Climategate 3.0?

Posted by William M. Connolley on March 14, 2013
(29)
More »

Apparently, something called “climategate 3.0″ has occurred. This caused massive excitement in the denialosphere for a day, but now everyone has quietly forgotten it. You can tell its a damp squib because the only even vaguely “mainstream” news report of it that WUWT can find is a blog piece by James Delingpole, a man so unimportant I haven’t even bothered call him a tosser. AW managed to find two emails that he thought were really interesting, but his slightly-more-on-the-ball readers pointed out they were already in v2. There’s a mildly interesting third one about Oreskes but: is that really it?

So, I think they have their numbering scheme wrong. Incrementing by integers is for major releases, not minor changes. This is really CruHack 1.0.2. Unless you want to argue that the original was just a beta, perhaps v0.9, what the denialists call v2 was 0.95; this might be the real v1.0. Perhaps something more interesting will emerge later, who knows.

For those too young to remember the original, see [[Climatic Research Unit email controversy]].

Early update: I should listen to Gavin, who points out how interesting google trends are on this. AW isn’t happy. This may require some playing with; last 12 months is also entertaining, though it is currently showing “Mar 10-16″ as “incomplete data”.

Refs

* CRU tooo?
* Those CRU emails in full

(29)
More »

Comments

  1. #1 Aslak Grinsted
    Denmark
    2013/03/14

    Agree with this being 1.0.2.

    You can lookup the ongoing bitcoin donations to the CRU here: http://blockchain.info/address/1HHQ36qbsgGZWLPmiUjYHxQUPJ6EQXVJFS

    Last I checked the exchange rate was 1btc=46usd

    I just did a google and found that bishophill also has a bitcoin adress. http://blockchain.info/address/1LDREeJjJMcUwoJZnZoTDWS7tPf2UVCajM

  2. #2 bluegrue
    2013/03/14

    DO NOT PUBLISH THE PASSWORD. Quote other parts if you like.
    Translate: Otherwise people will be able to see that you are quotemining.

  3. #3 MMM
    2013/03/14

    Someone in Stockholm REALLY CARED about climategate in 2009…

  4. #4 cce
    2013/03/14

    The real “news” (if you can call it that) is the letter from the guy throws even more cogs and gears into the Rube Goldberg sequence of events that would turn this into an “inside job” and this guy or group into “whistleblowers” who also had nothing to do with hacking Realclimate, and therefore shouldn’t either be called theives or hackers, because, you know, mumble mumble.

    The letter also builds on the commentary included in the Climategate bonus material that would like us to believe that anything more than the fraction of a percent currently spent on energy R&D is tantamount to genocide, as opposed to the more mainstream belief that AGW is just a ruse to transfer money from rich countries to poor countries. Or maybe it’s both.

  5. #5 toto
    2013/03/14

    #2: Apparently Steven Mosher is already building a full database of all the emails. He’s not sure how to deal with potential private information though – which might also be one reason why FOIA himself didn’t want the password released.

  6. #6 andrew adams
    2013/03/14

    So he entrusted it to the likes of Watts and tallbloke instead.

  7. #7 Marco
    2013/03/14

    Andrew, I am actually more concerned that he entrusted it to Lubos Motl, too. I’ve never been able to catch him having any scruples…

  8. #8 freddy
    2013/03/14

    I am interested in whether there are further mails from Kevin Trenberth saying that he didn’t fully understand the earth’s radiation balance and that he thinks the atmospheric window is much bigger than he thought before. And also that he elaborated on his famous expression “where the heck is global warming”?

  9. #9 Adam
    2013/03/14

    “AW isn’t happy.”

    He never is. There’s a line from Good Morning Vietnam that could be used, but I’ll refrain.

  10. #10 toto
    2013/03/14

    freddy: yes, also more about that time when Jesus fought the dragon.

  11. #11 RB
    2013/03/14

    Re: the digging and filling ditches, I take it that the gent doesn’t like Keynes. “Endeavor” seems to indicate more American influence than British.

  12. #12 The Climate Change Debate Thread - Page 2243
    2013/03/14

    [...] piece by James Delingpole, a man so unimportant I haven’t even bothered call him a tosser. Climategate 3.0? – Stoat Gavin Schmidt did bother to find out what were the volume of web searches for [...]

  13. #13 freddy
    2013/03/14

    toto, no what you indicated does not affect me at all, but more compromising stuff from Kevin Trenberth, James Hansen or Phil Jones would be extremely interesting.

