The global warming denialists have predictably gotten very excited about the emails that were stolen from CRU, declaring that they prove that there's a big climate scientist conspiracy (presumably to install a COMMUNIST WORLD GOVERNMENT). We don't know whether or not the thief altered the emails, but since there isn't really anything incriminating it's likely that they are all genuine.
Most of the fuss has been generated by taking emails out of context and bad faith interpretations of what was written. If you're interested in the gory details the RealClimate comment thread addresses most of them, while John Cook explains what Phil Jones meant by "Mike's Nature trick".
But the best take on the whole affair is this: Newtongate: the final nail in the coffin of Renaissance and Enlightenment 'thinking'
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The emails are proof of scientists spending government money to increase support of that particular governments leading policies. This is a scandal, a crime on many levels and this leak has provided far more evidence than there is scientific facts supporting climate change so to deny their guilt and support the climate change theory you would have to be barking mad.
Tim,
I have no issue with using the term 'trick' to describe a shortcut and disagree with those promoting this particular email as proof of wrongdoing.
However, there are a multitude of other emails that show truly egregious manipulation of results, distortion of the peer review process and corrupt practices etc etc.
Given how obvious the wrongdoing is I'm surprised that you would take a head in the sand approach.
Sadly, science is the loser.
Jack
PS - I don't think the release of information will have any effect on current climate negotiations at all, as they've never been about the science.
PPS - I see Sitemeter is reporting more than 3,000,000 hits. Well done.
Honi soit qui mal y pense
"The emails are proof of scientists spending government money to increase support of that particular governments leading policies."
Where in the E-mails does it show this? Please give me a msg# or post the ENTIRE message/s that show this "proof". If you fail to provide anything other than snippets of messages I am going to dismiss you as just another lap dog. So go fetch.
Jack, could you provide some examples of "egregious manipulation of results, distortion of the peer review process and corrupt practices" ?
The closest I have seen to manipulation of results is the "trick" and "hide the decline" comment, the closest to distortion of the peer review process is the Climate Research affair, in which it was De Freitas who willfully manipulated the peer-review process. The corrupt practices is perhaps best illustrated by the FOI requests and deleting e-mails, but here we often lack the whole context. I'd like to see the whole context before making any such insinuations.
There are 1,073 email messages. They date from Mar 96 to Nov 09 and are from various people. They were obviously selected from a number of mailboxes and 1,073 is a very small number over 13+ years. IMO it's extremely unlikely that these are a random selection: they are almost certainly the "worst" to be found, and it's only by taking them out of context and misinterpreting them that anything "damaging" can be claimed.
Well that's just not true.
I for one happen to be puffen muffens.
The fuss about the word "trick" has been particularly amusing because it shows that the critics are as short on verbal skills as they are on scientific competence. The unabridged Webster gives under (3) the following definitions of "trick":"A quick or effective way of getting a result"; "the art of doing something quickly, effectively, skillfully"; "instant or skillful effecting of a result as, that does the trick"; "a feat demanding skill or ingenuity".
Is this Jack "I am aware via my uncle" Lacton we're dealing with here?
Anyway.
Some details on the crack and the zip archive:
1. TrueSceptic over at Greenfyre reports that the file modification times in the zip archive are all 1 Jan 2009 00:00, which seems odd. TrueSceptic wonders why the attacker had to modify the file times (and I wonder too).
2. There's the theory that this was done by 'a Russian hacker'. But the file was initially uploaded to an incoming/ folder at ftp.tomcity.ru -- and an incoming/ folder can typically be written to by anyone, so it's also possible that
3. The Examiner reports that the attacker initially tried to upload the file to RealClimate, but was stopped.
> it's also possible that
...the attacker uploaded the file from another country. Such as Britain.
The word 'trick' can be used in many innocent ways, but let's not forget that in the e-mail in question it was coupled with the word 'hide', as in 'hide data that doesn't suit me':
'Iâve just completed Mikeâs Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd [sic] from 1961 for Keithâs to hide the decline.'
'Trick' on its own you might explain away; 'hide' is more dubious; 'trick' + 'hide' is starting to look unethical.
A Sock Puppet:
> it was coupled with the word 'hide', as in 'hide data that doesn't suit me': [...] 'trick' + 'hide' is starting to look unethical.
In the good old days when personal computers ran MS-DOS, there used to be "hidden files" in every diskette. I think this proves that the operating system vendors were all engaged in a nefarious conspiracy to own our PCs.
excuse my naivity, but is there anyone in the "sceptic" circle, who did not swallow this story with hook, line and sinker?
not a single person with the morality to NOT browse other peoples e-mails? anyone who would focus on the fact that stealing stuff is bad?
it is utterly absurd, to read [Roy Spencer](http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/21/spencer-on-elitism-in-the-ipcc-cl…), pondering about "elitism" among scientists, while flipping through STOLEN MAIL. is this really, how scientists should behave, he asks, while reading STOLEN MAIL.
why don t they share their data with us, we hear the "sceptics" ask.
look at how they handle stolen stuff, and wonder no longer.
What's fascinating is the behind-the-scenes views showing how much McIntyre has spooked these climate scientists. The lack of scientific support for Keith Briffa is clearly evident; no one wants to stand behind his 12-tree sample "trick".
If the people at CRU had handed over the data as per the original FOI requests no data would have had to be stolen.
We used to wonder what they were trying to hide. Now we know.
Downplay it all you want, but this is a proper scoop with genuine implications for science and how it should be practiced.
What's fascinating is the behind-the-scenes views showing how much McIntyre has spooked these climate scientists.
well, reading all those denialist posts about the CRU hack, you really can t evade to hear the triumphant "they mentioned me! they mentioned me!!!" shouts between the lines.
Watt s third post on the topic was the effect on the hits of his webpage.
were you trying to expose another "sceptic" personal trait, when you wrote that sentence?
so people who made zero impact on scientific papers still got mentioned in e-mail traffic?!?
Sod, actually there was a lot of scepticism among sceptics, who spent the first hours anti-virus scanning the zip file and wondering at the Russian (ftp) connection.
Then news came out that UEA had been hacked and various people (Gavin Schmitt for example) have validated that from what they've seen, the emails are genuine.
Also a lot of worry about using "stolen emails". Jeff Id pulled the russian ftp link off his site as soon as he noticed it (it appeared in a comment). But this is a whistleblower situation where the greater good is served by this transparency.
If the people at CRU had handed over the data as per the original FOI requests no data would have had to be stolen.
i always knew, that "sceptics" know very little about other stuff (beyond climate) either. but this episode is truly exposing a serious lack of knowledge about law and ethics.
for a start, you don t have the right to take something, if a person doesn t give it to you.
We used to wonder what they were trying to hide. Now we know.
so what did they hide where is the smoking gun?
Downplay it all you want, but this is a proper scoop with genuine implications for science and how it should be practiced.
yes, i have a pretty good idea about what will happen: real scientists will close ranks. they dislike thieves, and people without character. (reading other peoples mail is not the behaviour you would expect among scientists. publishing it isn t either)
let us wait and see, what comes out of this in the long run. but i have serious doubts, that this will improve access to data for "sceptics".
Auntie #15:
Now that the denialists have "the data" can we expect them to do anything useful with it? I've never yet seen them do anything interesting or insightful with the reams of data and climate model codes that are already freely available for download.
Sod, actually there was a lot of scepticism among sceptics, who spent the first hours anti-virus scanning the zip file and wondering at the Russian (ftp) connection.
running an anti-virus program is making me a "sceptic" these days? wow!
Then news came out that UEA had been hacked and various people (Gavin Schmitt for example) have validated that from what they've seen, the emails are genuine.
there are many ways of editing. selection of the mails, could already be a pretty strong one, without changing a word.
But this is a whistleblower situation where the greater good is served by this transparency.
this is complete rubbish. whistleblowers do a little harm, to prevent a big one.
here is my question again: where is the smoking gun?
the item, that is worse, than publishing 1000 STOLEN MAILS on the web?
FOIAs Auntie wrote;
I can think of only one - it will be with much improved IT security now that the denialists have shown how low they are prepared to stoop.
Sod
You asked, "here is my question again: where is the smoking gun?"
Here it is:
From: Tom Wigley wigley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
To: Phil Jones p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: 1940s
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 2009 23:25:38 -0600
Cc: Ben Santer santer1@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Phil,
Here are some speculations on correcting SSTs to partly explain the 1940s warming blip.
If you look at the attached plot you will see that the land also shows the 1940s blip (as I'm sure you know). So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC, then this would be significant for the global mean -- but we'd still have to explain the land blip.
I've chosen 0.15 here deliberately. This still leaves an ocean blip, and i think one needs to have some form of ocean blip to explain the land blip (via either some common forcing, or ocean forcing land, or vice versa, or all of these). When you look at other blips, the land blips are 1.5 to 2 times (roughly) the ocean blips -- higher sensitivity plus thermal inertia effects. My 0.15 adjustment leaves things consistent with this, so you can see where I am coming from.
"swindeled", what do you think that e-mail says?
Data manipulation for an agenda.
>Watt s third post on the topic was the effect on the hits of his webpage.
I never mentioned Watts. Please read more carefully.
Swindeled, which data were manipulated? Where on the surface record can we see it?
Best,
D
If you add 0.15 deg C to the global mean temperature for 1945, the maximum for 1998 will not be unprecedented. As a result, the oscillation anomaly becomes nearly cyclic.
Where on the surface record can we see it?
Best,
D
Further to [Craig Allen's point](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/on_those_stolen_cru_emails.php#…), have a look at [Gavin's answer to caerbannog](http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/comm…).
I don't know where you can see it. For that, we must have two datasets, one before, and the other after. My conclusion is just based on the email, not on the data.
This is extremely serious. The police must go in and invetigate.
Surely some intrepid Auditor has found it by now, as this is what they have been waiting for. Copy and paste the breathless 'smoking gun' post that is speeding around the world and post it here.
Best,
D
Anti-science denialism in a nutshell ... thank you.
Ignoring for the moment that CRU doesn't have distribution rights to some of the data requested under the FOI, the comment "had to be stolen" - a felony had to be committed by the denialist camp - seems to sum up the far right anti-science crowd's attitude to the law and ethics very succinctly.
Bad manners and good science.
"... reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC"
This is not science.
Thank you
Let me just draw attention to this bit:
The e-mail was sent less than 8 weeks ago.
Someone would have found the altered record by now.
Poor hopeful, addled 'Swindled' can't find the breathless blockbuster blog post to point to the smoking gun of swindling done just a few short weeks ago.
But his peals and foot stomping sound out: 'But there must be criminal activity! I wish it soooo much! Send in the police with my wish as evidence! Pleeeeeeeease?'
This is the best they can do, folks. This is all they have.
Best,
D
This is not science.
Exactly.
It is an out-of-context e-mail.
Thank you.
Wanker.
Sad, foot-stomping, wishful, young naive wanker.
Best,
D
Tom Wigley has done climate modeling work. I could be wrong, but the out-of-context quote swindled is so concerned about appears to be consistent with modeling past conditions and trying to figure out the physics.
I hope you haven't, Doug, ruined our fun chain-yanking.
;o)
Best,
D
> The police must go in and invetigate.
You're really calling for an [invetigation](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjPkEW-DzE8)?
... but we'd still have to explain the land blip.
It is manupulaion for someone else, for distortion.
Of course it is. The problem with the data was eventually tracked down and the speculated change turned out to be correct.
People like you would insist we use the erroneous original UAH satellite temperature reconstructions that showed no warming because researchers looked at it, said "there must be a blip there of about xC that must be removed because it doesn't jive with other sources".
Sure enough, Christy and Spencer had made some embarrassing errors (including a sign flip in a multiplication) and those insisting it was off were right.
But oh my gosh, if you saw an e-mail saying, "we must adjust the UAH product by xC" you'd claim "aha! nefarious! fraud! We have to keep the erroneous formula rather than the correct one because of this e-mail!"
Fortunately, CRU is already in contact with the police. Those who committed the felony of cracking the site will be investigated.
... but we'd still have to explain the land blip.
It is manupulaion for someone else, for distortion.
You can't seem to find what is manipulated, though.
Tell us exactly what is being manipulated. What is being distorted.
So we can send in the police, see.
Best,
D
"... reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC"
So in the "climate science" you can change your measurements?
The Police must go in and investigate for the sake of the world.
So in the "climate science" you can change your measurements?
Please cut and paste the line in the e-mail chain that explicitly states what they are measuring. What exactly they were working on.
The network would be nice. Please also post the breathless blog posts that find what data were altered.
Best,
D
Of course, just as you can in any field of science when you find out that your instrument is miscalibrated.
If I have ten thermometers and one reads precisely 1C higher than the other nine when being calibrated, I'm going to subtract 1C from the measurements before I use them.
"...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."
Should not we wait to find out before any public policy?
Leaving aside the whole thing of it being a feloney it does reveal both the mindset of denialist bloggers and their ignorance or wilful lack of knowledge about science.
George Monbiot et al have written recently about how denialists seem to become noisier and more pushy during 2009, even as the science becomes more solid. Its almost as if they know that the state of climate science is overwhelming their ideologically amplified noise level and it seems to be a desperate attempt to stop the science washing away all that they have built. I think they will just get noisier and climate scientists need to be tougher in getting the science out to the community at large and not just political and community leaders. Blogs like this one are not going to do it as the denialists are going out and addressing community meetings across countries like Australia. I guess you have lots of energy when your belief system is threatened.
Eli has another take on this, which also explains why the description denialist is fairly earned and why population growth is a climate forcing
... "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."
Thanks for the acknowledgement! Never heared it before.
Is "cutting last few points" science?
swindled must be a creationist. He/she appears to be well-schooled in the Gish Gallop.
The scientists talk about "the recent cold-ish years". The foot soldiers talk of global warming. Who is the denier?
Swindeled,
you have not answered the question. Here it is again. Please do not avoid answering it:
Thank you in advance.
Best,
D
swindled, swindeled, swndeled, vindicated, Vindicated, and whatever sockpuppet he posts as, is just trying to distract from the main issue.
No, the main issue isn't that Obama needs a teleprompter.
The main issue is that there is a cracker out there on the loose, he is uploading data from multiple users, and he is doing it with impunity.
I think the glibertarians haven't yet thought through the chilling ramifications of that, given that they're so enamoured with their talking points handed to them from on high.
[swindeled]clippity clop, clippity clop[/swindeled]
@ 44
The Police must go in and investigate for the sake of the world.
Looks like somebody got some kind of message from the bottom of a bottle.
The right-wingers cheering whoever hacked CRU on for liberating this information would be outraged if someone hacked the CIA and stole data that should have been released under FOIA.
Also, a modest proposal- As a thought experiment, let us toss all of the work done by CRU. Now, looking at the available data, does Global Warming still stand strong? If yes, than this is a tempest in a teacup. If no, well we have a problem.
I move to declare a Resolution to state that Swindeled doesn't know what the heck they are talking about, and therefore should be ignored for the reason of being a time-waster.
Best,
D
The SST data is not consistent with the land data, as Thompson 2008 showed, and as many others have observed. This is due to the ever changing sources of SST. i.e. the Bucket problem. The corrections that Jones is talking about are what would be required to make the land and ocean data consistent. Such a correction have not appeared in a paper or dataset -- it is a mental exercise.
A summary of this problem is here.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/A-new-twist-on-mid-century-cooling.html
If you want to read about grotesque manipulation of data to fit a certain ideology, read this:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/26/correcting-the-surface-temperatur…
Folks should remember that the CRU is just one of many organizations performing climate research. The fact that the CRU folks have been unwilling to provide data to skeptic-cranks says nothing about the big picture.
Other organizations have handled the "skeptic" problem differently. NASA/GISS under James Hansen has handled the "skeptics" by telling them, "you can find all of our data and source code here (data.giss.nasa.gov) -- go knock yourselves out!"
Likewise, NOAA has long made available tons of data and climate-model source-code. See http://www.ccsm.ucar.edu/
What is especially revealing, though, is what the skeptics "haven't" done with the tons of data and source code available to them. They haven't done *anything*.
If the "skeptics" were serious, they would have long ago performed a bunch of re-analyses showing how NASA/NOAA have gotten it wrong and published the results.
In one of the Sherlock Holmes tales, a crime was solved by inquiring about the "dog that didn't bark". In the case of climate skeptics though, you have dogs that do a lot of barking, but not much else.
The more I read of the emails, the more impressed I am with the scientists involved. It makes reading the comments by the denialists quite surreal. If you're not simply picking out a sentence here or there, you really get a feel for how the scientists perceive their own position, if nothing else. No admissions of guilt. If they're truly frauds, then they are completely unaware of the fact.
And as for their perception of folks like Steve McIntyre. Well, it starts out bemused but eventually becomes pure hate. And it's not like they hate him for showing them up; they hate him for getting in the way of real work being done; they hate him for pestering them so much that they consider it to be harassment; they hate him for being so unbearably wrong about most things and making mountains out of molehills. No, they're not obsessed with Steve McI; they really just want him to fuck off, now and forever, so they can get some damn work done.
These are not the emails of the guilty. You'll have to look elsewhere to find that.
No, they're not obsessed with Steve McI; they really just want him to fuck off, now and forever, so they can get some damn work done.
Yes.
If I may, I pointed this out years ago. Of course the Hero Stevie had to change the subject when I brought it up.
This is one of the strategies - flood the discussion with meaningless sh*t to waste time. I say to all of them and to the deniers and pseudoskeptics: f--k you, time-wasting vermin.
Best,
D
excuse my naivity, but is there anyone in the "sceptic" circle, who did not swallow this story with hook, line and sinker?
The truth is irresistible to them. Some of them write blogs, so any day now [1] we'll be reading coherent posts naming rogue scientists and stating the exact crimes for which they are accused, along with a precis of the evidence against them. McIntyre will probably be the first to do this, or Watts, on account both eschew innuendo and write all formal- and explicit-like. The evidence will be debated for a day or two but eventually the laughter will subside, scientists will return their ill-gotten tax monies, don parkas, and frog-march each other to prison.
[1] Never.
Apparently if the scientists in question told their adoring climate alarmists to go sit in the street and consume their own excrement they would do so gladly and proudly exclaim it's the proper thing to do.
Irrespective of the science of Climate Change, these scientists are clearly guilty of A) open manipulation of the peer-review process, B) flagrant disregard of the FOI laws and C) public incrimination of other scientists who don't fit their "narrative".
Most telling is Dr. Mann using his considerable public standing to vilify Steven McIntyre even when it's obvious he hasn't seen the data in question! (The tree ring fiasco). He's obviously still angry McIntyre found errors which disproved his first "hockey stick" graph.
And Dr. Jones telling the scientists to delete emails pertaining to the document written for the IPCC so they cannot be provided through FOIA! How on earth can the author of this article ignore this incredible breach of ethics and law?
If this was an experiment to see if pigs can fly it would not matter, but these very scientists are producing the key materials the entire world will base trillions of dollars of spending on and as such their behavior is beyond reprehensible and is very likely criminal.
It's disheartening to see so many articles from so-called "science" websites who apparently endorse this shoddy political manipulation of data.
JP, thanks for the laugh. It's always nice to gain insight into the insane mind.
One other thought before the denizens of this blog inevitably attack and insult me as a denier, idiot, right-winger or whatever. Just think about the long-term implications of the content of these emails.
Even if all the science is absolutely 100% correct, because the scientists in question have denied FOI requests and deleted documents, then it won't matter. Their ethical breaches could very likely cause the biggest loss of confidence the "green movement" has ever seen. And this does make me sad.
p.s. dhogaza, keep your blinders on dude. I'm not a climate change denier, I am an advocate of clear scientific principles. "The End justifies the Means" is a political philosphy, not a scientific one. Go read all these emails and tell me you are not shocked.
errrm.
I've lost count how many times I have read how some people would like Al Gore, Hansen and many others dead, locked up or hung etc.
Given the moronic abuse from those denier quarters, bordering on online violence in some cases and virtual dictatorship as well. I can't say i'm surprised that many scientists reveal that they are relieved when an opponent passes away.
It isn't exactly unusual.
JP:
>Even if all the science is absolutely 100% correct, because the scientists in question have denied FOI requests and deleted documents, then it won't matter. Their ethical breaches could very likely cause the biggest loss of confidence the "green movement" has ever seen. And this does make me sad.
Yes well, thank you for confirming the fact that the motives were political! and had no scientific merit.
JP:
Apparently if the scientists in question told their adoring climate alarmists to go sit in the street and consume their own excrement they would do so gladly and proudly exclaim it's the proper thing to do.
Well what a nice person you are. What sort of response do you expect to that sort of comment?
Sadly this is pretty typical of the science discussed by your sort, I have seen it all to often. Political posturing just to make your sad point.
because the scientists in question have denied FOI requests
Well, you obviously aren't too bright! You don't seem to understand, for example, that ICO denies FOI requests, not scientists. If a scientist refuses to comply with a request, their lack of compliance is catalogued and available online and action is taken against them for failing to meet their responsibilities under the act. If you wanted to, it would be the easiest thing in the world to identify which scientist failed to comply with which request. Carpe diem, idiot!
Even if all the science is absolutely 100% correct, because the scientists in question have denied FOI requests and deleted documents, then it won't matter.
so you are telling us, that even a 3°C temperature increase will not matter, because we read some unimportant e-mails? are you nuts?
