The 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 American and British climate researchers, include discussions of scientific data and whether it should be released, exchanges about how best to combat the arguments of skeptics, and casual comments — in some cases derisive — about specific people known for their skeptical views. Drafts of scientific papers and a photo collage that portrays climate skeptics on an ice floe were also among the hacked data, some of which dates back 13 years. . . .
In several e-mail exchanges, Kevin Trenberth, a climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and other scientists discussed whether a string of recent years of relatively stable temperatures undermined scientific models that predict long-term warming.
“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,” Dr. Trenberth wrote.
Other scientists went on to rebut him, saying that the fluctuations were not inconsistent with a continuing warming trend.
Dr. Trenberth said Friday that he was appalled at the release of the e-mails, which he said were private discussions. . . . .
At first, said Dr. Michaels, the climatologist who has faulted some of the science undergirding the global warming consensus, his instinct was to ignore the correspondence as “just the way scientists talk.”
But on Friday, he said, after reading more deeply, he felt that some exchanges reflected a concerted effort to block the release of data for independent review.
Bishop Hill summarizes lots of the e-mail contents here.
PeteP says:
‘hide the data’ and ‘erase the emails’- what kind of ‘science’ does this ?
BOGUS ‘science’, is what.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 10:01 amveteran says:
found this link, appears to be 60 megs of it available
http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/1648-Global-Warming-SCAM-HackLeak-FLASH.html
Quote
November 21, 2009, 10:03 amlucia says:
JHA– The Bishop Hill summary is great.
veteran–
There is a searchable archive here here. It’s very convenient.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 10:07 amuh_clem says:
Can we please stop referring to the climate change deniers as “skeptics”? They’re not skeptical at all when presented with cherry-picked data that supports their side; “credulous” is the more apt term.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 10:23 amlucia says:
JHA:
Many of these thing are more jaw-dropping than they might appear to those who are not addicted to climate blogs. For example, I’ve highlighted the red flag in this:
Those not addicted to climate blogs might wonder why this result is “dirty laundry” that could be used by those who might “distort” it.
For context, being “pretty red” is a big problem. The reason has to do with accusations that the method Mann used in early papers to screen for proxies will create hockey sticks out of randomly generated series. However, the reason his method could do so can occur only if the residuals are “red”. So, the residuals being “red”, whether Mann knew it, whether he was concealing it etc. has been a very intense topic of discussion.
This is discussed sufficiently widely that lots of people at climate blog have written explanations of why “red” noise is a problem, presenting at various levels. SteveMcIntyre has explained it in some detail in rather precise ways. Because lots of people can’t follow that math (and get a bit confused by the details of where tree rings came from etc.), I posted a more cartoon-like analysis to convey the qualitative idea for my readers in this post. The cartoon like analysis strips the issue of any specific details about tree rings or what precisely was done in papers, but simply shows that a certain filtering method tends to create hockey sticks.
Those who read comments at my will notice people will point out that the residuals have to be very red (i.e. have large lag-1 autocorrelation in the residuals) for the method to create hockey sticks out of noise. I agree: To create hockey sticks out of nothing, the residuals have to be “pretty red”.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 10:24 amdee nile says:
Catchy tune you’re whistling past that graveyard, uh_clem.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 10:31 amdearieme says:
For the climate conspirators, if such they be, to “hide the decline” is, apparently, a key achievement. What on earth could it mean? No, I’m stumped. “hide the decline” is hard to construe. A bit of a mystery is “hide the decline”. A knotty problem. Really enigmatic. So its author was quizzed: nope, he couldn’t remember what he could possibly have meant by “hide the decline”. Can the Volokh conspirators do any better?
Quote
November 21, 2009, 10:44 amlucia says:
clem–
It’s pretty clear some of these email are real. The one including an email I sent to gavin does correctly include what I wrote. (See http://www.anelegantchaos.org/emails.php?eid=929&filename=1225412081.txt ) (I laughed pretty hard at Gavin’s inferring some odd motive having to do with figure 6 and what he would have advanced for an explanation to rebut some phantom argument he thought I might make regarding Figure 6. I’d never seen that part. But I wrote Gavin and told him I laughed at it and he didn’t say, “Oh. Hey, that part is faked!” )
So, the fact is, many of us know that at least some of the stuff is real.
There is also sufficient skepticism over the rest that a few people are writing FOI’s to obtain certain emails and materials that are relevant to their research.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 10:47 amMartyA says:
Does any of this mean that Gore has to give the money back?
Quote
November 21, 2009, 10:59 amRichard Nieporent says:
Pay no attention to those “climate scientists” making up the data behind the curtain.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 11:09 amBart DePalma says:
The usual NYT spin. Go to Climate Depot for several links to a couple dozen emails and a searchable database of the emails where these scam artists posing as scientists openly discuss their fraud gaming the data, the computer model assumptions and the final results released to the public, while engaging in a literal conspiracy to hide all of the above from independent scrutiny. Of particular concern to these scam artists is their inability to explain away the last decade of global cooling while manmade CO2 emissions rose exponentially as China and India industrialized and discovered the automobile.
This scandal begs the question of how far this fraud extends. The Chamber of Commerce would be well advised to bring suit challenging the “science” relied upon by EPA in making their finding that mandmade CO2 is causing atmospheric warming and conduct extensive discovery of the data, models, findings and communications of global warming proponents in the government and in the university system. Let’s see just how far this fraud goes.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 11:14 amRoger Zimmerman says:
I think this one is pretty damning:
http://www.di2.nu/foia/0933254004.txt
Summary: a researcher — encouraged by his colleague (supervisor?) — explicitly decides to reduce the stringency of a statistical test in order to satisfy a political goal. The shift from a 2-sigma to a 1-sigma test is equivalent to a 5-fold increase in the likelihood of the null hypothesis. This would of course never pass muster in a journal submission.
The whole enterprise is transparently political — and thereby corrupted “science”.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 11:29 amChrisIowa says:
I wonder if, rather than a hacker, one of the participants created the file to save his corrasspondence and hid it off-site on a foreign computer to avoid an FOI request? Pure speculation, based on nothing.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 11:29 amRedman says:
Hundreds of millions of dollars in research funds are available for scientists whose research supports the GW theory. No money is available for those who dispute the theory. The scientists are following the money.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 11:32 amRichard Aubrey says:
When Ellsberg got the Pentagon Papers, the bulk of the discussion was about content.
When somebody outed Rockefeller’s discussion about politicizing the war in Iraq, the bulk of the discussion was about the underhandedness of stealing a communication.
We’ll see how this goes.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 11:39 amAbdul Abulbul Amir says:
We know exactly what it means. A scientific process does not intentionally hide anything. We know we are not dealing with a scientific process.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 12:50 pmRAH says:
I have been reading Steve McIntyre for years . He really did scare these frauds by insisting on the source data. I have always doubted the idea that man made CO2 was a source of global warming or even that we were in a long term trend.
The man that made the Global warming Swindle was very helpful and sent the DVD to me for a my son’s science paper in high school between Lord Monkton.
There were several other students that had papers supporting man made global warming and their papers got bad grades after my son’s research paper was read.
We have been fighting the non skeptics and trying to instill doubt over the assumption.
Reading that if they had to produce the data to McIntrye that the data would be deleted,shows how much McIntyre damaged their agenda to promote junk science and fraud.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 1:06 pmD.R.M. says:
Shorter Bishop Hill summary:
The CRU was engaged in political advocacy, and as political advocacy goes, they were acting (reasonably) ethically. But they were pretending that they were doing science, which they weren’t.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 1:13 pmN.F.W. says:
Whereas for aiding and abetting the litany of dishonesties to infiltrate my glorious republic I hope the leaders on the hill choke on this revelation and that the whole affair becomes an “historic” learning moment and an indictment of the judgment and business practices of the 111th congress. And if things go according to Hoyle this example of fortuitous cyberpunking might have an even chance to cripple a deceitful and ruinous energy policy before it can walk.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 1:21 pmJoe says:
These emails are also riddled with their discussion on deleting emails and other data to avoid a FOIA request.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 1:27 pmKazinski says:
The “red” flag Lucia raised is pretty damning when it comes to the technical issue of mining hockey sticks.
On the Hide the Decline issue, Jean S. at Climate Audit explains it well and shows graphically exactly what Jones was trying to hide and how it was done.
But the single most damning thing in the emails is Jones declaration in 2005, that he would delete all CRU data rather than release it to McIntyre and McKitrick. That coupled with the subsequent announcement in August 2009, when he had stalled the FOIA process as long as he could that the data had been lost.
If it was just Jones’s data it would be of less interest, but he compiled the data over 20 years under contract with NASA, and had been paid millions to do so.
The exact quotes are here.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 1:28 pmpmorem says:
There are more shoes left to drop.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 1:32 pmReligiousFanatic says:
So now that the warmist religion has been outed as a fraud, what totalitarian social engineering project does Al, Maurice and their co-religionists attach themselves to now?
This one was an effort to destroy the world’s economy. I’m drawing a blank as to what the next armaggedon they will manufacture will be, but I’m afraid they will come up with some new apocalyptical doomsday scenario with even worse consequences.
The religious fanatics of the left are worse than the religious fanatics of the right. At least the ones on the right admit their beliefs are based on mumbo jumbo. The ones on the left pray at the altar of “peer-review” without admitting that it means “review by people sharing my same religious dogma, i.e. my peers”. Although in this case the priests do seem to be aware of their fraud.
I have more respect for the scientologists than these dangerous, delusional loons. The scientologists confine themselves to emptying wallets one wallet at a time. These loons want to empty everyone’s all at once.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 1:34 pmPuritycontrol says:
Some things just shouldn’t be allowed to have the scrutiny of the public.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 1:48 pmMarty says:
Has anyone begun to think about what recourse the organizations who funded all this research may have, given prima facie evidence of misuse of their funds in order to perpetrate a fraud? If not prima facie, certainly reasonable cause for an investigation, either administrative or judicial, or both.
I’m not being hyperbolic, the fraud would include justifying future grants with misleading or false information, so I really do mean financial fraud, both misusing fiunds already granted, and lying on applications for future funds.
In the USA it’s a felony to knowingly make a misstatement to a Federal official in the performance of his duties, 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1001, and this includes applying for and reporting on the work status of grants.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/1001.html
I assume the UK has something similar, plus Hadley may have received US govt funds and is corresponding with recipients of US funds.
It’s not enough to just hoot and holler, these people need to be called to account. And tied up in the legal system for the rest of their working lives.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 2:00 pmkdackson says:
Well, lookie here. Seems the data has been “found”.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 2:04 pmHans says:
The fact that these documents, which reveal scientific dishonesty and fraud, 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).
Quote
November 21, 2009, 2:09 pmLTEC says:
All these years I thought that the reason the data — and the computer programs used to analyze the data — were being suppressed and made unavailable to the “wrong” people was by accident: emails requesting the data were mistakenly classified as spam, freedom-of-information requests were mislaid, websites containing the information were incorrectly configured, etc. But if these emails are genuine, it means the suppression was intentional!
