Post

When science calls: Climategate, a lesson to learn

Published 27th November 2009 - 38 comments - 710 views -

The recent events of the so called "Climategate" made the headlines in most of the newspapers and blogs around the world.

This is the moment people like Alex Jones have always waited for, a moment to finally call man made global warming a "Ponzi scheme", "a fraud", "a reason to tax beef", "total control of our society", and so on.

Just to be clear, as noted on realclimate.org, the emails contain "no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to 'get rid of the MWP', no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no 'marching orders' from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords." Period.

And even though the blogosphere is all fired up and the hypotheses are running wild for conspiracists, the science behind climate change is not at risk. But this is not the point. This was an organised effort by some scientists to discredit all dissidents, an orchestrated smear campaign, and it's not something to be proud of.

This reminds me of a story: back in 1950, a psychiatrist named Immanuel Velikovsky (Иммануил Великовский) suggested that an object of planetary mass, which he called a comet, was somehow produced in the Jupiter system. After a very complicated game of interplanetary billiards is completed, Velikovsky proposed that this comet entered into a stable, almost perfectly circular orbit, becoming the planet Venus. We know that this idea is almost certainly wrong, as all the evidence we have suggests.

Nevertheless, however absurd and unsubstantiated his idea might have been, there is an important lesson to learn, and nobody can teach that better than Carl Sagan himself.


The video will automatically start at the right time: 2m29s

"There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong. That's perfectly alright. It's the aperture to finding out what's right. Science is a self-correcting process. To be accepted, new ideas must survive the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny. The worst aspect of the Velikovski affair is not that many of his ideas were wrong or silly or in gross contradiction to the facts. Rather, the worst aspect is that some scientists attempted to suppress Velikovski's ideas. The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge and there's no place for it in the endeavour of science. We do not know beforehand where fundamental insights will arise from about our mysterious and lovely solar system and the history of our study of the solar system shows clearly that accepted and conventional ideas are often wrong and that fundamental insights can arise from the most unexpected sources."

Knowledge is free, and data should always be made public, for anyone to read, without any restrictions, regulations and alterations. The pursuit of knowledge is based on these premises, and we shall never forget that this is the force of the scientific method. Let us not be blinded by our goal, or we will forget about what matters most, and stop being real scientists.

p.s. This article was crossposted on my blog.


Comments

  • Vitezslav Kremlik on 27th November 2009:

    Why are hiding their data from verification? The only explanation, I think, is to hide their falsification of graphs:


    “The two MMs [McKitrick, McIntyre] have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone. Does your similar act in the US force you to respond to enquiries within 20 days? - our does ! The UK works on precedents, so the first request will test it. We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind. Tom Wigley has sent me a worried email when he heard about it - thought people could ask him for his model code. He has retired officially from UEA so he can hide behind that”

    http://motls.blogspot.com/2009/11/hacked-hadley-cru-foi2009-files.html

  • Vitezslav Kremlik on 27th November 2009:

    You did not beliefe me, that we have cooling after 1998? Maybe you will believe to CRU:

    Date: Sun, 26 Oct 2008 09:02:00 +1300

    Yeah, it wasn’t so much 1998 and all that that I was concerned about, used to dealing with that, but the possibility that we might be going through a longer - 10 year - period of relatively stable temperatures beyond what you might expect from La Nina etc.

    “Speculation, but if I see this as a possibility then others might also. 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.”

  • Vitezslav Kremlik on 27th November 2009:

    The IPCC scenarios A,B etc are just piece of fiction:

    “I want to make one thing really clear. We ARE NOT supposed to be working with the assumption that these scenarios are realistic. They are scenarios-internally consistent (or so we thought) what-if storylines. You are in fact out of line to assume that these are in some sense realistic-this is in direct contradiction to the guidance on scenarios provided by the synthesis team.”

