their own investigation on Bob Haldeman’s notes, it seems to me that it is an unrelated issue. To my untrained eyes, it looks like it was included to cloud the issue.

I think that these emails are being used to challenge the credibility of the researchers that authored them. Isn’t that a proper use of this type of evidence? After all, they are influencing policy decisions that will have major impacts on all of our lives. Questioning the manner in which the numbers were arrived at is not the same as rejecting them. It is reasonable for people, whether press or climate skeptics, to investigate claims that seem dubious. If there is a reasonable explanation for these emails, I am sure everyone but the fringe will be satisified, and that is all that can be expected in all issues.

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November 20, 2009, 8:58 pm
JustaFiend says:

Just like decent lawyers cringe when they hear about unethical antics of misguided attorneys, decent scientists are saddened by the rank unprofessionalism illustrated by these documents.

IMHO, anyone who even has the gall to mention the source of the leak (hacking) is introducing a very bad red herring. You don’t excuse bad behavior by pointing to other bad behavior. How it was obtained is irrelevant to what it reveals (other than affecting credibility or authenticity — both of which seem to be being militated by third parties in the affirmative). The fact that the course of billions of people’s lives, dozens of governments, and hundreds of trillions of dollars in economic activity may be being manipulated by CRU’s fraudulent machinations is beyond the pale. Scientific misconduct is an understatement. If a grad student did half of what is revealed here, they would be expelled.

I was a polite skeptic of AGW and was always open to legitimate science proving or disproving it, but I never bought into the “socialist are co-opting the green movement as a tool to battle capitalism.” As of today, I am beginning to see some merit in the latter.

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November 20, 2009, 9:41 pm
grrizzly says:

The peer-review process is explained! Michael Mann sent the following email to Andrew Revkin of the New York Times on September 29, 2009:

HI Andy,

Yep, what was written below is all me, but it was purely on background, please don’t quote anything I said or attribute to me w/out checking specifically–thanks.

Re, your point at the end–you’ve taken the words out of my mouth. Skepticism is essential for the functioning of science. It yields an erratic path towards eventual truth. But legitimate scientific skepticism is exercised through formal scientific circles, in particular the peer review process. A necessary though not in general sufficient condition for taking a scientific criticism seriously is that it has passed through the legitimate scientific peer review process. those such as McIntyre who operate almost entirely outside of this system are not to be trusted.

mike

And now appreciate what the same Mr. Mann wrote to a bunch of people on March 11, 2003:

This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the “peer-reviewed literature”. Obviously, they found a solution to that–take over a journal! So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering “Climate Research” as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board...
What do others think?
mike

Scientific method indeed!

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November 20, 2009, 10:12 pm
rpt says:

bgates: There are certainly a lot of people here who are gloating over the alleged fruits of what appears to have been a pretty serious crime. And then there are the people denying what appears to be a much more serious fraud on the public. Why are you a climate hoax denialist, RPT?

One email = fraud? Is it really that simple? I said I am not a climate scientist, but I think you are reaching past third level bootstrapping. What does the actual real world data say? Do you argue like this in your daily occupation?

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November 20, 2009, 10:33 pm
flyovertard says:

Tricks mean nothing. Solving the integral of
f(x)=sin(x)cos(x) involves one of the most elegant “tricks” in first year calculus.

The smoking gun is shutting down dissenting science (not views) in “peer reviewed” journals. Remember only “peer reviewed” counts for anything, everything else is just propaganda. The whole foundation of the recent climate being unprecedented relies on ... wait ... the recent climate being unprecedented.

The server hacked (yes illegal by US Law — but alas, it didn’t happen in the US) was from the CRU whose research focused on historical temp records both measured and via paleoclimate by proxy. If genuine, the hacked records show intentional data manipulation to make recent climate ... unprecedented; AND intentional evasion of FOIA requests; AND political interference of scientific publication.

Unfortunately all science will be subject to increased skepticism which is acceptable in its own right. However the impact on the reliability of science to the non-scientific population is disgraceful.

Its both a sad day for science and a triumph for science. Quite a bittersweet pill.

Note: sorry I’m not an elegant writer

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November 20, 2009, 10:35 pm
bystander says:

rpt:
One email = fraud? Is it really that simple? I said I am not a climate scientist, but I think you are reaching past third level bootstrapping. What does the actual real world data say? Do you argue like this in your daily occupation?

It would appear that “the actual real world data” has been tampered with, so what it says is suspect.

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November 20, 2009, 10:37 pm
rpt says:

bystaner:
My logic education is rusty, but isn’t the manner in which the emails were obtained irrelevant to what they say (provided it is not some sort of government investigation)? If they had been obtained as a gift from the authors, they would still contain the same words.Not to say that a crime has not been committed, but insinuating that the source of the emails negates the point strikes me as a genetic fallacy. And what does the actions of the National Archives have to do with these (stolen) emails? If they are conducting their own investigation on Bob Haldeman’s notes, it seems to me that it is an unrelated issue. To my untrained eyes, it looks like it was included to cloud the issue. I think that these emails are being used to challenge the credibility of the researchers that authored them. Isn’t that a proper use of this type of evidence? After all, they are influencing policy decisions that will have major impacts on all of our lives. Questioning the manner in which the numbers were arrived at is not the same as rejecting them. It is reasonable for people, whether press or climate skeptics, to investigate claims that seem dubious. If there is a reasonable explanation for these emails, I am sure everyone but the fringe will be satisified, and that is all that can be expected in all issues.

A crook is a crook. There is no whistleblowing claimed here. When you steal emails from someone else’s computer and rely upon it in an argument based on the stolen emails rather than actual data there should be a presumption that governs all of your argument you are (1) dishonest in one and dishonest in all, and thus credibility-challenged, and (2) you are not reviewing the entirety of what you have stolen objectively, but are instead cherry-picking the “gotcha” items. Maybe there is some relevance to the emails, maybe not, most of you “scientists” here can evaluate that in the larger context. In the meantime, those who hacked, and those who now rely upon the hackers solely to attack the credibility of their adversaries, rather than for direct proof, are worthy of derision.

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November 20, 2009, 10:42 pm
rpt says:

bystander:
It would appear that “the actual real world data” has been tampered with, so what it says is suspect.

It’s now a free for all. If hacking is ok, will can hacking and altering databases be far behind?

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November 20, 2009, 10:45 pm
Ryan Waxx says:

You are technically right, RPT... if someone dies, and it is later found that one of his sons forged his signature on the will, that doesn’t mean that that will wasn’t genuinely the last wishes of the deceased... but at the very, very least it raises some questions. And finding a murder weapon in that son’s closet, with the son’s fingerprints on it doesn’t prove 100% that the son did it... but it might convince a jury that’s not made up totally of the son’s sycophants.

In the same way, emails that certainly detail attempts to violate scientific ethics and corrupt the peer review process (and arguably even to corrupt the data itself) doesn’t mean that their science itself is bad... but at the very, very least it puts the lie to “the debate is over”, when this information reveals that the debate was shut down prematurely by hiding the data, blocking legitimate review, and massaging the data.

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November 20, 2009, 10:51 pm
flyovertard says:

Pursue the hackers to the end of the earth and burn them slowly in the name of justice. Thats a law thing with no implications to the science revealed.

Whats in the hacked data is another story.

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November 20, 2009, 10:56 pm
geokstr says:

Now if only someone could hack into Soros’ computers...

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November 20, 2009, 10:58 pm
Ryan Waxx says:

rpt:
It’s now a free for all. If hacking is ok, will can hacking and altering databases be far behind

Whistleblowing often involves actions that would otherwise be illegal. If you doubt that, then you know nothing whatsoever about whistleblowing.

Sometimes, in places where there is no protection for whistleblowing, the whistleblower remains anonymous. Obviously, no one wants to go to jail for revealing the malfeasance of others — much like what’s happening to the folks who exposed ACORN. Acorn is not being investigated, but the whistleblowers are. That’s what happens to people who reveal things that those in power would have preferred to leave hidden.

Maybe at the very least, the purported authors of these emails should be asked if they wrote them. Unfortunately, we have a nonfunctional media who has zero interest in investigating things like that, so that’s not going to happen.

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November 20, 2009, 11:00 pm
pmorem says:

My understanding is that all of those documents could have been requested and received lawfully under UK FOI.

There was existing public evidence that the UK FOI process was not effective with CRU. These files seem to contain evidence that CRU was deliberately and unlawfully withholding data.

In other words, much of this should have been publicly available already and all of it could legally be so.

Its deeply disappointing that it only became publicly available after hacking. That failure belongs first and foremost to CRU.

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November 20, 2009, 11:09 pm
geokstr says:

flyovertard says:
Pursue the hackers to the end of the earth and burn them slowly in the name of justice.

And why would we do that? If there is any there there, they may have seriously derailed an orchestrated fraud that could have caused tremendous damage to the world’s economy with costs that would make the present deficits look like penny ante, and hand over control to a very select elite, while enriching them beyond imagination.

If this turns out to be true, we should make heroes out of the hackers, and give them a couple billion dollars each as a reward for their service to mankind.

Or do you feel that breaking the law to expose a potentially monstrous criminal conspiracy should be punished no matter the context?

Of course, unlike our CO in Chief, we should withhold judgment until all the facts are in.

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November 20, 2009, 11:12 pm
Orson Buggeigh says:

Question for RPT: Do you think that Daniel Elssberg and the editors of the New York Times should have gone to prison for illegally leaking and publishing the documents commonly called “the Pentagon Papers?” it seems to me that under your logic, Ellsberg and the Times editors were all crooks who should have gone up the river.

Ryan Waxx makes the point nicely: This is whistle-blowing, not simple hacking or theft. Whistle blowers sometimes break the law because the powers that be are using the letter of the law to frustrate the spirit of the law. That seems to be precisely what is happening here. If the public cannot trust the scientific community to play by the rules and use genuinely straightforward and open peer review and open, independently verifiable experiments, then we are in trouble.

I do not condone breaking the law, but I find the prospect of the scientific community engaging in cooking the books far more dangerous to civil society than hacking into the lab’s computers in this case. Yes, it’s technically illegal. And it seems that what the climate researchers are doing is not ethical either. I think I’ll give the hackers a pass this time — they are engaged in whistle-blowing.

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November 20, 2009, 11:17 pm
whoopsie says:

This development would seem to complicate restoring science to its rightful place.

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November 20, 2009, 11:28 pm
Joel B. says:

This development would seem to complicate restoring science to its rightful place.

Ha...No, this development is extremely helpful in restoring science to its rightful place... one that includes a great deal of skepticism towards its “settled science” pronouncements.

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November 20, 2009, 11:50 pm
Brett says:

kdackson: Brett:Very cute indeed.As someone with a PhD in Engineering, I know the conext of “trick”, as in “trick of the trade”.What I am opposed to is that:1) They have a vested interest in demonstrating that AGW is real.So any method they develop to “reconstruct” data will by design reinforce that bias.Because a method that does not help your case is less than worthless.

