Reason Writers Around Town: Shikha Dalmia on Climategate and Obama's Radio Silence

If President Barack Obama was thinking straight, he would regard Climategate, especially its timing, not as a great setback for his global warming agenda—but a great godsend.

Why? As Reason Foundation Senior Analyst Shikha Dalmia explains in her latest Forbes column:

If Bush had been lucky, perhaps fate would have contrived a WMDgate for him before he launched the Iraq invasion and saved him from the worst mistake of his presidency…..

It is worth recalling that Bush too was relying on an international consensus—especially reports by U.N. arms inspectors—that Saddam Hussein was sitting atop stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction as a justification for war. 'Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised,' Bush said in a 2003 prewar declaration calculated to escalate the hysteria level against Saddam. After a two-year-long wild goose chase through the deserts of Iraq, Bush was finally forced to admit that Saddam no longer possessed weapons of mass destruction. But at least the phony consensus on which he based his decision was intact at the eve of the war.

However, Climategate is fast shattering the global warming consensus…."

So where will Obama look for the missing temperature increase if he wages a war against global warming? The most sensible thing he can do right now, says Dalmia, is:

Ask eco-warriors at the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit next week to declare an immediate cease-fire in their war against global warming pending a complete review of the science."

Read the whole thing here.

Comments

[Buttface Central]

No need for anyone to respond to Climategate. Only a total fucking moron (like the writers here at “Reason”) would think that a single email invalidates millions of pieces of data. Who funds this contraption again?

[C-Dog]

Hey dipshit, it’s not a single email. It represents a decade of fraud at the highest level of AGW research. It’s a rot at the core. So suck my dick, so I can drink.

[Buttface Central]

Oh please spare me. And go fuck your mother while you’re at it.

[Tulpa]

Yo, fuck a dog straight up with Obama’s Kenyan mother’s dick.

[C-Dog]

An eye for an eye, a troll for a troll. You ignorant fuckwit, you still haven’t sucked my dick.

[Buttface Central]

That’s quite a conspiracy you’ve got cooking there. How are things on the grassy knoll?

[Silentz]

Wow, you really swayed me with that argument. I see that I’ve been wrong all along! Well played.

[Paul]

No need for anyone to respond to Climategate. Only a total fucking moron (like the writers here at “Reason”)

Drink?

[Warty]

Contraption? Did you just call a magazine a contraption, you walking placenta? Jesus fuck, we need better trolls.

[jester]

Thanks Warty for being the last of the Three Billy Goats Gruff. Now BC can retire in disgrace with a horn in his side.

[Warty]

And I’ll grind his bones to make my bread.

[Episiarch]

Raytard’s not a troll. He’s just a complete moron.

[Episiarch]

Oh Raytard, how did you become so funny?

[Tony]

Groups that have absolutely no ties to entities with absolutely no financial stake in this very matter.

[Buttface Central]

lol. squeaky clean. no agenda.

[bigbigslacker]

Pay no attention to that man behind the…

[jester]

‘If President Barack Obama was thinking straight…’

What if Spartacus had a Piper Cub?

[django]

‘If President Barack Obama was thinking straight…’

and if my aunt had balls she would be my uncle.

[Neu Mejican]

pending a complete review of the science.

Oh the irony.
Science is a process involving continual review.

[Tulpa]

Irony indeed. The consensus lovers didn’t think so back when the shoe was on the other foot.

[Neu Mejican]

Wow… did that go over your head.

[joshua corning]

actually it went over your head…before Climategate broke “the science was settled” if i do recall.

Now you are running around saying “Science is a process involving continual review.”

Which one is it Neu?

Is the science settled or is it being continually reviewed?

[Neu Mejican]

JC,

It is being continually reviewed.
Your point?

[Paul]

You are 100% correct. Science is a process involing continual review. If it’s not constantly being reviewed, it’s something else.

[Neu Mejican]

Indeed.

[Neu Mejican]

We, of course, wouldn’t expect SD to understand that.

For a magazine called REASON…

[drink]

[joshua corning]

I think SD understood that. The context of Obama calling for review of the science is in a political sphere.

ie if Obama called for it he would save face and prevent himself from trying to do something stupid and politically damaging to himself.

I can see Bill Clinton doing something like what SD proposes. Obama on the other hand is to slow and unimaginative. Even when he goes against his own platform (Afghanistan) he has to copy Bush.

[JW]

Hey c’mon now. If Obama’s Top Scientist?, a Malthusian who once advocated forced abortions and sterilizations of the populace, can get behind the concensus, who are we to say its wrong?

http://www.reuters.com/article…..SN02246536

[joshua corning]

Indeed.

Exempt when the science is settled.

[Old Mexican]

Re: Neu,

Science is a process involving continual review.

Depends on who does the review, Neu. Frankly, I am quite skeptical that these flim-flam con-artists are going to accept being reviewed by a truly independent panel, but let’s see what happens. I won’t hold my breath, though.

[Neu Mejican]

Old Mexican,

WTF are you talking about?
Did you not read what I wrote?
SD’s suggestion is pointless.
The review process is ongoing, in place, and done in the open.

[Hazel Meade]

Not exactly. Some science can only get done by assuming other scientific theories are true and moving on.

It appears that climate researchers have been trying to pass AGW off as something equivalent to Evolution, when it’s actually something more like Moore’s Law.

I’m in the middle of reading ‘The Structure of Scientififc Revolutions’ at the moment, smack dab on the chapter where the problem of dealing with the accumulation of anaomalous data and/or phenoma tends to lead to a state of crisis in a field that leads to a paradigm breakdown or shift.

In any field, there tends to be a natural effort to cement the acceptance of the dominant paradigm, so that future questions can be addressed within that context. (i.e. accept global warming so we can discuss what to do about it.) But when things get to a point that the theory has to incorporate a lot of contrivances and fudging, something’s up.

That said, I tend to believe that anthropomorphic global warming is happening. But the current scandel has given me some doubts. At least it dispassionate fashion, which isn’t going to happen with people running around comparing their opponents to holocaust deniers.

[Schempf]

Thanks Hazel

[Neu Mejican]

A good book.
I highly recommend it.
BUT…I think your point about “assuming true and moving on” is a bit misleading. Those assumption are always up for review based on new findings.

[Hazel Meade]

i.e. when there’s just too much anomalous data to explain away.

[Buttface Central]

You need a dictionary.

[That Guy]

Yeah, considering the way in which the MSM and the left more generally is responding to this scandal, I’d say that “fast shattering the global warming consensus” seems like a bit of stretch.