Their ethical breaches could very likely cause the biggest loss of confidence the "green movement" has ever seen.
another person lecturing us on ethics, while he is reading STOLEN MAIL. absurd.
And this does make me sad.
i see. you have been crying all weekend.
Swindeled:
>... "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."
Well dear Swindy
Curve fitting has been discussed here before I seem to remember. There isn't enough information in that email snippet to determine why the comment was made. As Tim has shown in the past, using polynomials for curve fitting can give a false indication at the end and start of a curve. Other techniques probably do the same.
This would mean the last few points of data may have given a false impression to an audience. One that would show a decline when in fact there wasn't one.
The overall trend over decades may have been up. In any case if the scientist was presenting the graph, it would show the missing points and people would query it.
Another point of course is that the Hadcrut data shows the alleged drop in temperature, yet the CRU is the place that was hacked, despite providing evidence to support some deniers.
The other point is that we don't know if the period between data points was months or years.
Basically, you are grasping at straws based on little bits of incomplete info. If you do a shallow analysis of the email and you don't like the science, you can read whatever you like. I think you'll find that on RealClimate the scientists make these sort of assumptions and statements all the time (about leaving out data etc.) and it is public.
But the fact that it is a 'secret' email, somehow this is different??!
Really points to you as a victim really.
Meanwhile, in other [news](http://www.azstarnet.com/metro/317863), Mackie's main claim to spurious hockey stick data seems to have evaporated.
I must say, I'm impressed. These scientists can run and control a worldwide conspiracy of enormous complexity and scope with about six e-mails in twelve years. It must be a very well oiled machine.
lumimous
Reading the link it appears that 3.700 years ago there were warm conditions like now. That would have been the last spurt of the holocene climate optimum.
The trees at the top showed the recent growth because of the extra moisture from higher temperatures. No MWP?
Re: Trick
The "trick" discussion is getting a bit stale in favor of other emails, but here's another observation.
The following Google Scholar Search retrieves "about 19,400" uses of the word "trick" over the past 10 years in the "Engineering, Computer Science, and Mathamatics" category, which is presumably the catagory most relevent to the Climate Auditors' fields.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=trick+-%22ar+trick%22+-%22m+t…
(Some notable authors whose last names are "Trick" have been removed. Some non-relevant uses of the word remain, but I think the point is made.)
@El Gordo,
You say in response to yet another piece of science blowing big heaping holes into McIntyre's favorite hobby horse:
I have to wonder if you read the article? Because halfway through it if find the following:
It helps to read an article before you comment on it.
No MWP?
Culo d'Manteca
>Reading the link it appears that 3.700 years ago there were warm conditions like now. That would have been the last spurt of the holocene climate optimum.
Not exactly. Ring widths are similar to now. They aren't corrected for age. Rings are wider when the trees were younger.
>The trees at the top showed the recent growth because of the extra moisture from higher temperatures.
No. Because of the higher temperatures.
>No MWP?
Not in Southern California.
As Tim has shown in the past, using polynomials for curve fitting can give a false indication at the end and start of a curve.
Exactly.
See also:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/05/11/dangerous-curves/#more-1613
Leave out that middle one and I would have guessed you were talking about McIntyre. Oh wait. Change it to "abuse of FOI laws" and you would be.
Similam makes [this claim](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/on_those_stolen_cru_emails.php#…):
>*The lack of scientific support for Keith Briffa is clearly evident; no one wants to stand behind his 12-tree sample "trick".*
Similam bases his thinking on the tiny sample of cherry picked emails released. Brilliant.
Is Similam really saying he can gauge the level of the scientific views/support for anything at all based on a tiny bunch cherry picked emails?
Incredible, if you're not interested in the science I guess your reasoning suffers all sorts of distorions.
Jones tells Mann that the spatial extent of the MWP research is limited to the eastern US/N.Atlantic/European and Far East areas. Which explains why Southern California is not in the loop.
In the same email (11 August 2000) he solves my earlier confusion about the Thames freezing over.
'Frost fairs on the Thames in London occurred more readily because the tidal limit was at the old London bridge (the 5ft weir under it). The bridge was rebuilt around the 1840's and the frost fairs stopped.'
Wouldn't be ironic if this hacker was found to be a US citizen - he could claim to be suffering from Asperger's syndrome like Gary McKinnon.
FOIAs Auntie [15], yeah, and if you'd given me all your money when I asked for it I wouldn't have had to bop you over the head and take it.
el gordo [informs us](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/on_those_stolen_cru_emails.php#…) that Jones and Mann seek some science under the radar via secret emails into the minds of those who don't read their papers??
If Ben Santer and Phil Jones ever put out a book of their selected emails, I'd consider buying it. Those two manage to produce some Grade A snark!
One thing I can be sure of: this thievery has removed the gloves. From what I've read, the denialists have sneakily taken private emails in the hope of uncovering some kind of conspiracy only to discover that they're perceived as assholes and idiots - nothing more. Ouch.
Even if all the science is absolutely 100% correct, because the scientists in question have denied FOI requests and deleted documents, then it won't matter.
What a perfect slogan for the creationists ... oops ... gw denialists:
Even if the science is 100 percent correct, it doesn't matter.
Luminous wrote:
No MWP?
Not in Southern California.
Correct.
Remember, the Baliunas and Soon (BS) paper that "analyzed" the paleoclimate papers found the same thing.
What's this?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!? you exclaim?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!??!!?
Didn't BS go on a Heritage Victory Tour after they wrote a paper that "claimed" the MWP was global?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
Astute folk will remember that BS bullsh--ted the paper and even though they looked at the global reconstructions, they cherry-picked and didn't mention them in the write up and instead only focused on the local and regional papers, and Heritage trumpeted the cherry-pick.
And thus goes the meme, all over the denialosphere.
Denialists and pseudoskeptics: dishonest, lying hacks. And their Message Force Multipliers are credulous rubes.
Best,
D
It wasn't the scientists at CRU who denied FOI requests, it's the office that reviews FOI requests and determines whether or not they should be accepted or not that did so.
Not only did they did so, but when the denial was appealed, the official who was assigned to review the appeal also concluded the original rejection was warranted.
Why do you people lie like this? "scientists have denied FOI requests" is an easy lie to expose given that the whole history of McI's FOI requests have been published by McI himself.
Thanks for IJI, Sod, and BI for asking critical question about the credibility of the stolen/leaked documents. How on earth can anyone draw any conclusions if we don't know that the emails/documents are guenuine, unaltered, and provide a complete record of communications?
My blog post: [Hackers treated as credible sources of information (D'oh!)](http://newschoolsecurity.com/2009/11/hackers-treated-as-credible-source…)
This is a disaster for climatology.
It's interesting just how many comments this thread has generated. Try putting this stuff to people who have doubts. Tell them 'trick' isn't at all deceptive. Try saying that destroying data is transparent, try telling them stuffing editorial boards to prevent other views being aired is legitimate.
This is for these climate scientists and perhaps by association for the IPCC what "I did not have sex with that women" was for Bill Clinton.
It's a very sad day for environmentalists. Environmentalists trust has been betrayed.
It has no impact whatsoever on the science of climatology.
It's one more impediment to getting society to act upon the knowledge of climate that field of research has acquired, but it's not like those opposed to acting on that knowledge haven't been doing everything possible to convince the public to ignore it for a couple of decades.
Erm, data wasn't stolen. EMAILS were stolen.
You people suck. These emails were not 'hacked', by some 'hacker'... this was an inside job whistleblower.... and it will destroy, rightly, Phil Jones' career. And I'll be laughing all the way....
This blog is full of pigs. The mindless followers of the warmist religion truly live here don't they.
Man, my [killfile] is working overtime today!
Best,
D
Lol! But even then, I would respect McKinnon more, since UFOs are more likely than massive global Global Warming conspiracy.
Course, there may be such a conspiracy, but then the Earth itself is in on it too.
If the emails have been cherry picked then we can assume that there are a lot more. The assumption is that the site was hacked but maybe we have a mole in CRU. How much more do they have? Since CRU is funded by UK all the emails are public property.
You think you've got problems?
My hovercraft is full of eels.
94 Alex,
Email messages are only a small part of the hack.
The complete zip is 62 MB. Unzipped it's 168 MB, comprising
documents 158 MB
mail 10 MB
98 kent,
Of course they've been selected! 1,073 messages from a number of people (anyone got the number yet?) over 13+ years! Any reason to think there's any "worse" to come?
98 kent,
You might want to think about your last sentence. Just follow it through.
So are tanks. Go steal one and see how far that argument gets you with the judge.
RE95 etc... It strikes me that it would be a strange sort of whistleblower who released an entire fucking data file en masse on the web containing a hell of a lot of nothing alongside what is allegedly incriminating.
Kind of like if our friend at carbonfixated had blown the whistle on the Enlightonazi plot to tax gravity by releasing the complete works of Isaac Newton.
I checked the fonts used on the emails and the recent style of said fonts proves that they someone forged the emails. I believe it was the Texas National Guard. I will expect to be named Time magazine blogger of the year shortly.
So, I went to the site with the e-mails, and started reading until I ran into a reference to fraud in science. I continued in that thread for a ways and found a discussion among the scientists about how to expose the fraud. In the end, they decided the best response would be to double their efforts in a couple of areas and publish contrary data with contrary theory.
In short, it was scientists gone -- not wild, certainly -- civilized and honest.
There is some heavy irony, though. The alleged fraud was a paper by Douglass, and Singer, and others. The scientists were trying to figure out how best to get the truth out into science for discussion.
I suspect that if we read the actual stuff, science wins out again. That's why the rush to release the stuff in a way that makes it difficult to know what was said, or by whom -- giving maximum opportunity for the gullibles and denialists to use spin, before they get caught.
Finally! People are waking up to the gravity-ist lie!
We have been trying to expose this NASA round earth conspiracy for years now
http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php
Mass + MAAAGIC = Gravity!
Poor Kent writes:
>*If the emails have been cherry picked then we can assume that there are a lot more.*
That's correct Kent, and we can assume that those not presented do not support the agenda of those who published the emails. In fact, logically we might assume they do the opposite of support that agenda.
Then Kent writes:
>*The assumption is that the site was hacked but maybe we have a mole in CRU.*
Got any evidence Kent? How would a fantasy whistle blower supposedly get everyone else's emails?
Power Line had the best summary.
*98 Kent,
Actually Kent it could be that the universty's emails are not public property even with public funding. In the UK the Guardian newspapaper....oooh may a thousand fly ridden camels together spit on all its leftist, Fabian readers, has been running a campaign for over a year called, "Free our data" for just exactly that. Publicly funded info in the UK or info coming out of Gov bodies etc are not available under UK law, unlike the US and I suppose this applies to emails.
Of course being the leftist Guarding its campaign could just be a shabby 'trick' to help those conspiracists hide their emails from all those brave denialists
Tommy, Powerline? Surely you jest. If there is any "reverberation" it will be because the echo chamber is springing into action.
Thanks for the link Tommy. It made very funny reading and a good tutorial in how to write copy for right wing radio shock jocks
Ad hominem: very becoming of the faith-based AGW crowd.
Real scientists don't read hacked emails. Real scientists engage in ad hominem.
When will the rump wing dead-enders use ad hom correctly? Or is misusing it correct tactically and correct Englishly is immaterial to The Cause?
Best,
D
It was perfectly proper use of the term. There was no substantive argument against the points made in the article, just insults directed at the source.
The substantive arguments were made upthread. Look up and see what d-ckclueless 'swindled' tried and failed from his cut-paste from Powerline, and how quickly they disappeared.
That is: there is nothing of substance there. Or anywhere. Including your comments.
HTH.
Best.
D
It will be interesting to see what comes up in the code.
Yeah Tommy, the code!, we need the code that the email programs were written in.
And what about the thoughts of the evil scientists as they wrote the emails?! We need to do a FOI on their minds!
The best is actually not necessarily the "code", while that's a mess too, rather it's the comments in the code that tells a very interesting story...
Bra-vo!
Oh and why wouldn't everyone be happy if the earth wasn't headed to certain destruction with mass earthquakes, tidal waves of unusual size swallowing continents..
I like this one ... certainly worthy read for the Deltoids;
"If nothing else, what has already been revealed makes it clear that, regardless of whatever may be the real nature of AGW, the scientific proof for it is highly uncertain and conflicted. It is also clear that many of its leading proponents have been knowingly complicit in an ongoing scientific fraud the likes of which has never before been perpetrated. At his next public apology session the PM should feel a duty to add frightened children, coastal property owners, farmers, graziers, fishermen and climate sceptics to his list of those wronged." https://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2009/11/six-degrees-and…
Sarcasm aside, what is needed is transparency. That is the moral of this story as it was with the Yamal data. I still believe the weight of the evidence solidly supports global warming, but if there is nothing to fear, then there is nothing to hide. I don't think those investigating AGW have anything to fear aside from their own insularity. Put the information out there: if the data and code are public, it will hardly matter what climatologists say in private...it might even save them time fulfilling FOI requests.
Hey Deltoids - why not ask a Leyland Bro'?..."The only logical conclusion is that, since 2006, the weight of evidence goes against the (unproven) hypothesis that man-made greenhouse gases cause dangerous global warming."
http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2009/11/ending-climatema…
Lank, thanks for showing us the primary source documents that you rely on.
Still suffering from your nasty fetish I see. Still producing evidence free comments.
Reading the merangue ideas of the Denialati I am impressed by the depth to which they make mountains from molehills, and to which they tie themselves in Gordian knots of self-delusion.
I can't wait to see if Duffy and Comry-Thompson give this tea-cup some storm-time on Counterpoint in the coming weeks.
The e-mails are insignificant to political and scientific reality. AGW is dying as a concept. Cap-and-trade legislation is now off the table, and for good reasons. The link between our CO2 emissions and warming is not shown to be dangerous, if even present. Even with global increase of CO2, there is no warming the last decade. We cannot change cyclical temperature trends on our planet no matter how much some want to believe we can. As we see from comments here, these chicken-littles won't go away quietly even as their legs are cut out from under them.
Anyone care to say how this deliberate "hiding" of data is good science?
Tom,
Iâll look at what youâve said over the weekend re CCSP. I donât know the other panel members. Iâve not heard any more about it since agreeing a week ago. As for FOIA Sarah isnât technically employed by UEA and she will likely be paid by Manchester Metropolitan University. I wouldnât worry about the code. If FOIA does ever get used by anyone, there is also IPR to consider as well. Data is covered by all the agreements we sign with people, so I will be hiding behind them. Iâll be passing any requests onto the person at UEA who has been given a post to deal with them.
Cheers
Phil
HawkWatcher, thanks for yet another evidence free opinion piece.
So glad you've got your own little conviction and are keen to spread it regardless of the evidence that contradicts you.
I could speculate on where you get this utter tripe from, but instead why don't you share the source of this wisdom you are pushing.
Emails, shmemails. EU leaders are saying this outright:
New EU Head Blatantly Admits the Goal of One World Government
Bradley J. Fikes ask:
>Anyone care to say how this deliberate "hiding" of data is good science?
Well Brad, beside the point that you take a quote out of context to try and spin its meaning, the answers to your spun question [is here](http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/comm…)
And you could have found it your self if you were really curious.
Mike Smith at 120..."why wouldn't everyone be happy if the earth wasn't headed to certain destruction"
Well said - It took 120 posts for someone to hit the nail on the head.
The messages detailed in these emails show that many climate scientists have manipulated data and climate models to exaggerate and give false and alarming future temperature predictions. Now that this club has been exposed we should be very pleased that we can relax about CO2 and focus on real problems of population growth and our environment.
Nanny, interesting that you don't let [the facts](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/open_thread_35.php#comment-2093…) get in the way of your views:
>Thanks for the speech nanny, Pity you misrepresent what he said.
Global agreement about managing environmental costs is not global government.
But if misrepresenting people is what rocks your boat, God bless you and I hope he can heal you too.
Janet Akerman,
I gave you the entire email, so the quote could hardly be out of context. That's really weak.
And I already read your link -- it didn't answer the question about data hiding I raised ... Please copy and paste what you think is an answer to that specific email. The only discussion about "hiding" I saw in there was about a different email and different circumstances.
It would help not to be so defensive next time.
Lank writes:
>*detailed in these emails show that many climate scientists have manipulated data and climate models to exaggerate and give false and alarming future temperature predictions.*
Lank provide the specific emails/quotes/names that you base evidence for this wild claim. Otherwise you're [just continuing](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/aap_reports_from_the_future.php…) your turdphiling.
So, climate denialists are so incompetent at guerrilla warfare that they didn't know that there was a Freedom of Information Act process until the e-mails were leaked? Is that what these e-mails show?
Do a search for "Monckton." You'll see scientists discussing the claims of this guy -- the harshest term for him I've seen is "charlatan" -- and discussions as to which sets of real data, and which real studies, rebut and refute his claims.
Do a search for "Al Gore." Most of the hits are news or commentary articles passed to someone else. These scientists aren't conspiring with Al Gore, and aren't supporting his political work. They're happy someone from outside the science/research community pays them heed, but there is nothing unholy linking any of these people to Gore, nor Gore to them.
Do a search for "research grant." You'll see discussions about the paltry grants they actually get for grants, completely refuting one favored denialist claim that these guys are monkeying with the data in order to preserve their fat grants.
I used to leak stuff to news media professionally. One of the cardinal rules of leaking is that you leak stuff that makes your side look good as well as stuff that makes the other side look bad. One shouldn't leak material that paints your opponents as extremely ethical and cool in the face of stupid but very public attacks by charlatans (Monckton), or that shows them to be virtuously pursuing the truth for very little financial gain, or no financial game.
The denialists not only can't get any of the science right, they also can't leak straight. They threw a spanner into their own works.
Plus, maybe a couple will go to jail for it.
Denialists would do well to read All the President's Men. It's not the petty political stuff that you go to jail for -- it's the later actions to cover up and sabotage.
Lew Rockwell and the rest of the denialists deserve each other.
...even as their legs are cut from under them, yet still they survive for a little while longer.
How long before the msm pays some serious attention to this newsworthy story?
Brad, the weak out of context spin was in your question. Read it again and guess what I called you on.
Then read the link I gave you carefully,
>No doubt, instances of cherry-picked and poorly-worded âgotchaâ phrases will be pulled out of context. One example is worth mentioning quickly. Phil Jones in discussing the presentation of temperature reconstructions stated that âIâve just completed Mikeâs Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keithâs to hide the decline.â The paper in question is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) Nature paper on the original multiproxy temperature reconstruction, and the âtrickâ is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear. Scientists often use the term âtrickâ to refer to a âa good way to deal with a problemâ, rather than something that is âsecretâ, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all. As for the âdeclineâ, it is well known that Keith Briffaâs maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the âdivergence problemââsee e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommend not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while âhidingâ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is âhiddenâ in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens.
as I said, you could have found it your self if you were really curious.
el gordo,
Why don't you tell us the specifics that you think should be reported?
That a bunch of people on the internet think they've got some killer evidence to bring down the AGW conspiracy, but they just can't articulate the the charges yet. But they know they are right, they just need to find what they are right about.
Janet Akerman,
The chunk you gave me does not discuss the email or the "hiding" question, which referred to hiding data potentially under FOIA. The part you cited discusses Briffa and the tree-ring data, an entirely different subject.
Do you understand now?
Bradley,
He said the data was covered by prior agreements (of non-release), not that he was going to hide it.
[Kent opines](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/on_those_stolen_cru_emails.php#…):
Hmmmâ¦
Then why are public servant email accounts password-protected? Why is it considered an extremely serious offence to read colleagues emails? Why are emails routinely permitted to be deleted in the day-to-day running of public service â why not remove the 'delete' option from all email programs if the emails are "public property"?
Why is it that members of the public do not every day walk freely into the offices of government institutions and walk out with arm-loads of these "public" emails?
Given the billions of dollars of public subsidies of Big Oil, why do we not have the right to walk in to their offices and request all of their correspondence on efforts to avoid tax, on carbon emission regulation, on what they really think about the action of greenhouse gases, and on what the real known reserves of oil are?
And why do you confabulate government and non-government environments?
One could go on ad nauseum, but what's the point? It is clear that your logic doesn't pass even a pre-pubescent standard.
dhogaza:
Read the emails! Phil Jones personally talked to the people in charge of the FOI requests and "convinced" them McIntyre is "not the sort" of person who should have access and big surprise, they DENIED his request as recent as 2 weeks ago.
You want to protect these jerks that's your business, but try looking at the information available instead of marching like a lemming off a cliff.
Again, Mann, Jones, Briffa and a host of others have colluded to manipulate the peer review process, admit openly fabricating data and deny legitimate FOIA requests. If you are a scientist you should absolutely be pissed off at this breach of ethics. I expect this kind of crap from politicians, not from scientists.
I feel the most egregious thing of all has to be Dr. Phil Jones telling everyone to delete their emails just in case one of the FOIA requests gets granted. Unbelievable! CEO's in private industry have gone to jail for exactly that type of coverup.
I wouldn't care if none of these emails showed any wrong doing. Just the media attention the subject is doing will make people wonder and do research for themselves. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that co2 is not some poison gas. Plants Breath it. It is one of the 4 things needed for life on earth. Oxygen, water, sunlight, and CARBON. take one of these elements away and life as we know it goes with it.