What do you think peer review and the like is for? To catch those biases, when they happen.

2) They cannot rely on actual data, but must use a method to “reconstruct” data.Please see my comments on “dry lab” above.I don’t know about you, but the phrase “multiproxy temperature reconstruction” sounds like pseudoscience to me (and see below as to WHY)

Why should I consider your opinion on whether or not the terminology is pseudoscience? As for “reconstructing data”, that is referring to the actual data.

.3) Every good scientist KNOWS that data stands on it own.You just don’t make up crap, unless you have an agenda that requires you to make up crap.

They aren’t making up crap.Besides, the data itself is there for you to see — hell, the entire IPCC report, technical sections and all, is freely available on the Internet over at the IPCC website.

The funny thing about physical laws is that they tend to be consistent.Why does the tree ring density diverge after 1960?Personally, I don’t know and I don’t care.

Seeing as how you’re trying to use it against them, I doubt it.

Because the model is a CORRELATION, and as everyone should know, correlatin does not imply causation.Essentially, they are taking tree ring data and inferring a temperature.There are a number of problems with this approach, primary is that, unlike in a well designed set of experiments, there is no guarantee that environmental experimental factors are orthogonal (i.e, not co-correlated).

They have other ways of checking the temperature record (ice cores for one), and the tree ring method has stood up for testing. If you have an actual dispute on that as opposed to claiming that the entire scientific community consists of idiots who somehow don’t know correlation from causation, feel free to present it.

Now, I am no expert in AGW, but I am an expert in mathematical modeling, with almost 30 years of experience in the field — everything from modeling acid rain processes to complex chemical reactor modeling.

So you claim.

And the whole concept of restructuring the global economy based on a correlation between tree rings and temperature and models that have the value of ZERO within their confidence limits is laughable on its face.So does this prove they are “frauds”?Probably not, but it does show precisely how sloppy the work actually is and how shallow the attitude of making corrections to non-existent data to prove their agenda.

It does nothing of the sort, as you would have noticed if you’d read the section I quoted, as well as some of the actual research on global warming, instead of attacking it first.

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November 20, 2009, 11:50 pm
John Cunningham says:

there is detailed evidence on Anthony Watts’ site, http://www.wattsupwiththat.com showing that the tree ring data for the 20th century is from 12 trees cherry-picked from a larger group of 200 trees on the Yamal Peninsula in Northern Siberia.
try reading over all the selected emails currently being posted on numerous sites–they show clearly the motivation of the warmalists to massage and warp the data to meet a preconceived goal.

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November 21, 2009, 12:26 am
pc says:

So a cracker got a bunch of emails and this is the best they can do? el oh el.

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November 21, 2009, 12:32 am
Joe Triscari says:

I know the articles are claiming a “hack” which implies someone broke into a CRU computer took that data and dumped it into the public. I think the BBC article claimed the hacker were Russian presumably because the file first showed up on a Russian FTP site. I doubt it happened this way. I think this was a whistle blower.

If you look at the file — named FOI2009.zip — you find E-mails seemingly to bear only on the climate debate. I haven’t seen E-mails announcing all hands meetings, births, holiday parties, administrative requests, “isn’t this picture funny” or any of the other E-mails that make up maybe 50%-75% of my total E-mail traffic.

So...
Either the hacker downloaded server data, went through the last 13 years of E-mails and sanitized them to strictly bear on the climate debate removing all the “little” E-mails and associated attachments. Or... A file, FOI2009.zip which unzips to the directory FOIA, was prepared for some administrative need (perhaps a Freedom Of Information Act request) and someone inside decided to short circuit the release process and make it public outside the authorized channels. I think the latter is far more likely — but that’s me. In any case, the last date on the E-mails is Nov. 12, 2009. That gives you an idea how long our “hacker” had to prepare the data.

I don’t know what the legal ramifications would be under British law for the unauthorized release of pre-prepared FOIA data. I’d guess it’s different from hacking but maybe not. What would be the ramifications under American law?

There was clearly some resistance to the release from within the CRU. “FOIA” is referenced in 22 of the E-mails. In several, deep irritation is expressed having to respond to requests.

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November 21, 2009, 12:38 am
M.Gross says:

We don’t have concrete evidence all these emails are genuine, but I would think they provide reasonable justification to subpoena the real emails.

Are there any legal reasons one couldn’t subpoena the real emails based the fact these illegally obtained copies are the basis of suspicion? Assuming, for the purposes of my question that the contents of the emails actually consistute a statutory violation.

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November 21, 2009, 12:41 am
Mike from MN says:

All this concentration on emails, misses the bigger story, part of what was posted were models and their computer code. Outside experts have never gotten a look at exactly how the modeling works. I am more interested in what computer modeling experts, outside of the Climatology field, think. The real potential for skewing results towards AGW is by biasing the models

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November 21, 2009, 12:58 am
bgates says:

What does the actual real world data say?

Much of the actual data has never been released.

If hacking is ok, can hacking and altering databases be far behind

Given that the emails have already disclosed “hacking and altering databases”, using “tricks” to “hide” things, it looks like the only thing that’s far behind is you.

There is no whistleblowing claimed here

No, just somebody raising concern about wrongdoing inside an organization by releasing information. Nothing to do with whistleblowing at all.

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November 21, 2009, 1:25 am
bystander says:

rpt:
A crook is a crook. There is no whistleblowing claimed here. When you steal emails from someone else’s computer and rely upon it in an argument based on the stolen emails rather than actual data there should be a presumption that governs all of your argument you are (1) dishonest in one and dishonest in all, and thus credibility-challenged, and (2) you are not reviewing the entirety of what you have stolen objectively, but are instead cherry-picking the “gotcha” items. Maybe there is some relevance to the emails, maybe not, most of you “scientists” here can evaluate that in the larger context. In the meantime, those who hacked, and those who now rely upon the hackers solely to attack the credibility of their adversaries, rather than for direct proof, are worthy of derision.

You are generally right, a crook is a crook, but still, the fact that the “hacker” stole the emails does not change what the emails say, unless you are suggesting that the hacker created the emails. Is that what you believe?

You say that there is no whistle-blowing, and perhaps you are correct, but we don’t know that until the hacker is exposed or the hacker comes forward on his/her own and admits to the act.

Do you have evidence that the emails were not reviewed objectively? How do you know that the emails have been cherry-picked? They all seem to be from one specific file, and it is certainly conceivable that they were placed there by the owner of the source computer as a means of organizing his/her communication. I have done that so it is not hard for me to believe someone else would do that as well.

I don’t think anyone is relying on the hackers to attack their adversaries — they are relying on the text of the emails that the hacker exposed. And if it is true that the climate scientists in question were ignoring FOIA request for their data, these emails are the best proof anyone can access.

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November 21, 2009, 1:29 am
Kazinski says:

The real smoking gun is an atom bomb. I noticed this when reading the emails at Climate Audit:

Phil Jones in 2005:

The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone.

Then in a message that made the news, here is Phil Jones August 2009 at Pielke Jr.‘s blog:

Since the 1980s, we have merged the data we have received into existing series or begun new ones, so it is impossible to say if all stations within a particular country or if all of an individual record should be freely available. Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites, only the station series after adjustment for homogeneity issues. We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (i.e., quality controlled and homogenized) data.

So in 2005, the data existed but he said that he’d delete before releasing it. In 2009 after multiple FOIA requests, the data no longer exists. This is data that the UK and US governments paid Jones millions to compile and safeguard.

It can’t be explained away with any amount of handwaving. This is Inspector General and Congressional hearing level stuff. It isn’t just a tempest in a teapot.

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November 21, 2009, 3:18 am
David Walser says:

I’m not following RPT’s objections to our looking at and using the emails and other data made available to us by a hacker. I understand RPT’s objection to breaking the law; I don’t understand his/her trying to impose some sort of exclusionary rule the would require us to ignore this information since it was unlawfully obtained. (Note: There is some speculation that the data was “leaked” by someone inside the CRU. If that’s the case, we’re not dealing with “hacking”. Leaking the data still may have violated the law, but it’s not the same thing as hacking.)

Let’s see how this might play out in another context. Suppose Gov. Jim Bob murdered his mistress to keep his wife, Bobbie Rae, from divorcing him. To prove to Bobby Rae that he personally killed his mistress, Jim Bob gave Bobbie Rae a DVD of the murder. Somehow, a news columnist for the local paper (which had endorsed the Governor’s opponent) learns of the video and, since it’s kept in the Governor’s office and was made with government equipment, requests a copy of the video using the state’s FOIA. The Governor claims the video does not exist. The paper prints an editorial claiming the Governor is covering up a murder and is refusing the comply with the FOIA. The Governor claims the paper’s got no evidence of a murder nor that a video of the murder exists. The state police, controlled by the Governor, issue several reports stating the consensus of experts is that there was no murder. Frustrated that he cannot get a copy of the video by legitimate means, the news columnist commits several felonies by breaking into the Governor’s office, rummaging through his files, and finally stealing a copy of the video. The columnist then compounds his crime by posting the video on Youtube and sending a copy to Fox News to be played on the Glenn Beck show.

Questions: Should the public ignore the Governor’s murder because the news columnist obtained the video illegally and, absent that illegality, the public would not know of the murder and, therefore, the public must pretend that it does not know what it knows — otherwise crime would be rewarded? Would government be allowed to prosecute the Governor and to use the video as evidence in a court of law, even though the video was obtained illegally?

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November 21, 2009, 3:29 am
cirby says:

It’s absolutely HILARIOUS that so many of the AGW fanbase is suddenly screaming about how hacking and release of data is so wrong, when that sort of thing has been the basis of a large part of left-wing reporting for the last thirty-plus years.

If someone from the anti-AGW camp had his credit card records stolen, most of the “pro” believers would happily sort through all of his receipts, looking for every instance where he bought gas at an Exxon station to show how he was “bought off” by the eeevil oil companies. And it would be a Good Thing, because, you know, he deserved it.

Instead, we have people desperately trying to tell us that a “trick” to “hide” a result is just a really efficient algorithm or something, and not what it obviously is. Or that all of the “we need to hide these results or erase some files” emails don’t mean, well, what they mean.

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November 21, 2009, 6:16 am
kdackson says:

Brett:

When “peer” review is done by people who want to advance the agenda and actively conspire to supress opposing thought, it kind of makes “peer review” meaningless.

And they are “reconstructing” data by using a proxy (tree ring data) to infer climatic conditions (i.e., temperature). Because there were no direct measurements, it is “reconstructing”.

The data is not there for all to see. The IPCC report does not have the RAW DATA. These people actively fight against FOIA requests to keep the raw data secret. They have stated that no one outside their cabal is smart enough to review the data. Especially so if they have an opposing view. And everyone who want to look at the raw data MUST have an opposing view.