Seriously folks, do these emails — fake or not — tell us anything we didn’t already know? Whether their conclusions ultimately turn out to be correct or not, the behavior of these alarmists (including their unwillingness to call themselves “alarmists”) has been reprehensible for many years.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 2:13 pmTempermentcity says:
It seems the US has a precedent of obtaining damming evidence to justify an end, see Olmstead v. The United States of America. Despite the philosophically astute dissent by Justice Brandeis the evidence collected by illegal methods was allowed to convict Olmstead.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 2:23 pmLe Messurier says:
John Hinderaker at Powerline has a great piece up about this affair and what is known so far. It’s long and well informed. Elsewhere, at Climate Audit (mentioned above) the facts of this fraud are revealed by McIntyre.
There is apparently much more to come out as the several thousand documents are examined. They are available from at least three different sites. One tidbit is that it is likely that the computers were not hacked but that it was an “inside job”.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 2:24 pmlucklucky says:
Yes it appears an inside job, the initial nick of the person that released them was FOIA and reasons stated is that this shouldn’t be hidden from public.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 2:33 pmgeokstr says:
There have been a number of posts here in the last year discussing various aspects of the AGW
controversy, er, sorry, consensus. (My bad.) In every one of them, the usual commenters on the left were all over them, ridiculing unbelievers mercilessly as “denialists”, “know-nothings”, etc ad nauseum. I note only a few weak defenses in these two posts on this latest fiasco, and I see none of the proponents of AGW.Either they’re out licking their wounds, or they’re all huddled together on some private website, concocting which page they will all be on together when they coordinate the spin.
And look for the DOJ, Jerry Brown, the various prosecutors in charge of investigating ACORN-SEIU violence and criminal activity to use the excuse that they can’t get to these anymore, because they have to put every available bit of manpower on finding these despicable rightwing fascist capitalist-roader criminals who “stole” this information.
Only whistleblowers that expose stuff that helps leftism are legitimate, after all.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 2:34 pmfjfjfjfjfjfjjf says:
I agree with LTEC. There’s nothing new in the emails and it’s hard to see how they would make any difference.
Anyone actually studying the reports or the data would know that the kind of thing described in the emails happens all the time. The whole idea of original data not being made available; or being lost; or computer programs not being made available; or the way the graphs are routinely chosen to maximize appearance of warming; or the continual ad hominem attacks on “deniers”; or the selection of “proxies” for temperature estimation; — all these make it clear to the trained scientist what is going on.
For example, you might think it is going to hurt global warming to have email quotes about “hiding data”. But the efforts to hide the data have been public for years, as have the cherry-picked graphs.
So here is why these emails won’t make a difference:
(1) Among scientists who want jobs and funding, it won’t make a difference for the same reason the original research doesn’t make a difference;
(2) Among scientists or statisticians with independent sources of income who have an interest and knowledge in the climate change movement, it won’t make a difference because they already knew all this stuff;
(3) Among non-scientists who support the effects of climate change programs — bureaucrats, politicians, investors — it won’t make a difference because they support the taxation, bureaucracies and investment opportunities the climate change programs will provide, independent of the science;
(4) Among disinterested non-scientists who had supported large-scale climate change program funding, it won’t make a difference because because they react to simple images and are not basing their decisions on the science anyway. These people will just be shown some pictures of dying polar bears, Mount Kilimanjaro, the latest drought, and CGI of Florida underwater, along with some assurances the emails don’t matter and that there’s a consensus as to all this, and will not change their opinion;
(5) Among disinterested non-scientists who had not supported large-scale climate change program funding, it will not make a difference because they already believed the data was unpersuasive, not based on scientific analysis but based only on the incentive structure of the supporters of such large-scale funding;
(6) Finally, the vast majority of people, who do not know or care much about details of climate change, will not have the time or resources to evaluate the significance of the emails.
So in the end, although the emails will modify the rhetoric surrounding climate change for a few months, they don’t change the underlying incentives of the various actors in the debate, so they won’t make much of a difference to the outcome.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 2:44 pmkdackson says:
Except for the fact that the e-mails show a conspiracy to break various laws, including valid FOI requests.
Expect investigations. I hope.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 2:54 pmsitzpinkler says:
fjfjfjfjfjfjjf, I think you have a classification problem. There are non-experts in the middle who can be swayed. Their votes matter.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 2:59 pmLe Messurier says:
Dur to excessive traffic caused by yesterdays release of the data Climate Audit’s Steve McIntyre is now posting at a mirror site: Climate Audit Mirror Site
I would also note that Alder’s title to the original post is misleading and inaccurate. As I said earlier this appeared to be an inside job so the use of “Hack” is incorrect. The info was stolen. What was stolen and released were not just e-mails, but were also thousands of documents (some in PDF). Thought I’d clear that up. This isn’t just casual e-mail conversation we’re talking about here. We’re possibly talking about some real smoking guns (I hope!)
Quote
November 21, 2009, 3:10 pmJoe T. Guest says:
Gee, who in russia would have an interest in torpedoing Copenhagen? Certainly not Gazprom or its government pals...
Quote
November 21, 2009, 3:14 pmsitzpinkler says:
Michael Mann to Andrew Revkin (29 Sep 2009 17:27:25 –0400):
Don’t trust the outsiders! (And they smell funny, too.)
Quote
November 21, 2009, 3:17 pmkdackson says:
More like:
Legitimate = Us or people we control
Outside of the system = people who disagree with us.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 3:32 pmJon says:
These emails are breathtaking–but I feel that’s only clear with an awareness of the background against which these emails were written. What emerges is a brazen disregard for free and honest discussion.
There seems to be a continuing pattern wherein the authors deny, deny, deny, deny–and do so with a straight-face so that their apostles may then claim that the dispute has been addressed and the criticism is irrelevant. This is partisanship at its worst.
One account of this pattern has been highlighted recently and re-posted at wattsupwiththat based on a review of these released emails.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 3:56 pmHarry Eagar says:
The lawyers here may not care about ‘red noise’ in statistics, but there has been endless talk on VC about journal practices. Some mighty juicy stuff in these emails about that, if you go look.
For prosecutors, there’s a slam-dunk admission of violating the money-laundering statute, too.
There’s a pretty good case that the documents (if not the emails) should have been public long ago, raising that old legal question: Can you steal a free newspaper.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 4:00 pmArrowSmith says:
I expect the AGWers to double-down on the “deniers” — Alinsky them.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 4:06 pmNoah says:
No offense but Jonathan, do you seriously want to let links to the product of theft stay on your blog? I understand the contents may be newsworthy but how is this different than linking to a pirated film or piece of software? If someone wants to find the stuff a simple google search will turn it up in about 2 seconds but hosting links to stolen goods is bad policy.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 4:13 pmmariner says:
fjfjfjfjfjfjjf:
Actually you’ve done a nice job of explaining why we should not expect investigations.
One wee little thing you left out though: the far-leftists pushing this crap are firmly in charge in both the U.S. and the place Great Britain used to be.
In the U.S. they’ve so far managed not to investigate things a lot of things a lot bigger and more harmful to our society than this.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 4:18 pmrpt says:
Is there no research sponsored or funded by the Chamber of Commerce, trade groups, petroleum groups, chemical groups, etc, anywhere in the world? All research is paid for by GW supporters? Is this hyperbole or are you serious? I thought otherwise.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 4:23 pmArrowSmith says:
Would you be so fastidious about illegally obtained White House memos re: WMD/Iraq?
Quote
November 21, 2009, 4:24 pmB.D. says:
Super, duper serial.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 4:30 pmrpt says:
Who is Marc Morano; is he a scientist?
Quote
November 21, 2009, 4:31 pmbystander says:
I don’t think Gazprom would make the mistake of releasing the files from a Russian server. The KGB was not populated with idiots.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 4:31 pmNoah says:
I do believe that the White House should be able to engage in private conversation that remains private (for the period of time designated by the records act). If the President and the SecDef had email correspondence between them that was stolen and published then yes, I would feel the same way. Also, if the information contained in the correspondence revealed a crime then there might be some form of whistleblower protection — though that is an area of law I know little about and I believe would only protect someone who had legitimate access to confidential information that they subsequently made public.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 4:33 pmbystander says:
Of course there is, but that research is not the topic being discussed here. The fact that one side has also done it does not release the other from liability.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 4:35 pmrpt says:
By: Agreed. I am not a partisan in this fight but am trying to follow the argument.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 4:49 pmanti-climatic says:
It’s hilarious watching global warming alarmists squirm.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 4:58 pmHans says:
The fact that these emails, which reveal scientific dishonesty and fraud, were disclosed as the result of hacking does not make them in any way irrelevant or inadmissible, or discussion of them in any way improper. 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 emails 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).
Quote
November 21, 2009, 5:22 pmrpt says:
Hans:
You’ve already cut and pasted this comment twice in both of the ongoing threads. We get the point.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 5:24 pmOnly sane one left says:
Think about it. If there is no global warming then these guys are as interesting as tapeworm researchers. If there is global warming then they are superstars sought out by corporations and governments around the globe. There is every reason on Earth for them to fake data.
But in their fraud they could have hurt every person on Earth whose life would be made worse by carbon taxes, rationing, etc. How much more poverty would there be in the world because of them?
What we need now is show trials for them, Gore and the rest of the hucksters and a Nobel Peace Prize for the hackers!
Quote
November 21, 2009, 5:25 pmHummer Time? says:
So can we all get a Hummer now without guilt? China was smart to buy the brand. Maybe they were the hackers.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 5:27 pmMike McDougal says:
Should I sue them for something like intentional misrepresentation?
Quote
November 21, 2009, 5:30 pmkdackson says:
Some more analysis of the emails requested through FOIA”
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/11/024996.php
I wonder what the lawyers here think.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 5:35 pmkdackson says:
And this is what now passes for science:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/11/024995.php
Quote
November 21, 2009, 5:45 pmJM Hanes says:
fjfjfjfjfjfjjf:
How long has your glass been half empty? The opinions of that vast majority you so easily dismiss will, in fact, ultimately be the nail in Global Warming’s political coffin. Such civilians may not be evaluating emails around their kitchen tables, but evidence supporting what to date have been allegations and suspicions of fraud will certainly have an impact on cost/benefit analysis by both voters and their legislative representatives. It’s growing public skepticism that is already moving the meter both in Washington and Copenhagen.
There’s a substantive difference between what “everybody knows” and what is being acknowledged in the town square. The pols have pinned “settled science” to scientific “consensus,” and far too many of your “trained scientists” have been willing to let them do it, rather than hazard their careers crying into the global warming wind. That may soon change.
The emails which have put CRU on the defensive are precisely the kind of catalyst that has been needed to crack open the media door and shine a public, potentially legal, spotlight on their dubious maneuverings. There is a tipping point in the scientific community at which the fence sitters will see disassociating themselves from movement leaders who refuse even to support their own findings with data as the better side of caution.