Al gore didn't invent the Internet....but he did make up Global Warming.
Doug,
Bradley, He said the data was covered by prior agreements (of non-release), not that he was going to hide it.
He said he was going to be "hiding behind" the agreements.
Email evidence of a conspiracy. (Relax, it's humour)
http://myblahg.com/?p=5001
Brad, My Bad,
I've read too many trolls today.
Fighting FOI is not about science, its about policy. FOI can be a tool of harassment, but I still think FOI are necessary regardless of the harassment potential (I assume those scientist did too, until harassed).
I understand that these FOI were rejected by the office responsible for British FOI.
Regarding transparency in science, it should not be ad-hoc, what applies to one should apply to all. And a lot of science if now funded by IP, so there are legal questions of ownership. Not as simple as some wish it were.
Others may have more details.
JP@143
And no inner sceptic inside you asks:
"why didn't he delete his own mail?"
Janet,
Well, first of all, that isn't what the EU leader said. Try watching the video again.
Second of all, if the Global agreement, involves any political body overseeing with regulatory power, then yes, it is a global government.
Janet, thank you.
I'd like to see more sunlight here. One of the most important parts of science is letting the evidence be examined by skeptics. In the email I cited, the scientist plainly didn't want to let the information out, "hiding behind" the agreements, as he said.
There should be some provision that if you take public funds, your data will be made available to the public. This can be done by putting the information on the Web. That way, everyone can have it, with one data set, and minimal inconvenience to researchers.
Best,
Bradley
Bradley J. Fikes and a few others:
I have read the e-mails of Ben Santer getting seriously p.o'ed because of McIntyre's FOIA requests. You should try reading them, too. You will find the reason why the FOIA requests are not "legitimate", and why Jones tries "hiding behind" the agreements:
McIntyre requests data, demands codes, demands every single step in-between, while MOST of all that is freely available and published in the literature. Why is he demanding so much when anyone with sufficient understanding (ah, there's the rub, perhaps) can do it himself? As Santer also notes, he'd like to do some ACTUAL science, rather than continuously having to bother with frivolous FOIA requests for data that is already in the literature. The exchange further suggests they would have no problem with being audited, they just very strongly doubt McIntyre is the person to do so, considering he doesn't even spend one second on the fatally flawed paper Santer et al criticised, but instead starts to harass Santer for data and methods that, and I repeat, ARE FREELY AVAILABLE.
Well, Eamon,
Apparently Dr. Jones DID delete his email, it was Dr. Mann who dropped the ball:
http://www.anelegantchaos.org/cru/emails.php?eid=891&filename=121206312…
Guess he was too busy polishing his hockey stick :D
Brad, that's a defensible point of view, but 't must not be limted to what people on one issue. It should be the same for AGW as for Big Pharma, Agribusines/GMO etc.
Otherwise its a tool for attacking science which conflicts with interest of the most powerful, but absence of resort for science favoured by dominant industry.
It also has IP funding effects, resulting in the de-funding of vital work.
So more transparency is a good thing, but requires more funds.
Marco,
The RESULTS of the data are readily available, but not the techniques which would allow duplication of those results. And before you say the techniques are "privileged information", remember this is a public institution using public funds and as such are subject to FOIA requests.
Beyond McIntyre's FOIA request, there are several emails where Dr. Jones goes on about how to deny ANY FOIA requests. These guys didn't want anyone looking over their shoulder, that much is absolutely clear.
I would like to nominate tommy as Treasurer of the super genius league, because you always put the brightest lights in charge of finance. I'm being quite serious. Here are the funds, tommy.
Janet,
Of course this rule should be for all sciences -- I never thought it would be just for AGW.
Judith Curry over at Climate Audit has an interesting article, that kind of splits the difference. She says the AGW supporters were unjustly attacked, but then overreacted and retreated into 'tribalism' in which people were good or bad.
She also comes out strongly for data transparency.
In summary, the problem seems to be that the circling of the wagons strategy developed by small groups of climate researchers in response to the politically motivated attacks against climate science are now being used against other climate researchers and the more technical blogs (e.g. Climateaudit, Lucia, etc). Particularly on a topic of such great public relevance, scientists need to consider carefully skeptical arguments and either rebut them or learn from them. Trying to suppress them or discredit the skeptical researcher or blogger is not an ethical strategy and one that will backfire in the long run. I have some sympathy for Phil Jonesâ concern of not wanting to lose control of his personal research agenda by having to take the time to respond to all the queries and requests regarding his dataset, but the receipt of large amounts of public funding pretty much obligates CRU to respond to these requests. The number of such requests would be drastically diminished if all relevant and available data and metadata were made publicly accessible, and if requests from Steve McIntyre were honored (I assume that many spurious requests have been made to support Steve McIntyreâs request, and these would all disappear).
Nanny, writes:
>If the Global agreement, involves any political body overseeing with regulatory power, then yes, it is a global government.
Well Nanny, by your definition, the UN is global government, as is the World Court, the WTO, the IMF, and many more.
But of course they are not, the are either a union of government's, or a bunch of inter-government treaties, with agreed regulators.
I'd personally like to change some, but in a semi-democracy I go along with the some decisions that the majority vote for (or in some cases, fail to vote against).
I want internalisation of as much of externalised costs as possible, don't you?
Consequently I want a price on carbon, and I want it enforced.
Anyone care to say how this deliberate "hiding" of data is good science?
When the primary objective of the request is harrassment.
I actually do quite a bit of FOIA work and know the relevant laws and standards (in Maine, USA, under the state FOIA law, which is modelled on the national law).
First, in the case of extremely data hungry requests which may take 100s of hours to comply with, the FOIA'd agency can charge for search fees and copying fees. This is based on a) to encourage the requester to narrow their request to exactly the material desired and prevent wholesale "fishing expeditions" b) to adequately compensate staff for lost time doing their real job while complying with requests c) to dissuade people from making onerous, lengthy requests purely for the purposes of harrassment and amateurish fact-free conspiracy theories.
Mr. Watts, I appreciate the difficulty you outline in complying with FOIA requests, but surely it's to be expected when you are working on research which is the underpinning for literally Trillions of dollars in funding for the UN and it's hundreds of members. This is not endangered lizard research in Barton Springs, this is possibly the biggest piece of research since the dawn of man. The results of this research simply must be the most transparent of any every done.
@160
Your concern is noted.
Not if it involves politicians and bureaucrats. Then you'll just get the usual big-corporation favoritism, cronyism, bureaucratic bungling, back-room deals that squash the little guys, etc... etc...
The results of this research simply must be the most transparent of any ever done.
The results are transparent -- unless you are a conspiracy theorist who believes that scientists are literally making @##$% up in a grand, secret conspiracy to enslave the world and create a fascist, one world government. And because the temperature data generated by CRU is consistent with that produced by other, independent agencies, this must mean that every single data producing entity on the issue of climate is all conspiring together to fabricate evidence to produce a predetermined outcome.
Do you understand that because CRU's data is consistent with all the others, it means either everyone is in on the conspiracy or it means there isn't one?
That's why I classify McIntyre et al's request as harrassment.
This is how we know you're an idiot. In your Bizarro fantasy world, when chickens have their legs cut off, they go away quietly. It is impossible to take you seriously.
>The RESULTS of the data are readily available, but not the techniques which would allow duplication of those results.
The techniques are readily available. They are what scientists go to school to learn.
Where did all these clueless idiots come from?
>The RESULTS of the data are readily available, but not the techniques which would allow duplication of those results.
The techniques are readily available. They are what scientists go to school to learn.
Whaere do all these clueless idiots come from?
Apparently, libertarians "internalize" externalities the old fashioned way: by swapping bullets.
Back in reality, I just had the air-conditioning in my car recharged. The new-fangled freon replacement cost $10 and the labor was about $50. Cranks told us it would cost "thousands". I'm sure now they'll tell us that the Montreal protocol was still a mistake because we could have saved $5 had it not been for the "big-corporation favoritism, cronyism, bureaucratic bungling, and back room deals." Besides, the Ozone hole-scare is still a myth.
The RESULTS of the data are readily available, but not the techniques which would allow duplication of those results.
Duplication is for paranoids, replication is for scientists. Besides, denialists have never contributed to the code or data that is available.
Your outrage is noted, but you know, people who believe in science have had to deal for years with outright climate frauds and charlatans, for whose malfeasance theyâve documented the incontrovertible evidence. Yet theyâve never been in all that time as hysterical as you denialists are today and yesterday. I can scarcely follow two links on the Internet today without being mobbed by deeply stupid oil spivs projecting their religious fervor onto climate scientists and asserting âevidenceâ from between the words of emails they can barely understand. I mean this is some creepy Salem-type delirium that exceeds birthers, teabaggers, creationists, or any other crap the pomo right has spawned to date. Except for Al Gore, Soros, and ACORN, thereâs just something fucked up wrong with your country. I hope Obama raises your taxes.
An adequate intake of fats is necessary for humans to stay alive. If we didn't eat any fats at all, we would die. Therefore, it is wrong to call high-fat food unhealthy and the supposed health risks of obesity are a MALICIOUS MYTH made up by scientists.
Water is a necessity of life. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realise that without water, humans die within a few days. Therefore, the notion that one can drink 'too much' water, resulting in hyponatremia, is utterly silly.
It seems to me that if McIntyre et al. were truly interested in the quality of the techniques used by CRU to analyze the raw temperature data, they could simply use the same techniques as described on any set of "dummy data" and then do the analysis. If the techniques produced spurious results, it would show up, since you self-generated the raw "dummy data" that you processed and know exactly what it is.
What great fun.
All this debate already and the other half of the rip to come (----we release a random selection-----).
I wonder if they ripped GISS as well?
The Knights of Nihee from the Holy Grail comes to mind.
Don't be a dummy Douglas.
The denialists won't be happy till they have the real 'raw data' - ie. the satellite signals for temp measuremnts beamed directly through their thick skulls. Even then they'll blame everyone else when they can't 'see' the data.
>>I want internalisation of as much of externalised costs as possible, don't you?
Nanny replys:
>Not if it involves politicians and bureaucrats. Then you'll just get the usual big-corporation favoritism, cronyism, bureaucratic bungling, back-room deals that squash the little guys, etc... etc...
Nanny your describe what we get now following 30 years of deregulation, producing government disproportionately controlled by concentrated wealth.
I wonder if Jones and the others lawyered up, yet?
ali baba
To put it bluntly, one of us is delusional and I don't fancy your chances.
@Con
> Deleting scientific data and asking others to do the same is a crime.
Nice smear, shame about 2 things - what you describe is not a crime, and in any event that's not what happened.
However, beating your wife is a crime - when did you stop doing that?
Ali Baba,
el gordo has a track record here, I think he's just given you the kiss of life.
#15: "If the people at CRU had handed over the data as per the original FOI requests no data would have had to be stolen."
Yep, and if you'd just handed over your credit card and the cash as the blaggers asked, they wouldn't have kicked seven types of sh!t out of you.
Per-leease. Is this the best you can do?
sod (13): "excuse my naivity, but is there anyone in the "sceptic" circle, who did not swallow this story with hook, line and sinker?"
Precisely. At the very point the "sceptics" should have lived up to their name, their much-professed "'onest guv, I'm only serchin' fer the troof, innit" went completely AWOL. As Bernard quoted from the Great Bard, "...a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing"
@ el gordo
> How long before the msm pays some serious attention to this newsworthy story?
Oh wow, got to love that. Paint yourself as the victim there, in spite of the fact that this has been in national media (newspaper, radio and television) in the UK since the story broke. Yeah, one big leftists-control-the-media conspiracy there...
Fill the media with substanceless conspiracy smears then complain that the smears aren't getting enough coverage due to further conspiracies. Classy.
simulacrum (17): "actually there was a lot of scepticism among sceptics, who spent the first hours anti-virus scanning the zip file and wondering at the Russian (ftp) connection."
Oh yeah, those sceptics, they really waxed sceptical as they sceptically typed millions of posts on sceptical websites all over the place, sceptically quoting illegally hacked files disseminated illegally by third parties quoting emails whose context they knew nothing about and whose veracity they couldn't demonstrate, my didn't they flex their over-developed scepticism.
"Then news came out that UEA had been hacked and various people (Gavin Schmitt for example) have validated that from what they've seen, the emails are genuine."
Well for a start it was clear the hack claimed stated the files were from UEA, so clearly you can't read properly. Nor can you spel propally - it's Schmidt, not Schmitt. If you can't get a well-known scientist's name right off their website, what chance any of your comments on more significant issues are even in the same ball-park?
"But this is a whistleblower situation where the greater good is served by this transparency"
That you regard some hacker who illegally copies data off the UEA server as a "whistleblower" serving "the greater good" says more about your ethics than anything else, and conveniently saves me the bother of bothering with any more of your posts, save to say that unless and until you and your "sceptical" mates get out of bed early enough and get your sh!t together to produce a decent alternative hypothesis that explains the mechanisms underlying the current global mean temperature increase, your opinions are even less interesting and relevant to modern society than anaglypta wallpaper.
Wow, this group has certainly circled its wagons nicely.
Read the emails to understand how well McIntyre understands the data and the code. He understands Yamal better than they do.
Read Jean S' post on CA to understand exactly what Mann's "trick" is, with full explanation. Why didn't RC do that? Because it is embarassing to the Team. (The "trick" is most definitely unethical hiding, not simply an elegant method.)
Read Curry at CA to understand how seriously non-Team scientists take the Team's unethical behavior. Their wanton manipulation of the peer reviewed publishing process cannot be allowed to stand. Why aren't y'all up in arms? If the people in power were "denialists" you'd be all over this... yet science should be about truth not political power.
Every hour you defend the Team, you lose credibility on this.
Does anyone here understand the difference between a whistleblower and a thief? Try thinking about this as an act of civil disobedience; that might be more familiar.
Young scientists are starting to look at this and ask: "why should I go into science if the Powers That Be will destroy my best work if it doesn't agree with their preconceived notions?"
MrPete, I do understand the difference between theft and whistleblowing, and the fact that you and the rest of the denialists support criminal conduct is quite telling.
What is unfortunate is that young scientists may well be looking at this and wondering if climate science is the right filed if they are going to be harassed and smeared by denialists and have personal communications stolen. But that does matter to you because climate scientists are the enemy to you and McIntyre.
TS (6): "IMO it's extremely unlikely that these are a random selection..."
That's understating it somewhat. In their untramelled and unseemly stampede to get to the "juice", the "sceptics" conveniently forgot to apply even the least measure of that quality they're always bragging about - sceptical thought. "How do we know this stuff isn't fake? How do we know the motives of the unknown person(s) who selected these files? How do we know this is truly a "random" selection? Even if it is random, how do we know this selection is representative? Is there more extensive context to all this we don't know about or aren't being told?" These are some of the questions the "sceptics", the "searchers for the real truth" either forgot to ask or (conveniently) forgot about.
And they think they've found something revealing. Gits.
> "There should be some provision that if you take public funds, your data will be made available to the public."
Or, in other words, publicly funded science should be made impossible.
This is the denialist's long-term aim.
MrPete (182): "Every hour you defend the Team, you lose credibility on this."
"Credibility"? Ever heard of the word "hypocrite"?
"Does anyone here understand the difference between a whistleblower and a thief?"
Perfectly thanks. Evidently you don't.
"Try thinking about this as an act of civil disobedience; that might be more familiar."
Oh OK, so let me see if I've got this right. I can get someone to hack your server, download all your business emails for the last 13 years, post a selection of the files I've illegally obtained on the interdweeb, claim the selection is "random" (and thus imply they're representative of the whole), then attempt to destroy your business and public reputation by claiming you're a fraudulent so-and-so who deliberately "hid the truth", and all the while I am merely exercising my right to civil disobedience, not acting like a common-or-garden variety criminal.
Have I got that right?
Whilst all of the Denialati Neroes fiddle over the non-scientific event that is the crime of theft from UEA, it seems that the planet is burning slightly warmer than previously thought.
On the ABC's PM program this afternoon there was [a segment on the more rapid loss of eastern Anarctic ice than expected](http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2009/s2751232.htm). The Nature Geoscience advance online publication is [here](http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/ngeo694.html).
Let's see the spin on this one.
I'm looking forward to McIntyre challenging Jones face-to-face - and Jones providing a similar response to the one [Buzz Aldrin gave to one of his 'fans'](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUI36tPKDg4).
136 el gordo: "How long before the msm pays some serious attention to this newsworthy story?"
Is this the same el gordo who said "The story is gaining attention in the msm" not two days ago? Naaahh, can't be...
Was irritated to hear the handling of this on the BBC's Today programme on Radio 4 this morning.
Who did they have on but Nigel Lawson, who claimed to be "open-minded" about the science, but sceptical about policy - and then proceeded to trot out the claim of no warming this century, and proceed with a no-smoke-without-fire line calling for public enquiry into possible scientific wrongdoing. And surprise surprise his book (on sale now) was mentioned.
At least they didn't have him unopposed like Plimer, and they got Andrew Watson on (who did his best, but its so hard to counter the amount of smears that can be trotted out in thirty seconds, when given thirty seconds to respond).
Ho hum.
I suspect that from the denialists' point of view, this is a feature not a bug.
Yep, indeedy.
I've had to blow a whistle in my time, over extensive data fabrication by a technician in a lab where I worked.
And let me tell you, my revelation did not require that I somehow had to hack into the email and the data records of the entire department where I worked. Why would any whistleblower do that, and indeed, how could any mere whistleblower do such?!
The very fact that the hack garnered all of the electronic records for the department at UEA shows that it is an external job (if nothing else, no internal source would be so stupid as to leave certain trails to their involvement). The hack is a felony, it is being investigated by the police (hopefully including Scotland Yard and Interpol if necessary), and it is most certainly ideologically-driven, probably in no small part by those who stand to lose at Copenhagen if the world actually does decide to hold polluters to account.
MrPete, it seems that you have not a clue about what real whistleblowing is. Oh, and as an aside, Jean S's effort at Climate Audit is a more egregious example of [data laundering](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/aap_reports_from_the_future.php…) than anything that you might imagine that the UEA team was involved with.
Sadly for you, science and understanding are not on your side. Cluelessness certainly is though - in fact, I'd say that you and it are conjoined...
Mr Pete writes:
>Wow, this group has certainly circled its wagons nicely.
Mr Pete code for:
*Wow you people certainly ask for the evidence, you don't accept baseless smears with out asking for the detail.*
Mr Pete writes:
>Every hour you defend the Team, you lose credibility on this.
Mr Pete Code for:
*If you keep asking for the facts and details and don't start accepting the trash talk, then you are really disagreeing with my POV.*
Mr Pete writes:
Read some people on CA for the truth.
Mr Pete code for:
*Blog science is tops, forget peer review, fact checking and the basic scientific method, the key to science in view is find someone on the internet who says what I want to hear.*
Mr Pete writes, "Try thinking about this as an act of civil disobedience; that might be more familiar."
In pacifist terms, the act of civil disobedience is to disobey an unjust law and suffer the consequences of the act to highlight the injustice. Only when the perps step forward and allow themselves to be prosecuted will I think about this as "civil disobedience".
@ el gordo
How long before the msm pays some serious attention to this newsworthy story?
Strangely, I kinda agree with el gordo. The slimy b**tards at the Australian put their best 'science writer' on it today ... a heavy hitter who could interpret what it all meant and could be trusted to look at the UEA hack with a clear and knowledgable eye ... NOT.
Taking a break from the social pages we get a mindlessly shallow piece from Caroline Overington that predictably concludes with some snarky shite about Mann's comments on Daly's death.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/hackers-expose-climate-braw…
Why wouldn't they use Leigh Dayton or Asa Wahlquist who actually know something about AGW ?
Do you think, maybe, here in Oz we did something really bad a long time ago ... and for our sins are now cursed with the shittiest national newspaper on the planet ?? F.F.S!!
Hmmm...
[Lateline](http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/) just had a piece about the CRU hack, and bizarrely gave Andrew Bolt the starring role as the representative of the Denialati - with almost no whimper of challenge to his comments.
Tim Flannery was interviewed immediately afterward, but even ol' Tim let a few slip to the keeper: his reply to a question about 'cooling since 1998' did not include any mention of the factors that elevated global temperatures in that year, nor any mention of the factors such as La Nina and the solar minimum that might create the 'plateau' since. Nor did he mention that 1998 has since been equalled, or beaten, depending on which dataset is referred to.
It's a bit sad really, because I reckon that any but the most denying of the lay audience could have understood the relatively simply concept that 1998 is simply a noisy peak in a trend, and that its presence does not alter the implication of the trend. If Flannery had pointed out that such highs and lows are part and parcel for any short interval of a longer-term trend I am sure that most open-minded folk would have understood.
Anyway, the transcripts and videos should be up tomorrow.
the Australian is taking a ["fair and balance" look](http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/hot-and-bothered/story-e6…) at the e-mail story.
i think they dug up every single sceptic they could find, for a comment. pretty impressive reporting, as always.
"The techniques are readily available. They are what scientists go to school to learn."
Wow. I wasn't aware fraud was a legitimate scientific principle. They teach that in school do they?