Ice cores and tree rings are NOT direct measurements. They infer climate from the “data” supposedly contained in those sources. Without direct measurements outside the range of the correlation dataset, predictions are next to worthless. This is one of the first rules experimenters are taught.

I claim my background, I can back it up. I have nothing to hide. Can you say the same?

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November 21, 2009, 7:45 am
Tweets that mention The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Climate Scientists, Unfiltered -- Topsy.com says:

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by PostRank – Economics, Jason D. McClain. Jason D. McClain said: Climate scientists unfiltered [anthropomorphic or not?] Global warming causal questions remain ::: http://bit.ly/7WCsNj [...]

November 21, 2009, 8:04 am
Josh Adams says:

pmorem: My understanding is that all of those documents could have been requested and received lawfully under UK FOI.There was existing public evidence that the UK FOI process was not effective with CRU.These files seem to contain evidence that CRU was deliberately and unlawfully withholding data.In other words, much of this should have been publicly available already and all of it could legally be so.Its deeply disappointing that it only became publicly available after hacking.That failure belongs first and foremost to CRU.

I didn’t take note of the filename, but in one of the emails in the download someone talked about how they were concerned by FOI requests, and said they’d burn the data before turning it over, or something to that effect. Should be able to find it with the search engine that was built...

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November 21, 2009, 8:16 am
Orson Buggeigh says:

Peer Review isn’t all that it should be. Just talk to responsible historians about Michael Bellesiles and the Organization of American Historians. Quite simply, the reviewers reading Bellesiles’ manuscript all conveniently happened to be people who favored gun control, so none of them bothered to check his sources or ask any questions about why his findings seemed to be opposite of everything written on the subject to date. The Journal of American History published Bellesiles article and awarded it a prize; Bellesiles went on to expand it into a book, which in turn won an award from Columbia University.

Then the fun began. A man with an MA in history began blogging and posting about the errors he found, which made it clear that Bellesiles was fabricating material or quoting out of context.

Shall we talk about the success of peer review in evaluating the work of Ward Churchill, the pretend Indian with the MA in graphic art from a third tier college hired as an American Indian expert on history by the University of Colorado?

There is a real problem when people with a political agenda can suppress data to protect themselves while manipulating data for political purposes. The scientific community is late getting to the party of politically corrupted study. Welcome to the sewer. That, RPT, is why I will reluctantly give the hackers in this case a pass. Too many allegedly respectable academics refuse to do the responsible thing, which is to demand open access to controversial data, make it public, and let the people who contest the theory try replicating the research to see if they replicate the results. When that happens, bad theories are promptly weeded out. When someone has a political agenda, be it Indian rights, selling more Chevrolets, or climate change, there should be a great deal of skepticism from the rest of us, and much more open evaluation of the claims made. That openness is what is missing from most politically charged work. I won’t call it scholarship. Marketing, perhaps, or propaganda. But not scholarship, because it is a mockery of that word.

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November 21, 2009, 8:55 am
Ricardo says:

kdackson: 2) They cannot rely on actual data, but must use a method to “reconstruct” data. Please see my comments on “dry lab” above. I don’t know about you, but the phrase “multiproxy temperature reconstruction” sounds like pseudoscience to me (and see below as to WHY).

Yes, if you want to guess at what the earth’s surface temperature was before humans were taking constant temperature readings at land– and sea-based temperature stations, you do indeed need to reconstruct the data by using proxies. Just like historians and archaeologists try to reconstruct the facts of older societies or geologists try to reconstruct the details of past tectonic plate movements with certain limited raw data.

kdackson: Why does the tree ring density diverge after 1960? Personally, I don’t know and I don’t care. Because the model is a CORRELATION, and as everyone should know, correlatin does not imply causation.

That’s true but it is irrelevant. We don’t need to say anything meaningful about the causal relationship between temperature and tree ring density to exploit the correlation for constructing a temperature proxy. In statistics, we can say one variable is a linear predictor of the other (meaning we can use it to impute the value of the second within a certain confidence interval provided our estimation errors have a finite variance) without making any statement about causation. As an example: there is a positive and statistically significant correlation between adult height and life expectancy. Actuaries exploit this fact when deciding what premium to charge someone and save their companies millions of dollars by doing so. The life insurance company couldn’t care less about whether an additional inch in height “causes” you to live longer. It’s irrelevant to the fact that adult height can help them in predicting how long someone will live.

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November 21, 2009, 9:40 am
Roger Zimmerman says:

What I have read implies a concerted effort to manipulate noisy/suspect data to reach the desired conclusion. This is politics not science. Some have suggested that they had to do this data manipulation because various data sources have various degrees of reliability. But, this is precisely the weakness of AGW theory — there is no consistent, clean data set to support it (leaving aside mega-parameter software simulations, but that is a subject for another post). It is possible to do good science based on such data but it requires (in order of increasing integrity):

1) Admitting that the data was manipulated, and that this raises questions about its import.
2) Explaining exactly how the data was manipulated, so that others may subject that methodology to criticism.
3) Estimating the uncertainty in the data due to manipulation (and comparing that uncertainty to the effect being measured, to thereby test the significance of the measurement).
4) Trying other reasonable manipulations of the data to see their effect on one’s conclusions.
5) Making all of the raw data available to anyone that asks, so that they may perform their own analysis (which, of course, is also subject to criticism).

Arguably, the CRU folks have done a little of #2, and not much of anything else. Certainly, they have not done #5. And #5 is really the bottom threshold for valid science. The entire enterprise is therefore suspect.

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November 21, 2009, 9:49 am
The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » NYT on Hacked Climate E-Mails says:

[...] New York Times reports on the hack and disclosure of e-mails from the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit. The e-mails, attributed to prominent [...]

November 21, 2009, 9:53 am
Sarcastro says:

This just in: Academic scientists play unethical hardball to get their theses across!

Also: breaking the law is totally cool when it’s for your side. Besides the other side thinks it’s okay when it’s their side! Their hypocrisy allows my own!!

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November 21, 2009, 10:17 am
uh_clem says:

Sarcastro wins another thread.

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November 21, 2009, 10:36 am
Ken Arromdee says:

Sarcastro wins another thread.

The thing about sarcasm is that it may show what you oppose, while concealing what you believe. Does Sarcastro think whistleblowers are unethical? Well, that’s the most straightforward interpretation of his sarcasm. But because the sarcasm has to be interpreted at all, he can just deny it.

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November 21, 2009, 10:41 am
kdackson says:

Ricardo:

The problem with correlations of this type (i.e., tree ring data versus climate) is that there are many uncontrolled or co-correlated variable used as the predictors. For example, if you are using temperature, rainfall, and CO2 measurements to predict tree ring growth, you have the following problems (at a minimum):

1) you have not controlled for other variables, such as cloud cover or sunspot activity (not that sunspot activity is known to have any effect on tree ring growth, but you would like your analysis to kick out variables that have no known correlation).

2) The variables of temperature, rainfall and CO2 measurements are not fully independent. Without the orthogonality in the factors, your run a serious risk of drawing the wrong conclusions.

3) As you move outside the range of the measured variables (temperature, rainfall, and CO2), the confidence interval dramatically widens for the dependent vatiable (tree ring growth), rendering the predictions almost useless because the noise becomes larger than the signal.

That’s true but it is irrelevant. We don’t need to say anything meaningful about the causal relationship between temperature and tree ring density to exploit the correlation for constructing a temperature proxy. In statistics, we can say one variable is a linear predictor of the other (meaning we can use it to impute the value of the second within a certain confidence interval provided our estimation errors have a finite variance) without making any statement about causation. As an example: there is a positive and statistically significant correlation between adult height and life expectancy. Actuaries exploit this fact when deciding what premium to charge someone and save their companies millions of dollars by doing so. The life insurance company couldn’t care less about whether an additional inch in height “causes” you to live longer. It’s irrelevant to the fact that adult height can help them in predicting how long someone will live.

Do you care to reevaluate that statement, in light of the fact that you are using one correlation (measuring tree ring growth as a function of temperature) and applying another correlation (measuring temperature as a function of CO2) to decisively conclude beyond a shadow of a doubt that mechanistically increases in CO2 lead to catastrophic temperature rises? And by so doing, that we have a dire need to reduce CO2 emissions to keep temperature rise in check.

That is the definition of the fallacy of correlation implying causation.

That’s what ALL of the AGW arguments boil down to. No scientific proof, simply inference based on stringing a few weak correlations together.

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November 21, 2009, 10:49 am
davod says:

“I’ve talked to several of my friends who are active research scientists (though not in this field. They all agree that people should lose their jobs over this scandal.”

I know they are not in the field. It is a pity because much of research used by the Global Warming proponents has never been peer reviewed.

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November 21, 2009, 11:08 am
kdackson says:

davod:

No it’s been peer reviewed by a select group of reviewers that did not critically examine the “research”. And if they had critically reviewed the research, they would not be reviewing additional papers.

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November 21, 2009, 11:15 am
cirby says:

Ricardo:

Yes, if you want to guess at what the earth’s surface temperature was before humans were taking constant temperature readings at land– and sea-based temperature stations, you do indeed need to reconstruct the data by using proxies.

If that were all they’d been doing, then you’d have a point.

However... when they start “reconstructing” measurements made in recent years, modifying the observed temperatures to get an output that agrees with their preconceived notion of what the temperatures ought to be? No, that’s not science any more. They’ve been doing this for quite some time, and have been caught at it. This is just the smoking gun that they were doing it on purpose, instead of by accidentally massaging the data too much.

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November 21, 2009, 11:52 am
Burn the Data! says:

Also: breaking the law is totally cool when it’s for your side. Besides the other side thinks it’s okay when it’s their side! Their hypocrisy allows my own!!

I don’t think anyone above said breaking the law is totally cool; no one is suggesting the hackers should escape the law, right? They are merely considering the impact of what the emails show about CRU and the behind the scene shenanigans.

Do you do this to avoid the substance of the emails?

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November 21, 2009, 11:53 am
A. Zarkov says:

The following email (file 1255100876) from Ben Santer at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to Phil Jones at the Climate Research Unit read as follows:

From: Ben Santer
To: P.Jones@uea.ac.uk
Subject: Re: CEI formal petition to derail EPA GHG endangerment finding with charge that destruction of CRU raw data undermines integrity of global temperature record
Date: Fri, 09 Oct 2009 11:07:56 –0700
Reply-to: santer1@llnl.gov

Dear Phil,

I’ve known Rick Piltz for many years. He’s a good guy. I believe he used to work with Mike MacCracken at the U.S. Global Change Research Program.

I’m really sorry that you have to go through all this stuff, Phil. Next time I see Pat Michaels at a scientific meeting, I’ll be tempted to beat the crap out of him. Very tempted.

I’ll help you to deal with Michaels and the CEI in any way that I can. The only reason these guys are going after you is because your work is of crucial importance — it changed the way the world thinks about human effects on climate. Your work mattered in the 1980s, and it matters now.