  • Vitezslav Kremlik on 27th November 2009:

    Mann is trying to erase the MWP. To “contain” means not only to encompass, but also to destroy, elliminate, suppress erase:


    “—I think that trying to adopt a timeframe of 2K, rather than the usual 1K, addresses a good earlier point that Peck made w/ regard to the memo, that it would be nice to try to “contain” the putative “MWP”, even if we don’t yet have a hemispheric mean reconstruction available that far back [Phil and I have one in review—not sure it is kosher to show that yet though—I’ve put in an inquiry to Judy Jacobs at AGU about this]”

  • Vitezslav Kremlik on 27th November 2009:

    If you can write now, that:

    “the emails contain “no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to ‘get rid of the MWP’, no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders’ from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords.” Period”

    then there is something wrong with you.

    Yes, I read the Mann et al “explanations” and “excuses”, that it was “torn out of context”. I think these are juste very weak excuses. Poor excuses. Plain dumb excuses.

  • Vitezslav Kremlik on 27th November 2009:

    The funny thing is, that when the Jamal Data leaked in 2008 and McKitrick complained, that “Briffa and Mann have been refusing for 9 years to provide the data”... Mann wrote it is not true.

    Now you can read in his ery own e-mail, that he REALLY was hiding data.

    Now… can you still trust the RealClimate website?

    TH!NK about it.

  • Vitezslav Kremlik on 27th November 2009:

    * Phil Jones writes to University of Hull to try to stop sceptic Sonia Boehmer Christiansen using her Hull affiliation. Graham F Haughton of Hull University says its easier to push greenery there now SB-C has retired.(1256765544)

    * Michael Mann discusses how to destroy a journal that has published sceptic papers.(1047388489)

    * Tim Osborn discusses how data are truncated to stop an apparent cooling trend showing up in the results (0939154709). Analysis of impact here. Wow!

    * Phil Jones describes the death of sceptic, John Daly, as “cheering news”.

    * Phil Jones encourages colleagues to delete information subject to FoI request.(1212063122)

    * Phil Jones says he has use Mann’s “Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series”…to hide the decline”. Real Climate says “hiding” was an unfortunate turn of phrase.(0942777075)

    * Letter to The Times from climate scientists was drafted with the help of Greenpeace.(0872202064)

    * Mann thinks he will contact BBC’s Richard Black to find out why another BBC journalist was allowed to publish a vaguely sceptical article.(1255352257)

    * Kevin Trenberth says they can’t account for the lack of recent warming and that it is a travesty that they can’t.(1255352257)

    * Tom Wigley says that Lindzen and Choi’s paper is crap.(1257532857)

    * Tom Wigley says that von Storch is partly to blame for sceptic papers getting published at Climate Research. Says he encourages the publication of crap science. Says they should tell publisher that the journal is being used for misinformation. Says that whether this is true or not doesn’t matter. Says they need to get editorial board to resign. Says they need to get rid of von Storch too. (1051190249)

    * Ben Santer says (presumably jokingly!) he’s “tempted, very tempted, to beat the crap” out of sceptic Pat Michaels. (1255100876)

    * Mann tells Jones that it would be nice to ‘”contain” the putative Medieval Warm Period’. (1054736277)

    * Tom Wigley tells Jones that the land warming since 1980 has been twice the ocean warming and that this might be used by sceptics as evidence for urban heat islands.(1257546975)

    * Tom Wigley say that Keith Briffa has got himself into a mess over the Yamal chronology (although also says it’s insignificant. Wonders how Briffa explains McIntyre’s sensitivity test on Yamal and how he explains the use of a less-well replicated chronology over a better one. Wonders if he can. Says data withholding issue is hot potato, since many “good” scientists condemn it.(1254756944)

    * Briffa is funding Russian dendro Shiyatov, who asks him to send money to personal bank account so as to avoid tax, thereby retaining money for research.(0826209667)

    * Kevin Trenberth says climatologists are nowhere near knowing where the energy goes or what the effect of clouds is. Says nowhere balancing the energy budget. Geoengineering is not possible.(1255523796)