Vested interests will certainly not give up the ghost any time soon, but once they lose their consensual underpinnings, they can kiss that specious moral compass they’ve spent so long constructing goodbye — and their political mojo with it. I could be wrong, but it looks to me like the hockey stick trajectory is flipping.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 5:56 pmroad2serfdom says:
From the Biship Hill link in the original post:
Quote
November 21, 2009, 5:57 pmCommenter says:
These emails are hugely-important news, showing the incredible deceitfulness of the Director of the very institution, the Climate Research Unit (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, admits seeking 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.
But CRU’s director has engaged in fraud against the U.S. government, which has funded its research. Such lying to the government is a crime. The University of East Anglia should also investigate, as should the government of the United Kingdom.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 6:10 pmNoah says:
re: “Hide the decline”: While certainly a stupid thing to do. Isn’t he talking about the chart of the data and not the data itself? I believe the raw data was left intact, they just framed it in the charts in a way to sex-up their results. Bad ethics, bad policy but not quite as evil as suggested I would submit. Realclimate explained it this way (yes, I know, they are tied to CRU but it’s worth noting their position):
So go on, start your flaming of me for not howling that this is the death of AGW but pointing out that it is a problem but one that is, perhaps, not as overwhelming as is being stated.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 6:25 pmkdackson says:
No, it’s not the death of AGW, but with any luck the patient is diagnosed as terminal.
Relying on the “clarification” from the people who got caught with their pants down, should not be reassuring. It is spin, and it’s what politicians (not scientists) do.
The phrase “...so that the context of the recent warming is clear” should raise alarm bells, as if the trend were clear, they would not have to use a method to make it clear. That is crap of the first order.
They are trying to separate signal from noise when statistically you cannot discern the signal from the noise. The problem is also with selecting data to support their premise.
Now how ridiculous is it to infer global climate change from a sample of 12 trees in an isolated geographic region? If they had bothered to sample 2 trees per continent and base their model on that, it would be treated as a joke.
In short, their methods were flawed, their “research” would get most grad students laughed out of their program, and they conspired to ruin the lives and reputations of people who dared to disagree with their religion, not to mention conspiracy to commit what would be considered felonies if any US corporation destroyed records of that nature.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 6:45 pmKazinski says:
Whatever happens, Phil Jones is out at CRU. He is the head of an institute that is a primary archive of world climate data. Yet in email after email he talks about “deleting the files” rather than conform to a legitimate FOIA request. It is clear he can’t continue.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 6:47 pmTodd says:
I uploaded an access database to a free file uploading site with the contents of all 1000+ emails appended in a single table, with From, To, cc, subject, body and date all parsed into seperate fields. The original file name is also included.
This allows one to sort by date and read or filter by sender or keyword.
I created a simple form, Emails, which makes for easy browsing.
Here’s the link: http://www.sendspace.com/file/4yl22f
Some of the cc fields didn’t parse, but they are listed in the body field.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 7:24 pmHarry Eagar says:
Noah, read Jean S’s explication of what’s going on. It’s posted on most of the relevant sites.
‘I believe the raw data was left intact’
You can believe that but you don’t know it. The project of Climate Audit has been to get the raw data, which Jones and the rest have done everything — legal and, it appears, illegal — to prevent. If you haven’t followed this closely, you won’t remember Jones’s famous reply to McIntyre — why should I give you data that I have spent 25 years assembling just so you’ll pick it apart? (not a quote, but I could get the exact words if you need ‘em.)
Well, aside from the fact that they aren’t HIS data — they’re YOURS, you paid for them — it’s fundamentally important that the raw data be examined, as well as what was done to it subsequently.
Can you spell C-O-V-E-R-U-P?
Quote
November 21, 2009, 7:59 pmRichard Aubrey says:
Marty.
WRT recourse for the funding agencies:
They wanted the results. That’s why they funded the studies and institutions.
SCROOM
Quote
November 21, 2009, 8:09 pmChrisTS says:
So, ALL the collected data supporting the claim that our globe is undergoing rapid climate change has been debunked by the exposure of these emails?
I’m, puzzled by the precise content of the ‘skepticism’ [or whatever we prefer to call it]. Is the problem that
1) Some humans are being asked to change their habits?
2) That such change will involve state action? 3) That anyone thinks the climate is changing in ways that are dangerous for humans and other life forms?
After all, it is not necessary to deny the substance of 3 in order to resist 1 or 2.
It is one thing to say, “I refuse to change my lifestyle,” or “I fear how governments will use power in addressing problem X.” It is another thing to say, “I am not worried about the vanishing snows of Kilimanjaro, or drowning polar bears, or rising coastlines, etc.”
Quote
November 21, 2009, 8:38 pmJust a glimpse says:
“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.”
The theory’s right, so the data is wrong.
“If you think that Saiers is in the greenhouse skeptics camp, then, if we can find documentary evidence of this, we could go through official AGU channels to get him ousted.”
You criticise me? You lose your job.
“But, it you think about it for a while, Keith has come up with a clever 2nd sentence (when you insert ‘Northern Hemisphere’ language as I suggest below). At first, my reaction was leave it out, but it grows on you, especially if you acknowledge that many readers will want more explicit prose on the 1998 (2005) issue.”
As clever as ‘created or saved,’ if I say so myself.
“I really wish I could be more positive about the Kyrgyzstan material, but I swear I pulled every trick out of my sleeve trying to milk something out of that.”
If only wishing makes it so.
“Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?”
Any print-outs have to go in the shredder.
“Regarding Yamal, I’m afraid I know very little about the whole thing—other than that I am 100% confident that ‘The tree ring data was hand-picked to get the desired result’ is complete crap.”
What little I know is, I’m entirely sure that the critics are obviously wrong.
“At the risk of overload, here are some notes of mine on the recent lack of warming. I look at this in two ways. The first is to look at the difference between the observed and expected anthropogenic trend relative to the pdf for unforced variability. The second is to remove ENSO, volcanoes and TSI variations from the observed data.”
Inconvenient data? Remove it!
“I hope you’re not right about the lack of warming lasting till about 2020. I’d rather hoped to see the earlier Met Office press release with Doug’s paper that said something like — half the years to 2014 would exceed the warmest year currently on record, 1998!”
Hope is the thing with feathers.
“Anyway, I’ll maybe cut the last few points off the filtered curve before I give the talk again as that’s trending down as a result of the end effects and the recent cold-ish years.”
Just cold-ish.
“In particular, they would like to see the section on variability and extreme events beefed up if possible. They regard an increased likelihood of even 50% of drought or extreme weather as a significant risk. Drought is also a particularly important issue for Australia, as are tropical storms.”
We have our orders. Now beef it up!
Quote
November 21, 2009, 8:40 pmkdackson says:
ChrisTS:
OK, I’ll say it. I am not worried about the vanishing snows of Kilimanjaro, or drowning polar bears, or rising coastlines, etc.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 8:46 pmrandom commenter says:
Richard Aubrey — is “SCROOM” an acronym for something?
Quote
November 21, 2009, 8:53 pmChrisTS says:
I take it you do not live on a coast? :-)
Quote
November 21, 2009, 8:56 pmShelbyC says:
What has been debunked is the idea that we can collect ANY scientific data on a major issue without it being politicized.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 8:58 pmHarry Eagar says:
ChrisTS, you might pick better examples than Kilimanjaro or polar bears, as it is well-known that the snows of Kilimanjaro are disappearing because of changes in land use on the mountain; and that polar bears have lived through much warmer times than these.
The sea levels have been rising for hundreds of years. Unless they go down, they will continue going up. They never, ever stand still. You could eliminate all carbon dioxide emissions and, if you live on the coast, you’ll still have to move.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 9:07 pmNoah says:
I don’t see cover up. I see someone with an opinion confronting facts that are problematic to their belief. Doesn’t that happen in science all the time? I don’t see cover up in that one.
Um, trying to making something more legible for readers? What’s the conspiracy on that one? Have you never collaborated on a paper or presentation where you debated the most effective words to back up your point?
Doesn’t this run contrary to your claim? Here I see scientists saying to each other we have a problem with our theory. You have theories and you try to see if the data can match. That’s called testing a hypothesis, no?
You really don’t know anything about statistical analysis or economic study do you? You control your experiments by adding and removing data sets to see what is revealed. ENSO, volcanoes and TSI are all potential variables that would skew things when you’re looking at underlying trends. When talking about climate change (anthro or not) you can look at any short period and find reasons for anomalous results so you look to control for those variables.
Again, there’s no doubt these guys have their hypotheses that they would like to see proven out and hoping that the evidence comes around is not proof of a conspiracy. Look at the super-colider they fired up today. Every scientist involved is hoping to see a particle that just exists in theory right now. It doesn’t mean they are all frauds, does it? And wishing a particular point of view that you believe to be correct is espoused in a document is, again, not evidence of fraud.
Again, this seems like standard academic talk.
I’m not saying there wasn’t fraud at work, I haven’t a clue. But pick out the points that make a serious case against their data. Most of the quotes your citing really don’t show a giant evil at work. The other quotes you pulled are far more concerning and those should be where the focus lies.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 9:08 pmShelbyC says:
The markets sure don’t believe in global warming. I live about 15 miles inland, but my house is worth way less than the ones on the coast.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 9:16 pmJust a glimpse says:
“I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”
It’s good to be king.
“How should I respond to the below? (I‘m in the process of trying to persuade Siemens Corp. (a company with half a million employees in 190 countries!) to donate me a little cash to do some CO2 measurments here in the UK – looking promising, so the last thing I need is news articles calling into question (again) observed temperature increases – I thought we’d moved the debate beyond this, but seems that these sceptics are real die-hards!!).”
Questions! Again!
“One approach is to go direct to the publishers and point out the fact that their journal is perceived as being a medium for disseminating misinformation under the guise of refereed work. I use the word ‘perceived’ here, since whether it is true or not is not what the publishers care about — it is how the journal is seen by the community that counts.”
The community. The clique. The cool kids in junior high.
“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.”
Outcasts will be shunned by the whole of the tribe.
“So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC, then this would be significant for the global mean — but we’d still have to explain the land blip.”
Blips on land and blips at sea.
“NOAA want to give us more money for the El Nino work with IGCN. How much do we have left from the last budget? I reckon most has been spent but we need to show some left to cover the costs of the trip Roger didn’t make and also the fees/equipment/computer money we haven’t spent otherwise NOAA will be suspicious.”
But it’s our critics who are cashed-up, greedy and self-interested.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 9:16 pmJust a glimpse says:
(And an aside to Noah. You’re confusing me with an early commenter. The commenter called Commenter. I’m somebody else.)
Quote
November 21, 2009, 9:17 pmkdackson says:
ChrisTS:
Nope. I do not live on a coast. Even if I did, and if AGW was everything its supporters make it out to be, I be long dead before it affects me.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 9:35 pmChrisTS says:
I hesitate to say that you are lucky.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 9:49 pmChrisTS says:
Hey, You.
Oh, I know. Meanwhile we taxpayers have to pony up every hurricane season to bail out the builders/owners who think being as close to the ocean is absolutely necessary.