With best wishes,

Ben

This is a disturbing email because it suggests Santer might be willing to engage in thuggish behavior. Normally I would not take the phrase “beat the crap out of him” literally, but given the tone and context of the email, I no so sure. The staff at LLNL generally have the DOE “Q” clearance. Santer could lose his clearance, if not his job for this email. It’s likely he will get investigated by the Security Department over this.

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November 21, 2009, 11:53 am
A. Zarkov says:

This website has constructed a search engine for CRU email files. Sometimes the net really is amazing.

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November 21, 2009, 12:19 pm
kdackson says:

Some additional analysis:

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/11/024993.php

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/11/024995.php

Granted the author of the above pieces has taken sides, but read through the whole thing. He does raise some fair questions.

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November 21, 2009, 12:39 pm
Abdul Abulbul Amir says:

What do you think peer review and the like is for? To catch those biases, when they happen.

Peer review without access to the raw data is more or less meaningless.

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November 21, 2009, 1:36 pm
John Moore says:

For example, if you are using temperature, rainfall, and CO2 measurements to predict tree ring growth, you have the following problems (at a minimum):

You left one out: data sparsity. Not only is tree ring data an impure proxy for temperature, it is also not available in enough geographic/temporal density to provide accurate analyses — even if you could remove the effect of cofactors.

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November 21, 2009, 1:44 pm
kdackson says:

John,

I was only giving a few examples, and made the horribly naive assumption that the people doing the analysis would at least use a representative data set.

What is more troubling about the use of this so-called data is that they are using very localized sparse data to predict worldwide outcomes.

That, in itself, is suspect.

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November 21, 2009, 2:01 pm
Hans says:

Contrary to what RPT suggests, the fact that these documents were disclosed as the result of hacking does not make them in any way irrelevant or inadmissible. See, e.g., Lee v. Lee, 967 S.W.2d 82 (Mo. App. 1998) (Video tape depicting sexual activity between wife and another man was admissible in dissolution proceeding, regardless of whether husband obtained tape by criminal trespass or invasion of privacy).

Indeed, the dissemination and discussion of these documents is shielded by the First Amendment, especially given that they involve matters of great public concern. Bartnicki v. Vopper , 532 U.S. 514 (2001) (First Amendment barred lawsuit over publicizing tape that someone else obtained through illegal invasion of privacy).

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November 21, 2009, 2:06 pm
A. Zarkov says:

Hans: Contrary to what RPT suggests, the fact that these documents were disclosed as the result of hacking does not make them in any way irrelevant or inadmissible.

How could the material be irrelevant even if it were obtained illegally? We are dealing with scientific, not legal questions here. This is too bad for RPT as it shows he doesn’t really care about the science. He of all people should be infuriated at the likes of Mann, Hansen, Jones et al for trying to deceive people and thinking the fruits of public funding are their personal plaything.

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November 21, 2009, 2:18 pm
kdackson says:

How could the material be irrelevant even if it were obtained illegally? We are dealing with scientific, not legal questions here. This is too bad for RPT as it shows he doesn’t really care about the science. He of all people should be infuriated at the likes of Mann, Hansen, Jones et al for trying to deceive people and thinking the fruits of public funding are their personal plaything.

Yes, facts are stubborn things, and at the very least, this should cast doubt on the “settled science”.

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November 21, 2009, 2:27 pm
rpt says:

RPT: I do not have sufficient expertise in the area to comment on the substance of the disclosures, but one might ask those who seek “smoking guns” to disclose their own private correspondence before commenting, in order to equalize the playing field. Otherwise, the crime will be rewarded.

I posted the above disclaimer for a reason. Unlike all of the other posters here, I am not a scientist, nor have I followed the climate debate in the relevant journals, etc. I can’t express opinions about the data, etc. This is not an exclsuionary issue, because there is no criminal case. There is no admissibility However, form a general perspective

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November 21, 2009, 3:22 pm
rpt says:

“I do not have sufficient expertise in the area to comment on the substance of the disclosures, but one might ask those who seek “smoking guns” to disclose their own private correspondence before commenting, in order to equalize the playing field. Otherwise, the crime will be rewarded.”

Let’s start again. I posted the above disclaimer for a reason. Unlike all of the other posters here, I am not a climate scientist, nor have I followed the climate debate in the relevant journals, etc. I can’t express opinions about the data, etc. (pro-AGW, anti-AGW, denialist, etc.) and have not done so,. You have jumped to conclusions. You’re all way ahead of me. This is not an exclusionary rule issue, because there is no criminal case. There is no admissibility question because, as far as I know, there is no civil lawsuit pending in which these disclosures would be relevant; if that is not true so be it.

My questions are still the following: If all of this informal “secret” purloined email is relevant to the ongoing scientific and political debate because it discloses bias, or bad faith, or manipulation of data, or something else meaningful, then:

1. Is it not appropriate that all of the adverse parties, interest groups, petro-groups, etc. be compelled to disclose their internal correspondence because it might disclose similar wrongdoing? Does offering this data as evidence constitute a waiver of whatever privacy, confidentiality, proprietary information, trade secret, et al, claims that the anti-AGW parties are making? The proponents of this evidence are asserting that private internal communications are relevant and should be discoverable.

2. More generally, is hacking now deemed ok after the fact if it discloses useful/harmful impeachment information? What about physical breakins? Is the crime now incentivized?

Can someone address these legal issues in a nonpartisan way?

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November 21, 2009, 3:34 pm
Harry Eagar says:

rpt sez: ‘can hacking and altering databases be far behind?’

The altering of databases was already here. That’s what the documents reveal.

Besides, at least the databases in the hack should have been public anyway.

The emails, maybe. There were FOIA requests. You might be interested to follow the history of the attempts to defeat the FOIA requests, covered extensively in real time at Climate Audit. The hacked emails add a little gravy to that stew, but we already knew that the East Anglia academics were evading the FOI laws.

You come in at the middle of the third act.

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November 21, 2009, 4:14 pm
rpt says:

Harry:

You are right. I have not been following this so I am just asking the questions that immediately come to mind. There is only so much time in the day.....

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November 21, 2009, 4:15 pm
kdackson says:

I am speaking as a scientist who has had peer reviewed articles in other fields. I am not a lawyer, so I will restrict my comments to the general realm of science and what is or is not acceptable.

1: Absolutely NOT!

We know the energy companies et. al. have an agenda and are honest about having one. Call me a denialist, but I have had my doubts about environmental scares ever since I worked in acid rain for my MS degree. It was bogus then, so they had to come up with something else to waive a red flag.

Here, you have a group who is supposedly investigating climate change using the scientific method in a non-partisan manner. They are supposed to be dispassionate and disinterested in the results and have their results subject to third party scrutiny.

So let’s look at what the e-mails are purporting to say:

A) The e-mails show they clearly have an agenda while telling the public that they have none. The aganda is so deep that they will only share even internal research with people who they fully trust to toe the party line.

B) The scientific method is being perverted by “cherry picking” data and using techniques that yield the desired result. Forget the whole “tricks” language (as in tricks of the trade). They are basing predictions of global climate change based on 12 trees in a localized area. That would raise all sorts of red flags if word of that got out.

C) The third party review is not being done by disinterested parties. They are choosing reviewers who support their views and when asked to produce the data, they refuse. Indeed, the e-mails show a history of delaying release of data through FoI processes. When they were told to release the data a few months ago, it was mysteriously “lost”. In addition, they have acknowledged they were boycotting journals that published opposing views.

All of the above points to at the very least, a shocking display of dishonesty at best and outright scientific misconduct at worst. At least it casts doubt on whether these “data maker-uppers” (because they don’t seem to be researchers in my opinion) can be trusted.

2. I have my thoughts on this, but since IANAL, I will not express my opinion.

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November 21, 2009, 4:15 pm
A. Zarkov says:

rpt: Can someone address these legal issues in a nonpartisan way?

Some posters have addressed the legal issues, but it’s mainly the science that’s the issue in this particular thread. Your requirement that everyone pro and con disclose all their emails and everything else is of course not workable or necessary. But those who are working on public money have an obligation to share everything. They don’t own the data, but they think they do.

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November 21, 2009, 4:16 pm
rpt says:

Indeed, the e-mails show a history of delaying release of data through FoI processes.When they were told to release the data a few months ago, it was mysteriously “lost”.In addition, they have acknowledged they were boycotting journals that published opposing views.All of the above points to at the very least, a shocking display of dishonesty at best and outright scientific misconduct at worst.At least it casts doubt on whether these “data maker-uppers” (because they don’t seem to be researchers in my opinion) can be trusted.2.I have my thoughts on this, but since IANAL, I will not express my opinion.

Thank you. Your explanation helps. And for Zarkov. I should probably add “IANAS” to my posts on this topic.

If I can risk another question...is this disclosure limited to a discrediting/impeachment of the East Anglia people and their point of view/methods, or does it also constitute affirmative evidence that there is no AGW?

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November 21, 2009, 4:56 pm
Spence_UK says:

RPT asked:

2. More generally, is hacking now deemed ok after the fact if it discloses useful/harmful impeachment information? What about physical breakins? Is the crime now incentivized?

Well, here’s an interesting counterexample. Recently, a climate change protest group illegally broke in to a UK power station (Kingsnorth), climbed a chimney to paint a protest message on the side of it. (They wanted to write “Gordon Bin It”, but a generator failed leaving the chimney affectionately named “Gordon”) The protesters were caught, and the owner of the power station (E.ON) took them to court to recover damages from criminal activity.

Dr James Hansen, NASA employee from the Goddard Institute of Space Studies, flew into the UK to present expert opinion at the trial of the damage global warming could do, including potential future risk of flooding (therefore risking damage to property). An obscure UK law — which allows people to break the law in order to protect property — was invoked to get them off the hook.

So in answer to your question, yes, it seems climate protesters and James Hansen have already “incentivised” breaking in and damaging property.

I wonder if E.ON could use this to defend the hacker: the alarmism generated by CRU put our property at risk from misguided climate protesters, therefore the action was taken to protect said property? Slightly tongue-in-cheek perhaps, but nothing would surprise me in this debate.

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November 21, 2009, 5:07 pm
kdackson says:

If I can risk another question...is this disclosure limited to a discrediting/impeachment of the East Anglia people and their point of view/methods, or does it also constitute affirmative evidence that there is no AGW?

I would not so far as to say categorically that there is no AGW; however, it does bring their methods and conclusions into question.

Now that it is open for all to see, people who can look at the data and critically analyze the findings, we can finally have an honest debate as to whether AGW exists or not.

However, until the evidence shows that AGW is indeed a real phenomenon, I remain skeptical. The burden of proof is on the people who put forward the theory.

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November 21, 2009, 5:19 pm
A. Zarkov says:

rpt: IANAS

What does that mean?

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November 21, 2009, 5:19 pm
rpt says:

I Am Not A Scientist.

The complement to I Am Not A Lawyer.

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November 21, 2009, 5:22 pm
A. Zarkov says:

rpt: I Am Not A Scientist.