    * Mann discusses tactics for screening and delaying postings at Real Climate.(1139521913)

    * Tom Wigley discusses how to deal with the advent of FoI law in UK. Jones says use IPR argument to hold onto code. Says data is covered by agreements with outsiders and that CRU will be “hiding behind them”.(1106338806)

    * Overpeck has no recollection of saying that he wanted to “get rid of the Medieval Warm Period”. Thinks he may have been quoted out of context.(1206628118)

    * Mann launches RealClimate to the scientific community.(1102687002)

    * Santer complaining about FoI requests from McIntyre. Says he expects support of Lawrence Livermore Lab management. Jones says that once support staff at CRU realised the kind of people the scientists were dealing with they became very supportive. Says the VC [vice chancellor] knows what is going on (in one case).(1228330629)

    * Rob Wilson concerned about upsetting Mann in a manuscript. Says he needs to word things diplomatically.(1140554230)

  • Vitezslav Kremlik on 27th November 2009:

    * Briffa says he is sick to death of Mann claiming his reconstruction is tropical because it has a few poorly temp sensitive tropical proxies. Says he should regress these against something else like the “increasing trend of self-opinionated verbiage” he produces. Ed Cook agrees with problems.(1024334440)

    * Overpeck tells Team to write emails as if they would be made public. Discussion of what to do with McIntyre finding an error in Kaufman paper. Kaufman’s admits error and wants to correct. Appears interested in Climate Audit findings.(1252164302)

    * Jones calls Pielke Snr a prat.(1233249393)

    * Santer says he will no longer publish in Royal Met Soc journals if they enforce intermediate data being made available. Jones has complained to head of Royal Met Soc about new editor of Weather [why?data?] and has threatened to resign from RMS.(1237496573)

    * Reaction to McIntyre’s 2005 paper in GRL. Mann has challenged GRL editor-in-chief over the publication. Mann is concerned about the connections of the paper’s editor James Saiers with U Virginia [does he mean Pat Michaels?]. Tom Wigley says that if Saiers is a sceptic they should go through official GRL channels to get him ousted. (1106322460) [Note to readers - Saiers was subsequently ousted]

    * Later on Mann refers to the leak at GRL being plugged.(1132094873)

    * Jones says he’s found a way around releasing AR4 review comments to David Holland.(1210367056)

    * Wigley says Keenan’s fraud accusation against Wang is correct. (1188557698)

    * Jones calls for Wahl and Ammann to try to change the received date on their alleged refutation of McIntyre [presumably so it can get into AR4](1189722851)

    * Mann tells Jones that he is on board and that they are working towards a common goal.(0926010576)

    * Mann sends calibration residuals for MBH99 to Osborn. Says they are pretty red, and that they shouldn’t be passed on to others, this being the kind of dirty laundry they don’t want in the hands of those who might distort it.(1059664704)

    * Prior to AR3 Briffa talks of pressure to produce a tidy picture of “apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data”. [This appears to be the politics leading the science] Briffa says it was just as warm a thousand years ago.(0938018124)

    * Jones says that UK climate organisations are coordinating themselves to resist FoI. They got advice from the Information Commissioner [!](1219239172)

    * Mann tells Revkin that McIntyre is not to be trusted.(1254259645)

    * Revkin quotes von Storch as saying it is time to toss the Hockey Stick . This back in 2004.(1096382684)

    * Funkhouser says he’s pulled every trick up his sleeve to milk his Kyrgistan series. Doesn’t think it’s productive to juggle the chronology statistics any more than he has.(0843161829)

    * Wigley discusses fixing an issue with sea surface temperatures in the context of making the results look both warmer but still plausible. (1254108338)

    * Jones says he and Kevin will keep some papers out of the next IPCC report.(1089318616)

    * Tom Wigley tells Mann that a figure Schmidt put together to refute Monckton is deceptive and that the match it shows of instrumental to model predictions is a fluke. Says there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model output by authors and IPCC.(1255553034)