At most, it seems that this scandal will simply put a seed of doubt into the public’s mind which will only germinate if it’s followed up with a series of similar scandals (or something earth shattering like James Hansen saying he’s being paid to lie by Al Gore or something crazy like that).

[Al Gore]

“or something earth shattering like James Hansen saying he’s being paid to lie by Al Gore or something crazy like that”

Shhhh….

[jester]

meanwhile…
Jim Hensen’s Kermit the Frog faces imminent extinction as do nearly all amphibians due to ‘unknown’ causes that can only be pinned on Global Warming and/or excessive cell-phone usage.

[Hazel Meade]

Chem trails baby. Chem trails.

[jester]

It is a smart strategy by the Left to ignore the story. Let Glenn Beck and FoxNews cover it alone. Then claim it is obviously a fantasy of fringy Right-wing types.

And…it will work.

[That Guy]

Sad but true.

[?]

This story will never get anywhere in the regular press, because by the time every single commetantor finds their own special windy analogy-to-Bush kinda way past the “Now listen, I’m not some kinda flyover gauchiste or anything, but…” and “I’m all about obeying our Highly Educated masters, even in the total absence of evidence, but…” throatclearing stage, the fucking Sun will explode.

[Al Gore]

It’sbeen in the WSJ for at least two daysand Fox News for several. This is never going away.

[Tony]

God bless Rupert Murdoch. Such a selfless pursuer of truth.

[Al Gore]

It’sbeen in the WSJ for at least two daysand Fox News for several. This is never going away.

[Rod Stewart]

the fucking Sun will explode.

At this point, that would make it God’s little flamethrower if the Almighty were Pacino in scent of a woman.

[?]

Commetantors are Jews, by the way.

[:3]

Why would they even listen to him?

from Der Spiegel:

“One didn’t have to be a cadet on Tuesday to feel a bit of nausea upon hearing Obama’s speech,” wrote Steingart. “It was the least truthful address that” that this American president “has ever” delivered.

[Mr. Obama] spoke of responsibility, but almost every sentence smelled of party tactics. He demanded sacrifice, but he was unable to say what it was for exactly.

An additional 30,000 US soldiers are to march into Afghanistan — and then they will march right back out again. America is going to war — and from there it will continue ahead to peace. It was the speech of a Nobel War Prize laureate.

For each troop movement, Obama had a number to match. US strength in Afghanistan will be tripled relative to the Bush years, a fact that is sure to impress hawks in America. But just 18 months later, just in time for Obama’s re-election campaign, the horror of war is to end and the draw down will begin. The doves of peace will be let free.

The speech continued in that vein. It was as though Obama had taken one of his old campaign speeches and merged it with a text from the library of ex-President George W. Bush. Extremists kill in the name of Islam, he said, before adding that it is one of the “world’s great religions.” He promised that responsibility for the country’s security would soon be transferred to the government of President Hamid Karzai — a government which he said was “corrupt.” The Taliban is dangerous and growing stronger. But “America will have to show our strength in the way that we end wars,” he added.

It was a dizzying combination of surge and withdrawal, of marching to and fro. The fast pace was reminiscent of plays about the French revolution: Troops enter from the right to loud cannon fire and then they exit to the left. And at the end, the dead are left on stage.

But in this case, the public was more disturbed than entertained. Indeed, one could see the phenomenon in a number of places in recent weeks: Obama’s magic no longer works. The allure of his words has grown weaker.

It is not he himself who has changed, but rather the benchmark used to evaluate him. For a president, the unit of measurement is real life. A leader is seen by citizens through the prism of their lives — their job, their household budget, where they live and suffer. And, in the case of the war on terror, where they sometimes die.

Political dreams and yearnings for the future belong elsewhere. That was where the political charmer Obama was able to successfully capture the imaginations of millions of voters. It is a place where campaigners — particularly those with a talent for oration — are fond of taking refuge. It is also where Obama set up his campaign headquarters, in an enormous tent called “Hope.”

In his speech on America’s new Afghanistan strategy, Obama tried to speak to both places. It was two speeches in one. That is why it felt so false. Both dreamers and realists were left feeling distraught.

The American president doesn’t need any opponents at the moment. He’s already got himself.

http://www.spiegel.de/internat…..53,00.html

[Paul]

Ask eco-warriors at the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit next week to declare an immediate cease-fire in their war against global warming pending a complete review of the science.”

Yeah, that’s so not going to happen.

[Neu Mejican]

Well, given your comment upthread, you realize why it wouldn’t. Since the science is constantly under-review this suggestion implies either that we already have reviewed the science, so no “cease-fire” is needed…or we wait until the process is finished (which it never will be).

That means the suggestion is essentially meaningless.

[joshua corning]

politics Mejican politics.

[Neu Mejican]

Again…your point?

[Neu Mejican]

A better article to read with a more realistic view of the implications of “climategate.”

[Neu Mejican]

http://www.popularmechanics.co…..38343.html

[Ebeneezer Scrooge]

More realistic in terms of how the MSM is going to spin it? Yes.

More realistic in terms of what the truth is? I don’t think so.

The guy says “we don’t really know for sure what’s going on or what’s going to happen”.

He really needed to stop right there.

His faith did not allow it.

There have been periodic shifts in climate around the globe, over several thousand year time scales. As in, Chinese civilization started in the north China plains several thousand years ago, by growing wheat. Yet today it’s too cold and dry to grow wheat there.

At around this same time, the whole Mediterranean basin was wetter (and very probably warmer on average) back when the early recorded civilizations began there. Today it’s not so wet there, and in fact this climate shift has been attributed as a possible cause of weakening the Roman Empire.

It’s an incredible stretch to claim that these climate shifts are not part of some big natural cyclic phenomenon, and I haven’t seen evidence that “scientists” understand them yet.

So spare me the BS when they claim to “know” that the world is going to end within the next 50 to 100 years. I don’t buy it. There’s too much that is still not understood.

On top of that, it’s far from clear that what the Eco-Scaremonger want to do, is better for us than the alternative of doing nothing about climate change, and keeping our wealth — so as to be better prepared to deal with whatever does happen (for whatever reasons it happens).

[Buttface Central]

You’re an idiot

[Laoshi]

Way to go! If you don’t have a good antithesis, start calling names. This seems to work at my local newspaper web site, but doesn’t look so intelligent at this site.

[MNG]

“Climategate is fast shattering the global warming consensus….”

Is it shattering this consensus among experts? I’ve seen no evidence of this.

[Old Mexican]

Re: MNG,

Is it shattering this consensus among experts?

Well, I know that the idea of immaculate conception has not been shattered among its experts, either.

Which calls for a big “SO WHAT???” The only ones for whom it would matter is the rest of us.