Don’t get me wrong: I grew up in NE in a house the yard of which ended in a seawall. But, we had a seawall, and the harbor could rise 20 feet before it was a problem for us. (And, in some very bad hurricanes, it was.)
My spouse and I are very attached to a barrier island community off NC. But, at this point, we are no longer looking to buy anything on the island. We expect it will be mostly gone in a decade or two.
The fact than many people still will pay premium to have property as close to a shoreline as possible is a testament to some combination of optimism, ignorance, and risk-indifference.
I LOVE oceans, but if I buy anything near to one, it will be at a safe distance on high ground.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 9:58 pmflyovertard says:
fjfjfjfjfjfjjf says:
“I agree with LTEC. There’s nothing new in the emails and it’s hard to see how they would make any difference.”
The “Team”, as they have named themselves in these emails, have been the gatekeepers to scientific journal publication for over a decade (again admittedly in the emails). This “Team” has apparently heavily influenced what is published science and what is not.
For instance consider this recent publication from the American Geophysical Union:
EOS Vol:90 No.36 Sept09
Paragraph 1, Sentence 1:
“There are two main uncertainties in determining future climate: The trajectories of future emissions of greenhouse gases, and the response of the global climate system to any given set of future emissions”
This statement basically states: Only anthropogenic CO2 emissions matter to the future climate.
Can anyone with even minimal scientific background believe the above statement.
This is published “science” from the world’s most respected geophysical organization.
This event has rendered all published climate science suspect.
I said this before – it’s both a sad and triumphant day for science.
–A Tard from Flyover Country
Quote
November 21, 2009, 10:07 pmBlue says:
I’ve read through perhaps half of the documentation. What’s most troubling about many of the e-mails isn’t the putatively falsified data…there may be explanations for many of the out of context quotes. Rather, what emerges is a decade-long pattern of behavior where the AGW advocates:
1) Demand that the skeptics publish in “peer-reviewed journals” while
2) Taking steps to block those publications including sharing of supposedly anonymous copies for review
3) Coordination of response strategies based on this information
4) Threatening the editorial board of one journal that allowed a skeptical paper to “slip through” (that’s a direct quote).
5) Telling skeptics to address their work through comments then ensuring that those comments are unpublished by the journal in question.
Taken together its an outrageous and deeply unethical set of actions that prevents the normal scientific process of peer review to function.
This would never be tolerated in the disciplines I’ve been involved in…and I find it appalling to see in such an important field of science.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 10:10 pmMike G in Corvallis says:
You’ve probably seen people defending the CRU group with the argument, “So, there’s a vast worldwide conspiracy of thousands of scientists to convince the public that human-caused global warming is real when it really isn’t? Do you realize how ridiculous you conspiracy freaks are?”
Unfortunately, it doesn’t take a vast global conspiracy, and the people involved may have the best of motives for doing what they do. For one thing, a researcher like Keith Briffa is a big fish in a very small pond; we know there’s no vast conspiracy because the field is anything but vast. (How many people have even heard of “dendroclimatology”?) All it takes to push an orthodoxy is a small group of like-minded individuals who don’t even need to coordinate their actions with one another.
Funding to pursue research in fields like dendroclimatology is difficult to come by; these people are not in it for the money. I’m virtually certain that Briffa and at least some of the others are dedicated and sincere.
But the history of science is full of examples of dedicated, sincere researchers who backed an incorrect hypothesis and refused to admit their errors, even when the evidence became overwhelming that they were wrong. An example from my own field of astronomy would be the sad case of Peter van de Kamp, who spent four decades collecting the extremely subtle data that “proved” Barnard’s Star had planets. In the mid-1970s it was discovered that his data were invalidated by instrumental errors. Alas, van de Kamp never accepted that, and severed relationships with former friends and colleagues who didn’t support him. He continued to publish papers about the supposed planetary system until his death in the 1980s.
Even more reminiscent of the CRU situation is the case of Trofim Lysenko and his theories about the inheritance of acquired characteristics in biology and botany. Stalin declared that ‘the science was settled’ and Lysenko used the power of the State to discredit and even imprison proponents of Mendelian genetics. Lysenko apparently was completely sincere — he knew he had the truth, and silencing his opponents was therefore justified.
Read the collection of e-mails to and from the CRU researchers. They come across as True Believers, sincere in their research efforts but willing to bend the rules a bit by fudging data, preventing opponents from publishing, and using the media to discredit critics. After all, it’s in defense of the Higher Truth, and the urgency of the crisis justifies it. There’s definitely an us-versus-them mentality on display, one that treats anyone who can’t recognize the Higher Truth of AGW as stupid or corrupt ... and fair game for attacks.
Quote
November 21, 2009, 10:39 pmuh_clem says:
ShelbyC: The markets sure don’t believe in global warming.
Well, that settles it then! The markets have never been wrong before.
How’s that Enron stock doing?
Quote
November 21, 2009, 11:35 pmgrrizzly says:
clem,
You are aware that Enron (as well as Lehman Brothers) was a huge cheerleader for cap-n-trade, aren’t you?
Quote
November 21, 2009, 11:59 pmSenatorX says:
@uh_clem — slink off in shame already.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 1:17 amdr says:
when will the mainstream media cover this?!
Quote
November 22, 2009, 1:31 amA. Zarkov says:
Don’t be surprised if the US Congress simply ignores Climategate and goes ahead and votes cap-and-trade anyway. I really hope I’m wrong, but I think we may have lost control over our government which now seems to operate like some kind of politburo. When I call my Congressman’s staffers they won’t tell me anything. I can never get a straight answer. They always say “don’t know.” They tell me they don’t know his position when he’s about to vote on a bill within the hour. He won’t meet with us. I’m organizing an effort to vote him out in 2010. He seems not to care that his district is up in arms over his voting record. I sometime wonder if I live in a democracy any more.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 1:44 amA. Zarkov says:
If you have something substantive to say then by all means go ahead. But these content-free snarky statements are getting a little tiresome.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 1:47 amGaryC says:
The last date on an email message is November 12, 2009.
On November 13, 2009, Steve McIntyre was informed that his FOI request for data, much of which is in this data package, had been rejected.
That doesn’t “prove” anything, but it certainly suggests that an insider who was aware of the contents of the data package, because he (or she) had been involved in assembling it to respond to the FOI request, decided to act as a whistleblower. The probability that it was an outside hacker seems very low, at least to me.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 1:48 amNoah says:
Oh come on. What is this, the Glen Beck pity-party hour? You say you’re organizing an effort to vote him out and then, two sentences later, you say that you wonder if you live in a democracy anymore. Pick one and stop your crying. If you don’t like the situation then change it. You can vote your congressmen right out and if your district is, in fact, up in arms about him then voting him out shouldn’t be hard.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 1:52 amSarcastro says:
Yep, these guys being dumb totally disproves global warming, and all scientists who agree with them are clearly frauds now! Add in Mike G in Corvallis’s examples that prove individual fraudsters exist, we can be doubly sure the majority of this field is fraudsters!
We’d better exile Al Gore to Europe for bein popular with liberals and taking their money!
Quote
November 22, 2009, 2:11 amErnst Blofeld says:
The email archive doesn’t disprove global warming, but it certainly calls into question the credibility of those trying to shout down the skeptics.
The skeptics have been complaining about funny business in journal publishing protocols for years. The skeptics have been shown to be correct on that point; the AGW people have been politicking the journals and playing fast and loose with data.
Can anyone take the CRU people seriously when they assert that “the science is settled” after reading these archives? The entire enterprise is riddled with improper influence, the journals have been compromised, and peer review has been inadequate at best. Can anybody NOT bust out laughing and immediately bin a paper now if the CRU people refuse to release raw data for the paper?
Quote
November 22, 2009, 4:34 amMike G in Corvallis says:
Yep, these guys being dumb totally disproves global warming, and all scientists who agree with them are clearly frauds now! Add in Mike G in Corvallis’s examples that prove individual fraudsters exist, we can be doubly sure the majority of this field is fraudsters!
Yes, they do exist — very perceptive of you to pick up on that! Outright fraud wasn’t my point, though; ego, stubbornness, and self-righteousness play larger roles.
Sarcastro, I’ve seen you (or someone else using that name) contribute worthwhile comments to other blogs. Too bad you so rarely add anything other than snark and derision to discussions on the Volokh Conspiracy, except on the rare occasions when you post in [brackets]. It’s rather a waste of talent.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 5:51 amBenP says:
In all honesty, I don’t think these emails should seem the least bit out of the ordinary to anyone who has ever worked in any sort of academic department at a graduate level, or even sat in on a substantive faculty department discussion.
Academics being petty and egotistical about their own ideas and dismissive, if not outright hostile to those with differing ideas is absolutely not a surprise. I’ve seen more hostile discussions about any number of banal topics in history, and I’ve personally witnessed professors making the same comments about how articles by certain authors should be treated (read rejected) by journal editors.
Not to mention academics are in the business of ideas, and reading academics talk about how to best sell their ideas isn’t shocking either.
Beyond that, I see a lot of confirmation bias in this thread. People who were already convinced that global warming was a fraud see this as conclusive proof it is a fraud.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 6:58 amkdackson says:
OK, a question for all you lawyers.
If you were a prosecutor and the CRU was a witness, would you be so charitable to state: “Well, they lied, but that does not diminish the quality of their work”?
While it’s not proof that their work is useless, it does raise the question of whether it is suspect.
Now, I’m not saying that AGW is settled one way or the other (personally, I believe it to be a crock for reasons I have stated on this thread and others). However, now that the data have been released, it is possible to check the work of the CRU and either get the same (or similar result) using their methods, or show that the methods were flawed. That is the scientific process.
All I know is that we are always being told to “get a second opinion” if a medical doctor gives us some unpleasant news. We are talking about the health of the planet, and the main doctor is saying “trust me”. I want a second opinion.
This reminds me of the cold fusion thing from 15–20 years ago. When no one could reproduce the results, the whole thing fell apart. But not after millions in research grants were awarded.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 7:23 amfsfsfsfsfsfsfsfsf says:
BenP writes:
The emails are in fact uncharacteristic of typical scientific email correspondence because they include:
(1) requests to delete data to avoid Freedom of Information Act requests;
(2) requests to delete all copy of emails for secrecy;
(3) colluding with other supposedly anonymous reviewers in order to reject particular scientific papers;
(4) attempting to ban critics from any peer-reviewed journals by, for example, successfully getting them fired from editorial positions;
(5) participation and publication of patently absurd graphs and theories, e.g. using selected tree rings as some kind global temperature proxy and using that to justify restructuring the global economy; or publishing theories and demanding action based on data that they would not release; and finally
(6) collusion in the public animosity and hysteria directed against individuals and institutions who felt there was insufficient evidence of global warming and its causes to justify remedial action (e.g., calling skeptics “deniers” or “akin to war criminals” or comparing them to flat-earth advocates).