    * Grant Foster putting together a critical comment on a sceptic paper. Asks for help for names of possible reviewers. Jones replies with a list of people, telling Foster they know what to say about the paper and the comment without any prompting.(1249503274)

    * David Parker discussing the possibility of changing the reference period for global temperature index. Thinks this shouldn’t be done because it confuses people and because it will make things look less warm.(1105019698)

    * Briffa discusses an sceptic article review with Ed Cook. Says that confidentially he needs to put together a case to reject it (1054756929)

    * Ben Santer, referring to McIntyre says he hopes Mr “I’m not entirely there in the head” will not be at the AGU.(1233249393)

    * Jones tells Mann that he is sending station data. Says that if McIntyre requests it under FoI he will delete it rather than hand it over. Says he will hide behind data protection laws. Says Rutherford screwed up big time by creating an FTP directory for Osborn. Says Wigley worried he will have to release his model code. Also discuss AR4 draft. Mann says paleoclimate chapter will be contentious but that the author team has the right personalities to deal with sceptics.(1107454306)

  • Dave Thompson on 27th November 2009:

    Maybe Alex Jones is right you smug greenie.

    Didn’t you notice the money men all getting behind AGW?  Didn’t it look like they were planning something?  Well now we know.

    You can believe what you want about AGW, you can’t use the gun of government to force me to fund your supposed solutions though.

  • Adela on 28th November 2009:

    Offtopic
    How do you make the video start whenever you want to? Is there a way to set a countdown?

  • Federico Pistono on 28th November 2009:

    @Adela
    Add &start=100 for beginning at 100 seconds.

    Pretty cool uh? wink

  • Federico Pistono on 28th November 2009:

    @Dave
    Didn’t you notice the money men all getting behind AGW?

    Yes, and that is a totally unrelated topic to the science behind it.

    That’s politics. Important, and should be addressed separately, but don’t mix things up. smile

  • Federico Pistono on 28th November 2009:

    Vitezslav,
    there certainly a lot of material, could you please show me where exactly these email show that AGW is a fraud?

  • Dave Thompson on 28th November 2009:

    @Federico:

    Politicians are getting ready to pass global taxes on EVERYTHING based on this “theory” that clearly doesn’t have a consensus.

    If you liked the housing bubble and bankster bailout, you’re gonna LOVE the carbon trading bubble.

    It will cost trillions, move millions of jobs to countries where they don’t give a shit about the environment, and what will your environment look like then?

    When junk science is used to justify junk politics, don’t tell me to not mix them up.

  • Federico Pistono on 29th November 2009:

    @Dave,
    Politicians are getting ready to pass global taxes on EVERYTHING based on this “theory” that clearly doesn’t have a consensus.

    First off, I think you are misusing the word theory.

    A theory is a consistent group of general propositions used as principles of explanation for a class of phenomena.

    based on you usage between quotation marks, you are confusing theory with hypothesis or “guess”.

  • Federico Pistono on 29th November 2009:

    @Dave,
    secondly, politics has nothing to do with science in the strict sense. If you want to attack the theory of AGW then, by all means, do so, using scientific discourse.

    You say it’s “junk” because a couple of scientists did not operate professionally? What about the dozens of other scientists and independent studies, which draw the same conclusion?

  • Federico Pistono on 29th November 2009:

    @Dave,
    thirdly, the choice of a taxation system might or might not be the best solution for solving the problem, but this has nothing to do with the recognition of the problem itself, it’s how we decide to address it.

  • Vitezslav Kremlik on 29th November 2009:

    Federico, are you joking? What “dozens of independent studies” are talking about? Could you name please some study, which supported Hockeystick and which WAS NOT written by Mann or his friends or using his flawed data???

  • Federico Pistono on 29th November 2009:

    Åkerman, H. J. & M. Johansson, (2008) Thawing permafrost and thicker active layers in sub-arctic Sweden. Permafrost and Periglacial
    Processes 19, 279-292.