That makes it tough to follow what’s happening. Of course Al Gore is not a scientist either, but that doesn’t stop him from spouting of on AGW. BTW Gore recently said that the interior of the earth has a temperature in the millions of degrees! The core is actually at 7,000 C. The core of the sun is at 15 million degrees because its a big fusion engine. He was on TV talking about geothermal energy, so it’s not that he got the earth and the sun confused. He’s just a scientific ignoramus.

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November 21, 2009, 5:31 pm
rpt says:

I am not a Gore either.

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November 21, 2009, 5:33 pm
SG says:

If I can risk another question...is this disclosure limited to a discrediting/impeachment of the East Anglia people and their point of view/methods, or does it also constitute affirmative evidence that there is no AGW?

This quote

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.

is the closest I’ve seen along that line. Its seems they recognize that the data is not consistent with their predictions but rather that interpreting this as invalidating their predictions, they view it as a problem with their data collection methods.

Which to be fair, it may be. But when the data doesn’t conform to your prediction, you can’t claim the science is settled and the debate is over.

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November 21, 2009, 5:37 pm
A. Zarkov says:

rpt: I am not a Gore either.

Do you think non-scientist Gore has some special ability with respect to AGW?

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November 21, 2009, 5:39 pm
A. Zarkov says:

SG: Which to be fair, it may be. But when the data doesn’t conform to your prediction, you can’t claim the science is settled and the debate is over.

They are coming apart at the seams. What were they predicting 10 years ago as the temperature now? They have been in this business for 30 years.

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November 21, 2009, 5:41 pm
SG says:

Here’s my question — I don’t follow the AGW debate that closely so I don’t recognize the names involved here. If you were to completely discard the implicated scientists’ research, how much of the case for AGW remains? Is the research at stake fundamental to the case for AGW or is it tangential?

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November 21, 2009, 5:46 pm
lucia says:

SG

If you were to completely discard the implicated scientists’ research, how much of the case for AGW remains? Is the research at stake fundamental to the case for AGW or is it tangential?

On the first question: Lots of evidence to support AGW would remain even if we ignored all research by every scientist implicated by the CRU files.

On the second question: That question packs a lot of things together and the answer depends on what you consider to be “fundamental”, “tangential” and even “the case for AGW”. In comments here you are reading people pitting the case for AGW as if there are only two positions:
a) The absolute denialist position that everything about AGW is a hoax and b) Some position that is the negation of a. However (b) could contain a huge number of possiblities.

Much of the arguments at blogs, forums and even sometimes in the cru files revolves around accusations that
a) evidence is exaggerated (as opposed to made out of whole cloth.)
b) some scientists are trying to supress valid counter evidence by putting pressure on journal editors.
c) some scientiest are doing their best to make it very difficult for anyone to test the truth of their claims, conclusions or methods.

Also in mind, while we know that Cru was hacked and we know large fractions of the information in the leak is genuine, some may be edited or faked. We won’t know everything anytime soon if ever.

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November 21, 2009, 5:56 pm
John Moore says:

SG...

This release doesn’t change the science. Those who have critically followed AGW science were already aware of the distortions that are revealed by the emails — in general in most cases, and in specific in the case of the 12 tree samples.

What this does show is how corrupt the scientific process has become. It should serve to awaken the public to the fact that scientists, even working for government institutes, are indeed human beings, with biases, and significantly subject to group effects and financial incentives. It should put an end to the attacks on skeptics as “tools of the energy companies” and other meaningless ad homina.

As to the science itself... nobody with any understanding of the atmosphere doubts that increasing CO2 concentration, in the absence of other factors (including feedback), will cause a 1 degree C global temperature increase for every doubling of the CO2. Note that this is a dramatically smaller effect than being pushed by the alarmists, and is logarithmic (each doubling, not each increment).

The rest of the scientific debate is all about feedback effects, and other factors such as the rate of CO2 sequestration and external factors such as solar effects. The debate about paleolcimatological data is important primarily as it serves to inform the estimation of feedback, and the calibration of the models.

However, the alarmists have produced so-called “hockey-stick” graphs from the paleoclimatic data, and these graphs show a flat temperature trend until about 150 years ago, and then a sharp rise. The hockey sticks are great for scaring people, but have been severely criticized. A common (and correct IMO) criticism is that they show neither the midieval optimum (warm period) nor the little ice age, even though history strongly shows these events in Europe, and a lot of paleoclimatological data shows that it is global. Hence the sensitivity shown in the emails to splicing temperature time series, etc.

In the past, a strong paleoclimatic argument (famously abused by Al Gore) was long term (>100,000 years) correlation between apparent global temperature, and CO2 concentrations — primarily using ice core data. This was pretty well crushed when higher precision measurements of the ice cores showed that the warming signal (which may or may not have indicated warming) significantly preceded the CO2 concentration increase, requiring causation to go backwards in time to support the CO2->warming historical hypothesis.

The science in favor of positive feedback (needed to do more than the 1C/doubling) is based primarily on computer models — primarily general circulation models. These models are also extensively used for weather forecasting (which is where my own experience comes in) and are, basically, pretty lousy at the latter task. It is not unusual for a major trend to disappear between two model runs 12 hours apart!

To complicate things, the climate has many cycles, ranging from annual to multi-decadal to millenial and more. Sorting out the signal from CO2 (especially man-made CO2) from the natural cyclic effects and external forcing factors is very difficult — hence prone to argument and to fraud and pseudo-science.

Every climatologist I know has decided that the future of the atmosphere cannot be well predicted, and that the certainty shown by the alarmists is inappropriate and unscientific. Almost all of them, however, do not proclaim this for fear of the political and funding consequences. It is no accident that most of the prominent skeptics are near or after retirement (including the “father of climatology”) — they are safe from recriminations.

That this is a significant factor should be a red flag to anyone watching the debate — to inform them that the results are not to be trusted and not useful for policy making.

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November 21, 2009, 6:03 pm
Brad R says:

I’m not sure if this is on point or not, but the University of East Anglia provides this FOI guidance for their staff:
http://www.uea.ac.uk/is/foi/guidance

5 key facts that all staff should know about Freedom of Information

* The Act gives everyone both in and outside UEA a right of access to ANY recorded information held by UEA
* A request for information must be answered within 20 working days
* If you receive a request for information which mentions FOI, is not information you routinely provide, is unusual, or you are unsure of, you should pass the request to your FOIA contact or the Information Policy and Compliance Manager
* You should ensure that UEA records are well maintained and accessible to other staff, so that they can locate information needed to answer a request when you are not there
* As all documents and emails could potentially be released under the Act, you should ensure that those you create are clear and professional

That would seem to imply that “everyone both in and outside UEA” has a right to review emails on UEA servers.

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November 21, 2009, 6:13 pm
Greg F says:

SG: Here’s my question — I don’t follow the AGW debate that closely so I don’t recognize the names involved here. If you were to completely discard the implicated scientists’ research, how much of the case for AGW remains?

Since they were instrumental in deciding what went into the IPCC reports, which incidentally was their work, it would be quite devastating. These are the heavy hitters in paleo climate (the historical records). A case of the fox guarding the hen house.

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November 21, 2009, 6:37 pm
SG says:

Since they were instrumental in deciding what went into the IPCC reports, which incidentally was their work, it would be quite devastating.

My question was poorly worded — this is exactly what I was asking about.

It’s not the science behind AGW that I was wondering about. I don’t think anyone seriously doubts that CO2 is a greenhouse gas or that it’s concentration is increasing due to man’s activities. The AGW debate I meant was more the political/public policy debate — It’s how much warming is happening now and what the feedback looks like that is (properly) used to drive public policy decisions.

If you were to discard all of the research tainted by this group, it sounds like that need for a strong public policy response is radically undercut. Lucia, I infer you’re a proponent of some of the stronger AGW responses — would you agree with Greg F about this? Not that it is undercut, but that if you were to discard everything associated with this group it would be undercut?

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November 21, 2009, 6:53 pm
kdackson says:

John Moore said:

As to the science itself... nobody with any understanding of the atmosphere doubts that increasing CO2 concentration, in the absence of other factors (including feedback), will cause a 1 degree C global temperature increase for every doubling of the CO2. Note that this is a dramatically smaller effect than being pushed by the alarmists, and is logarithmic (each doubling, not each increment).

I would take exception to that, as it is simply a correlation (and not a very good one at that).

Your supposition falls apart for the following reasons:

1) The current level of atmospheric CO2 is approximately 360 ppmv, up from a level of around 280 ppmv (estimated) from pre-industrial revolution levels. Given that the atmosphere is 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen, 360 ppmv CO2 is equivalent to 0.0360% of the atmosphere. So there is approximately 2500 times the amount of nitrogen in the air than CO2 and approximately 700 times the amount of oxygen in the air than CO2.

Since air (and its components) are ideal gasses in the atmosphere (low temperatures and pressures), simple mixing rules apply. For any given physical property, you take the weighted average of the component physical properties.

The ratios are so far apart that a huge change in CO2 is required to see any change at all in the physical properties of air. This argues against a mechanistic rationale for CO2 increases to increase temperature.

2) Your argument relys on the correlations and models developed by the people who admit they cherry pick the data. Sorry, but that should not give one much confidence in the conclusions they reached previously.

You need to remember that correlation does not imply causation

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November 21, 2009, 7:24 pm
Harry Eagar says:

‘does it also constitute affirmative evidence that there is no AGW?’

and

‘If you were to completely discard the implicated scientists’ research, how much of the case for AGW remains? Is the research at stake fundamental to the case for AGW or is it tangential?’

Nobody knows even whether the globe is warming over, say, 100 years. And if it is, what causes it. Global surface temperature observations didn’t begin until 2001. Everything before that is more or less guesswork.

The CRU-Hansen axis has devoted a quarter of a century to reconstructing temperature series that nobody bothered to collect at the time. They are the big idea guys: their papers are the ones that assert that the last decade was the warmest in a thousand years and so on.

There are thousands of climate scientists working on fragments of the question (such as, for example, what is the relation of tropospheric warming above the tropics to surface temperatures elsewhere). The CRU-Hansen axis is really the only allegedly scientific source for the idea the the globe is warming under human influence.

If you are a denialist, then they are guys to shoot down, because with them gone, there’s really not much to present to policymakers.

And there are two parts to the CRU-Hansen project: 1) find proxies for the observations that were not made; and 2) manipulate them statistically to find useful trends. The hacked material casts doubts on 1. Steve McIntyre and his friends (including Lucia) have cast strong doubts on 2.

It looks to me like a pyramid of oranges at the grocers’. The hack pulled out a couple of oranges from the bottom tier.

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November 21, 2009, 8:16 pm
John Moore says:

2) Your argument relys on the correlations and models developed by the people who admit they cherry pick the data. Sorry, but that should not give one much confidence in the conclusions they reached previously.

You need to remember that correlation does not imply causation

You misunderstand, and apparently also do not read carefully, since my postings have been attacking both the false correlations and the accuracy of the models.