And, in the case of the policies, since it is OUR WALLETS that are being assailed, if the consensus among us, the intended VICTIMS, is NO LONGER THERE, then whatever the so-called “experts” think becomes a moot point – the Obamanites and the other thieves will NOT get the money. Period.

[Tony]

This is disturbingly anti-intellectual. What the hell makes you think you can trust anyone else on a complex topic better than the experts on that topic?

[juris_imprudent]

Yeah, religious dogma is like that. You just want to pretend that AGW isn’t just another enviro-weenie misanthropic wet dream. Right down the line from Club of Rome to AGW.

[MNG]

Really JS, you think all those scientific organizations are colluding in agreement is equivalent to the Club of Rome? I mean, we’re talking physicists, geologists, astronomers, etc. You think they all just went mad or something cllectively? How likely is that?

[Ebeneezer Scrooge]

The Inquisitors once used a similar argument. You need a better line Tony.

[MNG]

You used this dipshit analogy before. What is an “expert” in immaculate conception? The experts I’m talking about are people with PhDs in hard sciences who’ve have spent years working in their respective fields (not only climatology but geology, physics, paleotonology, statistics, etc.) who have reviewed the scientific pubs and info out there and found agreement with what the IPCC basically said.

[J. B. Babcock]

OMG, you of all people would say that? It is like your are compartmentalized from post to post and lack any shame. As if this damage didn’t happen to you.

MNG|12.2.09 @ 3:01PM|#

Glad you posted this. Here is the American Physical Society reaffirmation of their pro-AGW statement from a few years ago:

http://www.aps.org/units/fps/n…..nckton.cfm
reply to this
JW|12.2.09 @ 3:26PM|#

“At present, then, in policy terms there is no case for doing anything. The correct policy approach to a non-problem is to have the courage to do nothing.”

I couldn’t agree more.
reply to this
briareus|12.2.09 @ 5:54PM|#

Haha, fucking AWESOME. I think MNG posted that before he even read it.

Well done, Doctorate of Political Science, here’s what you missed:

In short, we must get the science right, or we shall get the policy wrong. If the concluding equation in this analysis (Eqn. 30) is correct, the IPCC’s estimates of climate sensitivity must have been very much exaggerated. There may, therefore, be a good reason why, contrary to the projections of the models on which the IPCC relies, temperatures have not risen for a decade and have been falling since the phase-transition in global temperature trends that occurred in late 2001. Perhaps real-world climate sensitivity is very much below the IPCC’s estimates. Perhaps, therefore, there is no “climate crisis” at all. At present, then, in policy terms there is no case for doing anything. The correct policy approach to a non-problem is to have the courage to do nothing.

You are such a Goddamned fraud.

[bigbigslacker]

Those who don’t care where the data came from are “experts”, not experts.

The whole thing does seem to be unraveling enough to matter on a practical level. I believe something significant recently happened in Australia as a result of these shenanigans.

[Rich]

The only thing Obama can control in this matter is which side he will support: The truth, or–what he accused his predecessor of–ideology.

We’ll see what effect greenhouse gases have on transparency.

[Paul]

Good articel, Neu.

[Paul]

It’s also a good article.

[MNG]

I liked the article to Neu.

[Tman]

“the worst mistake of his presidency”

I realize that this may not be de rigeur, but there are some of us who feel that getting rid of the lunatic despot Saddam Hussein and destroying a safe heaven for hundreds of Islamic terrorists who fled Afghanistan after we deposed the Taliban (for ex: Abu Musab al Zarqawi) not to mention the ones who were already there (see:Abdul Rahman Yasin), whilst giving birth to a democratic government in the heart of the middle east should not be considered Bush’s “worst decision ever”.

Read this http://www.husseinandterror.com/

and tell me why getting rid of this guy was such a horrendous decision.

[zoltan]

How’s that democracy comin’?

[Tman]

Not too bad considering the difficulties. Vermont it ain’t but it’s a helluva lot better than Saddams version of democracy. Some of my Kurdish friends have been back and forth a few times and they seem excited about the future.

Probably does fit with the media narrative, but there ya go.

[BakedPenguin]

Great. Why don’t you pay my fucking share of what it cost.

[zoltan]

Mine too, thanks. Certainly not worth the money spent, I’ll tell you that.

[Tman]

I’m sorry you don’t feel that you got your “moneys worth” out of the war in Iraq. I disagree because the world is better off without Saddam breathing oxygen, and I know plenty of others who feel the same way. Too bad we can’t pay for our government services a ‘la carte.

[swillfredo pareto]

Too bad we can’t pay for our government services a ‘la carte.

Unfortunately rubbing out despots is a public good. But based on your logic why have we not moved on to the next tyrant? What cost/benefit analysis will tell us when to stop?

[Tman]

You just answered your own question. Saddam passed the cost/benefit analysis (especially when you include his financial support for Islamic terrorists). I can’t say the same about other current despots, unfortunately. I wish that we could get rid of Kim Jong il and Ahmadinejad, but unless one of them declares war against the US it ain’t gonna happen.

[joshua corning]

and tell me why getting rid of this guy was such a horrendous decision.

It got Obama elected and got McCain in the position to be the runner up.

[Tman]

Tough to argue that, but a Saddam free world still trumps it, imo.

[MlR]

So then, you think effectively trading the U.S. for Iraq is a good deal?

(Setting aside the likelihood that Iraq’s going to devolve again not too long after our inevitable exit.)

[Chris]

Point of fact, Zarqawi was a Jordanian, who probably trained in Afghanistan at some point. Most of his Jihading was conducted against the “apostate” Jordanian government. When we moved in next door he found a more apostate-er target. Then he found a 500 lbs. Joint Direct Attack Munition.

Also, Saddam was not really into “Jihad” per se, he used Islamic Radicals to cement his internal power (his #1 priority), and bolster his regional prestige.

I just wish two things:

1. That we had used the fact that he was a brutal dictator as a casus belli vs. the WMD thing. Not the whole story, but would have prevented some national embarassment.

2. I also wish that the administration planned for something besides the best case scenario.

[Tman]

Zarqawi was in Iraq befor US troops were. He received medical assistance in Iraq to heal some wounds he received fighting the US in Afghanistan. And he was far from the only Jihadi to follow the same path from Afghanistan to Iraq before the US got there.

I couldn’t agree more with your two bullet points.

[Ebeneezer Scrooge]

Well yeah maybe, except for one minor problem: Iraq is going to be “better” only so long as US troops are there. The minute they leave it’s going to revert to something much worse. Quite possibly worse than what was there before.

Ditto for Afghanistan.