    Alexander, L. V. & J. M. Arblaster, (2009) Assessing trends in observed and modelled climate extremes over Australia in relation to future projections. International Journal of Climatology 29,
    417-435.

    Allan, R. P. & B. J. Soden, (2008) Atmospheric warming and the amplification of precipitation extremes. Science 321, 1481-
    1484.

    Allen, R. J. & S. C. Sherwood, (2008) Warming maximum in the tropical upper troposphere deduced from thermal winds. Nature Geoscience 1, 399-403.

  • Federico Pistono on 29th November 2009:

    Allen, M. R. et al., (2009) Warming caused by cumulative carbon emissions toward the trillionth tonne. Nature 458, 1163-1166.

    Alley, R. B. et al., (2003) Abrupt Climate Change. Science 299, 2005-2010.

    Allison, I. et al., (2009) Ice sheet mass balance and sea level. Antarctic Science, 21, 413-426.

    Andronova, N. & M. E. Schlesinger, (2001) Objective estimation of the probability distribution for climate sensitivity. Journal of Geophysical Research 106, 22605-22612.

    Annan, J. D. & J. C. Hargreaves, (2006) Using multiple observationally-based constraints to estimate climate sensitivity. Geophysical Research Letters 33, L06704.

  • Federico Pistono on 29th November 2009:

    Arzel, O. et al., (2006) Sea ice evolution over the 20th and 21st centuries as simulated by the current AOGCMs. Ocean Modelling 12, 401-415.

    Aumann, H. H. et al., (2008) Frequency of severe storms and global warming. Geophysical Research Letters 35, L19805.

    Bahr, D. B. et al., (2009) Sea-level rise from glaciers and ice caps: A lower
    bound. Geophysical Research Letters 36, L03501.

    Bakke, J. et al., (2009) Rapid oceanic and atmospheric changes during the Younger Dryas cold period. Nature Geoscience 2.

  • Federico Pistono on 29th November 2009:

    Barnett, T. P. et al., (2008) Human induced changes in the hydrology of the western United States. Science 319, 1080-1083.

    Barrett B. E. et al., (2009) Rapid recent warming on Rutford Ice Stream, West Antarctica, from borehole thermometry, Geophysical Research Letters, 36, L02708.

    Benestad, R. E. & G. A. Schmidt, (2009) Solar trends and global warming. Journal of Geophysical Research 114, D14101.

    Berger, A., (1978) Long-term variations of daily insolation and Quaternary climatic changes. Journal of the Atmospheric
    Sciences 35, 2362-2367.

    Berger, A. & M. F. Loutre, (1991) Insolation values for the climate of the last 19 million years. Quaternary Science Reviews 10,
    297−317.

  • Federico Pistono on 29th November 2009:

    Berger, A. et al., (1998) Sensitivity of the LLN climate model to the astronomical and CO 2 forcings over the last 200 ky. Climate Betts, R. A., (2000) Offset of the potential carbon sink from boreal afforestation by decreases in surface albedo. Nature 408,
    187-190.

    Betts, R. A. et al., (2007) Projected increases in continental river runoff due to plant responses to carbon dioxide. Nature 448, 1037-
    1041.

    Bindoff, N. L. et al., (2007) Observations: Oceanic Climate Change and Sea Level. In Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis.
    Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change   S.
    Solomon et al. eds (Cambridge University Press).

    Bondeau, A. et al., (2007) Modelling the role of agriculture for the 20th century global terrestrial carbon balance. Global Change
    Biology 13, 679-706.

  • Federico Pistono on 29th November 2009:

    Bony, S. et al., (2006) How well do we understand and evaluate climate change feedback processes? Journal of Climate 19, 3445–
    3482.

    Booth, B. B. et al., (2009 submitted) Global warming uncertainties due to carbon cycle feedbacks exceed those due to CO2 emissions.
    Nature.