All these taken together are clear evidence that the actions of the scientists involved are well outside the mainstream of scientific behavior.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 7:54 amBenP says:
Not only are you overstating your case a bit, (which is to be expected given you made your opinion on global warming abundantly clear from the outset) what I take from your statement is that you’ve never worked in a large graduate department.
They certainly don’t seem all that out of the ordinary as far as my experience doing some graduate work in a history department, and you can practically ask every doctoral student ever about how inter-departmental politics affected their dissertation. You’ll get an earful about how petty academics can be when you disagree with them.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 8:49 amBenP says:
Again, raising the confirmation bias issue. The only possible response to that is “which side am I on?” There’s really no such thing as an impartial lawyer, that’s why we have juries (or judges depending on the court)
It’s absolutely standard in every trial with an expert that if you’re on the other side of that expert you’re doing to dig as much as is economically feasable to find something he’s lied about, and if you can’t find anything they’re you’ll probably try to quote mine something to make it look like he lied or was being misleading.
If it’s your expert, you’re the one telling the jury, who cares that he has a record, or was an asshole at some point, or had a different conclusion in some other case, the evidence was different there, look at his conclusions from the evidence in this case.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 8:53 amkdackson says:
OK, just so we’re clear and I have this straight.
A criminal conspiracy to deny a valid FOIA request is now an acceptable course of action for government agencies or groups that accept government funding.
And we cannot question the motives of the people who are involved in criminal conspiracies.
And we cannot even begin to cast doubt on the work these people did, because we cannot challenge their motives.
Got it.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 9:31 amAnonperson says:
You can do anything you want to your data. What matters is whether or not your published paper states exactly what was done.
In regards to the journals, reviewers, etc., does anyone honestly believe that similar discussions do not take place in the anti-AGW camp? If so, then you are naive.
So what would really be damning? Well, if they made up data, that would be really damning. If they discussed doing things to the data that they would intentionally not state in the publication, that would be damning.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 9:40 amroad2serfdom says:
BenP,
There is a very big difference between academic fields. Economics has a custom where data is shared, so others can run the same models on their own computers and verify. They can also run other test on the raw data to check for inconsistencies. Seems like a good policy, but in other fields like history and medical many seem to be shocked at requests for raw data.
Maybe “everybody does it” is good enough when the issue is an topic no one will check up on. (Good enough to not be fired — no one cares enough.) However, everybody does not do it. When you are trying to impact major public policy, as Bellisles found out, fraud has a much higher probability of being exposed.
All this case needs now is a few Jim Lindgrins. Who will step up to the plate? There is a tipping point in cases like this where the silent majority no longer fear losing their jobs and funding by not shutting up and/or going along, and instead fear losing credibility by supporting an obvious hoax.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 9:41 amA. Zarkov says:
If anyone wants a statement of what mainstream science should be like, we need look no further than Richard Feynman’s 1974 commencement address at Cal Tech.
By Feynman’s standards the work of Mann, Hansen, Jones, Schmidt, and perhaps the rest of the global warming community falls woefully short. Of course we knew that before we read the emails. Their refusal to provide the public with all the data is absolutely inexcusable and their work never should have been taken seriously in the first place. This shows how utterly corrupt the whole enterprise of public science has become. The politicians have ruined it. We should get government out of science. Hat tip to Luboš Motl for the Feynman link.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 9:46 amAnonperson says:
Even if collected by the author? So an author could spend two years of hard work collecting data, and she would immediately have to share it? Are they required to put it on the web? In general, in most of the physical and biological sciences, data sharing practices are spotty at best. The main reason is that there is no incentive to share data, and every reason not to share it.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 9:50 amA. Zarkov says:
Glenn Beck showed a lot of common sense about global warming in his broadcasts– a lot more than the MSM.
As for my remark about democracy, it was aimed at our Congressmen who seem to be ignoring the public wishes on TARP, the stimulus package, Iraq, Afghanistan, Gitmo and health care. When the Speaker of the House gets asked a perfectly reasonable question about the constitutionality of the individual mandate and responds by say “are you serious, are you serious” and walks away, we have a government that seems to have contempt for the voter, and democracy itself.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 9:56 amA. Zarkov says:
Yes.
That’s too bad. See Feynman. Such people are not doing science. Do you think Sir Arthur Eddington kept his data secret that he collected at Príncipe Island? Did he just write “Einstein confirmed?” The practice of science is not like commerce.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 10:03 amSpence_UK says:
Please remember these people are employees of a publically funded organisation, and those hypothetical “two years of hard work” were paid for out of the public purse.
And, furthermore, if there is a desire to influence public policy by the results of the data then absolutely yes, these data should be made available.
If the data were funded personally by these individuals, and not published in the peer reviewed literature*, and people were not demanding public policy be shaped based on the results, then I see no reason why they would need to be made available.
*Note: many (but not all) journals have data availability requirements as a condition of publication. These are not normally checked or enforced rigorously though.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 10:11 amAnonperson says:
Zarkov, forgive me if I’m skeptical, but please provide a URL that explains this data sharing practice. Or more details. For example, does an author in economics need to provide her data immediately after the first paper is published? Or would they be allowed an embargo period of N years.
Spence_UK said:
I’m not saying what should be the case. Just stating what typically is the case. Scientists respond to incentives like everyone else. Sharing data actually takes significant effort and cost. That effort and cost has no benefit to the scientist, at least in the fields of science that I’m familiar with.
Most funding agencies, such as the NSF in the US, try to push data sharing, but it is hard to change the culture of science.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 10:30 amAnonperson says:
Zarkov, I have found the information on my own, so never mind. Economics does seem to have a much more open policy. It would be an interesting economics paper to study why the policy in economics is more open. Of course, one could claim that it is because economists are more noble than scientists in other fields, but I doubt that that is the case.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 10:39 amNoah says:
Absolutely, Glenn Beck was dead on, like here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khikoh3sJg8
Anyone can play that gotcha game. What’s next, you’re going to start quoting Lew Rockwell? As for the issues you site that congress has ignored public opinion on. The public wanted to fight in Iraq and we went, the public wanted to fight in Afghanistan and we went. We tend to get the government we want. When we’re following populist straw men like Beck then we get a congress that panders to it’s loudest and most crude base. We, sadly, get the government that the base demands.
But none of what you say here refutes my point that it is such a weak and pathetic view to scream “democracy is dead” when it’s alive & well — even if we don’t like what it has produced.
I found this on the Stanford website and thought you’d enjoy:
Quote
November 22, 2009, 10:40 amSpence_UK says:
I’ve heard this excuse before — “sharing data actually takes significant effort and cost” — from academics, but not so much from the private sector. Firstly, any scientist worth his salt will place his data under proper configuration control. This has benefits that far outweigh the costs — properly structured data storage, backups, that make for quick and easy recovery in the future when the data is needed.
Once this is in place, uploading a subset of the configured data onto the interwebs takes minutes. And guess what? It means you spend zero time responding to requests for your data, beyond pointing people to the FTP site. I would certainly argue proper configuration control and archiving *saves* time and money in the long run, which is why most private companies enforce it rigorously.
Certainly in my field (remote sensing) it is quite normal to upload image data etc. in accessible formats — the exception is military stuff (for obvious reasons) but in the US, even military stuff is often made available on the internet (albeit in a degraded form, e.g. reduced resolution etc.).
I have to admit, I don’t recognise the “culture of science” that you refer to here; not in my field, anyway.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 10:49 amAnonperson says:
It does have benefits, but many scientists don’t have the IT support for this.
Yes, if you have incentives to share data. But it also takes zero time to just ignore requests for data. :-)
Well, there are basically two ways that data collection is funded. In the first case, it is funded specifically. In that case, the PI has every incentive to share the data, because they are funded specifically to collect and share data. That is their very reason for existence.
In the second case, data is collected as part of a research project. In this case, what advances the career of the PI is publications. Any time or money that is spent on sharing data is time or money that does not contribute to the career of the PI.
What matters on one’s CV is how many publications you have. It doesn’t matter how many people have used data that you collected.
Note that in the first case, those PIs are actually on a different career track. They are not on a track that will get them recognized as top scientists in the field since they will not get any publications.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 11:11 amkdackson says:
And if the research is funded by the public, then the PI has a duty to make it public under FOIA requests.
So much for that argument.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 11:18 amAnonperson says:
Is this per year? Where does all this money come from? I’m not aware of that much money from the NSF (US) for pro-AGW research. Maybe NOAA or NASA funds some, but 100’s of millions? Specifically to support AGW?
Quote
November 22, 2009, 11:27 amSpence_UK says:
Not when those requests are FOIA requests :-)
And whilst number of publications are important, citations are often important as well (if a scientist is judged on a scoring method, such as the h-index). Certainly in my field, making your data available encourages others to use it, and when they use it, they will cite your work... up goes the h-index.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 11:29 amAnonperson says:
Hm...so why hasn’t someone sued Mann in court?
Quote
November 22, 2009, 11:34 amkdackson says:
Actually, there was a request for the data and e-mails under FOIA that was rejected on 13 November 09. The last e-mail in the data dump was 12 November 09.
Sounds like they had collected the data. If you recall, in mid August, the data had gone “mysteriously missing”.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/13/cru_missing/
And now the data are “mysteriously” found.
And I think that being sued for that data is now the least of Dr. Mann’s problems.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 12:01 pmAnonperson says:
I probably wasn’t clear in that I’ve digressed now from the whole AGW thing, and was more describing what happens in general. I don’t know of any scientist who would even contemplate filing an FOIA against another scientist, outside of the AGW field.
Definitely. But...well...maybe...I can use myself as an example.
Someone asked me for some code once. I could have given it to him, and I wanted to give it to him, but the student that had worked on it had graduated. It was in CVS, but there were multiple versions of it, who knows why? Students are students. Chaos often rules.
To give it to him, I would have had to figure out how to compile and run it. (That’s something that the student typically does.) I would then have had to verify that it was the correct version by re-running the original tests.
It might have given me one more citation, but it just never rose to the top of my priority list.
Furthermore, I would have had to clear this through our intellectual property office, if I really wanted to do everything through the proper channels. They probably would have nixed the idea anyway.
I’ve also been on the receiving end of this. I’ve also sent e-mail to other authors asking for code. I never dreamed of going to the trouble of filing an FOIA for it. It’s just something that most people in my field would never dream of doing.
(For the record, I am an academic with a number of NSF and DOE grants, but I’m not a climate scientist.)
Quote
November 22, 2009, 12:06 pmlucia says:
Anon
Untrue. The refusal of data has been very costly in terms of time. The constant refusals lead to people filing FOI’s, appealing the rejections writing new FOI’s etc. If you read the hacked CRU emails, you’ll see that the people fighting to keep the requested data out of the eyes of the general public have been spending time responding to the press, blogs, internal FOI officers, brainstorming ways to nomimally comply with FOI while keeping the data private.