I am not a dove by anybody’s measure. Quite the opposite. Saddam was a monster and so are the Taliban. But it’s far from clear to me that we’re better off today with Iraq in the shape it’s in (primarily because we can’t afford to keep 100,000+ troops over there forever), compared to what it was before.

I’d be all into kicking their asses if there was a clearly decisive way to do it. But I don’t see that we’ve accomplished that in either Iraq or Afghanistan — nor do I see how we could have done things differently to achieve the desired end goal.

[MlR]

No reason to accept the Washington consensus utopian end goal.

[Ebeneezer Scrooge]

Come again???

I never did accept their utopian BS. Just making observations.

Most people call me a hawk, but I was against these wars before they started for this reason: Americans are never going to be willing to spill all the blood that would be necessary in order to genuinely pacify these two countries. In which case, ultimate failure is more or less assured.

And it’s not clear success would be assured even if Americans were willing to spill the blood. No one has ever accused the Russians of holding back the war effort on humanitarian grounds, and they couldn’t put Afghanistan to sleep.

Not doing anything in Afghanistan made no sense. But what we’ve done hardly makes more sense. The Taliban will have Afghanistan back as soon as we pack up and get out. And if we’d left soon after we invaded, as some around here say we should have, well the Taliban would just have gotten it back that much sooner.

This remains a problem that I don’t see any good answers to. Bomb them — for what purpose? To let them know we’re really pissed off? It’s cheaper to send a letter.

You can bomb them but they’ll hide under rocks, and most of them will survive. Who’s ready to go on an extermination mission?

I don’t see what else has any chance of success in Afghanistan. In Iraq you might not have to exterminate everybody, a clear majority might be enough to get the point across.

[Neu Mejican]

It wasn’t to me, but to us all.

[MNG]

Neu
I’ve been trying to get someone here explain something to me, perhaps you can: what exactly did the researchers at the CRU do to “tweak” or “fudge” their data or whatever?

Secondly, the data that they “dumped”, is it true that it was data that was compiled by NASA, given to the CRU, and now neither NASA or the CRU or anyone has it?

The answer to these questions seem quite critical in justifying how outraged anyone should be, yet I could get no answer earlier today, even from some very outraged folks…

[prolefeed]

They no longer have the raw data — they have the “value-added” data, with no explanation of how that “value” was “added”.

[Neu Mejican]

See below.

[MNG]

Er, yeah of course. As Neu notes the “raw data” are the hundreds or thousands of temperature recordings at different weather stations over the globe and time. NASA compiled this information and gave it to the CRU. The CRU “normalized” the data (of course this process was probably described in their publications, if it were known at all that there was normalized data they would have been asked to justify and explain how they did this). The CRU then dumped the compilation.

Is anything in here wrong prole? Let me know what is, I’d appreciate it.

[Old Mexican]

Re: MNG,

As Neu notes the “raw data” are the hundreds or thousands of temperature recordings at different weather stations over the globe and time[…]The CRU then dumped the compilation.

That’s not the problem. I have no idea how YOU practice science, but in order to be able to INDEX the data to the results you are presenting so as to REPLICATE it (for independent corroboration), you need the original data, the procedure you followed, the models and the results. If you simply pull a rabbit out of a hat and then say “But, by the way, I don’t have the data I used for the modeling anymore”, I do not see how anyone of SOUND MIND would not consider that fishy.

Something IS rotten in Denmark. Very rotten…

[MNG]

Wow, noone could answer this. So there was NO destruction of some unique original data source, just the destruction of an compilation of such data…

[Lord Jubjub]

Yes, NASA and other countries should still have their databases. In fact, it is not the U.S. data collection that is the problem. Other countries have weather data that they may or may not be willing to make public.

The big question about normalizing data is whether the normalization itself has been fully justified. Yes, urban buildup would have created a heat island effect that would have raised a station’s temperatures. The question is how much do you lower the temperature? I would imagine that some research has been done to answer that question, but there may not have been exhaustive research.

It is sometimes surprising that certain scientific conclusions have been reach by simply assumption rather than empirical proof–across all disciplines.

[joshua corning]

what exactly did the researchers at the CRU do to “tweak” or “fudge” their data or whatever?

The “Trick” was what Mike Mann did. He mixed instrument data with proxy data to get an “average” when in recent history the Proxy data and the instrument data dramatically diverged. The instrument data showed and upward trend and the Proxy data tanked downward. By mixing the data he hid this fact.

The “hide the decline” was done by Briffa who used only Proxy data which also showed a sharp decline after 1960. He hid this fact by cutting the data after 1960 on his graphs.

This is just two of the ways they “tweaked” the data shown in the emails. There are more.

[jester]

‘what exactly did the researchers at the CRU do to “tweak” or “fudge” their data or whatever?’

Hang on a few minutes. I’ll e-mail them and ask them, themselves. They’re quite open to Q&A right now under the circumstances.

[Neu Mejican]

MNG,

If you want to know how they “tweaked” their data, your best source is their peer-reviewed publications where by all data processing is clearly described.

[prolefeed]

You were being snarky here, yeah?

[MNG]

Can you answer my question for me prole?

[prolefeed]

This touches on some of the more damning emails — don’t know if this is what you were referring to.

It’s not like they’ve come out and explained exactly what they did wrong — rather, someone stole some damning emails and, in the absence of them further incriminating themselves with a press conference answering any and all questions about what they did, and releasing all their data and metadata, well, this is what is available.

[prolefeed]

http://www.examiner.com/x-2506…..and-emails

[MNG]

Prole
I see three things:

“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.”

This seems to indicate the messing with a graphic for a talk. Man, that is hardly very nefarious stuff there.

“Here are some speculations on correcting SSTs to partly explain the 1940s warming blip….” I have no clue as to the science going on here. Can you explain to me what is dishonest that they are doing here? It’s not readily apparent to me.

“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.”

This reminds me of identical type of language I and other colleagues of mine have used in analyzing social scientific data for peer review, “trick” being something like running a step-wise regression instead of another type because it yeilds more spectacular looking results. I’m not sure what the big deal is with that. Any editor, reviewer or good reader of a peer review article reading it should say “hmm, wonder why they went with step-wise?” and can then read our justification for that and think “what a load of bull.”

[Artifex]

MNG,

Though you are repeating realclimate talking points with the focus on the word “trick”, this is really not the slimy point. The point is the “adding the real temps to each series”.

This was an action that Mike angrily denied in another realclimate post and suggested that the person suggesting he would do such a thing was a oil industry shill.

This padding the end of the proxy data with instrument data is in essence “cooking the books” to hide a place where the real world doesn’t agree with the proxies you have chosen. It’s not very honest.

[MNG]

I’ve never been to “realclimate” whatever that is. I just know that I use the term “trick” to refer to the choosing of differing statistical techniques all the time.