    [Well it would be if there was anything, but where is it? -W]

  14. #14 willard
    2013/03/14

    Some, not me, might argue that it’s worse in context:

    > Boy, this use of password protection for paleoclimate data is annoying

    http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/post/45289038919

  15. #15 willard
    2013/03/15

    Let’s prepare ourselves:

    http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/post/45381960089

  16. #16 KenH
    2013/03/15

    A bit OT, but has anyone heard of the book or author?
    http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/03/13/peter-foster-deranged-science-peverse-policy/

  17. #17 Dave
    Miami
    2013/03/15

    Isn’t it a little redundant to be talking about this? If it is nothing, there is nothing to see and we should discuss other issues.

    [Arguably. The counter-argument is that if people see only the denialists talking about this, they might think we were avoiding it because we were afeared to -W]

  18. #18 Marco
    2013/03/15

    KenH: Darwall is of the Center for Policy Studies. Think “government should be small, free market”, and you get an idea of where he is coming from.

    The book itself is published by “Quartet Books”, known for publishing, ahem, “alternative” stuff, like Ian Plimer’s error-riddled book.

    But most damning of all: Apparently James Delingpole thinks it is a brilliant book. Can’t have more catastrophy heaped on your book than the interpreter of interpretations being so positive…

  19. #19 Russell Seitz
    2013/03/15

    3.0 enjoys a 5 sigma probability of becoming another Frabjous Day , Calloo Callay, Forbes column by the Heartland crew.

  20. #20 Sou
    http://blog.hotwhopper.com/
    2013/03/15

    “There’s a mildly interesting third one about Oreskes but: is that really it?”

    Not even mildly interesting given there’s no context. He may have meant literally “A good example” as opposed to the bad one of someone else (elsewhere in the email discussion – not shown).

    Not that it matters anyway.

  21. #21 MMM
    2013/03/15

    Regarding Oreskes: I think it is obvious that Oreskes used a fairly constrained search term that didn’t pick up a lot of papers (eg, “global climate change”) which picked up a small percentage of the papers on climate change, global warming, etc.: this may not be a major problem, assuming that the use of “global climate change” vs. “climate change” isn’t correlated with the belief in human-causation… but it is something that I noticed at the time because her search wouldn’t have picked up my one publication at that date.

    So it isn’t surprising that some would criticize her paper for that. But, heck, show me a scientist who doesn’t criticize other people’s papers, and I’ll show you a scientist in a coffin.

  22. #22 MMM
    2013/03/15

    (and Wigley is well known for being especially prone to criticize people who use different methodologies from the one he prefers. Often he is right, but not always)

  23. #23 Russell Seitz
    2013/03/15

    I don’t recall any disclosure in’materials and methods’ of how many times Oreskes et al. iterated her search , let alone what other search terms were tried and rejected.

    But them, it must be anti-science to question their historiography , since they say so.

  24. #24 Susan Anderson
    2013/03/17

    re Delingpole, *he* thinks he’s important … (doesn’t do science, he’s an “interpreter of interpretations” – actually, a megaphone for ignorance with a “don’t confuse me with facts” slant. No wonder he thought he was intellectually raped by a polite confrontation with reality.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2011/jan/24/james-delingpole-tv-interview

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36Xu3SQcIE0

  25. #25 Hank Roberts
    2013/03/18

    It’s still stirring, or being stirred — check the comment by
    Patrick Michaels March 16, 2013 at 12:45 PM at “Climate Tribes”

    (if others follow the link, don’t leap to a polarized point of view, Maas is worth reading in some depth on weather generally and specifically for Washington State, and solid about the physics. He’s here talking about personalities and blogging; he moderates pretty well so does stay readable through the comments)

  27. #27 Another Week of GW News, March 17, 2013 – A Few Things Ill Considered
    2013/03/18

    [...] 2013/03/14: Stoat: Climategate 3.0? [...]

  28. #28 Hank Roberts
    2013/03/20

    > how many times Oreskes et al. iterated her search

    And which slice of Google’s search results she or they got
    — did they know to sign out of Google services, clear cookies, change names and IP addresses between searches?
    – Did they know repeating a Google search (don’t know about Scholar) can on the odd Tuesday of some months yield results pre-confirmation-biased with more of what you looked at last time you did a similar search?

    Not likely, don’t think anybody did back then.

  29. #29 John Mashey
    2013/03/21

    Hank: you should know better …
    Google algorithms had precisely zero to do with this, it was a keyword search in (ISI) ie WoS, as was explained in the paper.