The techniques ARE NOT readily available to duplicate Mann's results with the raw data. If you've followed this at all you know this.
wow, two "fair and balanced" articles, in two days. the australian rules..
Two emails: In the first, Michael Mann nicely describes the role of skeptics and peer review. In the second, Phil Jones talks about rigging the peer review process to keep out skeptical papers.
How can this be ethical science?
Michael Mann to Andrew Revkin
"Skepticism is essential
for the functioning of science. It yields an erratic path towards eventual truth. But legitimate scientific skepticism is exercised through formal scientific circles, in particular the peer review process. A necessary though not in general sufficient condition
for taking a scientific criticism seriously is that it has passed through the legitimate scientific peer review process. those such as McIntyre who operate almost entirely outside
of this system are not to be trusted."
Phil Jones to Michael Mann
"The other paper by MM is just garbage - as you knew. De Freitas again. Pielke is also losing all credibility as well by replying to the mad Finn as well - frequently as I see
it.I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is !
144 DC1,
This is surely something that belongs in Denial Depot. Or is it just *gross* stupidity?
How can this be ethical science?
i want to here you say this again, in a courtroom. and you will be waving the STOLEN MAIL, that is your evidence, in the air.
pure comedy. (ps: thanks for the "the office uk" reference above. Gareth is the perfect image of the average sceptic)
@Bradley J. Fikes
Are you serious? All the second quote is missing is a great big winking smiley face at the end. You'd have to be pathologically determined to find *something* to take offence at in these emails to be at all concerned by that.
This is your evidence of rigging the peer review process? Describing junk papers as the junk they are and making fun of them? Quick, call the thought police!
sod,
That's not an answer, that's an evasion. Let's hear your evaluation of the ethics of rigging peer review like Phil Jones described.
Dave,
This is your evidence of rigging the peer review process? Describing junk papers as the junk they are and making fun of them? Quick, call the thought police!
"Kevin and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is !
Care to describe how that is ethical?
>To put it bluntly, one of us is delusional and I don't fancy your chances.
Cesos Mantequilla, you have a future in stand-up.
192 Bernard,
"...all of the electronic records for the department". How do we know? We've only seen 168 MB so far. We don't know how much more is out there, only that *some* selection has been done to produce the 168 MB.
>The techniques ARE NOT readily available to duplicate Mann's results with the raw data. If you've followed this at all you know this.
>Posted by: JP | November 23, 2009 8:29 AM
Then how do you explain Amman & Wahl's ability to duplicate them? Not only that, but duplicate McKittrick & McIntyre's erroneous, mistake ridden attempt to duplicate them?
JP@155: there is a good reason I referred to Santer et al. Both the raw data and the methodology was available and described. Yet, McIntyre decided to harass Santer anyway.
The Jones-data is indeed a result. The result of raw data given to Jones with restrictions as to its use and sharing. Giving it to others who clearly do not have the intentions the data is to be used for (McIntyre even openly stated it is not his intention to make a temperature chronology! Unless he get paid to do so...), would be a violation of these imposed restrictions.
How would you feel if somebody walks into the local town hall and demands all the information they have about you. Including that of your local physician and the like (since we're talking the UK, the health service providers are government employees). Public property, regardless of the promise of the government to not divulge this information to anyone who is not entitled, and where entitled means a very restrictive group of people. Simple FOIA request, would you support that one? Followed by exposure of all your illnesses, run-ins with authorities, every detail the government has logged, on a website, with the explicit aim to enlarge every tiny detail into a HUGE scandal. Somehow I strongly doubt you would be very happy about that, and fight it all the way.
Hang on... RIGGING the peer-review process? You are confusing issues, Bradley.
If scientifically suspect articles are consistently getting through to certain journals (E&E in the above case, I recall offhand), then it's entirely fair to argue that those journals are not adequately peer-reviewed, and should not appear in a summary of the science. Which is what IPCC AR4 was.
Now, tell me this. Did Phil Jones have ultimate say into what went in and what stayed out of the final IPCC report? And if not, how the hell do they declare, rather than argue, what is defined as peer-reviewed literature? And how the hell do they have the power to 'rig' peer review?
Clutching at straws, really.
#210 should read: "...and papers published by those journals should not appear..."
MrPete@182: McIntyre understood Yamal better? That's a good one, considering that Briffa demolished just about any and all claims. Delayed Oscillator takes it even further
http://delayedoscillator.wordpress.com/
(scroll down to find the many blogs on Yamal).
Of course, since you are an avid CA believer, you more than likely follow the two-step rule:
1. McIntyre is always right.
2. In case he is not, rule one applies.
@200, Bradley J. Fikes:
You conveniently forget the manipulation of the peer-review process by De Freitas. Jones at worst tries to manipulate the process back to its original: everyone treated the same, you look for experts in the field to review the paper, not for people who will review the paper and will approve of its finding regardless of any flaws in the methodology.
... even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is !
Utter corruption!
Oh, looky:
Mr Pete is here.
Say, buddy, how is your paper coming that will sink The Team? Will it torpedo their little red wagon?
Are you going to publish it in the new CA (Chorus, Amen) journal Galileo: The Journal of the NewScience?
No?
Why is it that denialists and pseudoskeptics can't collect their own data and publish the results?
Is it because they don't have sh*t?
Awwwww. I hope their feewings aren't hurt as their brains contort to deny this bit of reality.
Best,
D
My favorite line in this satire was delivered by Kevin Trenberth:
"The fact is that we canât account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we canât."
This one line epitomizes the fear of being wrong about AGW, which can easily be confirmed by reading comments on sites like this...
If the earth's climate doesn't cooperate with climate model projections and peer reviewed theories, then the credibility and reputations of many scientists and their affiliated organizations are at stake.
This would be worse than a travesty, it would forever leave a stain on the scientific community and bring to light the ideologies, politics, egos, bias, monetary forces and marketing techniques behind creating a consensus to sell societal change.
Question: If this "lack of warming" were to continue unaccounted for the next 18 years or so, would this travesty then become a disaster?
Dano,
I'm afraid Mr. Pete's Starbuck's has grown cold.
Betula,
Still projecting your neuroses, i see.
@Bradley J. Fikes
> Care to describe how that is ethical?
Care to describe how it is not? Please point to the precise parts that are evidence that unethical behaviour took place, especially given that this is a response to a blatant manipulation of the peer-review process in an attempt to lend a gloss of credibility to junk science. Please explain why it would be unethical to discuss (remember - this is a discussion, not evidence of any subsequent action) potentially tightening the rules of conduct to prevent such a farce from being lent undue weight. Why is a *discussion* of a *possible* change to the rules to avoid *abuse* of the rules by other parties prima facie evidence of an ethics violation? In detail please - just pointing at an email and saying "there you go" is childish.
While you're at it, please explain how it is ethical to use a *stolen, private email*, stripped of its context as a smear on someone with no evidence of any wrongdoing.
Ironic that the denialists are up in arms about their ever-so-slightly flimsy evidence of manipulation of data at CRU, yet I don't know of a single one of them who spoke out against Ian Plimer's manipulation and misrepresentation of his sources in Heaven and Earth.
Betula,
The fact is that the problem Trenberth was agonizing over could have been obviated in [2003](http://www.searchmagazine.org/Archives/Back%20Issues/2008%20November-De…) but for the intransigence of the __BU__ll__SH__it administration.
Exactly. Thoreau was not named "anonymous". Nor was Ghandi. Nor was MLK.
Each stepped forward and was willing to go to jail for their actions.
Mr. Pete's "heroes" are anonymous cowards.
Ironic that the denialists are up in arms about their ever-so-slightly flimsy evidence of manipulation of data at CRU, yet I don't know of a single one of them who spoke out against Ian Plimer's manipulation and misrepresentation of his sources in Heaven and Earth.
lord, lord, lord.
Lordy! What would they do without manipulation? TGGWS is nothing but distortion! That is their Modus Operandi. Don't take that away from them.
Best,
D
220 lord_sidcup,
Do they ever show any scepticism (the real kind) over anything, no matter how obviously dishonest or cretinous, as long as it attacks climate science? After all, (I repeat yet again) Plimer's book contains claims too dishonest even for Durkin's TGWWS, the previous benchmark for dishonesty.
The fact is that we canât account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we canât.
Be sure of your theory before implementing it us public policy!
What happens if the cooling continues until 2030 to the temperatures of the 1970s?
em! Dirty Laundry indeed!
Shorter "con":
If we're 90% sure about something, then we should hedge out bets on the other 10%.
* * *
Meanwhile, the plot thickens:
> Can you reveal more about the attempt to upload the file to RealClimate? Did the cracker crack into realclimate.org too, or is there already a publicized feature on realclimate.org allowing third parties to upload data? Where did the upload come from? etc.
> -- bi [i.e. me]
> [Response: I was wondering when someone would ask. It was a hack into our server around 6am Tuesday. The IP address was from a computer in Turkey. - gavin]
Hmm. Turkey. RealClimate crack. I think the "disgruntled whistleblower from the inside" theory is becoming a bit hard to maintain...
@con:
You fail again in the context. Trenberth is discussing a complex climate model that has troubles modeling some short-term variations. There is no doubt on the theory. None.
Marco
If there was no doubt in the theory, why is this difference between projection and observation?
IPCC projection is invalid!
@229 Marco
Clicks link...
> IPCC Projections Disproved by Girma Orssengo, MASc. PhD
Bwahahahahahahahahhhhahahaha
(pause for deep intake of breath)
Ahahahahaahahahaaa
(Sits down, wipes tear from eye)
Thanks, I haven't laughed that hard in *ages*. Probably not since Girma claimed that the moon sucked the sea away from the earth's surface, leaving a vacuum underneath.
Apologies Marco, I did of course mean @229 con
Difficult to type when your sides have split.
Dave
The graph is from IPCC, the observation is from HadCRU. What is wrong with Orssengo's chart posted @229?
Bradley queries:
What's unethical about stepping on cockroaches?
LB states....
"The fact is that the problem Trenberth was agonizing over could have been obviated in 2003 but for the intransigence of the BUllSHit administration"
Ah yes, "could have".
Back to speculating about the results of something that didn't happen.
The word travesty comes to mind.
>The graph is from IPCC, the observation is from HadCRU. What is wrong with Orssengo's chart posted @229?
>Posted by: con | November 23, 2009 12:16 PM
You mean besides the cherry-picked [end-point](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1990/plot/hadcrut3vgl…)?
Bradley J. Fikes confuses inclusion of garbage with proper ethics. Let me just re-quote the start of that email for you again:
Quite. The ethical thing to do is include something that you think is garbage. Garbage is ethically positive. One more time:
Good ol' garbage. Ethically, garbage is superior. Just ask Bradley J. Fikes. He loves garbage. And again:
If I were a scientist and I was working on a very important document and some asshole buffoon was trying to inject garbage into it, I shouldn't try to keep the garbage out. Garbage good. Garbage real good!
Garbage.
A few observations that might be helpful.
1. For the last two weeks I have going through a 3 foot high stack of emails from a FOIA request my group, Friends of Sebago Lake, issued to the Portland (Maine) Water District regarding their water quality program in Sebago Lake, Maine. Most of them deal with some fairly persnickety issues of statistical analysis of various parameters and whether they show or do show a long-term trend of declining water quality. Like the CRU emails, they are from water quality analysts and are brief and cryptic, since they all know the subject extremely well. Without a very detailed understanding of the science and the specific issues at hand, and the entire history of the proceeding, and by reading and understanding all of the 500 pages of emails and their correct sequence, it is virtually impossible to figure out exactly what each email actually means. And, by the same token, it is extremely easy to misinterpret what they actually mean.
2. Whenever we FOIA a public agency, I automatically assume that if there were any true "smoking guns" in the files that clearly implicated the writer with illegal or unethical behavior, they would delete them and take the risk of getting caught deleting them (which is extremely hard to prove) rather than produce them and face the almost certain fate of professional embarrassment and censure. I also know that, as agencies get FOIA'd more and more, when agency staff decide to discuss something with a colleague that they do not want coughed up in a FOIA request, they discuss it in person or over the phone, leaving no paper trail. I have seen this often, ie. an email that says, "Let's talk about XXX over the phone or set up a meeting." This is usually a tell that the subject is something they would rather not commit to electronic storage. So, in general, when we do a FOIA request I do not expect to see the type of "earthshaking, definitive proof of conspiracy" emails that amateur sleuths believe they will uncover by filing a FOIA. You will either get a sanitized document set, a document set sanitized by workers not commiting sensitive opinions to paper, or a document set that shows the truth, ie. that there never was any vast conspiracy to begin with. This is just the nature of the beast.
3. Lastly, on this specific stolen document dump, it is axiomatic that if the accusation were true that CRU staff have purposely skewed and falsified raw temperature data, their final product should be significantly different from others compiling similar data. To my understanding the CRU results do not diverge significantly from that produced by other, independent entities. This must mean that either the CRU have not cooked the books, or that every other entity is cooking the books in exactly the same way and they are all in one ginormous, collective conspiracy to deceive and befuddle. And the creationist/denialists (why bother separating them?) assert that based on no evidence, Occam's Razor logically points to a vast worldwide conspiracy.
Why am I not surprised?
Quite. The ethical thing to do is include something that you think is garbage. Garbage is ethically positive. One more time...
Good ol' garbage. Ethically, garbage is superior. Just ask Bradley J. Fikes. He loves garbage. If I were a scientist and I was working on a very important document and some asshole buffoon was trying to inject garbage into it, I shouldn't try to keep the garbage out. Garbage good. Garbage real good!
Oscar the Grouch has a climate degree? Who knew?
Best,
D
Here's part of a comment I saw on another post on this topic:
There are dozens of emails that actively encourage people to manipulate data, other scientists or both. There are even some that encourage gross violations of the law to get out from under pesky FOIA requests.
This allegation was not supported by any specific quote from any email or other document. And it raises a question that I'm sure the denialists will be eager to avoid answering: if the emails contain evidence of any criminal conspiracy, why weren't they forwarded to the appropriate authorities, instead of to the blogsphere? If they were forwarded, where's the documentation of said authorities' response? If not, why not?
This is an example of a bluff we'll be seeing a lot of: the denialists claim they're in possession of stolen emails proving all sorts of incriminating shit, but so far, their claims are all noise and no specific citations, references, or statements to back any of it up.
This is an example of a bluff we'll be seeing a lot of: the denialists claim they're in possession of stolen emails proving all sorts of incriminating shit, but so far, their claims are all noise and no specific citations, references, or statements to back any of it up.
Yes.
Call them on it when used. Ask for specifics. As we see all over this thread, they fold when you call their bluff.
Just because they jump up and down and ululate and point doesn't mean anything.
Best,
D
@232 con
> The graph is from IPCC, the observation is from HadCRU. What is wrong with Orssengo's chart posted @229?
What, you mean apart from the really obvious stuff like taking a smoothed curve and then tacking some childish dot-to-dot idiocy at the end?
What is wrong with Orssengo's chart posted @229?
For starters, the author: he has no credibility at all -- a rather important point that you ignored when it was pointed out ot you. Seriously, Girma has gummed up several threads with idiotic logic and flat-out lies, and has even admitted he has a purely political agenda that has nothing to do with truth or honest science. He's a crank and a troll.
Second, why did Girma only cite ONE source of "actual measurements?" Is there only one group on Earth monitoring temperature changes?
And third is his brief, crappy, and self-righteous writing:
The main issue in the global warming debate is the truth. The only question in this debate is âdoes human emission of CO2 causes global warming?â One way to answer this question is to compare the IPCC projections for the mean global temperature anomaly with actual measurements as shown in the above chart.
The tone here is typical of the deluded conspiracy-buff: "My only concern is THE TRUTH, which no one else cares about!"
And that's only what a non-scientist like myself can find wrong with that chart.
November 2009: The month that the radiative properties of carbon dioxide suddenly changed.
Here's another bit of hacked emails the denialists probably won't be quoting all that much:
We should be able to conduct our scientific research without constant fear of an "audit" by Steven McIntyre; without having to weigh every word we write in every email we send to our scientific colleagues. In my opinion, Steven McIntyre is the self-appointed Joe McCarthy of climate science. I am unwilling to submit to this McCarthy-style investigation of my scientific research. As you know, I have refused to send McIntyre the "derived" model data he requests, since all of the primary model data necessary to replicate our results are freely available to him. I will continue to refuse such data requests in the future. Nor will I provide McIntyre with computer programs, email correspondence, etc. I feel very strongly about these issues. We should not be coerced by the scientific equivalent of a playground bully. I will be consulting LLNL's Legal Affairs Office in order to determine how the DOE and LLNL should respond to any FOI requests that we receive from McIntyre.
Apparently the CRU folks were getting HUGE amounts of FOIA requests from McIntyre, so many -- and so unreasonable -- as to constitute the bureaucratic equivalent of a DDoS attack. As in about fifty FOIA requests in five days.
Brad,
This is quite a provocative statement:
>Phil Jones talks about rigging the peer review process to keep out skeptical papers.
Two questions for you:
1) What is the paper that Jones says he'll keep out?
2) What is the peer review process for?
Raging Bee, who was that from?
I should think that LLNL and DOE have a fair amount of experience handling crank FOI requests, far more than UEA ...
This in relationship to the flap at Climate Research after De Freitas published Soon & Baliunas, leading to the resignation of six editors, including the editor in chief.
But, of course, the denialist spin is that this wasn't because the paper was crap, that Jones' comments (and actions by others) wasn't due to the paper being crap and De Freitas manipulating the review process, but is due to making sure that skeptic papers are "Expelled".
Sorry, that quote was apparently from Thomas Karl, director of the NOAA's National climate Data Center. Here's the article I got it from:
http://www.salon.com/news/global_warming/index.html?story=/tech/htww/20…
Gavin has just confirmed on RC, that the "whistleblower" made an attempt to hack the RC server.
will we hear any excuses?
There seems to be a great deal of confusion about the UK FOI legislation. Let me clarify a few things that are enshrined in the Act:
1. A public body can decline to provide information that is already freely available through other means;
2. An authority can withold information if there is an intention to publish it in due course (very relevant in the case of scientific data);
3. A public body does not need to disclose information that has been provided in confidence (interesting implications for emails from external organisations / people);
4. Section 14(1) clearly states that public authorities do not have to comply with vexatious requests (see below);
5. Section 12 of the act allows a public body to refuse a request if the costs of providing the information are too high. For most public bodies this cost is currently 18 man hours (24 for central government);
The Government guidance on vexatious requests says this:
In particular, you should consider the following:
- Can the request fairly be seen as obsessive?
- Is the request harassing the authority or causing distress to staff?
- Would complying with the request impose a significant burden in terms of expense and distraction?
- Is the request designed to cause disruption or annoyance?
- Does the request lack any serious purpose or value?
I will let you judge for yourselves whether this definition of vexatious might apply in the case of the FOI requests mentioned in this thread.
Sod, I'm not convinced it's a whistleblower. That comment essentially leads to an external source - a Turkish IP uploads the file to the RC server and creates a draft post (the draft was caught and left unpublished), then a comment appears on ClimateAudit that links to the RC-server's copy of the file. (The comment, in full, is "A miracle just happened." with the commenter's name linking to the file on RC.) THEN it appears on Air Vent, from where it spread elsewhere.
The UK version of FOI is more protective to the recipient agency than the US version and Maine's but the principles are similar. Under these guidelines, McIntyre et al's carpet bombing of requests to CRU perfectly fit the definition of vexatious.
In Maine, there is a specific provision which allows agencies to deny any waiver for search fees to people who have filed "frivolous" FOIA requests with the agency in the past.
The entire point is to not penalize honest, legitimate and reasonable requests for documents the agency possesses on a subject while weeding out the people writing in crayon and/or using the FOIA to harass and deliberately gum up the works.
The default position is to just request the information from an agency staffer. Usually they will give to you without any formal request at all. If you ask nicely.
Raging Bee,
You can preserve the integrity of URLs by enclosing them in angled brackets <>.
As someone who sits on the FOI committee within a UK public body, I will make an observation. Sometimes it is clear that individuals deliberately set out to be classified as vexatious - for example they lodge multiple requests within a very short period that cannot possibly be met. When these requests are turned down they respond by claiming that the public body is denying them their rights, a narrative that attracts support and sympathy from a certain subset of society, regardless of the actual reality of the situation.
This leads to palpable frustration amongst those working in the public sector.
Brad writes:
>There should be some provision that if you take public funds, your data will be made available to the public.
What you describe here is a two tiered standard of science, that sounds very dodgy and perhaps unworkable.
Basically, science with any govt funded will be open to scrutiny in a way that private science will not.
What is more, what types of private science will be affected? The little guys who sell their private IP to government researchers?
Who will be less affected, mega-corporations who currently keep much of their test data private (big pharma, mega-agribusiness/GMO, those seeking to claim genomes under IP).
Unworkable because, where is the extra funding going to come from? You need to change the whole IP funding model, affecting private and public data. And you need to raise funds in another way, unless you want the reduce the amount of research done.
As I said previously, we must avoid the bias where those with most concentrated power and wealth can attack the science they disapprove of, but shelter the science they favour. This requires a one tier standard of transparency.
I'm sorry, but I don't see the deregulation that you are referring to. Government has grown and grown over the last 30 years, ... heck since Cleveland was in office.