    Braun, M. & A. Humbert, (2009) Recent retreat of Wilkins Ice Shelf reveals new insights in ice shelf breakup mechanisms. IEEE
    Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters 6, 263-267.

    Brook, E. et al., (2008) Potential for abrupt changes in atmospheric methane. In Abrupt Climate Change. A report by the U.S.
    Climate Change Science Program and the Subcommittee on Global Change Research. 360-452 (U.S. Geological Survey).

  • Federico Pistono on 29th November 2009:

    Cavalieri, D. J. & C. L. Parkinson, (2008) Antarctic sea ice variability and trends, 1979-2006. Journal of Geophysical Research 113,
    C07004.

    Cazenave, A. et al., (2009) Sea level budget over 2003-2008: A reevaluation from GRACE space gravimetry, satellite altimetry
    and ARGO. Global and Planetary Change 65, 83-88.

    CCSP, (2008a) Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate. Regions of Focus: North America, Hawaii, Caribbean, and U.S. Pacific Islands. A Report by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program. (Department of Commerce, NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, Washington, D.C., USA).

    CCSP, (2008b) Abrupt Climate Change. A report by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program and the Subcommittee on Global
    Change Research. (U.S. Geological Survey, Reston VA).

  • Federico Pistono on 29th November 2009:

    Chang, P. et al., (2008) Oceanic link between abrupt change in the North Atlantic Ocean and the African monsoon. Nature Geoscience
    1, 444-448.

    Chapman W.L. & J.E. Walsh, (2007) A synthesis of Antarctic temperatures. Journal of Climate, 20, 4096-4117.

    Chen, J. et al., (2006) Antarctic mass rates from GRACE. Geophysical Research Letters 33, L11502.

    ...
    shall I continue?

    These publications do not come from the National Academy of Sciences.

  • Federico Pistono on 29th November 2009:

    So let’s assume for argument’s sake that Mann, Bradley and Hughes made some terrible mistake in their statistical analysis, so we need to discard their results altogether. This wouldn’t change our picture of the last millennium (or anything else) very much: independent groups, with different analysis methods, have arrived at similar results for the last millennium. The details differ (mostly within the uncertainty bounds given by Mann et al, so the difference is not significant), but all published reconstructions share the same basic features: they show relatively warm medieval times, a cooling by a few tenths of a degree Celsius after that, and a rapid warming since the 19th Century. Even without Mann et al, we’d still be stuck with a “hockey stick” type of curve – quite boring. 1

  • Federico Pistono on 29th November 2009:

    Also, I’m still waiting for where exactly do these email show that AGW is a fraud?

  • Dave Thompson on 29th November 2009:

    The smoking gun is in the source code. It’s all over the net I have other stuff to do than copy-paste it here.

  • Federico Pistono on 29th November 2009:

    Meaning: I don’t want to find the piece that supports what I’m saying, you just have to believe me because non anthropogenic global warming is my religion.

  • Dave Thompson on 29th November 2009:

    Or, “I got other shit to do”

  • Federico Pistono on 29th November 2009:

    Sure,
    you had time to say “this is bull****”, but you have time to explain why.

    Typical, just like Mike and Vitezslav.

  • Federico Pistono on 29th November 2009:

    You all scream “it’s a conspiracy”, “you people are blind”, “our vegan overlord want to take over the world” and so on.

    But when it comes to down to science and serious things, you answer is “I have no time for this”.

    How convenient.

  • Dave Thompson on 29th November 2009:

    Don’t take my word for it, real journalists, computer experts are currently pouring over the data.  And like Watergate, it’s not the scandal that will be look worse, it’ll be the cover up.

    http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/

  • Federico Pistono on 01st December 2009:

    RealClimate is answering those very comments.
      *  Trenberth: You need to read his recent paper on quantifying the current changes in the Earth’s energy budget to realise why he is concerned about our inability currently to track small year-to-year variations in the radiative fluxes.
      * Wigley: The concern with sea surface temperatures in the 1940s stems from the paper by Thompson et al (2007) which identified a spurious discontinuity in ocean temperatures. The impact of this has not yet been fully corrected for in the HadSST data set, but people still want to assess what impact it might have on any work that used the original data.
      * Climate Research and peer-review: You should read about the issues from the editors (Claire Goodess, Hans von Storch) who resigned because of a breakdown of the peer review process at that journal, that came to light with the particularly egregious (and well-publicised) paper by Soon and Baliunas (2003). The publisher’s assessment is here.