The 1 degree C warming per doubling is based on well understood radiative physics. It has been accepted science for 100 years. It is NOT based on correlation — it is based on actual physics — unlike the more extreme warming forecast by the global warming alarmists.

You also should have read what I said about the qualifiers. Feedback could be positive or negative, and external factors (say, volcanic eruption, solar variation) can also affect temperature. In other words, I am hardly a global warming alarmist — in fact I am what they would sneeringly call a “denialist.”

Yo do not help the skeptic’s cause to ignore fundamental physics. I am well aware that CO2 is a trace gas — but what counts is its differential response to radiation at different wavelengths. The spectral characteristics of the inbound flux are different than the spectral characteristics of the outbound radiation. That is why CO2 truly is a “greenhouse gas.” It just happens to be a very weak one.

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November 21, 2009, 8:19 pm
kdackson says:

A fellow “denialist” traveller. Good to know.

I am familiar with radiative heat transfer (Engineer and all that). However, I would guess that radiative heating of the landmasses and the ocean with convective heat transfer to the atmosphere would be a more mechanistic based model, primarily because the concentration of so-called green house gasses is relatively low.

Inbound and outbound fluxes? You mean absorptivity and emissivity? Since both O2 and N2 do not absorb in the IR range, the entire contribution to the radiative flux from the atmosphere is the CO2, O3 (0.07 ppmv), CH4 (2 ppmv), and H2O, and of those 4 compounds, H2O is the largest contributor and varies widely depending upon where you are and averages 4000 ppmv.

More likely is the reradiation from the surface of the earth to the black body of space at night. Cloud cover affects that most strongly, and you can see it on clear, calm nights in winter when the temperatue in my neck of the woods typically can get to –10 F (or lower) during the winter.

I never denied the fundamental physics of the situation, but I have not yet seen an adequate model that takes into account the topography and incident solar radiation, convection, and reradiation to space that would be a starting point.

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November 21, 2009, 9:32 pm
John Moore says:

kdackson... The greenhouse gas physics I refer to can be thought of as a 1-dimensional model — nothing that describes the total situation. Yes, I am referring to the absorption and emission spectra. The incident radiation from the sun has a different spectrum than the return radiation — the sun is hot, the emission from the earth is much cooler — as you suspect.

The difficulty of dealing with CO2 forcing is exactly because of the feedback effects. There are known (at a gross level) positive feedbacks: warm the earth and the oceans hold less CO2; melt tundra and get methane. There is also negative feedback (more CO2 means more CO2 absorbed by growing plants, etc).

The most significant factor is indeed H2O — specifically, clouds. Clouds either increase or decrease the albedo depending on droplet concentration.

The way the alarmists arrive at their predictions is through the use of sensitivity models. These are typically GCM’s (similar to those we use in weather forecasting). Twiddle the parameters to what you think CO2 will do to the forcing, and then see what the model says. Needless to say, these are almost completely unfalsifiable, since there is no higher-CO2 atmosphere to try them against. Hence the interest in paleoclimatology. They can try to model the past and match it to the past’s climate record.

That seems to be very fraught with errors and enormously vulnerable to sampling bias.

So, let’s impoverish humanity (err, I mean create green jobs) based on this dog’s breakfast.

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November 21, 2009, 9:45 pm
rpt says:

A. Zarkov:
Do you think non-scientist Gore has some special ability with respect to AGW?

I have not read any of his work. I do know that hie is a popular whipping boy for one side of the debate.

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November 21, 2009, 9:57 pm
Ricardo says:

kdackson: Do you care to reevaluate that statement, in light of the fact that you are using one correlation (measuring tree ring growth as a function of temperature) and applying another correlation (measuring temperature as a function of CO2) to decisively conclude beyond a shadow of a doubt that mechanistically increases in CO2 lead to catastrophic temperature rises? And by so doing, that we have a dire need to reduce CO2 emissions to keep temperature rise in check.

No, I don’t care to re-evaluate my previous statement at all since it is directly on point: the correlation v. causation problem has nothing to do with using proxies to reconstruct a temperature series for the past 1000 years. That’s what the discussion is about. Obviously, we can’t even begin to have a reasonable debate about AGW or the role CO2 plays in warming if we can’t even agree on the temperature data. Your objection to the use of proxies for temperature is simply wrong: we don’t need to know the causal impact of a 1 degree increase in temperature on tree ring density to use tree ring density as a proxy. If we wanted to know that causal impact then your objections are right — we don’t need it, though. See my example of adult height and life expectancy and the millions of dollars life insurance companies bet on this correlation.

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November 21, 2009, 10:03 pm
kdackson says:

Ricardo, if you want to use proxies based on a sampling of 12 trees in a local area to extrapolate to global conclusions, then more power to you.

That’s like sampling 2 trees per continent and drawing global conslusions from that. Would you be comfortable with data of that high a “quality”?

Is a bogus method based on cherry picked data from a local data set, with no controls for variations due to species, latitude, elevation, rainfall, soil nutrients, etc.

Think of it another way. If the tobacco companies did a study that found a group of 12 people who were lifetime smokers and liven into their 90s, died of something other than cancer, and published the data as proof that there was no correlation between smoking and cancer, would you blindly accept that data?

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November 21, 2009, 10:21 pm
John Moore says:

Ricardo,
Without having a causal relationship or very good correlations, the statistical use of the proxies is simply data mining.

The actuaries can test their stats... if the correlation holds up over time, then their bets are good and they’ll keep making them. They also don’t care about co-factors, because it doesn’t matter what the mechanism of action is, the results are the same.

With climate proxies, this isn’t the case. The data is too sparse to just use correlation, and furthermore, what do you correlate with, when you don’t have good temperature measurements? We have only had decent global teperature measurements for a couple of decades or so — with satellite sensors. Any data before that is suspect, as is shown by the valid debates over the shape of the curves — even in the thermometry era. Even the satellite data is subject to systemic bias.

Hence, the paleoclimatic data is simply very noisy, too sparse and subject to systemic error. The consequence of this is that we can’t place much confidence in it. Make huge policy decisions from science dependent on this data is the height of folly (unless there are other motives).

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November 21, 2009, 10:51 pm
John Moore says:

Ricardo,
Without having a causal relationship or very good correlations, the statistical use of the proxies is simply data mining.

The actuaries can test their stats... if the correlation holds up over time, then their bets are good and they’ll keep making them. They also don’t care about co-factors, because it doesn’t matter what the mechanism of action is, the results are the same.

With climate proxies, this isn’t the case. The data is too sparse to just use correlation, and furthermore, what do you correlate with, when you don’t have good temperature measurements? We have only had decent global teperature measurements for a couple of decades or so — with satellite sensors. Any data before that is suspect, as is shown by the valid debates over the shape of the curves — even in the thermometry era. Even the satellite data is subject to systemic bias.

Hence, the paleoclimatic data is simply very noisy, too sparse and subject to systemic error. The consequence of this is that we can’t place much confidence in it. Make huge policy decisions from science dependent on this data is the height of folly (unless there are other motives).

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November 21, 2009, 10:51 pm
A. Zarkov says:

A long time ago I did forest modeling. There are a whole lot of factors that affect tree growth.

1. Growing degree days. This is just like heating degree days where you average the temperature above a threshold.

2. Soil conditions.

3. Root pathogens.

4. Rainfall.

5. Altitude.

6. In some cases forest fires.

7. Air pollution such as ozone and sulfur dioxide.

8. Competition from other vegetation.

9. Stuff I can’t remember.

Now are you going go to take a small sample of trees from one place and extrapolate that to the whole planet? You couldn’t do that if you had temperature stations instead of trees.

I also worked on calculating the global temperature field using the available station data at the time. The most successful method was radial basis functions, specifically Hardy’s multiquartic. I don’t know if people use this technique today, but I would be very interested to see how they go from station data to the global temperature average. But Mann, Hansen et al won’t provide data and methods. As the emails show they would rather destroy data than release it. Is this science? I’m amazed that they every got away with concealing public data.

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November 21, 2009, 10:51 pm
John Moore says:

oops

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November 21, 2009, 10:51 pm
lucklucky says:

“we don’t need to know the causal impact of a 1 degree increase in temperature on tree ring density to use tree ring density as a proxy.”

False, as a proxy of what? up and down? It certainly can’t be proxy of temperature. Because temperature has a value. Not knowing the process it is all thin conjecture not science like this news show:

“The growth of British trees appears to follow a cosmic pattern, with trees growing faster when high levels of cosmic radiation arrive from space.
Researchers made the discovery studying how growth rings of spruce trees have varied over the past half a century.
As yet, they cannot explain the pattern, but variation in cosmic rays impacted tree growth more than changes in temperature or precipitation.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8311000/8311373.stm

“See my example of adult height and life expectancy and the millions of dollars life insurance companies bet on this correlation.”

Insurance companies aren’t making science. Insurance companies need to justify how to get bigger premiums.

But the above is all Blablabla...not even todays is possible to say what is the earth temperature. There is not enough data(stations don’t cover whole world) and even less reliable(many stations are affected by land use) to say what is any value.

Even less possible is to have an historical series. Stations in Europa have been moving to Mediterranean, those in Pacific, a big part of the world for those that forget forget have several issues.

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November 21, 2009, 10:55 pm
A. Zarkov says:

rpt: I have not read any of his work. I do know that hie is a popular whipping boy for one side of the debate.

He doesn’t have any work to read. He’s published a coffee table book called An Inconvenient Truth. Have you ever looked at it? No index. No references. No table of contents. It’s a polemic, not any kind of work of science. Gore won’t debate anyone. When a journalist asked him some embarrassing questions at a press conference, they cut off his microphone. Why would he not be a whipping boy with that kind of record?

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November 21, 2009, 10:57 pm
Ricardo says:

kdackson: Ricardo, if you want to use proxies based on a sampling of 12 trees in a local area to extrapolate to global conclusions, then more power to you.

I’m not sure you understand the context of the academic dispute between Mann et al (the tree ring, hockey stick people) and the skeptics. The debate is not over whether there has been significant warming in the past century: that is already settled by the direct temperature record. The dispute is over whether there was such a thing as the Medieval Warm Period and whether temperatures in this period reached higher than they did in the 1990s.

Skeptics at this point usually bring out anecdotes about wine vineyards and olive plantations existing in Northern Europe as proof of the Medieval Warm Period. This evidence is a) anecdotal (and therefore given appropriately low weight by scientists) and b) every bit as “localized” as the tree ring data. Fortunately, Mann et al do not rely just on tree rings but use several other proxies and use principal component analysis to extract a proxy measure of temperature.

Is their method biased? I honestly haven’t followed the debate closely enough to know. But I do know that a true skeptic would not use anecdotal evidence from one small corner of the earth to make generalizations about the temperature record of the past 1000 years. If you want to say that we simply don’t know much of anything about global temperatures before 150 years ago, then please do so. But you cannot deny the warming of the past century (which relies on direct measurement rather than rough proxies) nor can you make any claims about the natural variability of the climate or past warming periods.