Now, this “adding the real temps to each series”. What does that mean? Really, I don’t know what it means. Do you?

[joshua corning]

You make me laugh MNG

This reminds me of identical type of language I and other colleagues of mine have used in analyzing social scientific data for peer review, “trick” being something like running a step-wise regression instead of another type because it yeilds more spectacular looking results.

You see in 2004 Mike Mann denied using his “trick”:

Michael Mann, Dec 2004

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

Of Course phil Jones knew full well that this was untrue before Mann denied what he did:

Phil Jones, Nov 1999

I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.

Then Gavin Schmidt tried to deflect it but in fact confermed that Mann did use a trick which he denied doing in 2004

Gavin Schmidt, Nov 2009

Scientists often use the term “trick” to refer to a “a good way to deal with a problem”, rather than something that is “secret”, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all.

Yes there is somehting problematic when you use a trick then deny doing it in attempt to deflect critisim. It is damning when you pile on emails that conspire to block FOI requests on this very subject and it is fraud when the emails show a concerted effort to deny papers being published that attempt to expose the trick.

for more on the subject i suggest you go here:

http://camirror.wordpress.com/

[MNG]

We’re going to have to figure out what was entailed in “the trick” before we hyperventilate, whether he later denied it or not imo.

[Lord Jubjub]

I believe transparency has been one of the major problems with CRU.

[joshua corning]

We’re going to have to figure out what was entailed in “the trick” before we hyperventilate, whether he later denied it or not imo.

I have told you what the “trick” was multiple times.

Don’t be an asshole.

now i have called you an asshole multiple times for denying that you have been told.

[juris_imprudent]

Did you used to do accounting for Enron?

[Schempf]

Without the raw data I can’t believe there is an end to this argument.

“Trust me” doesn’t hold up very well in scientific discussions.

[Michael B Sullivan]

No comments so far on the claim that there was an international consensus that Hussein had WMD’s? To the extent that there was such a consensus, it was because the US asserted that it had secret intelligence that proved that he had WMD’s.

That was the whole point of Colin Powell’s famous speech before the UN, remember?

[MNG]

Neu
I figured as much. Sheesh.

Btw-I meant “too, Neu” above

[Neu Mejican]

As for the “destroyed data” the silence on that speaks volumes to me.

From Realclimates post on the data:

I just saw an article in the UK Times that claims the orignal temp data (ie: raw unadjusted in any way) has been destroyed/mislaid during a move of facilaties. Further according to this article, the only thing now in possession of the CRU is the smothed and corrected data produce in accordance with CRU’s model. Could you comment as to whether this is true and on a hypothetical, were it in fact true would the research in fact be repeatable, in the of a good experemnet can be repeated and arrive at the same answer? Sorry some one may haved this before just did not have the heart to wade through all the coments. Thanks.

[Response: The raw data is in the custody of the met services who originated it. CRU is just a collation, not a temperature measuring organisation. – gavin]

[Old Mexican]

Re: Neu,

[Response: The raw data is in the custody of the met services who originated it. CRU is just a collation, not a temperature measuring organisation. – gavin]

I don’t know how much science investigation you have done, Neu, but let me put it this ay: If I had given my engineering thesis to my teachers without ANY footnotes, and then told them that the original texts can be found in the library, I would not have graduated.

That answer from Gavin is a sleazy cop-out. An investigator HAS to keep the original data HE or SHE used for the modeling and the statistical analysis, so as to follow his procedure and try to replicate his experiments.

Imagine if Darwin had come back from the Galapagos with NO specimens, NO pictures, but a big book with his notes and writings – how would people know what he was talking about?

I finally have come to the realization that you are willing to entertain the most preposterous of explanations and ad hoc excuses just to defend your holiest of holies, your most cherished belief. Why would you stake your sanity on this flim-flam can only be explained from your own ideological makeup: A thorough Statist.

[Chad]

Do you fail to graduate if you don’t keep your magnetic tapes from 30 years ago? That it what we are talking about.

CRU has released all the data it has right to. Some of it is owned by other organizations, whose permission has not been obtained.

[joshua corning]

[Response: The raw data is in the custody of the met services who originated it. CRU is just a collation, not a temperature measuring organisation. – gavin]

This is old hat.

You can see in the emails that the CRU team would deny access to data then point huge data dumps and say they used that data. Of course the team would not provide a list of the data they selected out of the huge dump.

The same thing happened with the CRU…they not only lost the data, they lost the list of where they got it and are unable to replicate their results.

[joshua corning]

unable to replicate their own results

[Voros McCracken]

I’m guessing the basic issue is that “Global Average Temperature” sounds specific enough, but is actually pretty damned nebulous.

How such a thing is calculated could result in substantially different results, particularly when differences of a degree or two are considered important. Considering what transpired, if there’s a way to code the years being studied such that the researchers don’t know which years are being calculated, that would be a preferred method.

So it’s not just a matter of re-gathering the raw data (which would be a pain), but re-grokking it in the way CRU grokked it to try and replicate their results (or else their results are scientifically invalid). Since the consensus on their code is that such an endeavor is likely impossible…

It’s a big mess as far as I can tell.

[prolefeed]

“Global average temperature” includes such things as taking the temperature data from a jet airport at Diego Garcia island in the Indian Ocean, and then using that highly unrepresentative data of a tarmac full of fossil fuel burning planes landing to extrapolate for millions of square miles of surrounding ocean, because there’s no place to place a thermometer in the ocean.

This is, to put in mildly, not reliable.

[EscapedWestOfTheBigMuddy]

Look at the email numbered 1134526470 in the dump.

I’ve been trying to wrap my head around that in a way that doesn’t come out to “they are ad libing the weights in their averages” and not making it work.

I mean, I assume that the weighting problem is hard, and a real consumer of computing resources because the list of points sampled keeps changing, but…surely this isn’t an accepted procedure.

Anyone out there know climetology from the inside? Is this kosher?

[jester]

I see that Jonah Goldberg put in an opinion in the USA Today.

So long as this ‘issue’ goes down partisan lines, it will be a partisan issue, science be damned.

So we really aren’t in any new place regarding AGW. Business as usual, but bullshit nonetheless.

[BakedPenguin]

MNG, Neu, spin all you fucking want. The programming notes are calling bullshit.

[BakedPenguin]

MNG, you’ve been talking about that regression model all day. If you posted what you were trying to study, I missed it. Also, it’s been a while since I took quantitative analysis, so I probably couldn’t intelligently comment on it even if you had. I will ask this: did it occur to you that perhaps the stepwise regression better represented the actual phenomena(on) you were studying?