    Update: Pulling out some of the common points being raised in the comments.

      * HARRY_read_me.txt. This is a 4 year-long work log of Ian (Harry) Harris who was working to upgrade the documentation, metadata and databases associated with the legacy CRU TS 2.1 product, which is not the same as the HadCRUT data (see Mitchell and Jones, 2003 for details). The CSU TS 3.0 is available now (via ClimateExplorer for instance), and so presumably the database problems got fixed. Anyone who has ever worked on constructing a database from dozens of individual, sometimes contradictory and inconsistently formatted datasets will share his evident frustration with how tedious that can be.
      * “Redefine the peer-reviewed literature!” . Nobody actually gets to do that, and both papers discussed in that comment – McKitrick and Michaels (2004) and Kalnay and Cai (2003) were both cited and discussed in Chapter 2 of the IPCC AR4 report. As an aside, neither has stood the test of time.
      * “Declines” in the MXD record. This decline was hidden written up in Nature in 1998 where the authors suggested not using the post 1960 data. Their actual programs (in IDL script), unsurprisingly warn against using post 1960 data. Added: Note that the ‘hide the decline’ comment was made in 1999 – 10 years ago, and has no connection whatsoever to more recent instrumental records.
      * CRU data accessibility. From the date of the first FOI request to CRU (in 2007), it has been made abundantly clear that the main impediment to releasing the whole CRU archive is the small % of it that was given to CRU on the understanding it wouldn’t be passed on to third parties. Those restrictions are in place because of the originating organisations (the various National Met. Services) around the world and are not CRU’s to break. As of Nov 13, the response to the umpteenth FOI request for the same data met with exactly the same response. This is an unfortunate situation, and pressure should be brought to bear on the National Met Services to release CRU from that obligation. It is not however the fault of CRU. The vast majority of the data in the HadCRU records is publicly available from GHCN (v2.mean.Z).
      * Suggestions that FOI-related material be deleted … are ill-advised even if not carried out. What is and is not responsive and deliverable to an FOI request is however a subject that it is very appropriate to discuss.

    You can follow up the discussion, there are more than 1,000 comments, most of which have a direct response.
    http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack-context/

    You can read them through, I’m sure that if you do (although I have my doubts you will…) you’ll find all your answers.

  • Vitezslav Kremlik on 01st December 2009:

    I will prepare a detailed assessment of the CRU “excuses”. It will take time. But for now:

    1) Climategate bunch were hiding their data for almost a decade. Nature and IPCC thus published hockeystick without verification. Without hockeystick. CAN YOU DENY THAT?

    2) If there is nothing to hide… why were they hiding it? You admit, that resiting FOIA was wrong. WHY DON’T YOU ASK FOR THE REASONS?

    3) Your idea, that there are lots of other independent authors, who confirm hockeystick IS WRONG. These other studies are also connected with Climategate. Using Mann’s data. Or written by his friends. YOU SHOULD READ WEGMAN REPORT… But I doubt you will.

    4) If there is no reliable scientific evidence, that our warming is/was alarming and extraordinary… why should we make climate hysteria?

  • Vitezslav Kremlik on 01st December 2009:

    Corrigenda: Sorry, in point 1 I wanted to write “without peer-review” not “without hockeystick”.

  • Federico Pistono on 01st December 2009:

    Answer here: http://climatechange.thinkaboutit.eu/think2/post/open_challenge_to_all_climate_sceptics_bring_it_on/

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