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November 21, 2009, 10:58 pm
A. Zarkov says:

Actuarial science and reliability engineering have similar goals, but the methods are way different. The actuaries have tons of data because there are billions of people. They can estimate the force of mortality function directly from life tables. But reliability engineers don’t have much data and they often can’t wait until all the units fail. So they use models for the hazard function (same as the force of mortality) like the Weibull distribution. Then they estimate the parameters and do inference. They are at the mercy of their data. Similarly with tree ring data– they must use models and doing the validation can be very hard. Moreover they have lots of opportunities to fiddle. That’s why they won’t show you all the work.

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November 21, 2009, 11:04 pm
rpt says:

A. Zarkov:
He doesn’t have any work to read. He’s published a coffee table book called An Inconvenient Truth. Have you ever looked at it? No index. No references. No table of contents. It’s a polemic, not any kind of work of science. Gore won’t debate anyone. When a journalist asked him some embarrassing questions at a press conference, they cut off his microphone. Why would he not be a whipping boy with that kind of record?

He’s not my guy to defend so it doesn’t matter.

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November 21, 2009, 11:17 pm
mischief says:

Here’s my question — I don’t follow the AGW debate that closely so I don’t recognize the names involved here. If you were to completely discard the implicated scientists’ research, how much of the case for AGW remains? Is the research at stake fundamental to the case for AGW or is it tangential?

One should note that even if there’s lots of other research — how do we know it’s not been corrupt, too? This demonstrates that we need complete transparency from all of them so we can evaluate. They are not entitled to the presumption that they are telling the truth since, obviously, some of them are lying.

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November 21, 2009, 11:35 pm
Willis Eschenbach says:

I am the person who made the original Freedom Of Information Act to CRU that got all this stirred up. I was trying to get access to the taxpayer funded raw data that they built the global temperature record out of. I was not representing anybody, or trying to prove a point. I am not funded by Mobil, I’m an amateur scientist with a lifelong interest in the weather. I made the FOIA application because I had sent the following to EAU with no response:

I would like to obtain a list of the meteorological stations used in the preparation of the HadCRUT3 global temperature average, and the raw data for those stations. I cannot find it anywhere on the web. The lead author for the temperature average is Dr. Phil Jones of the Climate Research Unit.

Many thanks, Willis Eschenbach

Receiving no reply, I filed the FOIA application. They stuffed me around with a bunch of bogus excuses, even after I had appealed the decision. Basically, they just tossed my request into the trash.

Now the emails reveal that Jones convinced the University FOI official to simply blow off all of the emails from people associated with Climate Audit. Since I post there regularly, I was automatically one of the evil people whose requests could just be thrown away.

From Phil Jones:

1. Think I’ve managed to persuade UEA [University of East Anglia, where CRU is located] to ignore all further FOIA requests from if the people have anything to do with Climate Audit.

and

When the FOI requests began here, the FOI person said we had to abide by the requests. It took a couple of half hour sessions — one at a screen, to convince them otherwise showing them what CA was about. Once they became aware of the types of people we were dealing with, everyone at UEA ... became very supportive.

Now I’d like all of you folks that are claiming that is just boys being boys, and thats how scientists act, and that there’s nothing there, to explain how blocking my honest, sincere, legitimate Freedom of Information Act requests, along with FOIA requests from everyone who posts at Climate Audit, is normal science at work. It is not. It is a direct and scurrilous attack on the scientific method itself.

Science works by one person making a claim, and backing it up with the data and methods that they used to make the claim. Other scientists attack the work by (among other things) trying to replicate the first scientist’s work. If they can’t replicate it, it doesn’t stand. So blocking the FOIA allowed Phil Jones to claim that his temperature record (HadCRUT3) was valid science.

So this is not just trivial gamesmanship. This is an attack on the heart of science, trying to keep people who disagree with you from ever checking your work and seeing if your math is correct. I am astounded by people like the guy above who says:

Besides, the data itself is there for you to see — hell, the entire IPCC report, technical sections and all, is freely available on the Internet over at the IPCC website.

That’s the point. The data is not all there to see, not only that, you can’t get to it even with a legal FOIA request ... because they simply illegally evaded the request. Now, they’re trashing emails to try to hide their trail ... anyone else want to say that’s how normal science operates?

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November 21, 2009, 11:56 pm
Willis Eschenbach says:

SG, you ask:

Here’s my question — I don’t follow the AGW debate that closely so I don’t recognize the names involved here. If you were to completely discard the implicated scientists’ research, how much of the case for AGW remains? Is the research at stake fundamental to the case for AGW or is it tangential?

These are some of the most central scientists in the entire climate debate. Phil Jones is responsible for creating and maintaining the HadCRUT3 global temperature dataset used to show that the earth has warmed. Michael Mann is the creator of the infamous and discredited “Hockeystick Chart” of global temperatures used by the IPCC. He and Gavin Schmidt are the main force behind the realclimate.com website, which claims to be scientific but in fact ruthlessly censors dissenting views. They claim that they do not screen scientific ideas and questions, but the emails say different. From Michael Mann:

» Anyway, I wanted you guys to know that you’re free to use RC [realclimate.org] in any
» way you think would be helpful. Gavin and I are going to be careful
» about what comments we screen through, and we’ll be very careful to
» answer any questions that come up to any extent we can. On the other
» hand, you might want to visit the thread and post replies yourself.
» We can hold comments up in the queue and contact you about whether or
» not you think they should be screened through or not, and if so, any
» comments you’d like us to include.

Bradley and Hughes are co-authors on the “Hockeystick” paper. Tim Osborne is a scientist at EAU. Keith Briffa has written numerous papers supporting the AGW (anthropogenic global warming) hypothesis.

Taken as a whole, they are some of the most prestigious and visible climate scientists supporting the AGW hypothesis. All of them are or have been authors and lead authors for important sections of the IPCC reports. For them to act in this manner is absolutely shameful.

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November 22, 2009, 12:13 am
Sarcastro says:

[Oh, I agree it’s shameful, but my experience in physics academia made me pretty cynical about how often scientists play hardball with each other and softball with their results. Thus, I doubt one can say it is their liberalism that makes them lie. That doesn’t mean I don’t think these guys should be fired.

As to the importance of the taint from this behavior, time will tell. I doubt these are the only climate scientists around talking about climate change, though.

And finally I’m glad people have moved to talk about the substance, and not try to justify the theft.]

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November 22, 2009, 1:08 am
rpt says:

Willis Eschenbach: SG, you ask:
These are some of the most central scientists in the entire climate debate. Phil Jones is responsible for creating and maintaining the HadCRUT3 global temperature dataset used to show that the earth has warmed. Michael Mann is the creator of the infamous and discredited “Hockeystick Chart” of global temperatures used by the IPCC. He and Gavin Schmidt are the main force behind the realclimate.com website, which claims to be scientific but in fact ruthlessly censors dissenting views. They claim that they do not screen scientific ideas and questions, but the emails say different. From Michael Mann:
Bradley and Hughes are co-authors on the “Hockeystick” paper. Tim Osborne is a scientist at EAU. Keith Briffa has written numerous papers supporting the AGW (anthropogenic global warming) hypothesis.Taken as a whole, they are some of the most prestigious and visible climate scientists supporting the AGW hypothesis. All of them are or have been authors and lead authors for important sections of the IPCC reports. For them to act in this manner is absolutely shameful.

What is their motivation to act in this manner?

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November 22, 2009, 1:26 am
Willis Eschenbach says:

rpt, you ask:

What is their motivation to act in this manner?

I am always reluctant to speculate on people’s motives. It could be anything from a sincere belief that they have the gospel truth, to petty viciousness, to a willingness to ignore science in order to “protect the planet”, to a desire not to be challenged. I truly don’t know.

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November 22, 2009, 1:59 am
John Moore says:

Skeptics at this point usually bring out anecdotes about wine vineyards and olive plantations existing in Northern Europe as proof of the Medieval Warm Period. This evidence is a) anecdotal (and therefore given appropriately low weight by scientists)

No, it’s not anecdotal. It is historical fact. There is quite a difference. There is no doubt that there was warming in Europe (and Greenland) in the middle ages that exceeds what we see today. The “climate proxies” in this case are historical records and artifacts, such as the large barns built in Greenland.

and b) every bit as “localized” as the tree ring data. Fortunately, Mann et al do not rely just on tree rings but use several other proxies and use principal component analysis to extract a proxy measure of temperature.

At least this argument starts with a valid issue: locality — sort of like the 12 bristlecone pines used in the hockey stick! However, check out http://www.co2science.org/ for a substantial list of papers indicating that the midieval warming and the “little ice age” were global.

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November 22, 2009, 2:08 am
Ricardo says:

John Moore: No, it’s not anecdotal. It is historical fact. There is quite a difference. There is no doubt that there was warming in Europe (and Greenland) in the middle ages that exceeds what we see today. The “climate proxies” in this case are historical records and artifacts, such as the large barns built in Greenland.

OK, so please point to a 1000-year quantitative temperature series produced from these historical records and we might be able to compare the methodology and underlying data of this to what was used in Mann et al. Temperature records today are based on hundreds of individual land– and sea-based temperature stations or on satellite imagery covering the entire surface of the earth. Obviously, no method of reconstructing a past temperature record can come close to our contemporary methods. That’s not a valid criticism of attempts to do so, though.

I browsed the website you pointed to and most of the papers seem to be analyses based on one particular localized area. It’s not a good faith argument to criticize Mann et al for their own localized data while citing papers that also rely on localized data just because they agree with your preconceived biases. Not to mention there is almost certainly selection bias in the studies this website cites. What is needed is a rigorous meta-analysis which I don’t believe is provided on this website.

Quote
November 22, 2009, 2:24 am
GaryC says:

A. Zarkov: He doesn’t have any work to read. He’s published a coffee table book called An Inconvenient Truth. Have you ever looked at it? No index. No references. No table of contents. It’s a polemic, not any kind of work of science. Gore won’t debate anyone. When a journalist asked him some embarrassing questions at a press conference, they cut off his microphone. Why would he not be a whipping boy with that kind of record?

There are frequent reports in the financial press that Al Gore will soon have a net worth exceeding $1 billion, mostly from climate-related investments.

Quote
November 22, 2009, 2:33 am
Spence_UK says:

Ricardo: OK, so please point to a 1000-year quantitative temperature series produced from these historical records and we might be able to compare the methodology and underlying data of this to what was used in Mann et al.

The problem is, trivial changes to the algorithm and data samples of Mann’s methodologies (and those of similar reconstructions) result in completely different quantitative results — including temperature series which show a strong medieval warm period.

For example, eliminating just one location in Mann’s original work (the West USA strip-bark Bristlecone Pines) results in a medieval warm period hotter than today. So one of your original criticisms — that results should not be dependent on just one location — means we must also reject Mann’s work. Because that specific conclusion is dependent on just one location.