I can say this, however: if you only applied that regression to part of your dataset, (as they only applied some “value-added” methods” to some data at CRU), you and your co-writers are fucking frauds.

[Neu Mejican]

It is this kind of blanket statement that is most misleading.

Sometimes it would be inappropriate…but not always. Details matter. Their methods got past the admittedly low bar of peer review. Their results are out in public ready for a sound scientific beating by anyone with the gumption to do it.

Have at it.

[jester]

Full disclosure. Or ‘I am not a crook.’ This is really retarded. What is so difficult? Why does HuffPost refer to Popular Mechanics and a reviewer who admits not being a prime-time player?

[QuickQuestion]

Is their program/code open-source? It seems like they would have opted for that years ago. Could possibly help them now, or not… Many of the big science computation projects out there are open-source, so…

[juris_imprudent]

Short answer – no. Two things: 1) the data filtration/”normalization” which is mostly a matter of describing how they cull and pre-process the raw data, and 2) the “model” is not some nice clean box of super-computer code, it is bits and pieces of various tools (e.g. Matlab) and custom bits.

[Old Mexican]

I had to put this reply here so that it does not get lost in the noise:

Re: Neu,

From a link you provided, a question about the raw data supposedly lost:

[Response: The raw data is in the custody of the met services who originated it. CRU is just a collation, not a temperature measuring organisation. – gavin]

I don’t know how much science investigation you have done, Neu, but let me put it this way: If I had given my engineering thesis to my teachers without ANY footnotes, and then told them that the original texts can be found in the library, I would not have graduated.

That answer from Gavin is a sleazy cop-out. An investigator HAS to keep the original data HE or SHE used for the modeling and the statistical analysis, so as to follow his procedure and try to replicate his experiments.

Imagine if Darwin had come back from the Galapagos with NO specimens, NO pictures, but a big book with his notes and writings – how would people know what he was talking about?

I finally have come to the realization that you are willing to entertain the most preposterous of explanations and ad hoc excuses just to defend your holiest of holies, your most cherished belief. Why would you stake your sanity on this flim-flam can only be explained from your own ideological makeup: A thorough Statist.

[joshua corning]

Michael Mann, Dec 2004

No researchers in this field have ever, to our knowledge, “grafted the thermometer record onto” any reconstruction.

Phil Jones, Nov 1999

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)

hmmmm….

[Old Mexican]

Just to put matters in perspective, this is what Neu Mejican wants everybody to believe about the missing data: That it is irrelevant.

Imagine the scenario:

“Hey, finally, here are the results for the temperature trends 1960-2008!”
“Good job! Let me see the database you worked and your process, to make sure you followed proper statistical protocols”
“I only have my ‘value added’ data”
“What the hell is that?”
“It’s the normalized data”
“Normalized from WHAT?”
“Well, from the raw data”
“I want to see the raw data”
“I don’t have it anymore”
“What the hell do you mean ‘I don’t have it anymore’? Am I supposed to take at your word that your ‘normalized data’ was not invented”
“Of course! I mean, my investigation is peer reviewed!”
“Fuck you!”
“You must be a D-E-N-I-E-R!”

Something like that.

[joshua corning]

They lost the raw data thereby preventing any independent replication of their analysis.

It makes me wonder what it would take for people like Neu MNG and Chad to stop calling skeptics deniers.

[joshua corning]

unable to replicate their own results

[Neu Mejican]

I don’t recall ever using that term.
Healthy skepticism is a central feature of the scientific process.

[Neu Mejican]

My memory is often wrong, of course.

It is important, I think, however, to discriminate between a skeptic and a crank. There are a lot of both in this debate (generally and on these boards).

[joshua corning]

It is important, I think, however, to discriminate between a skeptic and a crank.

There are cranks on both sides. when you start discriminating between the two on your side then I might worry about my side.

[jester]

Climategate? WTF is Climategate?…
‘Once a tipping point is reached, we will face a human and financial catastrophe that will make this recession seem like a golden age of prosperity.’…this is from the HuffPost as of 3 days ago.

No mention of any controversy. That controversy shit was fucking made up at Reason.com for all concerned. It was a non-event in the MSM.

We are all gasbags. This is Glenn Beck histrionics. You are now part of Glenn Beck histrionics. Congrats.

[Old Mexican]

Climate Change: This is the worst scientific scandal of our generation.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/com…..ation.html

Just so you understand the hoopla about the “peer review” crap, these flim-flam artists, these con-men, were reviewing each other’s papers and calling the process “peer review.”

Given star billing by the IPCC, not least for the way it appeared to eliminate the long-accepted Mediaeval Warm Period when temperatures were higher they are today, the graph became the central icon of the entire man-made global warming movement.

Since 2003, however, when the statistical methods used to create the “hockey stick” were first exposed as fundamentally flawed by an expert Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre , an increasingly heated battle has been raging between Mann’s supporters, calling themselves “the Hockey Team”, and McIntyre and his own allies, as they have ever more devastatingly called into question the entire statistical basis on which the IPCC and CRU construct their case.

The senders and recipients of the leaked CRU emails constitute a cast list of the IPCC’s scientific elite, including not just the “Hockey Team”, such as Dr Mann himself, Dr Jones and his CRU colleague Keith Briffa, but Ben Santer, responsible for a highly controversial rewriting of key passages in the IPCC’s 1995 report; Kevin Trenberth, who similarly controversially pushed the IPCC into scaremongering over hurricane activity; and Gavin Schmidt, right-hand man to Al Gore’s ally Dr James Hansen, whose own GISS record of surface temperature data is second in importance only to that of the CRU itself.

There are three threads in particular in the leaked documents which have sent a shock wave through informed observers across the world. Perhaps the most obvious, as lucidly put together by Willis Eschenbach (see McIntyre’s blog “Climate Audit” and Anthony Watt’s blog “Watts Up With That”), is the highly disturbing series of emails which show how Dr Jones and his colleagues have for years been discussing the devious tactics whereby they could avoid releasing their data to outsiders under freedom of information laws.

They have come up with every possible excuse for concealing the background data on which their findings and temperature records were based.

This in itself has become a major scandal, not least Dr Jones’s refusal to release the basic data from which the CRU derives its hugely influential temperature record, which culminated last summer in his startling claim that much of the data from all over the world had simply got “lost”. Most incriminating of all are the emails in which scientists are advised to delete large chunks of data, which, when this is done after receipt of a freedom of information request, is a criminal offence.