Concentrated wealth can hire lobbyists that influence Big Government. That is the chain of influence. My solution is not to limit wealth, not to limit free speech, but to limit government.
Well, if you got rid of government, those interested in forestalling action on CO2 emissions wouldn't have to go to all the bother of committing felonies by breaking into university servers.
There's a solution for you ...
I'm sorry, but I don't see the deregulation that you are referring to. Government has grown and grown over the last 30 years, ... heck since Cleveland was in office.
Of course na_gs doesn't want to see it.
My first career was in banking as an analyst. The key deregulation was in some laws in the banking industry that allowed the expansion and the resultant bubble is all you need to know. Key deregulation to make the rich richer.
Best,
D
Janet: There is actually a US law to that effect already. The whole point of it and similar legislation was to essentially establish hurdles for public research that private research could dodge, and allow for a mechanism for private research to obtain public data and "re-analyze" it to come up with different conclusions in the name of sowing uncertainty and evading regulations.
For the fallout and consequences of this type of legislation, I recommend Doubt is Their Product (an excellent book on denialism in general which also has a great chapter on the institutionalization of antiscience).
Of course, it's been used by some recognizable names more recently, too...
Er, correction: I confused the Data Quality Act with the earlier Shelby Amendment. Both are in the same vein, though - inserted into other laws at the insistence of industry lobbyists, with the intention of making it easier to challenge regulations (by challenging the core science rather than through usual complaints channels), and ensuring such a challenge could only go one-way (such that it couldn't be used to target them).
For the record, the complete text of the Shelby amendment, available at that link, is four lines long, and basically forces into law exactly what Brad asks for.
>>Nanny your describe what we get now following 30 years of deregulation, producing government disproportionately controlled by concentrated wealth.
Nanny responds:
>I'm sorry, but I don't see the deregulation that you are referring to. Government has grown and grown over the last 30 years, ... heck since Cleveland was in office.
Nanny deregulation has increased and government have increased. Government and the lobby/donation complex have become a self licking ice cream. Government is getting worse the more we losen the controls on concentrated wealth to work its anti-democratic influence. And there is perverse incentive to do so. If powerful rich don't purchase the decision they want they will be out competed by other who will. That makes a strong case for regulation.
How much does it [costs to run](http://www.google.com.au/search?rlz=1C1GGLS_en-USAU294AU304&sourceid=ch…) a winning campaign now days? [Where do you get](http://www.opensecrets.org/) the money for that?
Every hear of the [GlassâSteagall Act](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_Act)? Well how much did its repeal, along with the [other](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26774653/) deregulation [cost you?](http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-the-bailout-cost-2009-7). Tell me something else that has ever cost that much?
Oh my are we not the smart ones. If this file only has around a 1000 emails from 13 years, do you really think it was a hacker browsing all the mailboxes on the server looking for the "best" ones? Or perhaps, it was a prepared file for the FOI request by someone internal and it was accidently made available? I love the jump to conclusions you are accusing people of without looking in the mirrror as to what you are doing, the same thing!!!
If you think I've committed a felony, feel free to report me to the Multnomah County (Oregon) District Attorney's Office and start the process that will land my ass in jail.
Otherwise, STFU.
There should be some provision that if you take public funds, your data will be made available to the public.
That would mean, by definition, that a Wal-Mart or other corporation that receives tax breaks/incentives from a state or municipality for locating there, should be considered, for the purpose of the law, a public agency subject to full production of any and all documents on any topic, including any and all proprietary information.
Once Wal-Mart agrees to abide by such a provision, I'm all for it.
Posted by: dhogaza | November 23, 2009 6:32 PM
Nice strawman, does it come with a blue or black coat?
So...somebody put together an FOI file, complete with 'gosh, let's delete all of our sensitive e-mails so no one can FOI them!' e-mails, then accidentally uploaded it to a Russian FTP site? Plausible!
> So...somebody put together an FOI file, complete with 'gosh, let's delete all of our sensitive e-mails so no one can FOI them!' e-mails, then accidentally uploaded it to a Russian FTP site? Plausible!
Not before accidentally hacking RealClimate's servers from a Turkish IP and putting it up there. And accidentally bragging about it on CA.
You really have to pay attention when you go on the internet - the amount of stuff you can do just by accident is quite scary!
Nanny,
My comment just go through moderation, and is [here](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/on_those_stolen_cru_emails.php#…).
If this file only has around a 1000 emails from 13 years, do you really think it was a hacker browsing all the mailboxes on the server looking for the "best" ones? Or perhaps, it was a prepared file for the FOI request by someone internal and it was accidently made available?
Given that the search terms of a FOIA request broad enough to capture all of these various emails and authors would have be about as narrow as saying "I want everything you and your conspirators ever wrote about how you all have faked global warming", the inclusion of only 1,000 emails scattered over 13 years tends to discredit your theory.
But then again, I'm a climate denialist skeptic.
Jon writes,
>*Oh my are we not the smart ones. If this file only has around a 1000 emails from 13 years, do you really think it was a hacker browsing all the mailboxes on the server looking for the "best" ones? *
No "smart" Jon, Not just "browsing" I'd be surprised if the highly agended hacker didn't use a range of search functions to cherry pick his/her email matching his/her preconceived agenda.
But were not as "clever" as you.
Tim Flannery seems to have started 'crossing over to the other side'. Is it possible our favourite alarmist is making a visit to the sceptic's camp? This from Lateline last night....
"Weâre dealing with an incomplete understanding of the way the earth system works⦠When we come to the last few years when we havenât seen a continuation of that (warming) trend we donât understand all of the factors that create earthâs climate...We just donât understand the way the whole system works⦠See, these people work with models, computer modelling. So when the computer modelling and the real world data disagree youâve got a very interesting problem⦠Sure for the last 10 years weâve gone through a slight cooling trend."
Mmmmm.... sounds like we have a change of heart coming on!!
#196...and what does Bernard J have to say about Flannery's movements...."It's a bit sad really". A bit like your life BJ!!
On Flannery (#271)
Lank releases what you might call a "random selection" of quotes mined from the interview. A slightly fuller version:
"The thing is we deal with an incomplete understanding of the way the Earth's system works, we know enough to say as the IPCC said that greenhouse gases cause warming," he said.
"They are 90 per cent-plus sure that it's caused by humans, we can go that far.
"In the last few years, where there hasn't been a continuation of that warming trend, we don't understand all of the factors that creates Earth's climate, so there are some things we don't understand, that's what the scientists were emailing about."
And:
"These people (scientists) work with models, computer modelling. When the computer modelling and the real world data disagrees you have a problem. That's when science gets engaged.
"What Kevin Trenberth, one of the most respected climate scientist in the world, is saying is, 'We have to get on our horses and find out what we don't know about the system, we have to understand why the cooling is occurring, because the current modelling doesn't reflect it'.
"And that's the way science progresses, we can't pretend to have perfect knowledge, we don't."
What a flip-flop! Any minute now, he'll be announcing the conspiracy!
Sorry, forgot [link](http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/24/2751492.htm). The video is up.
Even my favourite denialist Georgie boy Monbiot says resignations are in order...
"There appears to be evidence here of attempts to prevent scientific data from being released, and even to destroy material that was subject to a freedom of information request. Worse still, some of the emails suggest efforts to prevent the publication of work by climate sceptics, or to keep it out of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I believe that the head of the unit, Phil Jones, should now resign. Some of the data discussed in the emails should be re-analysed."
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/11/23/the-knights-carbonic/
>[Sod, I'm not convinced it's a whistleblower. That comment essentially leads to an external source - a Turkish IP uploads the file to the RC server and creates a draft post (the draft was caught and left unpublished), then a comment appears on ClimateAudit that links to the RC-server's copy of the file. (The comment, in full, is "A miracle just happened." with the commenter's name linking to the file on RC.) THEN it appears on Air Vent, from where it spread elsewhere.](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/on_those_stolen_cru_emails.php#…)
Anyone interested in speculating on Steve's and Jeff's computers getting 'audited' by the Mounties and the FBI respectively in the near future?
Lank.
My life is in no way sad (I am actually a very busy, fortunate, and contented bloke), but of course you had no evidence with which to make such a spurious claim such as you did.
Your apersion, however, is sad...
Grow some, and stop misrepresenting things in the same manner as the rest of your denialist mates on this thread are doing.
[Luminous](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/on_those_stolen_cru_emails.php#…).
I'd bet that they've already been deleting like mad.
Hmm ... quote mining ... reckless refusal to provide or acknowledge appropriate context ... inability to engage in a normal, human dialogue freed from rigid, preordained dogma and argument by fallacy.
That is an irreducibly complex behavior.
Con,
You've an apt name. You've just been conned by Girma Oressengo. We fortunately have the evolution of Girma's ideas on record. They make quite [entertaining reading](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…). Readers can follow his evolution for 2000 posts. He pulls data from different data sets and basically shows him self up here.
Just take a look at the data [he references](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1990) from HadCurt says he is plotting. He applies a compress means function to achieve [his results](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1990). But does this chart look like the one he produced for "realist" (sic)? Its far more wobbly, yet his is so smooth. Its a fraud!
Now look at the [12 month mean figures](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1990/mean:12/plot/had…).
What's more IPCC didn't plot projections according to HadCrut. He's mixing data sets.
You believe Girma, you ain't sceptical in the slightest.
Re 167, cce: your reality is noted.
Oops, apologies cce, I think I misread your post. I retract my comment in #282.
Regards,
Don.
Con,
Let me demonstrate is how you and Girma are wrong in a few steps so that hopefully even a non-skeptic can understand.
1) first question, on [girma's chart](http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=4393) what is the black line labelled? Is it labelled Observed? And Observed HadCrut? Where does it change colour to signify the that Observed and Observed HadCrut could be anything but the same? This is a gross misrepresentation.
2) What have the IPPC used as the Observed data? What smoothing have they used? How is this different to the smoothing selected by Girma?
Now let me spell it out for you, Girma's data points are not relevent to the rest of the plot, he is cherry picking between data sets to use the bits he likes and jumbled with the data others use and pretend to be reporting the same thing. The compress:12 smoothing function Girma used will not reproduce data consisten with AR4 smoothing. And it is even based on a different data sets. Its a fraud!
Sadly, Girma is not competent to judge his errors (as exemplified in the [Girma thread](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…).) And sadly Girma's supporters are not competent nor sceptical.
A fine example of the evolution of denialist blog science.
These are troll-points (my shorthand for troll-delivered orchestrated talking points). There's no earthly reason to reply to these nth-hand, identical, accusations. The people making them are not living in the reality-based world, and their motivations are the lowest possible.
Seriously. Even if some moronic troll posts here "This is proof that ...," at least in a venue where the blog owner is science-compliant, there's no need to reply to them. Discuss the much-repeated talking points? maybe, a little. But again. Since it's the entire goal of the trolling to get their time-wasting hook in your mouth, I'm just suggesting people don't nibble.
Some more to ponder Con,
This is as simple as 2 + 2 = 4. -- con.
But until we see ALL the raw data, how can we believe you?
What if one of the 2s was on a sunny roof next to a heater?
Wouldn't it almost be a 3?
Now this blog has become a show of howling monkeys playing the game "Ostriches With Their Head Stuck in the Sand". What a show!
Yor friend George Monbiot has something for you, boys:
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/11/23/the-knights-carbonic/
How does it hurts? However, Monbiot is the kind of blind stubborn of the "epur si muove" kind.
JP@153
Are you being particulary dense for a reason, or is it natural?
The email you link to was sent to Dr Jones.
That means it's in his email inbox.
So if he's an evil email deleting conspirator he can easily delete it from his CRU account
>*The fact is the following data of CRU:
(Year 2005,0.47 deg C); (2006,0.42); (2007,0.40) & (2008,0.33) all lie below ALL the IPCC projections, including commitments. This is a FACT! Is it Con or Janet the denier?*
Thank you Con , and is it a fact that all Girma said was that 2005,06, 07, 08 were all below the AR4 long term (11 year) smooth trend?
NO, he pretended that his compress:12 data was equivant to the A44 11 year smoothed trend. That is a misleading fabriction.
And that you support this is, yet another fine example of denialism!
If Girma had not mislead his readers he could have presented a chart [like this](http://deepclimate.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/ar4-smooth-2.gif) with the comment that, recent years are tracking below the 11 year long term projected trends. Though the observed 11 year smoothed trend is well within 1 SD of the that projected. However, if this 'low trend' keeps up, the projections in the future will likely be lower than that in the AR4.
With the disclamer that about half the data points are expected to be below the long term projection, and because of auto-correction many of those data points will be in sequential years.
Many have suspected that Girma is surpreme Poe, who is successfully hoax denialist and demonstrate the gross errors that he can get them to support.
So if you want to keep posting this hoax, God bless you.
That is "auto-correlation", not "auto-correction"
Even my favourite denialist Georgie boy Monbiot says resignations are in order...
i don t think that this was a clever post by Monbiot.
but i see, how true denialist will love the implications of this: STOLEN MAIL can cause lots of problems to real scientists. great news.
Monbiot is a concern troll.
Jones has absolutely nothing to apologize for. Monbiot is playing the classic role of the Puritan who says "tut .. tut" when it is convenient for him to play the role of prim school marm upset that someone left a participle dangling.
Monbiot should get off his ass and do some actual investigative reporting into who stole the documents and who tried to hijack RealClimate's site to take over their front page and splooge them.
But for Monbiot, that would be "drudge" work far beneath his station and would require ... actual effort.
Eamon@292
The email linked to is a reply to an initial email sent by Jones to Mann, the text of which is included in the reply from Mann to Jones. The relevant content is in the text of the initial email from Jones to Mann.
It doesn't matter how private the emails were, describing someones death as "cheering news" means you are finished.
You lose your job.
You lose your reputation.
Man, this apple is crispy!
Lets see...
Posting the same link several times as if repetition strengthens the argument? Check.
Ignoring substantive rebuttals? Check.
Random use of caps? Check.
Complete disregard for science, logic or reason? Check.
Belief that the work of Girma Orssengo is unassailable and impervious to criticism? Check.
I submit to you that "con" is in fact Girma. Either that or someone who has cribbed heavily from his copybook...
Earthtide -
I have to wonder what the Denialosphere reaction would be to Hansen or Mann having a heart attack.
But let's put it like this: Prominent denialists have helnped in successfully stopping any effort to control GHG emissions for the last 20 years (Since Hansen's 1988 testimony); as a result, By any sane estimate, the death toll as a result of this will be a minimum of six figures and probably much, much higher. Denialism isn't some sort of internet parlor game, it's mass murder on a vast scale.
Girma,
If you believe that the AR4 projections are 12 month means, why didn't you plot 12 moth mean instead of your compress:12 function.
If you think that the AR4 projetions are 12 month compressed valies, why is your [compress:12 data from 1990](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1990/compress:12) so wobbly compared to AR4 data?
Finally why do [competent scientist](http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2007/2007_Rahmstorf_etal.pdf) believe the IPCC projections are 11-year smooth curves?
>All trends are nonlinear trend lines and are computed with an embedding period of 11 years and a minimum roughness criterion at the end.
Girma I take no pleasure in calling your a denialist, I wish you would take a different approach.
Curiously, I had been typing a similar post to [Dave's](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/on_those_stolen_cru_emails.php#…) at intervals during the afternoon, when I read his and realised I'd been gazzumped. No matter!
I would add one further piece of evidence though - the only people I know who refer to themselves in the third person are Girma Orssengo and Eli Rabbet, and I doubt that Eli would be the sock-puppeteer beind the 'Con' con.
It seems that Wormtongue will try any dishonesty in order to circumvent the right of Tim Lambert to ban Orssengo from clogging the arteries of Deloid with his bilge.
His slipperiness won't make his crap any more right though.
Janet,
Here's some background on the increase in regulation and the big business influence on regulators in the US:
http://economics.about.com/od/governmenttheeconomy/a/intervention.htm
Note that the beginnings (Sherman Anti-trust) were to break up those railroad monopolies that the government helped to create!.
Dano,
Of course deregulating little bits of the economy while leaving others stifled with regulations will, like a small break in the levee, lead to a massive outpouring. It's because everyone thinks the regulation "protection" is still in place. "The government will take care of it", right Dano?
dc1 #144
Not, it takes someone much stupider than that!
dc1, how about you gather some facts for us - say, sit in a room with a [10% concentration](http://www.inspectapedia.com/hazmat/CO2gashaz.htm) of CO2 in [the air](http://www.uigi.com/MSDS_gaseous_CO2.html) and get back to us in, say, 24 hours and let us know how you make out?
Following up from [my post last night](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/on_those_stolen_cru_emails.php#…), here is the link to the segment discussing [the stolen CRU files](http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2008/s2751375.htm), and this is the link for the [interview with Tim Flannery](http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2008/s2751390.htm).
Tonight's episode had a piece about the faster-than-expected Antartic warming, including a brief grab from Matthew England. It seems that even with the current non-scandal that is the criminal theft of email and data from UEA, AGW stops for no Denialist...
Well, I just read a selection of emails and have to admit I feel more than a little bit dirty at invading people's privacy. But it is useful to actually see the context of a lot of the accusations that have been made, and you seriously need to have a predetermined conclusion in mind to read them as evident of foul play. Even the repeated references to the FOI are largely about the frivolity of FOI requests for data, and frustration thereof.
270 Janet,
This is just supposition but I *think* the hacker(s) copied all the mailboxes then used grep or similar to pick out the "best" examples.
Steve@297
I'm aware of that. It doesn't change the fact that it's odd for someone who's being accused of conspiracy to not delete mails he sends and receives as part of aforesaid 'conspiracy'
The hack was discussed on BBC2 Newsnight last night. They had Fred Singer and Bob Watson on. Sadly, I missed it as I was out at a pub quiz. If I find a link to it I'll post it.
TS above, UK readers can find the Newsight program on iPlayer [here](http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00p6bn0/Newsnight_23_11_2009/).
I just deleted a bunch of comments from Girma's sock puppet, "Con".
Of course deregulating little bits of the economy while leaving others stifled with regulations will, like a small break in the levee, lead to a massive outpouring. It's because everyone thinks the regulation "protection" is still in place. "The government will take care of it", right Dano?
na_gs, I appreciate you wishing that this ideology was still relevant on the ground. Too bad events have proven otherwise (this is not an endorsement of th' soshu.izm) 'bout th' regalayshun.
There's just too much information out there now to wish that it were true.
Best,
D
Missed that Newsnight Bud. Don't normally watch it.
But the iPlayer version was interesting. I'm not sure Fred Singer actually new at the start why he was on TV!
Jet lag maybe? (being kind).
Isn't it about time he retired?
From the logs:
"As we all know, this isnât about truth at all, its about plausibly deniable accusations.â
* From: Edward Cook
What a line, guys. That had a lot of thought behind it.
Science should be about a pursuit of truth, and debate should be as well.
I am sorry to disagree with you folks.
Nanny [your link](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/on_those_stolen_cru_emails.php#…) provides very little reference to that last 30 years, and does nothing to contradict my [statements here](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/on_those_stolen_cru_emails.php#…).
Certainly, if you detailed the 120 year history of the growth in these regulations (which was reversed, periodically), you will document a series of massive failures due to insufficient regulation. Including Robber Barron monopolies, 1929 crash and subsequent depression.
And as a consequence to responding to the obvious problems that were addressed, you will also document over that period the 120 year rise of a superpower.
Your link also hints at the highly prudent regulation needed to make safety a key objective in nuclear power, too some degree reducing the otherwise relentless stripping away of everything but the profit motive.
So I thank you for bring these points into the discussion.
However it stands that with 30 years of radical degregualtion (starting from the Reagan/Thatcher years) the situation just as I stated:
Nanny your description [of the usual big-corporation favoritism, cronyism, bureaucratic bungling, back-room deals that squash the little guys] describes what we get now following 30 years of deregulation, producing government disproportionately controlled by concentrated wealth.
>[...]deregulation has increased and government have increased.
>Government and the lobby/donation complex have become a self licking ice cream. Government is getting worse the more we losen the controls on concentrated wealth to work its anti-democratic influence.
>And there is perverse incentive to do so. If powerful rich don't purchase the decision they want they will be out competed by other who will. That makes a strong case for regulation.
I believe there is a high risk that we are witnessing the demise of a superpower, one that has eaten its golden goose.
The quote refers to the author's opinion of Steve McIntyre, that he (McI)'s not interested in the truth at all, just plausible deniability (and if you read the walking-on-eggshells prose employed by McI when he implies fraud etc, the accusation makes perfect sense).
The author would agree with you about science, which is why the author loaths McIntyre.
"When the primary objective of the request is harrassment."
That's a load of crap. I've read the reasons for the requests and they are perfectly valid.
Besides the word "hide" was not about the FOI requests. It was about faking up the temperature graphs. "Trick" was used to "hide the decline" which means that in context it was being used to obfuscate. I'd use the word "lie" but some here my get confused and think I meant to say they were resting on their sides. They were not trying to protect themselves against harrassment. It's quite obvious from the emails that they had private data that was needed to check their work that they were not producing, and in fact were threatening to destroy.
Sorry, you don't know WTF you're talking about.
And, of course, the whole kerfluffle is over one graph in one brochure by one organization. The e-mail refers to nothing in regard to what's in the scientific literature.