Releasing the data would almost certainly have taken much less time.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 12:08 pmsitzpinkler says:
These e-mails matter because credibility matters. Credibility is particularly important when the audience is unable to directly assess the truth of a proposition. That’s certainly the case here. Very few people are able to rigorously assess the scientific claims being made about global warming. At some level we have to trust others. E-mails of the sort just released undermine that trust.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 12:12 pmkdackson says:
Really? I thought that was my point. That their credibility was severely undermined.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 12:21 pmAnonperson says:
Well, I’m sure that this incident might increase his political problems, but I haven’t heard of anything yet that is really scientific misconduct. It all depends on whether or not any manipulations were done that were not clearly stated in a published paper. I haven’t seen any statement about that.
I don’t think anything they have done is noble, of course. But I am somewhat amused by all the outrage. Who would have suspected that scientists can be petty, or could play dirty, or could seek to influence the peer-review process?
Quote
November 22, 2009, 12:24 pmPubliusFL says:
I’m sure they do. The pro-AGW camp has been telling us that the anti-AGW camp does this stuff (cherrypicking data, etc.) all the time. But then they also say (to quote Michael Mann from one of the leaked e-mails) that what the anti-AGW folks do is “not legitimate science.”
Quote
November 22, 2009, 12:33 pmAnonperson says:
Yes, but I was really talking about the general practice of science, not the whole AGW thing. In general, it will cost a scientist zero to ignore an initial request for data from Joe Schmoe. Yeah, if Joe really files an FOIA request, then the whole cost balance will change.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 12:37 pmkdackson says:
Yeah, the problem is that these
scientistspoliticians likely engaged in conspiracy, which I believe, is a felony.As for scientific misconduct, that is not strictly a legal thing. However, if they get kicked out of their institutions, good luck gettting hired again. Because how would you be able to go about getting NSF, DOE, or EPA funding with that cloud over your head?
And the boycotting of journals should give every honest scientist pause.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 12:54 pmAnonperson says:
Well, scientists criticize others work all the time, in private conversations.
I do have concerns about AGW science, but not based on any of the leaked documents/e-mails. I don’t expect AGW scientists to be angels, so my concerns are more systemic in nature. And what one person calls cherry-picking is what another person calls discarding bad data, calibration, etc.
What keeps science honest is not the moral character of scientists. Rather, it is that ultimately, it either works or it doesn’t. AGW is a little bit unusual in that the time scales are very long, and that it is hard to validate models due to the nature of climate. So it will self-correct, eventually, but there will be costs, if the policy makers choose incorrectly.
Note that I have exactly the same concerns about the anti and pro side. In some sense, AGW is like the perfect storm of bad science and bad policy, on all sides. It’s highly politicized, highly uncertain, not a natural fit to the scientific method, highly international, and highly expensive.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 12:55 pmSpence_UK says:
It is worth noting that prior to FOIA requests, polite direct requests are made to the scientists for data; only when the scientists refuse do the FOIA requests come in. And yes, this is invariably due to the peculiarity of AGW being used to justify massive public policy change.
If you look at one of the e-mails, they discuss different options on how to handle the FOI requests. One of the options put forward is to provide the data, but deliberately obfuscate it by changing to an arcane cross-referencing method.
Obviously, this obfuscation would take time and effort. This isn’t the behaviour of someone worried about the amount of time and effort dealing with these requests will take: it is the behaviour of someone seeking to impede analysis whilst not straying too far from the letter of the law.
The usual caveat applies that this e-mail has not been verified, and it is even possible that the suggestion was supposed to be a joke. But if true, why would someone genuinely worried about the planet — and genuinely convinced of their data and methods — do that? It makes no sense.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 1:02 pmAnonperson says:
Sure, but like I said, I haven’t yet seen something that is clearly scientific misconduct. It is not misconduct to discuss how to analyze and process your data. It is misconduct to falsify data. It is also misconduct to intentionally not report some crucial step in your analysis (in your final publication).
So did they do any misconduct? I have no idea, and I don’t have a horse in this race. I am interested in the practice of science, but not specifically intrested in AGW. I had never heard of CRU, or East Anglia, or Phil Jones.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 1:04 pmkdackson says:
As I have implied before, I am an engineer, and also want to see the facts obfuscated by politics. Hell, if they have a valid data smoothing algorithm that is shown to get good results (i.e., calibration data predicting a similar data set collected over the same time frame with other differences), I might want to use that in some of my own modeling.
What about the people like me who might use their methodology becasue we saw it referenced and it passed the initial “sniff test”. We don’t follow the field, so if it comes into question, we don’t learn of it until its too late. That is what is so damn frustrating here.
Cherry picking the data — is it misconduct? I doubt it. However, I know that if I did that during my PhD program, I would have gotten kicked out. To always look for reasons to include more data — because it strengthes the analysis. Looking to exclude data — well, that just seems dishonest unless you have some documentation that is was incorrect to begin with, such as a broken/miscalibrated instrument, bad methodology, bird crap in the sample (hey it happens in atmospheric sampling), etc.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 1:25 pmRHSwan says:
Anonperson,
If they conspired to hide or delete information releasable through FOIA, that is a crime in the US, although I doubt any jail time would occur. It might get the guy fired from a government job though.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 1:27 pmAnonperson says:
I would agree that releasing it would be best thing to do, but I think that even well-intentioned scientists could react in the same way, if put in the same position.
For better or worse, AGW science is not what I would consider to be clear-cut, slam-dunk science. But that is mainly due to the inherent nature of it, I think.
Anyway, I need to go do some real work now. None of it involves sharing data, or responding to or filing FOIA requests, luckily. :-)
Quote
November 22, 2009, 1:28 pmNoah says:
“Conspiracy” is not a felony. Conspiracy to commit a felony is potentially a felony. You need the felony first though.
I can conspire with my wife not to tell the kids where we hid the candy, that certainly isn’t a felony.
Go get a paper bag, hold it over your nose & mouth and breathe deeply. You’re hyperventilating.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 1:29 pmlucia says:
Anonperson–
It’s true academics take less care with code revisions etc. But at least some of codes being discussed are run monthly to generate the monthly temperature anomalies posted by CRU and NASA. Others are codes used to process data for peer review publications, and the request is made within a week of publishing the paper.
For the former, the issue of vanishing graduate student and not knowing which code revision was used is (or dang well ought to be) irrelevant. Moreover, since people have been requesting these for years, there would have been ample time to clear the release through IP if any scientist was willing to release the code. (Besides which... people at national labs do sometimes share codes without clearing through IP. And as for a computer program written by a government employee as part of his government duties? Maybe one of the lawyers here can weigh in on whether or not there is copyright, trademark or any other sort of IP argument to be made on that. )
For the latter, the issue of vanishing graduate student might be irrelevant, but it’s pretty unlikely. The main reason these codes aren’t shared is the researchers prefer not to share them with the person who requested them.
Their preference may or may not be justified. It may or may not be in compliance with a particular journal policy. There may or may not be an issue of IP. But most if not all those things you claim might make it difficult to release a code would appear on a list of things that might hypothetically make it difficult, but which, in the case we are discussing, irrelevant.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 1:32 pmAnonperson says:
That would be after the request, right? In other words, it’s okay to discuss things like e-mail retention policies before any specific request has been made?
Quote
November 22, 2009, 1:34 pmkdackson says:
OK, how about conspiracy to violate provisions of the FOIA? Does that rise to the level of comitting a crime?
You know, like threatening to destroy the data rather than release it?
Quote
November 22, 2009, 1:38 pmAnonperson says:
Yes, I guess the nature of comment threads make it difficult to maintain context. I am talking in general, and also talking about what typically happens in the real world, and why it happens. I never intended to use that to justify any specific thing that the pro-AGW scientists are doing. Just providing some background and context from my particular field.
As to IP, IP from NSF-funded research still belongs to the university. I don’t know about the policy at the national labs.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 1:44 pmRandom Commenter says:
“In general, in most of the physical and biological sciences, data sharing practices are spotty at best. ”
If meant to apply to monitoring data and derivatives, this is horseshit. Large amounts of long-term physical and biological long-term monitoring are collected on the public dime, and the vast majority of it is made available to the public in raw and summarized form via web sites, ftp, and printed publications. In geophysics and biology the same is usually true of key intermediate datasets that are used for major lines of analysis. A lot of the stuff in these emails may be innocent, but it’s hard to imagine an innocent explanation for the (possibly criminal?) lengths these guys went to to avoid sharing publicly owned data. If Phil Jones et al. really have deliberately thwarted efforts to replicate their analyses, then they should be fired and their previous “work” given very little credence until it survives a proper re-analysis by other parties.
My comment is contingent on the emails etc. being real. I still find it hard to believe these guys could behave in such a vile and unethical fashion.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 1:48 pmSpence_UK says:
Anonperson -
My reading of the e-mails is that there is probably *not* enough to construct a case of scientific misconduct (especially not with regard to the scientific literature) although I would note that I have not read all of the e-mails in great detail.
The bigger problem is likely to be the FOIA requests, and the alleged subsequent deletions. I understand that deleting anything which is the subject of an FOIA request is actionable in the UK, and the dates tally up (David Holland’s request for e-mails, followed three weeks later by the email containing the requested deletion).
Ironically, there probably is no “smoking gun” in the deleted e-mails either, and the alleged decision to delete them may end up costing one individually dearly (if that is, indeed, what happened).
I also believe that a criminal trial over FOIA requests would be far more damaging to the AGW case (and personally) than his institution booting him out on scientific misconduct.
As for e-mail retention rules etc., had the deletion suggestion happen prior to the FOIA request taken place, it might have been okay, but if what I’ve seen is right, it happened three weeks after.
As for the likely outcome of such an investigation and/or trial... best ask a lawyer ;-)
Quote
November 22, 2009, 1:52 pmA. Zarkov says:
Did you watch the video you linked to? If you did then surely you noticed that Latif presented a curve with an unlabeled vertical axis, presumably temperature, versus time. That curve looks like exponential growth, but we all know greenhouse effect must grow logarithmically with CO2 concentration because IR absorption is bounded at 100%. Anyone who has ever painted a room would understand. The first coat gives you good coverage, but each succeeding coat adds incrementally less. This is why the climate sensitivity factor is usually expressed as the temperature increase for a doubling of CO2. To get linear growth in temperature with time, we would need exponential growth in CO2 with time. To get exponential growth of temperature in time (as Latif shows) we would need some kind of super exponential growth in CO2 concentration, which seems extremely unlikely. Of course logarithmic growth initially looks linear (log(1+x) = x) so we could get convex looking increases for a short time if we had real exponential growth in CO2. If Latif wanted to be honest and not alarmist, he would have shown a sigmoidal curve. So he’s playing games too. He’s right that we could have a down fluctuation for 10 years, but I recall the global warming advocates playing the same game in the 1990s whenever a hot year would present. Now days they can’t do that, so they have found religion.
As for democracy, yep Churchill was pissed they voted him out. But what would he say today with the European Union being shoved down the throats of European citizens? When the Eurocrats couldn’t get the EU approved through referendum, they went the Treaty (of Lisbon) route where they didn’t need a popular vote, except for Ireland which did initially vote against it.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 1:57 pmAnonperson says:
It’s not. That data is funded specifically to be made available, so of course it is shared. An example of this is any of the data from the NSF LTER program. If any site did not share their data, they would have failed in their primary mission, and they would be defunded.