But the question which inevitably arises from this systematic refusal to release their data is ? what is it that these scientists seem so anxious to hide? The second and most shocking revelation of the leaked documents is how they show the scientists trying to manipulate data through their tortuous computer programs, always to point in only the one desired direction ? to lower past temperatures and to “adjust” recent temperatures upwards, in order to convey the impression of an accelerated warming. This comes up so often (not least in the documents relating to computer data in the Harry Read Me file) that it becomes the most disturbing single element of the entire story. This is what Mr McIntyre caught Dr Hansen doing with his GISS temperature record last year (after which Hansen was forced to revise his record), and two further shocking examples have now come to light from Australia and New Zealand.

In each of these countries it has been possible for local scientists to compare the official temperature record with the original data on which it was supposedly based. In each case it is clear that the same trick has been played ? to turn an essentially flat temperature chart into a graph which shows temperatures steadily rising. And in each case this manipulation was carried out under the influence of the CRU.

What is tragically evident from the Harry Read Me file is the picture it gives of the CRU scientists hopelessly at sea with the complex computer programs they had devised to contort their data in the approved direction, more than once expressing their own desperation at how difficult it was to get the desired results.

The third shocking revelation of these documents is the ruthless way in which these academics have been determined to silence any expert questioning of the findings they have arrived at by such dubious methods ? not just by refusing to disclose their basic data but by discrediting and freezing out any scientific journal which dares to publish their critics’ work. It seems they are prepared to stop at nothing to stifle scientific debate in this way, not least by ensuring that no dissenting research should find its way into the pages of IPCC reports.

Back in 2006, when the eminent US statistician Professor Edward Wegman produced an expert report for the US Congress vindicating Steve McIntyre’s demolition of the “hockey stick”, he excoriated the way in which this same “tightly knit group” of academics seemed only too keen to collaborate with each other and to “peer review” each other’s papers in order to dominate the findings of those IPCC reports on which much of the future of the US and world economy may hang. In light of the latest revelations, it now seems even more evident that these men have been failing to uphold those principles which lie at the heart of genuine scientific inquiry and debate. Already one respected US climate scientist, Dr Eduardo Zorita, has called for Dr Mann and Dr Jones to be barred from any further participation in the IPCC. Even our own George Monbiot, horrified at finding how he has been betrayed by the supposed experts he has been revering and citing for so long, has called for Dr Jones to step down as head of the CRU.

The former Chancellor Lord (Nigel) Lawson, last week launching his new think tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation , rightly called for a proper independent inquiry into the maze of skulduggery revealed by the CRU leaks. But the inquiry mooted on Friday, possibly to be chaired by Lord Rees, President of the Royal Society ? itself long a shameless propagandist for the warmist cause ? is far from being what Lord Lawson had in mind. Our hopelessly compromised scientific establishment cannot be allowed to get away with a whitewash of what has become the greatest scientific scandal of our age.

So you have all – romance, deceit, envy, jealousy, illegal destruction of information, manipulation of data, a close knit cabal of peers reviewing each other’s work… the making of another Michael Crichton novel.

[jester]

This would all be interesting if AGW weren’t true. We have 12 step programs for people like you (and me.)

[ahhhh my eyes!]

For the love of Zeus, put extended quotes in a

block-quote

not italics!

[Hazel Meade]

some of us don’t know how to use blockquotes ….

i think it’s something like caret-blockquote-endcaret, but I’m not sure.

[EscapedWestOfTheBigMuddy]

<blockquote> Your quote goes here </blockquote>

But, cricket, you will never master webfu until you figure out how I made the tags appear in the blog.

[Hazel Meade]

ahhhh! I am seeing the underthings! Hide them!

[ahhhh my eyes!]

Sorry, yes I should have spelled it out:

<blockquote>Quoted stuff here.</blockquote>

[joshua corning]

For the love of Zeus, put extended quotes in a

block-quote

How do you do that?

I have always wondered

[prolefeed]

If, as our house liberals would have us believe, the raw data isn’t lost, it’s out there somewhere, then it won’t be any problem for CRU to find that existing raw data and give it to researchers to see if they can replicate their “value-added” data, right?

And if they can’t, then it effectively doesn’t exist.

“Well, yes, we did lose the Library of Alexandria in the fire, but no problem, you can recreate the books — just take this alphabet here, copy each of the letters the right number of times, and put the letters in the right order.”

[Old Mexican]

Regarding the “independent review”, as I said before, it will probably not amount to much:

But the inquiry mooted on Friday, possibly to be chaired by Lord Rees, President of the Royal Society ? itself long a shameless propagandist for the warmist cause ? is far from being what Lord Lawson had in mind.

So the Warmists are going to review the work of their fellow Warmists to make sure the Warmist assertions were done within the expected, Warmist standards. Oh, jolly good! Hip, hip, Cherry-o!

[jester]

‘So you have all – romance, deceit, envy, jealousy, illegal destruction of information, manipulation of data,…’

scat parties, golden showers, anal sex, fellatio, cunnilingus, boy-on-boy, girl-on-girl, boy-on-gerbil, gerbil-on-girl, gerbil-on-gerbil, etc.

[Hazel Meade]

I saw some hot gerbil on gerbil action when I was 8.

[joshua corning]

FYI Gerbils eat their dead.

[jester]

‘Soylent green are gerbils!’

[Hazel Meade]

I noticed that when I was 8 as well.

First time I ever heard the quote “nature red in tooth and claw”. My dad had a rather dry wit.

[jester]

Are you okay?

[jester]

You seem so. Way more so than the average poster.

[Eric Cartman]

Yeah, well when I was eight I saw some elephant on pot-bellied pig action. Now get your bitch-ass back in the kitchen and make me some pie!

[jester]

BTW, that -gate suffix has always sucked.

Substitute it with fraud. Climate fraud. -gate is to benign.

If it isn’t fraud, then start getting to work, fraud apologists. The workload is on your back now.

Oh! Sorry! You’re right. It is on us idiot deniers. Sorry again. I forgot that intelligence is only a Lefty trait. Stupid me!

[Schempf]

Threaded comments don’t work here folks. This is an active and agressive debating site where scanning a 200+ thread makes absolutely no fucking sense.

[joshua corning]

Threaded comments don’t work here folks. This is an active and agressive debating site where scanning a 200+ thread makes absolutely no fucking sense.

Yeah you pretty much have to quote people. Hoping that the threaded comments go to the right place is futile.

[Ebeneezer Scrooge]

I keep swearing that I’m going to swear them off for good. We need to be rid of them. But it seems that all I really end up doing is swearing a lot.

[Neu Mejican]

Old Mexican.
Your analogies are inapt in the extreme.

[Old Mexican]

Sour grapes. Sour grapes.

😉

[G Mc]

Unless all global warming studies were centralized under the control of those who authored these suspicious e-mails, than this “controversy” does nothing to dispute the rational argument for global warming. There remains a consensus in favor of the GW theory.