The divergence problem being referred to is widely described in the relevant literature, with nothing being hidden whatsoever, unless, as Gavin Schmidt has said several times, you consider "publishing in Nature" to be "hiding stuff".
Brian,
"private data"
You mean their bank account details??
McIntyre is a serial pest and gets treated as one.
and in fact were threatening to destroy.
yes. and when he wrote, that he would kill his wife when dinner wasn t ready, he was planning murder.
Brian, why don t you post your e.mail account and password, so that we can look at your mail?
My first ever visit to this blog. I discovered here during my reading of 1200+ often very lengthy comments in Real Climate about the email scandal that should concern every scientist in general and every climate scientist in particular.
However, I stopped reading the comments for this post at the 100th comment. No need to read further. This blog has the most arrogant, condescending and repulsive set of commenters I've ever come across in the blogosphere. Ad hominem attacks that involve repeating the same 'gotcha' question that's supposed to nab a denialist idiot with pants down, complete indifference to what even to this lay person appears to be a flagrant breach of scientific ethics, petty pre-occupation with spellings erros and commenter's moniker, sleight of hand dismissal of commeters because they are not scientists or climatologists, and on and on... The whole works of obnoxiousness in full display in less than 100 short comments.
While the Real Climate website has shown some true courage and openness following the email scandal, the mob in this neighbourhood is in an aggressive, irrational and juvenile denialist mood about the damage the recent revelations may cause to science of climatology.
sHx writes:
ShX seems to be labouring under the illusion that this here blog is actually a science journal.
Anyway, nice concern troll.
Re: sHx/#315
You know, I always wondered why people judge the quality of a blog (i.e. articles written by a single author or small group) by the comments (i.e. small replies written by a diverse group the author isn't responsible for). By analogy, do you judge the quality of an artist or band by the quality of their work, or by their fans/critics?
sHx,
No details, just assertions?
Ready and willing to debate the facts, you are not.
Brian you have just attribted your preferred meaning to the words used in the emails:
>...the word "hide" was not about the FOI requests. It was about faking up the temperature graphs. "Trick" was used to "hide the decline" which means that in context it was being used to obfuscate.
Brian, are you sure of your interpretation on these matters?
Have you every used the word "trick" and "hide"? Does that mean each occasion is valid evidence that you were obfuscating the the truth? Every used slang words?
I suggest that if we had your email account I could used your standard of argument to judge you guilty of anything I wished.
I also suggest you educate yourself on [the issues](http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/) that the people in question were discussing before you hang them in your frenzy. The context brings light that you are ignoring.
>No doubt, instances of cherry-picked and poorly-worded âgotchaâ phrases will be pulled out of context. One example is worth mentioning quickly. Phil Jones in discussing the presentation of temperature reconstructions stated that âIâve just completed Mikeâs Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keithâs to hide the decline.â
>The paper in question is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) Nature paper on the original multiproxy temperature reconstruction, and the âtrickâ is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear.
>Scientists often use the term âtrickâ to refer to a âa good way to deal with a problemâ, rather than something that is âsecretâ, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all.
>As for the âdeclineâ, it is well known that Keith Briffaâs maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the âdivergence problemââsee e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682).
>Those authors have always recommend not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while âhidingâ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is âhiddenâ in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens.
PHIL JONES TURNED ME INTO A NEWT!#!@#!
â¦
â¦.
â¦â¦
I got betterâ¦â¦.
305 Tim,
Was that really from Girma's IP? The style was not quite Girma's.
BTW any chance that comments could be divided into pages to speed things up? I see that RC now has 50 posts/page but 100 would be fine too. This only became a real problem with the Girmathon but it makes a difference even with shorter threads.
320 con,
Looks like Tim is letting you post more stuff.
Come on. You really think that Tim can hide the "greatest scandal in recent science history" by deleting a few posts when the hacked files are:-
1. Available for all to see (if they want). There's even a searchable version out there so you don't have to download the zip.
2. Being quote-mined to the last jot and tittle by every denioblog on the planet?
Really?
305 Tim,
Was that really from G*rma's IP? The style was not quite G*rma's.
BTW any chance that comments could be divided into pages to speed things up? I see that RC now has 50 posts/page but 100 would be fine too. This only became a real problem with the G*rmathon but it makes a difference even with shorter threads.
(My previous post was held, so I'm trying this obvious ruse. ;) )
319,marcusj
Brilliant comment! This whole episode really is like a witch hunt.
TrueSceptic,
The latests disjuncture in Girma's string of denial is that didn't mention the emails. He was here to sneakily self promote his latest blog work.
IMO Tim did him a favour by removing his multiple self incriminating post. Now he can pretend he said something different. No mind, his latest delusional comment is transitory.
Anti-science loonies now concerned for the status and reputation of science. If only there were a phrase for this???
Predicted responses:
A) Concern troll, punkass. Look it up.
B) AD HOMINEM@#!!!!
C) More arguing with nannypants. Maybe he'll come around soon.
When a whistle blower releases emails, they are thieves.
Careful, your bias is showing.
William Wallace,
What whistle blower are you referring to?
@325 William Wallace: Are you channelling MrPete?
Presumably if I hacked your computer, spread select bits of the downloaded files about the place and used that to defame you, you'd simply shrug and agree with me that I was simply "serving the greater good"...
Yes, "Con" shares Girma's IP address. It's funny how a professed follower of Rand won't respect my private property. Girma, this is my blog, and you are banned from posting here.
Here is a good video for you folks to enjoy: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/11/24/minnesotans-globa…
William Wallace,
You are submitting propaganda in place of evidence? What about [an answer](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/on_those_stolen_cru_emails.php#…) instead?
Gawd... yet more evidence that right wingers can't do funny. I spent the whole thing drinking a cup of coffee and none of it went even close to anywhere except my throat. I want my time back.
Sorry Janet, I don't usually answer stupid questions.
Thanks for the confirmation Willy W, I keep finding you lot have nothing.
Sadly, it seems climate science has been kidnapped by political science. Strange how I thought that scientists were supposed to be open and even welcome criticism as a way to test and strengthen their arguments? If this was a truly scientific email thread those that wrote it would be proud to see it released to the world. Instead reading some of these emails you get a sense of a group of paranoid 'know it all's' who think that they are to good for a critical review. Frankly it just makes me sad...
Tom, did you see this from one of the emails:
tom,
I think you are confusing criticism with harassment?
Would you be willing to submit yourself to the scrutiny that the CRU have been through?
If you have a political agenda, do you think your opponents could not use what they find in your history of correspondence to frame your for anything, that is frame you enough to have your found guilty in the court of premature speculation.
[Here are](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/even_the_tobacco_companies_nev…) some more reasons on why I think your views are not fully formed nor fair.
What's the matter William Wallace (334)? Janet's question too hard to understand? Or is it you know you've been called on your BS?
Tom said:
What scientists welcome is not ad hominem criticism or rock throwing but rather analytic critique from those with the skill and insight to do it.
The pseudo-scientific filth merchant advocates are not trying to "strengthen science" (nor are they intellectually equipped to do so). Rather, they seek to demolish the standing of science to inform policy by traducing the scientists, precisely because they are convinced that the science speaks against their interests. The desire of the scientists to stop the filth merchants from harassing and slandering them as agents of a global conspiracy to return to the early holocene and lift taxes and grub grants and introduce socialism is strong.
Shorter Tom:
If you're a scientist, you should welcome people stealing from you, even if it is a felony.
Tom:
If you believe this, and if your RW asshole friends more or less make this a condition of doing science, every techie in the world will avoid science as a profession.
Some relevent context to Jones alleged request to delete emails [is here.](http://dean.salon.com/technology/how_the_world_works/2009/11/23/the_cas…)
>>Since 2002, McIntyre has repeatedly asked Phil Jones, director of CRU, for access to the HadCRU data. Although the data are made available in a processed gridded format that shows the global temperature trend, the raw station data are currently restricted to academics. While Jones has made data available to some academics, he has refused to supply McIntyre with the data. Between 24 July and 29 July of this year, CRU received 58 freedom of information act requests from McIntyre and people affiliated with Climate Audit. In the past month, the UK Met Office, which receives a cleaned-up version of the raw data from CRU, has received ten requests of its own.
>Fifty-eight FOI requests in five days!
>So why won't CRU comply?
>According to Heffernan:
>>Jones says that he tried to help when he first received data requests from McIntyre back in 2002, but says that he soon became inundated with requests that he could not fulfill, or that he did not have the time to respond to. He says that, in some cases, he simply couldn't hand over entire data sets because of long-standing confidentiality agreements with other nations that restrict their use.
My reading has also lead me to believe that the UK office responsible for FOI requests dismissed the deluge of FOI as vexatious. But I can't relocate the details. Can anyone confirm or counter this?
Eric [blows a gasket](http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/copenhagen/commen…) over at RC.
Not that I blame him. oracle2world has just proven in a few flabbergasting paragraphs why RC needs moderation.
Janet:
Steve McIntyre is the Peter Hore of science.
In the interests of scientific openess, I have decided to release a few emails between myself and a postgrad student working on one of my projects. The scandal was bound to come out, so I might as well pre-empt the embarrassment...
-------------------------------
To: YYYYYYYYY@ZZZZZZZ.gov.au
From: XXXXX@VVVVVVV.edu.au
Subject: Re: Fiddling with the data
Hadrian:
I use a little trick to 'adjust' the data â just add 1 (or 5, or 10, or whatever works for you) to all of your data, et voila!, no problem!
Just remember to keep a track of your adjustments for when you present the data! It can be a bit embarrassing when some sharp-eyed pedant in the audience realises that your animals appear to be about twice the size that they should be! ;-)
Knut.
To: YYYYYYYYY@ZZZZZZZ.gov.au
From: XXXXX@VVVVVVV.edu.au
Subject: Re: More fiddling with the data
Hadrian.
Ah, that's be the tagged ones. You can remove the discrepancy by hiding the values that were gathered by manual measurement after 1998. Use the automatically obtained values instead.
As to Nero, someone should take his knees out with a sledge hammer. Then he'd have half an idea about what it's like.
Knut.
To: XXXXX@VVVVVVV.edu.au
From: YYYYYYYYY@ZZZZZZZ.gov.au
Subject: More fiddling with the data
Knut.
Um, how does that work?
H.
Oh dear.
It seems that I didn't post all of the emails from that sordid exchange. If the complete set is presented, the context is rather changed...
--------------------------
To: XXXXX@VVVVVVV.edu.au
From: YYYYYYYYY@ZZZZZZZ.gov.au
Subject: Fiddling with the data
Hey Knut.
I've been playing around with the body masses for the adults over the summer-winter period, and they're coming together nicely.
I've had very few problems, although I've had one or two that have cropped up. It's a bugger when you try to do a log transform on the changes in mass, because sometimes an individual loses weight with respect to the previous measurement, and as you know it's a bit difficult to work out the logarithm of a negative number... What would you do in these cases?
Hadrian.
To: YYYYYYYYY@ZZZZZZZ.gov.au
From: XXXXX@VVVVVVV.edu.au
Subject: Re: Fiddling with the data
Hadrian:
I use a little trick to 'adjust' the data â just add 1 (or 5, or 10, or whatever works for you) to all of your data, et voila!, no problem!
Just remember to keep a track of your adjustments for when you present the data! It can be a bit embarrassing when some sharp-eyed pedant in the audience realises that your animals appear to be about twice the size that they should be! ;-)
Knut.
To: XXXXX@VVVVVVV.edu.au
From: YYYYYYYYY@ZZZZZZZ.gov.au
Subject: More fiddling with the data
Knut.
That's a great idea. It's obvious once you know how!
As you're on fire, maybe you can tell me what to do about the weird jump in mean mass that appears in the graphs after 1998 â what's the deal there?
On another matter, I spoke to Nero about getting knee-pads for when we do the borrow work, but he doesn't want to stump up for half a dozen sets â he reckons that it's an 'extravagance'! Some people...
Hadrian.
To: YYYYYYYYY@ZZZZZZZ.gov.au
From: XXXXX@VVVVVVV.edu.au
Subject: Re: More fiddling with the data
Hadrian.
Ah, that'd be the tagged ones. You can remove the discrepancy by hiding the values that were gathered by manual measurement after 1998. Use the automatically obtained values instead.
As to Nero, someone should take his knees out with a sledge hammer. Then he'd have half an idea about what it's like.
Knut.
To: XXXXX@VVVVVVV.edu.au
From: YYYYYYYYY@ZZZZZZZ.gov.au
Subject: More fiddling with the data
Knut.
Um, how does that work?
H.
To: YYYYYYYYY@ZZZZZZZ.gov.au
From: XXXXX@VVVVVVV.edu.au
Subject: Re: More fiddling with the data
Hadrian, Hadrian, Hadrian.
You goose!
The automatic pads are calibrated to subtract the weights of the transmitters when the animals cross them. The discrepancy between the auto and manual measurements is less than 0.5%, which is on the same order of magnitude as the within-method measurements, so the composite gives a good indication of mass changes.
Knut.
Erm, that should have been "burrow work"!
>>*Fifty-eight FOI requests in five days!*
>Steve McIntyre is the [Peter Hore](http://www.theherald.com.au/multimedia/images/full/334887.jpg) of [science](http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200808/r278710_1180415.jpg).
I didn't know that Hore had close links to Big Oil? Perhaps if Murdoch's empire [went quiet](http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20830365-2,00.html) on Hore's disruptive time wasting antics?
Janet and Dano,
I guess you'll see what you want to see regarding "deregulation". If you add 1000 regulations and subtract 1, I guess you call that deregulation, but I don't.
Janet, your "failures due to insufficient regulation" have a flip side: Regulations played a big part in the creating the problems in the first place. See the boom created by the Federal Reserver prior to the 1929 bust. See also the government role in creating the railroad monopolies! Nuclear regulation? Who created the atom bomb again?
The superpower IS in demise, but not from "deregulation". It is from overregulation (Big Government), not producing, spending way too much, and from devaluing its currency the same way Zimbabwe has.
Actualy Nags, the problem is people who have a drive to power and money. They will pervert any structures other people set up to restrict them, given enough time and money. Thats what they have done with the government, although it didn't take so much doing.
Whatever na_gs. You obviously have never worked in banking or finance. But you go ahead and believe whatever is convenient to maintain your ideology.
Best,
D
The superpower IS in demise, but not from "deregulation". It is from overregulation (Big Government), not producing, spending way too much, and from devaluing its currency the same way Zimbabwe has.
I'm just repeating this paragraph as a good indicator of how uninformed, emotional, fact-free, history-free, and downright disjointed today's libertards really are.
We're devaluing our currency "the same way Zimbabwe has?" Really?! So how come we haven't got the same results as Zimbabwe? Do people like nags even READ what they paste in haste from their dittosphere? Because if they can't even process their own shrieking-points, they sure as Hell can't handle the real world.
However, I stopped reading the comments for this post at the 100th comment. No need to read further.
Right -- the comments aren't worth your time to read, but it's still worth your time to add a comment of your own. And of course your comment is flat-out incorrect because you didn't read all the comments and therefore don't know what you're talking about.
This blog has the most arrogant, condescending and repulsive set of commenters I've ever come across in the blogosphere.
Um, excuse me for sticking to pedantic details, but we're not the ones stealing other people's emails and lying about what they said.
Ad hominem attacks...
Bitch, please. You call us "arrogane and repulsive," and THEN you complain of "ad hominem attacks?"
...that involve repeating the same 'gotcha' question that's supposed to nab a denialist idiot with pants down...
So did any of the denialist idiots actually ANSWER the questions? Oh wait, you didn't bother to read the comments, so you wouldn't know, would you?
Yet another denialist idiot shrieking about ad-hominem attacks because he can't make a substantive argument about the issue at hand.
Fifty-eight FOI requests in five days!
it is harassment, and nothing else.
they are pretending that this is similar, to what environmental groups do, but it is not. there is no smoking gun, like measured high chemical concentrations or a real will for data in these attempts. just harassment.
this was a test balloon, and it turned out really bad for science. the conclusion denialists will take from this effort is a bad one: crime will be accepted (actually CHEERED!), by the media and by "sceptic" and denialists followers.
the criminals are treated as heroes and are called "whistle blowers" and not hackers, against all evidence.
expect more of this. i might even foresee a future, in which climate science institution will need protection like abortion clinics. the combination of rhetorics and criminal/violent acts is already showing a few similarities.
on the other hand, i expect some punishment to follow for the sceptics. the idea that FOIA requests by them will be more welcome from now on, is totally absurd. do they really expect people to give them their e-mails, so they can publish random parts and misrepresentations on the web?
i expect real scientists to move away from those, who took part in this harassment. those who published those mails, and/or scientists discussing them without losing a word of contempt for the criminal act by which they were provided, have demonstrated serious ethical flaws. i could not imagine even sharing a table with such a person. i expect many scientists to really move away from them.
James Hansen has publicly advocated putting global warming "deniers" on trial.. And we all remember how James Hansen didn't want to release his slopping and buggy source code that ended up erroniously identifying 1998 as the warmest year on record. Fortunately, the so-called deniers were able to reverse engineer and identify his mistake. Opps.
These emails illustrate how the peer review system is gamed, and is essentially turned into a mutual affirmation clique. How global warming alarmists conspire to keep skeptical eyes off their data and methods. And, worst of all, how they proudly brag that they would rather destroy and delete data than release it to others to find bugs, errors, and fraud.
Nice to see William Wallace referring to a gamed peer-review process. Too bad he does not realise the discussion in the e-mails was about the 'gaming' of the review process by the 'skeptics'. Ah, but I forgot: 'skeptics' HAVE to game the review process, otherwise they cannot get anything in the literature. Who cares that it's bad science, they have the right to publish in the scientific literature. right, William?
Nice spin, Marco, but let's look at the words of Phil Jones...
Nice spin, William Wallace, but despite those fightin' words, the two papers actually did get in.
Dr. Tim Ball on the hacked CRU emails. Or course, the so-called sciencebloggers are probably busily trying to invent some clever neologism to discredit older scientists who do not agree with them. It's easier than addressing arguments, and, besides, it is difficult for sciencebloggers to end the AGW deceit.
William Wallace: Once Tim Ball learns he can't count his undergraduate years as years as a professor, we'll listen to him. Have you looked into Barry Cooper yet, by the way?
Bernard J: That was brilliant.
Nanny writes:
>I guess you'll see what you want to see regarding "deregulation".
I agree with you on that point. The difference is how hard we each look at the evidence before we decide what we see. I provide [figures](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/on_those_stolen_cru_emails.php#…) that have informed my views.
You choose not to challenge these figures nor the logical implications of these figures relating to concentration of power:
>*How much does it costs to run a winning campaign now days? Where do you get the money for that?
Every hear of the GlassâSteagall Act? Well how much did its repeal, along with the other deregulation cost you?. Tell me something else that has ever cost that much?.*
Why not address these relevant points?
Nanny next asks:
>"failures due to insufficient regulation" have a flip side: Regulations played a big part in the creating the problems in the first place. See the boom created by the Federal Reserver prior to the 1929 bust. See also the government role in creating the railroad monopolies!
I also agree, that regulation will have unintended (and sometimes perverse consequence), but I argue that failing to regulate in the face on a known perverse system will have predictable consequences, which are (as in the case of perverse concentrated-contribution-government complex) predictably terrible.
I also argue that the chance of having beneficial regulation diminishes the more entrench vested interest get in the power system. (See my points above, the ones you chose not to address).
The problem that a bunch of super-elites finally got to push through their wishes regarding the Fed (in 1913 following Jekyll Island), would not be solved by reducing the potential for democratic counter balance to the concentrated power of such super-rich.
Without Jackson etc. using the power of democracy, the super-rich would have taken banking power in the US much earlier.
>Nuclear regulation? Who created the atom bomb again?
The USA, with a massive military budget in the time of war. A budge that never looked back, and one that Eisenhower foresaw would result in a Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex. A complex that has become a template for other industries.
>The superpower IS in demise, but not from "deregulation". It is from overregulation (Big Government), not producing, spending way too much, and from devaluing its currency the same way Zimbabwe has.
The first part part of the sentence is lacking supporting evidence.
The second part seem partially accurate, but Zimbabwe is an extreme example, the US will not drop that far. The costs of essentials (for the proto-serfs) will inflate, but the price of the big assets owned by the super-rich are actually deflating. And the super rich 1% own as much as the bottom 50%.
So while the proto-serfs will end up paying more for essentials, and more to pay off debt, the price of major assets will deflate.
Hence its inflation for the little guy and deflation for the super-rich.
Michael,
You're an ass. Steve M posted a blog and suggested people could put in FOI requests to CRU as he had done.He didn't submit all the requests himself. Also, the fact that 58 were put in over 5 days is irrelevant - just Jones trying to play the 'victim'. Essentially, he only had to respond to one, yes one, request
Actually it gives the CRU FOI officer grounds to dismiss them on grounds of being vexatious or filed for purposes of harassment, bad strategic move by SteveM.
Dave Andrews writes:
>Michael, You're an ass.
Decoding 'Dishonest Dave' (Dave Andrews has history here folks):
Michael, I would like to distract from the fact that McI coordinated a FOI bombardment campaign, which produced the predictable result of harassment and vexatious FOI requests.
1998 was the warmest year on record (until 2005.) That's global means per GISSTemp. If you're referring to US temperatures, that's a different matter altogether.