Rather, it is for data from individual grants, usually for a specific research topic, that is not well-shared. And by well-shared, I mean placed in a public repository with adequate meta-data, etc., so that it is searchable via some kind of meta-search engine.
And to be clear, I’m speaking in the general context, nothing to do specifically with CRU.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 1:58 pmAnonperson says:
Great, the last thing I need now is more entertainment to distract me from real work. (Yeah, call me a cynic.)
Quote
November 22, 2009, 2:03 pmJohn Moore says:
Another way of saying this is that there cannot be “settled science” in AGW by its very nature! The truly interesting hypotheses cannot be falsified until 50 or 100 years from now, which means that, for now, they are not scientific hypotheses at all — they are speculation.
To base enormous economic changes on such speculation is, on the face of it, absurd.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 2:28 pmlucia says:
Anon–
Untrue again. That is, untrue if by “Joe Schmoe” you mean “person the scientist doesn’t know” or something similar.
Ordinarily, the only people who contact for code are people interested in the authors field of research. Ignoring such requests isolates the scientist, whose own career generally benefits from having people cite his work, follow on and, yes, even criticize it.
Admittedly, if people who had no intention of running, reading, reviewing the code were just asking for a code for no reason at all, then ignoring might save time. But this doesn’t happen.
Yes. And turning down legitimate requests repeatedly is likely to result in such things. Moreover, turning down requests when you dang well know this will trigger FOI requests is a real good way to waste your own time, that of the scientists working on your projects, that of your FOI officers, supervisors, the person who requested the code and, in the context of the codes discussed in the CRU-Hack files, it will likely end up wasting the time of PR people at CRU.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 2:37 pmAnonperson says:
By Joe Schmoe, I mean someone that is not a big-shot also in the field. Such a person is unlikely to have an effect on someone’s career. Does it happen? Sure it does. I’m by no means a big shot, but I am respectable in my field, and I’ve sent requests for code and/or information that were ignored. I’m sure the person was busy, and gauged, correctly, that ignoring my request would have no negative impact on this person’s career.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 2:54 pmGuest12345 says:
It’s not bad data when it fails to match your preconceived result. Bad data requires an identification of a collection problem. What Mann, Jones, etc. got up to was not discarding bad data, it was straight up cherrry-picking.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 3:29 pmAnonperson says:
My admittedly poorly stated point is it that it is not possible for me, a non-expert with limited time, to tell the difference, in this particular case.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 3:51 pmflyovertard says:
If a government agency internally “conspires” to delete information to get around a FOIA request, its illegal. I’ve no knowledge of the law but if its not — it should be.
If a collection of government agencies “conspire” to delete/withold information to get around an FOIA request — its a conspiracy.
This all misses the big picture — that this cabal of conspirators (aka scientists) have used there positions and reputations to manipulate what can be called published science. I listed an example from EOS in the thread above.
AGU’s position statement emphasizes that the proof of AGW is confirmed from a wide and varying array of evidence. The kicker is that what has has been published may or may not represent accurate objective science. Are there valid papers contrary to the AGW view that were not published?
Furthermore, I could be very wrong but it seems that the one weakness in the entire AGW argument is that recent warming is unprecedented. These folks controlled the temperature record (via measured and by proxy). If recent warming is not unusual — manmade CO2 emissions can’t be the culprit — the whole house of cards falls down.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 4:23 pmCollege Student says:
Do you think media coverage in the U.S. is biased? We are looking for people interested in politics to take our Institutional Research Board approved study.
Many people feel that the media can lead people in different ideological directions. We are Smith College students in a Senior Political Psychology Seminar and we want to invite you to take our survey. We are investigating the relationship between media coverage and political information. If you take our short, confidential survey you can choose to be entered into a raffle for a $50 gift certificate to Amazon.com. If you are interested, follow this link to Surveymonkey.com
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=T4JLkCcNbd7TRexboclKxA_3d_3d
Quote
November 22, 2009, 5:15 pmlucia says:
Anon–
If you would otherwise have written papers citing his work, then his ignoring your request would have a negative impact on his career. It might be a small negative impact, but one citation less is a negative impact. In the normal course of events, having your work risk being relegated to obscurity, or just less wildy cited, because you ignore requests for information (or code) has a negative impact on careers.
This is why most active researchers do not ignore requests for code, data, or discourage questions about their papers.
In any case: your example is a bit irrelevant because we aren’t discussing someone being busy and ignoring a request once. With respect to the issue of code refusals discussed in the hacked CRU emails (the topic of JHA’s post) the situation is researchers did not ignore the code requests, the specifically responded (sending emails or letter), specifically refused (sending emails or letters), specifically refused repeated requests, specifically acted to avoid sending data after it was requested by FOI etc.
So, even if, at some point in your career, you think you were wise to save yourself a snippet of time by ignoring an isolated email request for code from a stale research paper, the analogy to the CRU situation is poor.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 6:37 pmNoah says:
Everything you say may very well be correct but that wasn’t the point I was making. I wasn’t talking at all about future predictions, I was talking about the misrepresentation of past data by Glen Beck. The macro trend is warming, the rate in the future is obviously arguable, the argument that Latif said that you could have a decade of cooling within a macro trend means that warming doesn’t exist is patently false. The charts at :55 and 5:19 are clearly labeled and represent recorded data, not projected data and that’s all I was focused on because you said:
.
You’re now having a different argument, but feel free if that makes you happy. I still maintain Beck wasn’t showing a lot of common sense and that when you look at the statement by Latif and the interpretation by Beck that is clear.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 6:54 pmHarryEagar says:
‘Hm...so why hasn’t someone sued Mann in court?’
Not Mann. Jones. Very expensive to sue someone, although the idea has been brought up as a last resort.
They shouldn’t have to sue. They should get what they ask for, because THAT’S THE LAW. Sheesh.
If there really were a well-funded anti-AGW conspiracy, I’m sure Big Oil could find a way to covertly fund such a lawsuit, though.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 7:05 pmFub says:
I’m not an IP lawyer, but I believe that without contractual terms to the contrary, IP rights to a work for hire (program written by an employee) belongs to the employer. Since the employer is a government, the rights may be public domain, depending on the government, its laws and policies.
That said, long ago in a galaxy far away, I cut analysis code for a research employer who contracted to the government. The government ultimately got the data and code. Since this was public research (ie: not classified or otherwise client confidential), I think anybody who wanted the code or the data could have it for actual copying costs. Mag tapes cost a few bucks along with mainframe and operator time to write, unlike today when CDs and CPU cycles are throwaway cheap.
I recall occasionally shipping tapes, mostly data but sometimes code, to other research organizations when they requested something or other (through organization channels, but very informally).
Quote
November 22, 2009, 8:53 pmLightcon says:
They are neither hypotheses nor speculation. They are predictions, based on a combination of well-established theories (blackbody radiation, absorption spectra, etc.) and models which are (imperfectly) consistent with a rich history of past observations. Those observations include not only direct historical temperature measurements and the tree-ring proxy data to which the widely reported stolen e-mails refer, but also evidence from ice core isotope ratios, growth patterns of corals, and geologic observations of past sea level.
Despite your evident ignorance of the scientific method and the extent of evidence for global warming, you are correct to say that these predictions and theories will be far more convincing after we wait 50 or 100 years to see what really happens.
On the other hand, there’s already plenty of evidence right in front of our faces to indicate that temperatures are rising (ignoring short-term fluctuations like the 10-year lull all you deniers are so excited about). Polar ice is decreasing faster than even the alarmists predicted. Glaciers everywhere in the world are disappearing at a rate unprecedented in the life of our species. The permafrost in interior Alaska is melting. Populations of tropical species are moving deeper into temperate zones all over the world, including mosquitoes that carry malaria and Dengue fever, and jellyfish that threaten important fisheries.
With little effort, any of you can see these changes with your own eyes, with no need to try to divine and compare the judgment, motives and statistical techniques of various foes and allies analyzing complex scientific data about which most commenters in this thread obviously have little expertise.
The trouble is, if the experts are right, within 50 or 100 years climate change will IMPOSE even bigger economic changes on us: inundating major cities and turning essential croplands into deserts or rain forests.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 8:56 pmLightcon says:
Really? How do you claim to know these things? What about glaciers in the Northern Rockies, the Alaska Range, the Andes, Tibet? Also disappearing due to “changes in land use”, I suppose? Let’s see the computer code for the models you use to link land use to decreasing snowpack.
When, exactly, were these warmer times during which polar bears lived, and how do you know what the temperatures were then, and that the bears to which you refer were “polar bears” in a meaningful sense?
You say “well-known” as if you believe scientific truth is a matter of consensus. Let’s see some proof, as clear as in high-school physics. If it’s not that cut-and-dried, it’s not science.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 9:12 pmgeokstr says:
Funny how these “experts” never seem to consider 1) that many, many periods in the past were much warmer than today and even much warmer than those “predicted” by the alarmists if we do nothing, with CO2 concentrations hundreds of times higher, and yet all those periods were lush with life, and 2) that all these inundated cities and new deserts will just as likely be replaced by vast tundras in Greenland, the Yukon, and Russia now buried under miles of ice and snow becoming bigger breadbaskets than what we have now.
One thing that can easily be concluded from geological history is that warmer periods were a hell of lot more favorable to life than cold periods.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 9:21 pmHarryEagar says:
Look up Exit glacier in Alaska, where the National Park Service (those rightwing anti-environmentalists) have a nifty exhibit showing how the glacier has been retreating steadily since way before carbon dioxide became an issue.
Better yet, try to find a copy of Emanuel Le Roy Ladurie’s “Times of Feast, Times of Famine,” for incontrovertible evidence that glaciers were smaller a thousand years ago than they are today. (When you find an 11th c. chapel where a glacier just melted, it’s hard to argue that somebody ‘hid it under the garbage,’ like in ‘Alice’s Restaurant.’
We can be pretty sure that polar bears got through warmer periods on the same argument: Where the bears live now, you can find the remains of forests. It takes a while to grow a forest.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 10:03 pmDavid Schwartz says:
The problem is that there is no evidence that they are consistent with any data that doesn’t fall into one of two categories:
1) Data that they specifically tuned the model to be consistent with (such as the current lack of warming), or
2) Data that was itself specifically tuned to be consistent with the model (such as the tree ring data).
And the problem is not really due to intentional scientific misconduct or abuse. It’s the nature of the incestuous way the data is being used. To use a proxy, you need to calibrate the proxy. To calibrate a proxy, you need to know what the temperature was like in the past. You cannot then use the calibrated proxy to validate the very past values that were used to calibrate the proxy.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 10:14 pmLightcon says:
I apologize to John Moore for jumping to the conclusion that he doesn’t understand the scientific method. After reading some of his comments in the previous climate change thread, it’s clear that he does. I disagree with his use of the word “hypothesis” in this context, but my ad hominem accusation was wrong and out of place. Sorry.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 10:15 pmDan Weber says:
The Earth certainly had life with concentrations of CO₂ hundreds, even thousands, of times today’s values. You would not want to live in such a place.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 10:29 pmAbdul Abulbul Amir says:
The real scandal is that government policy is being built on a foundation of secret data. That these clowns won’t release their raw data means that the EPA CO2 endangerment finding is going to be built on assertion rather than verifiable data.