The debate on this website should not focus on whether or not the phenomenon of global warming exists (though that is a legitimate subject of debate), it should be about what types of public and individual action may effectively counteract it, if at all.

[Chad]

The Forbes article is a vapid regurgitation of denialist talking points and offers nothing new whatsoever. There are much more balanced and intelligent views out there. Try reading the articles at Nature and Popular Mechanics.

[Chad]

Link to the Popular Mechanics article

http://www.popularmechanics.co…..tml?page=4

Btw, when you start writing (and believing) stuff like this, you stop being a denier and start being a skeptic. It is too bad Reason and Forbes cannnot aspire the journalistic standards of Popular Mechanics. Of course, this is because they are seeking truth while you are just being partisan.

[Buttface Central]

Thank you!

[Neu Mejican]

Already linked above.
Threaded comments suck.
;^)

[Pro Libertate]

I’m a string theory denialist.

[Neu Mejican]

Me too.
Proudly.

[PR]

some people just want to believe.

[Neu Mejican]

http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/…..te_hearing

[Neu Mejican]

I like the deck of cards example from the popular mechanics article. SD, Old Mexican, Joshua, WattsupwithThat, and others show themselves to have fallen victim to the house of cards fallacy in their reaction to the CRU leak.

1) They assume that CRU’s work is a house of cards and that small quibbles with specific aspects of it make the whole thing useless.
2) They assume that the broad hypothesis that human CO2 output is a climate forcer that is warming the planet is a house of cards built on top of the CRU house of cards, so any minor flaw with CRU discredits the rest of the field.

But of course, the IPCC used multiple models and multiple sources of data in the extensive review of the literature that has taken place systematically over decades. The convergent evidence in support of the hypothesis comes from multiple sources, multiple researchers, and lots of work. This work includes something on the order of four or five hundred articles that make narrow, specific counter-claims that have had to be explained. Most of those have been explained or incorporated into the models.

[Old Mexican]

Re: Neu,

But of course, the IPCC used multiple models and multiple sources of data in the extensive review of the literature that has taken place systematically over decades.

You’re just guessing it is. The outrage would not have been as large as it is even among those that were convinced if it not were for the fact that the MAIN information for the IPCC report comes from the CRU.

[Neu Mejican]

To the “data dump” issue.

For Old Mexican. I work in a field that uses open data sources quite frequently. The standard practice for this use is not to keep your own archive of the data (sort of defeats the purpose of a central open archive of data), but, rather, to reference that public data source in your methods. If you aggregate data from several, you explain the sources, how they were aggregated, document dates/versions of the data source etc…

How is this different than what happened with the CRU?

Really, if I am missing something let me know.

[Old Mexican]

Re: Neu,

The standard practice for this use is not to keep your own archive of the data (sort of defeats the purpose of a central open archive of data), but, rather, to reference that public data source in your methods.

Not convinced, Neu – these guys were not writing term papers here. If you create “value added” (normalized or averaged data), you would have the original data in a database for other researchers to pool and compare. Just saying that “The source of my data came from NASA’s FTP file 1234. Go and fetch” is a clumsy cop-out.

[Neu Mejican]

But, “the source of my data is_______” is a standard practice in fields that make frequent use of open source data archives.

How is it a cop out?

Really. You’re hysteronics here are all about the data being lost, but a clear source citation to an available data archive is just as good as a copy I keep and hand to you. Sure, it may be less convenient, but validity is not harmed if the data is archived somewhere else.

And again, replication of their findings does not require the same raw data. If their findings are true they will be replicated using different data and different methods as long as both are representative and valid.

[domoarrigato]

I’d agree except that the author wrote a bunch of emails that call his independance and data adjustment proceedures into question. Now that this has undeniably occurred, more than “the usual” is required.

[domoarrigato]

Neu,

I dont see how the term “peer reviewed” is even relevant when the needed raw data is not available. I also think not having the code freely available makes peer review impossible.

Also, “peer review” has no meaning when the “peers” doing the “reviewing” are selected for their ideological agreement. Those who do not agree are marginalized and even publications that dont fall in line get marginalized as a whole. There is nothing about that process that is free, fair, or impartial.

[Neu Mejican]

The peer review, I believe, occurred prior to the data being dumped. But again, as long as the source archives are still available, there is no barrier to further peer review.

And I have seen nothing to indicate that the source archives are lost.

[domoarrigato]

I’m sorry, but your answer seems irrellevant. I may have mispoken though in asking for the “raw data” We need to see the data upon which the conclusions were drawn. if that is raw data, lets have it. if they made a bunch of adjustments, then lets have those. Given “A” the scientists have presented us with “M” as a conclusion. If A is available, then we need to se B, C, D etc. Their credibility is being questioned. If their science and their methods can stand up to scrutiny, than they should. If the scientists refuse, why should anyone believe their conclusions?

And to your point about it being available prior – was the full complement of data and adjustments and code made available during the peer review process? who did the peer review? Lets hear from them. If there are other scientists standing up to say that their methods are worthy, let them explain why, if the actual authors refuse. Someone must assess the impact of missing data and methodologies on their conclusions. And to be credible, given the clear evidence of favoritism the emails admit, it must be indpendant of the process that is now itself in question.

[Neu Mejican]

There is no reason to believe that the peer review process for any publication based on this work was in anyway out of the ordinary.

[domoarrigato]

Well, it seems clear that the peer review process referenced in the leaked emails is badly slanted towards those with conforming opinions. If you say this is not out of the ordinary, I guess I believe you. That makes me trust the conclusions less, not more…

[domoarrigato]

And I am fully aware that there is plenty of room to point fingers, and shrug shoulders over WHY the data etc isnt available. nevertheless, the data isnt available. Now we have a specific, palpable reason to want to review it, and we can’t – for whatever reason. Does that mean we have to throw out the conclusions of the papers based on that data? Well, maybe. Until a new, clean, unadulterated data set can be openly and publicly assembled and shown to produce the same results or support the same conclusion, I’m afraid the results are tainted.

[Hyperion]

The early hopes of the AGW religious zealots that they could suppress this, or it would just go away, is now over. Let’s move to the next phase please:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/…..index.html

India has just announced that there is no way they will even consider any cuts in emissions, but they will endorse any efforts to transfer stolen resources from other foolish countries that will sign on, lol.

[charlesbrooks]

Everyone has their favorite way of using the internet. Many of us search to find what we want, click in to a specific website, read what’s available and click out. That’s not necessarily a bad thing because it’s efficient. We learn to tune out things we don’t need and go straight for what’s essential.

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