What is worse is that the strip-bark Bristlecone Pines are well known for having non-climatic influences (probably reaction-wood growth from damage to the tree), and Mann’s algorithm has no way of dealing with non-climatic effects mixed in to the data.

Mann’s 2008 paper boasted that he was no longer dependent on the Bristlecone Pines — but on further investigation, it was found he added another series which was hopelessly contaminated with non-climatic influences (this time, lake sediment that had been disturbed by civil engineering projects in the 20th century). Unless you believe civil engineering projects are a good proxy for northern hemisphere temperature, this is little more than a bad joke.

These are examples of sensitivity of the results to data — European scientists Gerd Burger and Ulrich Cubasch demonstrated similar sensitivities in their paper “Are multi-proxy reconstructions robust” (Tellus, 2005). Here they show trivial changes to the algorithm which are inconsistent between studies yield entirely different chronologies.

Sorry, this has been a long post, but I can finally deliver the punch line. If trivial changes that cannot be determined a priori result in completely different medieval / modern temperature relationships, the methods are inadequate for determining the correct warmth. This is science 101.

Furthermore, archeological evidence cannot be dismissed. And it isn’t just one or two data points — we have a huge range of proxies showing consistent NH warmth in medieval times, ranging from Finnish tree lines, to UK vineyards and frost fairs, to Greenland settlements and burials, to Sargasso sea sediments, to American mountain range tree lines, to Scandinavian pollen stratigraphy. In science, you can’t just dismiss this mountain of evidence. You can’t just say “this newer result is better”. If two sets of results are inconsistent, you have to find a definitive reason why one set is wrong and the other is right.

Unfortunately, there are many more reasons to doubt the modern multiproxy studies than there are to doubt the archeological evidence. Meanwhile, the most honest scientific answer at present has to be “we don’t know”. The e-mails show how the top climate scientists try to control the peer-reviewed literature to keep “we don’t know” off the options list.

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November 22, 2009, 6:14 am
lucklucky says:

“I’m not sure you understand the context of the academic dispute between Mann et al (the tree ring, hockey stick people) and the skeptics. The debate is not over whether there has been significant warming in the past century: that is already settled by the direct temperature record.”

It is you that don’t understand what is the issue. There is no reliable temperature record even today. The error that could occur is bigger than the differences that we usually talk. With data e anecdotal evidence we have can only get big temperature changes. Or are you telling everyone that 70% of earth (I suspect that you know there something called Oceans and Seas ) that doesn’t have any reliable temperature record ever. Only recently there have been put buoys.

Written in 1800s refering a text of 1683 an example of anedoctal:

“...Qui in Italia è voce e querela comune, che i mezzi tempi non vi son più; e in questo smarrimento di confini, non vi è dubbio che il freddo acquista terreno. Io ho udito dire a mio padre, che in sua gioventù, a Roma, la mattina di pasqua di resurrezione, ognuno si rivestiva da state. Adesso chi non ha bisogno d’impegnar la camiciuola, vi so dire che si guarda molto bene di non alleggerirsi della minima cosa di quelle ch’ei portava nel cuor dell’inverno”. Ouesto scriveva il Magalotti in data del 1683. L’Italia sarebbe più fredda oramai che la Groenlandia, se da quell’anno a questo, fosse venuta continuamente raffreddandosi a quella proporzione che si raccontava allora...”

Chapter XXXIX
http://www.leopardi.it/pensieri.php

So is there even someone that can say what are and have been the earth temperature(with degree precision) without more than 70% of earth!? To not talk about issues like
cloud cover.

But all of above that is missing only helps us describing the climate, doesn’t tell us what affects it, what are the main forces behind it.

For example IPCC says textually that feedbacks aren’t well understood.
Nevertheless without shame and showing clearly how corrupt they are CO2 is the culprit.

Strangely showing once more how “settled” the science is:

“A Nasa study says climate scientists have underestimated by 20 to 40 per cent how much methane warms the planet — even though it is already believed to be 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
The study, led by Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, said methane blocked the creation of aerosols that would otherwise cool the planet — a new finding not counted in current estimates of global warming.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/science/news/article.cfm?c_id=82&objectid=10608122&pnum=1
Monday Nov 9, 2009

So with underestimations(if true) of 20–40% for such a mundane thing like methane what have been the quality and value of simulations?

Science settled? no we just know that we are very far from knowing enough and all resources should be spent trying to know more, instead of serving a political-economic takeover by a corrupt clique.

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November 22, 2009, 11:53 am
Harry Eagar says:

ricardo sez: ‘But you cannot deny the warming of the past century (which relies on direct measurement rather than rough proxies)’

and

‘Temperature records today are based on hundreds of individual land– and sea-based temperature stations or on satellite imagery covering the entire surface of the earth.’

You need to know that global satellite observations of surface temperatures did not begin until the 21st century. (The satellite observations that began in 1979 were of levels of the troposphere, whose relation to surface temps are unclear but, in any case, not linear.)

Records in 1900 were not based on hundreds of stations. About 70% of the globe was not being observed in 1900, so claims that the global temperature has risen X (usually they say, 0.6 C) in a hundred years are based on a merely notional idea of what the globe’s temperature was a century ago.

Most people who engage in this debate, even the strong critics of AGW, accept that there has been warming in the 20th c., but it’s just an assumption. There is very little observational data to show it.

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November 22, 2009, 1:36 pm
kdackson says:

Yeah, so what about methane?

It’s only at 70 ppbv in the atmosphere. That’s 0.0000070%.

It’s literally a gnat fart.

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November 22, 2009, 1:36 pm
John Moore says:

Yeah, so what about methane?

It’s only at 70 ppbv in the atmosphere. That’s 0.0000070%.

Measuring it’s volumetric concentration is not enough. You have to look at its contribution to albedo, which this doesn’t do.

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November 22, 2009, 1:47 pm
John Moore says:

OK, so please point to a 1000-year quantitative temperature series produced from these historical records and we might be able to compare the methodology and underlying data of this to what was used in Mann et al. Temperature records today are based on hundreds of individual land– and sea-based temperature stations or on satellite imagery covering the entire surface of the earth. Obviously, no method of reconstructing a past temperature record can come close to our contemporary methods. That’s not a valid criticism of attempts to do so, though.

You miss the point. The historical evidence, while not providing a time series, is sufficient to refute any hypothesis or methodology that fails to produce a Northern Hemisphere midieval warm period and a Northern Hemisphere “mini ice-age.” It is not necessary to provide an alternate hypothesis when refuting one!

The site I referenced shows that there are lots of indicators of global midieval warming. Is it a proof? No, but it sure provides lots of data that needs to be, and hasn’t been accounted for.

As to the proxy data... the fact that it uses lots of stations and produces lots of data is insufficient evidence of its accuracy. Furthermore, the temperature data is only from the last 150 years — before that it is all proxies, with their many problems.

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November 22, 2009, 1:51 pm
kdackson says:

John Moore: Measuring it’s volumetric concentration is not enough. You have to look at its contribution to albedo, which this doesn’t do.

This is the ant and the rubber tree plant. The volumetric (molar)concentration is so low that it would have to have a HUGE effect to see any difference. For example, 5000 TIMES the effect of CO2 to have the same volume weighted contribution. Same with all of these trace gasses. Water vapor is the biggest contributor because it’s in such high concentration AND has a high response factor.

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November 22, 2009, 3:30 pm
Harry Eagar says:

‘the temperature data is only from the last 150 years ’

Very little data go back 150 years.

If our interest is global temperatures, then we need something akin to global data.

I wish to get a pony for Christmas. It’s really, really important for me to get a pony.

Well, that doesn’t mean there’s a pony.

Maybe we are poisoning the atmosphere and killing our unborn children. But the method being used to demonstrate that is incapable of demonstrating it. Cue trumpets and invoke precautionary principle.

The real problem with Jones-Hansen and their crowd is not that they are telling us more than they know, they are telling us more than they can know. There are people on the other side of the opinion doing the same.

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November 22, 2009, 4:10 pm
SirKev says:

lucklucky: Funny. Suddenly Deep Throat of Watergate fame is bad, those workers that leaked documents of firms that polluted rivers too, leaks by unnamed functionaries that show corruptions, malfeasance etc are now a bad thing...How the world turns...

Actually, all actions are criminal, including those government officials that allowed the NYT to disclose sensitive anti-terrorism programs. Anyone who commits such an offense should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and the information obtained, no matter how noble, should not and cannot be used to mitigate the crime(s).

That said, the method of obtaining the information does nothing to discredit the validity or legitimacy of the information. While I agree the e-mails do not point to some great left-wing conspiracy, it does show that the “science” being conducted is sloppy at best and dishonest at worst. Further, you have scientists that are so deep into it that they are no longer acting as scientists, but as advocates/fanatists and are conducting themselves as such. My biggest problem with AGW has always been the refusal to release the data and the unwarranted adhominum attacks whenever questioned or challenged. Based on these e-mails we see what feeds those actions.

It will be interesting to see what ramifications result from this peek behind the curtain.

Quote
November 22, 2009, 7:11 pm
Mike Lorrey says:

RE: Claims that the leakers hacks illegally accessed this data are patently false on their face given FOIA law in Britain. The data is owned by the public and they have a right under FOIA to it at any time they request. Therefore the ‘hacker’ was merely overriding the illegal security policies of CRU that violate FOIA. This is a prime example of the maxim that the internet routes around failures.

The only people who should be getting investigated and prosecuted here are Phil Jones and the rest of the Hockey Team, given the evidence now made public against them for conspiracy to falsify data, to violate FOIA, to subvert the peer review process, defrauding the taxpayer, filing false expense reports, falsely testifying before congress, and in one case, a solicitation to commit assault and battery.

The Team is as dirty a group of white collar criminals as they come, akin to Bernie Madoff, Carl Icahn, and the Enron crew. If they are not investigated and prosecuted, then the system is well and truly corrupt.

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November 22, 2009, 7:17 pm
Willis Eschenbach says:

Ricardo says:

John Moore: No, it’s not anecdotal. It is historical fact. There is quite a difference. There is no doubt that there was warming in Europe (and Greenland) in the middle ages that exceeds what we see today. The “climate proxies” in this case are historical records and artifacts, such as the large barns built in Greenland.
OK, so please point to a 1000-year quantitative temperature series produced from these historical records and we might be able to compare the methodology and underlying data of this to what was used in Mann et al.

Most temperature reconstructions depend sensitively on a small group of proxies, including the “Yamal series” and the bristlecone pines. Take them out, and there’s no Hockeystick. Here’s one study that doesn’t use them.

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November 22, 2009, 8:50 pm
Willis Eschenbach says:

I’ve posted up an account of my experience with the CRU at

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/24/the-people-vs-the-cru-freedom-of-information-my-okole.../

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November 25, 2009, 10:12 pm

Climate Scientists, Unfiltered

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