That's intellectual honesty, plain and simple. I don't know if those scientists have referred to 2008 as a cold-ish year in public, but I have said 2008 is a relatively cold year on many an occasion. It's not a secret. In fact, when I did an analysis explaining why the 1998-2008 trend is statistically inaccurate, I said that if 2009 is also a cold year, this could change my evaluation. (So far, 2009 is turning out to be a relatively warm year.)
> but despite those fightin' words, the two papers actually did get in.
dhogaza,
Any details? Which papers are we talking about?
Gavin gave the details on RC ... sorry, I don't remember which they were though (and if you decide to dig it out of that thread - I think it's the more recent of the two - it's going to be a slog though maybe a good search query will uncover it quickly)
Taah Dhogaza,
If anyone finds it first, please link back here.
Marco, were [you referring](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/on_those_stolen_cru_emails.php#…) to the resignations that occurred due to unsupportable papers getting published?
Yes, the left wingers in science have a track record of going after journal editors for allowing contrary papers to appear in journals. Richard Sternberg comes to mind.
Ah, yes, the sternberg card is played.
Well, as it turns out, the situation is very similar, and sternberg did indeed bring disgrace to the journal he was editor of.
Looks like we have an all-around anti-science type in William Wallace, folks!
Thanks to Steven McIntyre, who was able to force NASA to change their results. And if NASA can't get it right, what makes you think other countries are getting it right?
It should be "The Anthropogenic Climate Change Denialists".
It is so sad that you "believers" are so out there with your religion that you are unable to discuss the "climate fraud" in a civil manner.
Provide transparency to some recently collected data which are coupled to a recent "climate warming prediction model" and a link or reference to a scientific article discussing these findings (all collected raw data, methods used to collect these data and statistical methods used to treat that data) and if you cannot do that, well then you shouldn't speak out at all. Watching a glacier melt is not proof of anything other than that the ice is melting. Got any proxy data collected after 1980 lying around somewhere, no, why not? Would be interesting to compare/run some recently collected proxy data in a recent/updated "climate prediction model" wouldn't you say? But that would be to much for your puny brains to cope with. No, you will probably adjust the data to fit with your beliefs, so no transparency.
Yes, McIntyre uncovered a statistically insignificant change that led 1934 to be statistically tied with 1998 whereas before 1998 was statistically tied with 1934 (for US temp, not global).
Now that's a regular Mt Everest of an accomplishment.
Oh, and note that McIntyre uncovered that problem because ...
all the data is being hidden by climate conspirators?
Not exactly, he was able to do that because all the data is kept online where anyone can access it and compute to their hearts content.
The scandal of it all.
Your rewriting of history doesn't surprise me.
But, as I recall, NASA refused to provide the source code, blocked his access to the data via the internet, slyly alleging a denial of service attack, and only acquiesced once the bright light of the skeptics was shone on the rat-like behavior of the alarmist conspirators.
See, for example, NASA Blocked Climate Change Blogger from Data
Uh, how do you think he got the data?
Uh, he was spidering a server and ignoring the robots.txt file, so a network admin shut him out. McIntyre then huff'd and puff'd but the network admin didn't know who he was, but of course McI couldn't believe that some random network admin wouldn't know someone as famous as him.
If you bother yourself to read the thread posted at CA at the time, you'll see that many of his worshippers over there actually agreed that there was nothing nefarious about what the network admin did, and that steve was overreacting because he was clueless.
Admins block spiders that ignore robots.txt routinely if they catch them. Bandwidth has to be paid for, after all.
Here's the note the network admin sent McIntyre:
Of course, McIntyre responded saying he wasn't running a robot spider, but rather a computer program ...
Eventually he was allowed to run his robot on weekends and at night, when it wouldn't interfere with people trying to do their job during working hours.
dhogaza, what do you think of the proposal to
Wouldn't this be more transparent? What objections, if any, do you have to this modest proposal?
Yeah, so around about midnight the admin told McIntyre that he'd have to ask the research team for access to those files (i.e. the admin doesn't have authority to decide himself).
The next morning, when the appropriate people came to work, they asked the server admins to let McIntyre download the stuff during evening hours.
The whole thing took less than a day.
Journals are moving in this direction, made possible by cheap storage, cheap high-speed internet access, and cheap computers.
But things don't happen overnight.
Keep in mind that McIntyre has, for instance, attacked Lonnie Thompson for not having followed journal requirements that weren't adopted until some years after the paper in question was published.
So be wary of how proposals like this are used - retroactively beating people up for not doing something that wasn't required in the past (nor standard practice) is, well, not fair.
Regarding McIntyre and NASAGate, when McIntyre calmed down he described it this way:
Which in no way corresponds to Wallace's claims about the event.
Willaim Wallace [wishes](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/on_those_stolen_cru_emails.php#…) that unsupported papers could be treated the same as supportable fact checked papers?
Let me guess all science that you disagree with is "left wing" science? Perhaps if science challenges your ideology it must be wrong?
Willy, many sensible people think that when the evidence contradicts your ideology its time to challenge your ideology.
@Wallace: So you think all countries make their own calculations, then these results are pooled together, and this in turn becomes GISSTemp? Without knowing much about the specifics, I'm pretty sure it doesn't work the way you think it works.
Effective Strategies to Trump "Denialists" (put together after reading the first 100 and the last few scores of replies to a particular entry in Deltoid. Dedicated to Tim Lambert of UNSW)
1- Tell them they are not scientists. No, they are idiots. This strategy should work most of the time because most members of the public are not scientists anyway.
2- If they claim to be scientists, tell them they are not climate scientists. They speak outside of their area of expertise. Only idiot scientists would do that. (This strategy should work for most of the trolls that claim to be scientists and aware of scientific method and ethics.)
3- If they claim to be climate scientists, ask them what they have published lately in reputable peer-reviewed journals. (Since we have already bullied all reputable peer-reviewed journals into line, this strategy should make the troll that claims to be a climate scientist -not that they come hereabouts anyway- the idiots that they always have been.
If these strategies fail, then feel free to go for all lower common denominators. Call them idiots again. Idiots, idiots, idiots! Introduce fresh methods. Like calling them morons instead of idiots. Make fun of their spelling, grammar, moniker, etc, even if they are from a non-English speaking background. Take no prisoners!
I am sure Tim Lambert of UNSW, who is not a climate scientologist -excuse the error, pls- and who must be very busy right now investigating the claims about the programming code and HARRY_READ_ME.txt, would approve the strategies offered to the pet trolls of his blog in the holy crusade against AGW heretics.
BTW, I'll be at the UNSW studying something unimportant. Not computer or climate science, unfortunately. Maybe, I'll invite Tim for lunch one day -a free lunch!- and get to know him better. I'm sure he'll turn out to be a very nice guy when meet him personally, despite his fascination with pet trolls.
sHx,
Have you tested your strategy?
I can predict a few reply, but I'd be interested in the result of your experience.
"Have you tested your strategy?"
No. I am testing it now. Only an idiot would ask a question like that!
In case anyone had doubt whether sHx was a concern troll or sincere, here are extracts from [sHx's earlier post](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/on_those_stolen_cru_emails.php#…):
>*This blog has the most arrogant, condescending and repulsive set of commenters I've ever come across in the blogosphere. Ad hominem attacks [...]*
>*...sleight of hand dismissal of commeters because they are not scientists or climatologists, and on and on... The whole works of obnoxiousness in full display in less than 100 short comments.*
Then sHx comes back [with this](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/on_those_stolen_cru_emails.php#…):
>*Effective Strategies to Trump "Denialists" [...] Dedicated to Tim Lambert of UNSW)
Then [this](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/on_those_stolen_cru_emails.php#…)*
>>"Have you tested your strategy?"
>*No. I am testing it now. Only an idiot would ask a question like that!*
Well, I guess I tested sHx, I think the answer is quite clear.
I don't think the peer review process works the way you think it does. Reviewers often do not have full access to data about which the paper has been written (though it would be nice if they did). It is not practical for the reviewer to replicate authors' conclusions. The output of peer review is not perfection. It is just a form of quality control, and it is only as good as the reviewers are skeptical. Given the level of AGW skepticism indicated in the CRU emails (that is, virtually none), it appears to me that papers providing evidence of AGW haven't received much quality control.
I love science. I loathe people who call themselves scientists when they're actually left-wing activists.
Science attempts to describe what is. It doesn't advocate for what should be. Cap and trade, command and control economies, etc. These are not science. It one front for creeping socialism and a steeping stone to communism.
Mark Bryne, it is interesting that you felt you had to explain that for deltoid regulars. LOL. Says a lot about your respect for their intelligence.
Replicating results != Fact and Citation Checking.
I wonder if Willy Walls would work better in a fortune cookie bakery or a cereal box factory?
Best venue for such pearls, you know.
dhogaza,
Re my [earlier question](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/on_those_stolen_cru_emails.php#…]
Soon and Baliunas (2003) made it into the [Copenhagen Diagnosis](http://www.ccrc.unsw.edu.au/Copenhagen/Copenhagen_Diagnosis_LOW.pdf), see page 45.
Which I believe also reconciles with Marco's comment.
That should read Soon and Baliunas (2003) made it into the CD.
Interesting comments William, I was actually seeking information.
BTW, your advocacy combined with an overwhelming lack of presentation of supporting evidence says a lot to contradict your last post.
Willy Wally just luuurrrvs science. All sorts of science. Like creation "science" (see elsewhere on ScienceBlogs). I suppose Evolution is just left wing activism too. I don't know if there's any real value in responding to him, him being a lunatic an' allâ¦.
WW 338: "The output of peer review is not perfection. It is just a form of quality control, and it is only as good as the reviewers are skeptical. Given the level of AGW skepticism indicated in the CRU emails (that is, virtually none), it appears to me that papers providing evidence of AGW haven't received much quality control."
In what sense do emails (whatever their derivation and irrespective of the legality of their publication to a scientifically illiterate audience) form a part of the peer-review process?
And Steve C, In what sense can one determine the full spectrum of any others views from a cherry picked selection of emails?
But let us turn to specifics 'William the believer', please cite the best evidence you have that support your claim that:
>"These emails illustrate how the peer review system is gamed"
I'd like to begin to bring together the context the specific papers that were at issue to see how your claim stand up.
I note that you have declined a similar early invitation for specifics (on the matter of an imagined whistle blower). I hope you won't decline this new opportunity.
William Wallace writes:
>*I love science. I loathe people who call themselves scientists when they're actually left-wing activists.
Science attempts to describe what is. It doesn't advocate for what should be.*
WW,
There are consequences from scientific discoveries. The implication of these consequences are not always understood by those external to the field.
You seem to wish that scientist sit tight and don't ring alarm bells if humanity continues down a path with consequences of extreme risk.
I think otherwise, I believe it is the duty of scientist to behave as James Hansen behaved when he knows what he knows.
Some readers will be aware the Hansen recently put himself forward for arrest at a Mountain-Top coal-mine protest. Later we found that Hansen was suffering cancer (which has now been operated on).
What a hero. William your small minded sniping is an embarrassment in the face of such to acts of enormous integrity.
Hansen acts to bring attention to what he knows.
Wallace continues:
>*Cap and trade, command and control economies, etc. These are not science. It one front for creeping socialism and a steeping stone to communism.*
What an embarrassment. I don't even need to critique this rubbish, just stating it again is enough.
After reflection on William Wallace's post where he states:
>*I loathe people who call themselves scientists when they're actually left-wing activists. Science attempts to describe what is. It doesn't advocate for what should be.
Cap and trade, command and control economies, etc. These are not science. It one front for creeping socialism and a steeping stone to communism.*
I'm beginning to gain some empathy for those scientist who's experience the brunt and who thus detect a rising parallel to [McCarthyism.](http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/copenhagen/commen…)
WW (388): "I love science. I loathe people who call themselves scientists when they're actually left-wing activists."
However, when they're right-wing activists...
Re William Wallace:
>*I loathe people who call themselves scientists when they're actually left-wing activists. Science attempts to describe what is. It doesn't advocate for what should be. Cap and trade, command and control economies, etc. These are not science. It one front for creeping socialism and a steeping stone to communism.*
Richard "*[What We Are Up Against, and What to Do](http://www.heartland.org/full/24841/Climate_Alarm_What_We_Are_Up_Agains…)*" Lindzen, is the sort of activist scientist that the New Climate McCarthyists seem to like. Lindzen's regular [sessions at the ideological lobby tanks](http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Richard_Lindzen) (Heartland Inst., George C. Marshal, Preping-up
big oil and big coal) prove his unaligned sensible position. So too his position in an Exxon funded "think tank'. This is why he is not subject to William Wallace's critique.
Advocating for inaction is the only acceptable role for a scientist, and the only solid test that proves someone is not suspect.
Forget the science seems the risk of Williams approach? William appears hight focused on advocacy that challenges his ideology. Advocacy and activist that he likes goes without notice or critique from William.
Wallace,
When the solutions to problems conflict with your political views, is it sensible to shoot the messenger?
William Wallace:
What? You mean the world hasn't been cooling for 10 ... err hang on.... 11 years?
Was that oft-repeated denial mantra actually "slopping" and "erronious"?
Flamin' heck!!
Bray-fart (say it quickly) opines:
So the Montreal Protocol and its successors were a step toward communism? The reduction, through cap-and-trade, of sulphate emissions to reduce acid rain brought us all one goose-step closer to a science-less socialist hell?
What of the limits put on heavy metal emissions into the environment, or of dioxins, or of intenstinal microflora?
Heck, we muct all be cherry-red tunic-wearers by now, according to your logic.
Do you even have a clue about what it is that you speak of?!
Other readers might not be aware that before James came out of the protest closet, he once came to Minnesota to spread the AGW news. The Globe Is Warming!
Give me an example of a right-wing activist scientist.
Everybody, happy thanksgiving, I hope you get to spend it with loved ones. And remember, don't eat too much tofu turkey.
@#404:
Actual quote from one such right-wing activist scientist:
The author of this screed is none other than S. Fred Singer, who still tries to call attention to his science credentials for authority.
There's many more, too. Look into the tobacco fiasco, or CFC/ozone denialism, or the George C. Marshall Institute's defense of Reagan's Star Wars program (by setting a handful of right-wing physicists versus the consensus of the community through the popular press rather than through research). Singer's involved in all of these, by the way, but he's hardly alone.
Of course, I doubt this'll make any impact to your rhetoric, just as surely as no creationist will change when presented with "just one transitional form".
John Christy, Roy Spencer, Robert Lindzen.
Oops, epic fail, I gave more than "an example" ...
In addtion to the evidence presented by Brian D, plus your ignoring evidence that [already countered](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/on_those_stolen_cru_emails.php#…) your opinion, there are few more points of note:
Love the [primary source](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWnMlUPqnas) science you present here Wallace, that's a fail.
And your last post reinforced the point that:
>William your small minded sniping is an embarrassment in the face of such to acts of enormous integrity [[of James Hansen](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/on_those_stolen_cru_emails.php#…)]
Then there is your [continuing failure](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/on_those_stolen_cru_emails.php#…) to present requested evidence to support your attacks on science.
Nanny,
In case you missed my reply, it [is here](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/on_those_stolen_cru_emails.php#…).
Real science is falsifiable. But when guys like Phil Jones won't disclose his data or methods, the process is no longer science, but "trust me".
Somebody else wrote:
Sounds like this has been partially corroborated by the CRU emails, too.
And that email goes on, with an AGW alarmist double entendree
Wallace,
Is it that you don't want to get pinned down on [the detail](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/on_those_stolen_cru_emails.php#…)? Do you prefer to keep to smear-and-run tactics?
I'm sure with thousands of emails you could say what ever you like, so long as you keep running and never get hung up on the context nor detail.
Unfortunately running a propaganda campaign is different to truth seeking.
And unfortunately the overwhelming evidence suggests we are on a path of extreme risk, and such (as your) focus on propaganda in place of truth seeking is contributing to reducing our opportunities to create a 'safe landing'.
Release the data and analysis for scrutiny, then we'll talk. Otherwise, all you have is "trust us, we're scientists, we know more than you." That, and a bunch of incriminating emails.
And we all remember how James Hansen didn't want to release his slopping and buggy source code that ended up erroniously identifying 1998 as the warmest year on record. Fortunately, the so-called deniers were able to reverse engineer and identify his mistake. Opps.
Posted by: William Wallace | November 25, 2009 11:09 AM
Ooops indeed, strange memory you had since that didn't happen! Prior to the posting by McIntyre, Hansen had pointed out that 1934 was in a statistical tie with 1998 and that the record year was 1934.
J.H. released the source code before refusing to release it to McIntyre?
William Wallace, change the IP laws and the remaining data can be released. Or lobby for more funds to buy out the IP rights.
Until then I am to understand all the GISS data is avaliable, it is shows the world is warming faster than CRU data.
So perhaps you'd suggest we now adapt GISS as the more accurate?
Wallace, Hans has [a ditty](http://www.realclimate.org/?comments_popup=2019#comment-144118) which expresses the frustration of harassed scientist, caught between IP laws, miss-information, and what some experience as seemingly malicious attacks.
Tim et al,
I deal with computer security quite a lot. What you're not understanding is this: while it is painful to admit (esp for CRU), to date we have exactly ZERO evidence that anyone has committed a crime in releasing these emails. Don't fly off the handle quite yet... :)
Among security nonspecialists...
1) By *FAR* the most common method for secure and/or confidential information to be released is an "oops" on the part of those who hold the information. It happened earlier this year at CRU, just by way of example.
2) The second most common way: purposeful release from the inside, either by someone who didn't realize the information was confidential, or someone who did but felt the information should get out. (That latter would be a whistleblower of course.)
3) It is actually quite rare for someone to hack their way in. If CRU *were* subject to a knowledgeable data attack, the attack would be quite easy to accomplish and they would never know it happened. A good attacker can cover all tracks.
With those realities in mind, it is rather early to be claiming the data was stolen via external attack. That's by far the least likely path for it to have been released.
I don't mind your venom however. One thing I've learned this year: when people go over the top in their politicized perspectives, they lose the ability to see things clearly, and more quickly make it obvious to the rest of the world just how off base they are. The truth ultimately does get revealed, no matter what.
[D -- last I heard, the samples were being isotope-analyzed, which may provide far more interesting info than a simple refutation of stripbark BCP as climate proxies. Since there's no budget for any of this, it's all done on lowest-priority lab time. I'm frustrated by the delay as well, but hey, we're in no danger of falling back to the Team's disclosure record :). Nothing hidden, nothing to hide. All available data still remains online, including all recent corrections found.]
Speaking of William Wallace.....
Why did William Wallace wear a kilt?
Because sheep can hear a zipper a mile away!
That might give folks a clue here as to what the individual who uses the handle "William Wallace" likes to do when he's not spamming message boards with his idiocy.
MrPete.
You're engaging in pocket hockey.
What, you mean "oops, I've accidentally released some information that I hold, whilst simultaneously using Russian and Turkish servers in the process, and also whilst attempting to 'release' it on the RealClimate site"?
In your game of pocket hockey, I think that's an own goal.
When I approached senior management about data fabrication, I didn't feel the need to hack into the emails of everyone in the department. I certainly didn't think that it needed to be released on an internet denialist site first, when there are numerous institutional oversight mechanisms available.
Additionally, it is inconceivable that workers do not know what material in a department is confidential - in Australia an essential part of every job application, and of every subsequent job induction, is the demonstration of appropriate understanding of institutional confidentiality conditions, and I doubt that British standards are any less stringent.
Hmmm...
So, it's "quite rare for someone to hack their way in", but it's "quite easy to accomplish"? Well, you have at least one out of two correct, and judging by the industry in firewall software and by the convictions for hacks into US military and law enforcement sites, it's patently obvious which of the two it is.
And who said that this was a "good" hack? Whoever was responsible bungled their attempt to break into RealClimate.
I'm trying to get this posted on my blog, but alas WordPress is being its slow and stupid self again (somehow it thinks that it needs to load maps.google.com when I fire up its blog editor -- wtf?). Anyway:
* * *
I just downloaded the FOI2009.zip file containing the cracked CRU content (I used the megaupload copy), and while I don't intend to open up the actual content inside, I did study the structure and metadata of the .zip file, and I found some interesting things:
Of the 4,662 files in the archive, 3,172 seem to have been last modified under a timezone of -0500 (somewhere in the Americas), 1,487 under a timezone of -0400, and 3 under a timezone of around -0000 (ah -- now that's closer to Britain).
The .zip file itself contains two smaller .zip files:
(1) mbh98-osborn.zip, in which 2,171 of its files yielded a timezone of -0400, and 4 files had a timezone of -0500;
(2) russia.zip, which contains no timezone information.
All archive members with timezone information gave a user ID (uid) and group ID (gid) of 1,002, which is very close to a nice round number.
why is it that the supporters (dhogaza, D, and others) sound like bullies and resort to name calling, while the skeptics sound a lot more reasonable? whatever your opinion on the matter of AGW, shouldn't we be focused on the truth and not worried about being right?
personal attacks do not makeup for scientific shortcomings.
Selective reading or downright dishonesty on your part.
My understanding is that they were successful - that's why Real Climate was down for the day a week ago Wednesday.