Quote
November 22, 2009, 11:08 pmTweets that mention The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » NYT on Hacked Climate E-Mails -- Topsy.com says:
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Rick Henderson, PostRank – Law. PostRank – Law said: NYT on Hacked Climate E-Mails http://bit.ly/6IpYrY #postrank #law [...]
sgi says:
Abdul says the magic word: verifiable.
Why would a handful of scientists whose data and predictions are driving the global endeavor to reduce green house gas emissions and thus upend our economies not want their data verified by other scientists?
Couldn’t their predictions be wrong?
Quote
November 23, 2009, 12:32 amLightcon says:
Oh, of course, you’re right. One particular glacier has been retreating for a long time, perhaps indicating that temperatures in that spot were warming even before human emissions added to warming. Therefore, obviously, it follows that further warming will have no undesirable effects?
If one particular location was not glaciated at an unusually warm moment in the past, that’s “incontrovertible evidence” that glaciers in general were smaller then? This is your response to the evidence that glaciers around the world are disappearing at a rate unprecedented in the life of the modern human species?
You’re “pretty sure”, are you? For most of the year, polar bears live on sea ice. They eat seals they catch there. They wait out the brief arctic summer with little or no food on land, where they lack the necessary adaptations to hunt successfully. Which place do you suggest they lived in some undefined pre-ice-age past in forests?
By the way, you haven’t answered any of my questions yet.
Quote
November 23, 2009, 5:45 amJohn Moore says:
Beware of College Student’s study (above). If you are a conservative, you can only “vote” for your views if you also “vote for” extreme racist/sexist views. It also has huge emphasis on “groups” — apparently looking for anti-PC thought.
It is very poorly constructed.
Quote
November 23, 2009, 12:01 pmjenny says:
I find it interesting that all the apologists for CRU can come up with are arguments and excuses that since corruption at this level of research is commonplace that the results should still be believed; that the method of disclosing this revealing information makes the seriousness of it void. Funny that.
Quote
November 23, 2009, 12:17 pmJohn Moore says:
Lightcon says:
There are disconnectes in your “based on.” The predictions come directly from climate models, which the modelers themselves do not claim as predictive — only that they measure climate sensitivity to CO2 — an assertion which is simply not falsifiable right now.
The paleoclimatic data you give, which as you may have noticed is under strong and credible attack, does not give the predictions.
Err, that short term fluctuation that “deniers” are concerned about also evinced significant concern from one of the pro-AGW scientists — as shown by the leaked email. Back to the issue of falsifiable — the decadal lack of warming directly falsifies all of the climate models, since they predict something different. It is true that this may be because they are missing some component that will magically balance out exactly, but we don’t know what it is if it even exists. Hence the best data we have so far falsifies the best models we have so far. QED.
Also, unless you are a “denialist” of the “little ice age,” the warming trend is a simple continuation of the warming since that event, and still hasn’t reached the midieval warm period level.
PS, the use of the term “deniers” or “denialists” is inappropriate. Generally, when referring to those who disagree with a scientific theory, ‘skeptic’ is the correct term. “denialist” and “denier” has arisen only in this particular debate, and is a political term clearly chosen for its association with Holocaust “denier” and thus it’s inherent pejorative impact. I would suggest that perhaps we should lavel the Hockey Stick proponents “denialists” of historically verified past fluctuations.
This might actually support your hypothesis except for the fact that net global ice is in stasis — the Antarctic ice cap is growing at a rate that almost precisely matches the northern hemisphere declines. Also, there is a quote floating around (don’t have time to dig up the link) that sounds just like what you wrote above, but came from the Weather Bureau in 1922.
The significant of antarctic ice cap growth is interesting: if northern hemisphere ice melts (and much of it is on water) and the antarctic ice cap grows, then the contribution of ice melt to ocean levels is negative — in the absence of other factors, this trend would cause ocean levels to fall.
Actually, the experts don’t predict inundation of major cities — that’s a Gore-ism. Furthermore, you are now imposing another weak “science”... economics... in a way that has poor predictive powers. You are implicitly asserting that the present cost of significantly reducing CO2 emissions, GLOBALLY, is less than the present value of the future costs imposed by warming, which may or may not happen. That is a breathtaking leap.
And, of course, the killer argument against making US policy to expensively reduce CO2 emissions is that it won’t make any difference to the climate — even if the alarmists are correct — because China and India will not go along. Hence this whole thing is an exercise in liberal guilt flagellation, combined with special interest rent seeking.
Quote
November 23, 2009, 12:24 pmNoah says:
I think you’re a little off here in both fact & logic. There has been significant sea-ice loss in the arctic. However Antarctic ice is relatively stable or growing very slightly. Can you point to the data sets showing an exact offset?
The Antarctic situation is not terribly surprising. There has been significant calving on one side of the continent causing large amounts of ice loss but there has been increased snow fall. Warmer air holds greater moisture and that moisture will fall and stick over land that is below freezing (as is the case with antartica) so that area could see ice growth for centuries despite significant climatic changes elsewhere. The arctic ice pack is largely on water and thus gets warmed from above & below, and is roughly at sea level (whereas much of antartica’s surface is at huge elevations) so the rate of loss would be higher.
I’m not making a case one way or the other, but the Antarctic dataset doesn’t prove either scenario. Here’s a good, balanced assessment of it:
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/271218
Quote
November 23, 2009, 12:43 pmHarry Eagar says:
Well, let’s see, Lightcon. Glaciers in Alaska retreating without our help. Check. Glaciers in Europe retreating without our help. Check.
On what grounds do you say that today’s glacial retreats are unprecedented? I just gave you 2 precedents, far apart.
As for bears, northern Norway. We have archaeological evidence that people were carving tree trunks into canoes about 6,000–8,000 years ago where there are no trees — but there are bears — today.
Quote
November 23, 2009, 12:59 pmChrisTS says:
Thanks for filling in for me. I really thought the snow/glacier/permafrost melt were not questioned (just the causes).
Quote
November 23, 2009, 1:33 pmA. Zarkov says:
I wrote that Glenn Beck was showing more common sense than the MSM, not that Beck was showing more sense than Latif. For the most part, the MSM have been cheerleaders for the whole global warming agenda. They give tons of publicity that the ignoramus Gore and very little to the skeptics. I was simply giving Beck a little credit for introducing at least a little counter argument into the picture.
BTW I don’t agree (or disagree) that the macro temperature trend is up. I want to see the original raw station data behind any such claims. I want independent vetting of the instruments, otherwise don’t bother me with numbers I have no confidence in. The emails plainly show that we can’t trust the people put in charge of the data. They are advocates, not scientists.
Quote
November 23, 2009, 1:39 pmLightcon says:
Analysis of inclusion layers in ice cores from Mount Kilimanjaro shows that the mountain has been continuously ice-covered for at least 11,700 years. That record is now in imminent danger of being broken.
Ice cores from Huascaran in Peru and Nevado Sajama in Bolivia show that those peaks have been continuously ice-covered for 25,000 years, yet the glaciers in that area are threatened as well.
A well-preserved human body, popularly called Oetzi, was revealed in 1991 after being continuously buried in ice in the Tyrolean Alps for 5300 years.
Quote
November 23, 2009, 6:14 pmLightcon says:
You seem to have some kind of scientific or engineering background, but it must be in a field that deals with very simple, deterministic systems that are easy to model precisely. Most systems in the natural world are complex and mathematically chaotic: they exhibit behavior that reacts very sensitively to changes in inputs that are too small to be measurable. Climate is a prime example of such a system.
Does that mean we just throw up our hands and say that because sometimes the system exhibits small-scale variations we didn’t predict, it’s hopeless for us to predict the large-scale trends? That’s ridiculous. Weather forecasts are sometimes wrong, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be confident it will rain tomorrow when we detect an approaching storm system.
Try an experiment. Put a pot of water on the stove and turn on the burner. What does your “model” predict the temperature trend will be in the water? Now put a sensitive electronic temperature probe in the water and watch the readings. The general trend will be for the temperature to rise, but there will be moments during which the temperature falls, due to turbulent (chaotic, unpredictable) motion of water in the pot. Does this falsify our prediction that the water will eventually boil?
Quote
November 23, 2009, 6:33 pmJohn Moore says:
Gee, I never knew that weather was a simple, deterministic system. Shame on me.
I’ll remember that the next time that the GFS (a GCM) and the WRF (another GCM) give me radically different forecasts for only 12 hours into the future (and I don’t mean spot forecasts, either)!
Yes, which is why long range predictions about it that are based on specific feedback parameters should be, to say the least, treated as tentative. Anothe characteristic of most long lasting systems is that the feedbacks tend to be negative (unlike the warming proposed by the alarmists, which requires high levels of positive feedback). You are aware, I assume, that without this feedback, we only get 1.2C warming per each DOUBLING of CO2, right?
No, but it means we don’t make milti-trillion dollar decisions based on uncalibratable models of complex chaotic systems (except for economic systems, where we don’t have a choice).
When we have predictions that in 2100 the temperature will be X, but the models that produce it are way off for a 10 year (really, a 15 year) period, it’s time to be very suspicious.
What the current flat/cooling trend shows is that the models are unable to explain a significant variation over a significant time period. Your faith that these variations will all integrate to zero over time is touching, but misplaced.
Do you know how GCM’s work? How parameterization is done and calibrated?
Quote
November 23, 2009, 7:13 pmKirk Parker says:
anonperson,
Yes, you do have a horse in the race, even if you don’t realize it. You may not be interested in AGW, but it’s interested in you: some folks want to drastically restructure the world economy, and these institutions and individuals are shading their science to try to help them achieve that.
If that’s true, you’ve just generated a lot more enemies of the NSF. Why on earth shouldn’t IP developed using my tax dollars go straight into the public domain?
Quote
November 23, 2009, 7:13 pmOld MD says:
I’m an old retired MD who spent most of his professional life in research — 100’s of publications and a couple of dozen books published. This withholding of data is ridiculous. I never witnessed it being done in all my decades of medical research. There is always a bit of secrecy before publication as one does not want to be trumped by a rival lab. But after publication, all data garnered that generated the conclusions is and should be made available for peer review. These climatologists are hiding something — they’re not acting like real scientists.
Quote
November 23, 2009, 9:04 pmHarryEagar says:
‘A well-preserved human body, popularly called Oetzi, was revealed in 1991 after being continuously buried in ice in the Tyrolean Alps for 5300 years.’
And well-preserved chapels from the 11th c. were revealed as ice retreated in the Jura Alps in the mid-20th c.
Do you have a point or are you just shotgunning random snippets of information?
Quote
November 24, 2009, 2:42 pm