I'm sure MrPete will respond that whistleblowers commonly distribute their goods via committing a felony (breaking into Real Climate) that's not protected by any whistleblower act I'm aware of.
Strange, I didn't realize MrPete had an autobiography fetish.
interesting story.... i'm not a scientist, but am looking for help with this. a friend, who doesn't believe in global warming, said 95% of greenhouse gas is water vapour. less than the 5% remaining is carbon dioxide. less than 5% of that is man made, the rest coming from nature somehow. so from that only 0.25% is from man. And we only want to reduce our usage by about 15%. this is only 0.0375% of greenhouse gases. (I think my math's right. not sure if i paraphrased him correctly). i can see why he wouldn't believe global warming if this is true. my question is, is it true? something seems to be missing.
thanks for everyone's help.
Question: For general pointers on climate science, I suggest heading to RealClimate.org and clicking the Start Here link.
A general answer to your overall question is: Small things can have huge effects. A tiny wind doesn't seem all that important, but if you're balanced on top of a post, it can topple you. (Likewise, a virus is a ludicrously small proportion of your body mass, but it only takes one to get you into bed for a week.)
A more specific answer to your question can be found here, numbers 26 and 27. I'd also add "Read the IPCC reports", but those can be hard to follow for people with no scientific background at all (even a little helps, though).
An even better answer, though, is to question your own (and your friends') ability to evaluate scientific data without going through the years of training the experts have. What you can do well, though, is sidestep the question: Given how you can't know for certain whether climate change is real or not, what's the most rational course of action to take? The outstanding book What's The Worst That Could Happen? is a great guide to this (it's based, somewhat, on this series of videos, which are available for free but take longer to go through), and is usually the first resource I suggest to people who aren't already familiar with the argument.
Hope that helps.
(FWIW, a 15% reduction is NOT a science-based goal, and several scientists are angry over this. If you read the most recent scientific report (the Copenhagen Diagnosis, discussed here), you'll see that the science is calling for an emissions peak (i.e. no more increases period) from 2015 to 2020, followed by a sharp drop of 100% (not 15%!) afterwards.)
[Dhogaza](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/on_those_stolen_cru_emails.php#…).
"Bungled" was a poor choice of wording on my part. The fact that the cracker(s) didn't enter and exist RealClimate without being spotted straight away was the point that I was trying to make.
It's secondary though to the more important point that one doesn't "accidentally" release information by committing a felony and breaking into others' servers, nor does one blow the whistle by committing a felony and breaking into others' servers.
However one slices it and dices it, MrPete is full of it.
> robot spider
http://www.pinktentacle.com/images/la_machine_3_large.jpg
> computer program
http://i.ehow.com/images/GlobalPhoto/Articles/4965232/177549-main_Full…
Any fool can see the difference.
To reiterate:
Most of the files in the .zip file seem to be packaged under timezones of -0500 or -0400.
William Wallace,
>*Release the data and analysis for scrutiny, then we'll talk. Otherwise, all you have is "trust us, we're scientists, we know more than you." That, and a bunch of incriminating emails.*
>*Posted by: William Wallace | November 26, 2009 9:23 PM*
Oh you mean [this data?](http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/)
Does Hans [anticipate your response?](http://www.realclimate.org/?comments_popup=2019#comment-144118)
Oh, yes, it's one of those self-evident truths Tom Jefferson talked about ...
(MrPete's been around a long time)
*[comment deleted. Ray is only permitted to post to the Ray thread]*
> I was amazed at the sheer dogmatism I found on this site and the frequency of insults and ad hominem attacks directed against Plimer and anyone who may be naturally skeptical about the certainty of this issue.
> By contrast, when I visit sites on the other side of the fence, I find the commentators and posts much more reasonable.
Did you keep rehearsing those content-free lines while you were at the back of the car? Because I must have heard it a hundred times.
There's a reason why Deltoid has a special thread reserved just for you. So get back in that thread.
Gosh, creationists do the same. If I felt like spending the time, I'd categorize Standard Anti-Science Claims and start counting how many times creationists, AGW denialists, HIV denialists, etc use them.
This one - "they're not nice, so science is wrong!" has got to be one of the top five arguments used by all science denialists.
biji,
sHx was a blatant concern troll. [See here](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/on_those_stolen_cru_emails.php#…).
Mark Byrne:
Haha, thanks. :)
* * *
I found that the most recent access time (atime) of the files in FOI2009.zip is 16 Nov 07:27:52 UTC, which would probably mean the .zip file was packaged after that time.
Regarding realclimate as a source. The raw data GHCN v.2 didn't seem to have pressure and humidity. Necessary, in my view, to determine how much heat is in the atmosphere, since dry air and wet air at the same temperature have different amounts of heat.
Realclimate commenting on climate science by climate scientists who get paid to study the climate and who might have a vested interest in getting people alarmed. But other than that, solid source.
It had to happen.
Aynsley Kellow, an arts graduate, previous co-author with Energy and Environment editor Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, acknowledged climate change sceptic, misrepresenter of DDT policies, and all-round distorter of genuine science, has just been interviewed by Michael Duffy on [Counterpoint](http://www.abc.net.au/rn/counterpoint/default.htm) about the theft of data from CRU.
He has a spray at many folk, particularly at Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann, distorts the facts of the matter with complete unashamedness, and even managed to squeeze in that the term "denier" is used in an effort to link denialists with Holocaust deniers.
I hope that Duffy gives someone the right of reply: "counterpoint" is one thing, but out-and-out lying is completely over the top.
Kellow? Erk, I need a shower.
WW (436): Do you have even a skerrick of evidence for this sly little smear: "Realclimate commenting on climate science by climate scientists who get paid to study the climate and who might have a vested interest in getting people alarmed" (emphasis added).
If so, provide it. If not, act like any decent human being and retract the statement.
Bernard, this is typical of the sorts of "guests" Duffy insists on giving air-time to. Duffy give the right-of-reply? Not bloody likely.
Presumably this is all in the name of the oft-quoted but sorely misunderstood principle of "journalistic balance". IMO people sharing el gordo's views have a lot to answer for.
Wallace states:
>*Realclimate commenting on climate science by climate scientists who get paid to study the climate and who might have a vested interest in getting people alarmed. But other than that, solid source.*
Nice little closed logic their Willaim, so if you are a climate scientist you should not be trusted on climate science.
****
BTW, what is this "might have a vested interest in getting people alarmed"? Why not accuse aids researches, or public health reserachers, smoking reserachrs of that charge?
I would have thought, might have a vested interest in aquiring knowledge would be the significant driver. Or might have a vested interest is getting the science right, accurate, and faithfully represented.
On the other hand there are [these motives](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/new_zealand_climate_science_co…). Compare and contrast.
[Steve](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/on_those_stolen_cru_emails.php#…).
Sadly, your description of the Counterpoint approach is correct. Nevertheless, I have posted on their guestbook, and in case it doesn't pass moderation muster (which wouldn't be the first time...), I'll repeat it here:
I was outside listening through a closed window, so I am wondering - did I hear correctly?!
Did Joe Hockey just say that he'd appoint Ross Garnaut and Ian Plimer to derive a Coalition policy on the science of climate change, should Hockey gain the leadership?
This goes from the comic to sheer tragedy, if so...
Bernard, accusing one or more ABC programmes of bias is something of a national sport, as el gordo and his puppet masters right-thinking mates well know. Ergo Counterpoint. I've lost count of the number of times I've yelled and raved incoherently at the radio when Duffy is banging his favourite climate change "scepticism" tin drum, and it's got to the point where I've sworn off (instead of at) Duffy when driving - the potential road toll would be too much to bear.
I still can't see how Duffy's anti-climate science pogrom programme lives up to its name, it's like calling Andrew Bolt a member of the intelligentsia.
>*Did Joe Hockey just say that he'd appoint Ross Garnaut and Ian Plimer to derive a Coalition policy on the science of climate change, should Hockey gain the leadership?*
1) An economist; and 2) a non-climate-scientist error riddled polemicist.
Can anyone spot the skill set that is missing?
No, it was Senator Steve Fielding, calling for a Royal Commission.
Sigh.
Gaz.
Yeah, I caught the PM repeat on local ABC, and heard Fielding speak after the Hockey story. It was just another example of his detachment from reality... I should have guessed that it would be one of the nutjob senators that came up with that one.
One thing for Australian politics at the moment - if it wasn't so serious in consequence, we'd all be splitting our sides laughing!
I heard this weekend that the controversy manufactroversy has even lead to parliamentary inquiries here in the Netherlands. Some MP's want the Minister of Environment to explain what she thinks about all this deception. Ugh. At least she's on record saying that the hackers have been cherry-picking the emails. By the way, the questions came from MPs who all just happen to be from populist, right-leaning parties.
And this morning I found a link to a horrific Sunday Times article:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6936289.ece
Seems like they swallowed the denialist talking points whole, hardly any other perspective is given. The comments are pretty much as you'd expect too.
Here is a thoughtful piece the alarmists should read:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8aefbf52-d9e1-11de-b2d5-00144feabdc0.html
It was a quick read, because I stopped at the first lie ...
For smear-and-run fetishist
*"a thoughtful piece"* = [???](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/on_those_stolen_cru_emails.php#…)
WW @ 448: if this condescending, derivative collection of other people's witless opinions is what passes for "thoughtful" in your mind, it's no wonder you won't answer a straight question.
I'll ask again: either provide evidence of your sly attempt to smear other people's character and reputation (@436), or retract it. After all, if you're going to who bang on about how it's easier to discredit scientists who don't agree with you than it is to debate with them, surely you need to lead by example.
never heard of that source, but this [report](http://www.advertiser24.co.uk/content/advertiser24/news/story.aspx?bran…) about the investigation sounds interesting:
Meanwhile it is believed that hackers unsuccessfully attempted to secure data from the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis (CCCma), a division of of the climate research branch of Environment Canada.
and
A UEA spokeswoman also confirmed that the information was not available on a server that could be easily accessed and could not have been inadvertently released.
let us see
Evidence for that? see here. Climate scientists. LOL. What a bunch of jokers.
Willy,
>Regarding realclimate as a source. The raw data GHCN v.2 didn't seem to have pressure and humidity.
You aren't [looking](http://daac.ornl.gov//CLIMATE/climate_collections.html) in the right place.
William,
Almost all of the thermal inertia of the earth is in the oceans anyway. The true measure of the amount of heat in the system is the average temperature of the oceans.
We are able now to measure the temp of the oceans reasonable well, but these records only go back a few decades. The point of the air temp. record is as a proxy for the ocean temp.
Thus your argument is pure red herring.
Bernard, looks like you're off Aynsley Kellow's Christmas card list if his response to your comment to Counterpoint is any indication ;-)
http://tinyurl.com/ya6glx6
*[comment deleted. Ray is only permitted to post to the Ray thread]*
Which is, of course, utterly irrelevant to the question of whether it's a pollutant.
Can't help but notice the rest of your comment was essentially a content-free whine.
*[comment deleted. Ray is only permitted to post to the Ray thread]*
You didn't actually make an argument for CO2 not being a pollutant, you know. You just asserted it. Which makes you a hypocrite as well as an idiot.
Of course, Wallace doesn't go to doctors because they might tell him he has cancer so that they can get cancer surgeons to charge him huge fees for surgery, he doesn't go to dentists because they might send him to a maxillo-facial surgeon to charge him a huge fee for implant surgery, he doesn't ask solicitors for legal advice when he faces court because they might tell him to engage a barrister who charges big fees.
In short, Wallace has nothing to do with professionals because they "might have a vested interest in getting people alarmed".
Otherwise he's a hypocrite.
*[comment deleted. Ray is only permitted to post to the Ray thread]*
Quite obviously not. The fact that a certain quantity of a substance is necessary does not imply that more of it is not a bad thing.
Martin's logic is impeccable Ray,
Now its time to make your case. You needn't make it 1,000 pages, since that was in fact only your straw man beat up, presumably to distract from Martin's correct logic.
*[comment deleted. Ray is only permitted to post to the Ray thread]*
Repeating your previous fallacious arguments does not strengthen them, especially after the fallacy has been pointed out.
Oh, go on - why not?!
I would seriously like to read your "1,000 page dissertation" where you "go through" these points.
And if it takes you one thousand pages to explain photosynthesis, even to a lay person, you will no doubt be including detailed explanations of the toxicity of CO2 to organisms at various concentrations, and even to particular photosynthetic reactions.
You will also, no doubt, have plenty of room in your "1,000 pages" to discuss Leibig's Law of the Minimum, to discuss the relative contributions (positive and negative) of various other photosynthetic components to carbon reduction, and to discuss the various complexities of additive and synergistic interspecies interactions in the overall primary productivity budget.
Oh, and there are more than a few biologists here waiting with bated breath for your opus magnum.
One thousand pages? I can't wait!
>Repeating your previous fallacious arguments does not strengthen them, especially after the fallacy has been pointed out.
Martin's point is flawless Ray.
Yours, Ray is something else.
If you could get me a printed copy, on soft paper (don't want anything too scratchy -- and please, no staples!), then I'll review it over the next few weeks "whilst doing the business".
Back to your thread Ray.
You couldn't be clearer in demonstrating what rubbish and pollution is.
Back to your thread Ray.
You couldn't be clearer in demonstrating what rubbish and pollution is.
Posted by: Janet Akerman | December 2, 2009 6:57 AM
Thank you Janet. I knew you would understand.
Would you like me to give you a 1,000 page dissertation on why carbon and carbon dioxide are essential for life?
yes, please. title, author and year, like a proper citation.
but how should you know how to cite properly?
you believe that the average dissertation has 1000 pages?
and has a topic like "why carbon and carbon dioxide are essential for life"?
your academic career did not progress beyond kindergarten?
*[comment deleted. Ray is only permitted to post to the Ray thread]*
Could somebody here identify instances when legitimate scientific advances were disseminated and conducted outside of the peer review process?
Because, I think you should get used to it. Peer review is dying, thanks to Dr. Phil Jones et al.
Even Judith Curry, Chairperson of School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, recognizes that blogging skeptics are providing a legitimate scientific function.
Yet the extreme left wing scienceblogs bloggers continue to characterize these people as "denialists".
Your sweater is unraveling.
LOL. Looks like Guy Raz forgot to read the memo to kill the climategate story by ignoring it. I wonder how long before he's reassigned to cover less prestigious issues by the libturd powers that be.
I do view doctors and dentists advice with skepticism, and have sought second and third opinions only to find out that the first was for lack of a better work, wrong.
There is a reason why they call it "practicing" medicine and only an idiot would believe everything their doctor tells them based solely on their M.D.
On the other hand, I bet you would be extremely skeptical if your M.D. endowed doctor told you, indirectly, that you should skip your swine flu shot and instead take a food supplement derived from rice because it strengthens your cells and immune response by better allowing energy to get to the cells by treating their Mitochondrion.
I would be skeptical, too, even if the M.D. stated that he skipped his flu shot and is on the suppliment.
So who is the hypocrite?
Any individual cell has many mitochondria.
Science is just something that you met once, briefly, back in junior high isn't it?
Wallace,
The climate has had a second, third, and 4th assessment. The prognosis stands.
You are in denial.
You have too little imagination. More like "oops, we left the files out in the lobby. Sarah's nine-year-old daughter shared them with her friends. One of her friends is a thirteen year old whiz kid who posted them online through an anonymizing proxy." Or whatever.
Again, you're assuming a hack. Not a necessary element.
Wow, you have high standards. I can count on one hand the number of corporate entities I've consulted for who actually keep confidential material locked up. (Look around your office suite next time you go in: how much material could a janitor collect?)
You clearly know little of this. Not something I'm going to discuss in detail online, for obvious reasons. Knowing some top-level experts, I consider myself knowledgeable but not expert.
A mini-introduction: there are three levels of security: commercial, non-commercial, and government. "the industry" is commercial. "US military" is government. The best non-commercial easily defeats the best commercial (often within seconds or minutes.) CRU clearly has lower-than-commercial security practices.
I remain unconvinced there was any real breakin attempt. Non-experts easily see scary attacks in ordinary events or breakdowns. And yes, if there was an attack on RC, the fact that it was bungled is ample evidence it was not done by a pro.
Oh, in answer to the conundrum about rarity of hack vs simplicity:
a) Leaks are far more common than hacks. This alone makes release-by-hack relatively rare.
b) For a determined opponent, non-hack attacks are usually simpler and cheaper than hacking. Why bother with hacking when you can just walk into the building? Again, this makes hacking the more uncommon method.
c) Simplicity of hacking: let's just say that with the right tools it is scary-easy. I used to have a fifteen-second demo I did for executives to put the fear of God into them, so to speak. You get me a cup of coffee, I get all your passwords. :-D
On the other hand, the admins and the police - who actually have had the opportunity to work with the server - are convinced.
Anon self-proclaimed internet expert MrPete, or those who have been able to actually read access logs and the like, who to believe?
The level of grasping at straws by the denialsphere in an attempt to legitimatize the publishing of stolen e-mails is thoroughly disgusting.
MrPete might be right. Someone may have filched access codes by walking into somebody's office and copying them from an open computer.
It's still a criminal act, though.
I've not been paying a lot of attention. Has this been reported somewhere?
In the absence of further info, my own guess about most-likely-source has been someone closely related to one of the players, not necessarily an employee.
My example about grabbing access codes was an example of breaking in, and yes that would presumably be criminal. Remember, my opinion is that a breakin or hack is a much less-likely scenario. I'm open to whatever is discovered. We're all curious about that, of course.
(LB, I'm not anonymous like you. I just like to use the MrPete handle. You can easily find me as Pete Holzmann. Or, if you've been around long enough to recognize this: {hpda,pyramid}!octopus!pete :-D ...)
*Sigh.*
LB, that would have to have been a root account then to the back-up mail server. Because that's how the entire mail database, in mbox format, got lifted.
Gaz, why "sigh"???
I've now searched for any confirmation or even rumor that the police believe it to be a hack, as dhogaza claims. In fact, I've searched for any statement from the police at all. Obviously, the web is a big place, but I've found nothing. If dhogaza, you or anyone have any links providing an update from investigative authorities, I'm quite interested.
The most interesting new thing I found is evidence that (some of?) the material may have come from one of Tim Osborn's computers, perhaps his home computer: http://ijish.livejournal.com/692.html
Nothing conclusive, of course. The obvious question for an investigator: who has access to Tim's computers.
All in all, a gut-wrenching situation.
The University made a public statement that the break in was being investigated by the police. I wouldn't surprise me if the police themselves have issued no PR about it.
Martin,
A variety of PC email software packages understand mbox format, including the Eudora software that CRU staff use on their Windows computers.
No roots, servers or sysadmin experts need have been involved for mboxes to be part of the picture.
480 Luminous,
Why do the email files all have an identical creation date of 1 Jan 2009? Why does the zip show a timezone outside the UK?
480 Luminous,
A number of email accounts were accessed. What sort of "open computer" would this be?
486 MrPete,
That doesn't make sense. You need access to the accounts that own those files, whatever the format or email client.
Don't feed MrPete, the whole exercise is meant to counter criticism that it Is Not Nice To Read Stolen E-mail. They cast doubt on its being stolen in an effort to whitewash the actions of The Mob who are using them to try to get people like Jones and Mann fired.
I honestly am not interested in any particular outcome of the investigation. Just sharing from my experience with other examples of confidential information releases.
One of the things that often surprises people is how "impossible" bits of evidence eventually turn out to be not so impossible.
Obviously, this certainly COULD be a hack attack. Doesn't negate anything I've suggested.
[I could give you plausible ways that the various bits of curious dates/etc happened, but it is not worth speculating. Unless/until someone is found/confesses, we can't really know for sure.]
Yes, it's Not Nice To Read Stolen E-mail. It's also Not Nice To Game The System, etc. Lots of "Not Nice" stuff has been revealed through all of this.
A lot of disinfectant is needed to clean up this mess. Probably way more than what it took to clean up the gross mess I found downstairs on New Year's eve... dead mice clogging up our plumbing. Yechhhh.
Frankly, it's of little concern to me what happens to Jones and Mann. I'm far more concerned about what has been destroyed in recent years (not just in climate science) w/ respect to the integrity of science, and the politicization of science. What is quickly coming to a head has been developing for a long time. Scientists are finally waking up. THAT has nothing directly to do with Jones and Mann.
When a crime is exposed I have a hard time punishing those that expose it. Let's take care of these Bernie Madoffs of the energy scare first. Billions of dollars are changing hands.
Doing science is now a crime in some people's eyes.
What a world we live in ...
Nincompoop.
Attempting to protect the planet from pollution is not going to affect the real approaching "energy scare" that is Peak Oil/Coal.
If anything, careful husbanding of finite fossil resources is also the best mitigation of the coming "energy scare" - but of course, acknowledging this and acting upon it would be counter to the fundamental tenets of the laissez faire ideology upon which starry-eyed nonsense comments such as JBM's are made.
Truly, JBM would make Tim Curtin proud.
On a different matter, it seems that I am finally about to lose my borrowed computer. So many moles to whack, and no Interweb umbilicus to whack them through...
LOL, they broke the law, and thanks to a tantamount 6 month statue of limitations, they won't be prosecuted. So climate researchers in the U.K., feel free to break the law...if you can hide it for 6 or more months.
Sha naw naw naw, naw naw naw naw, hey hey hey, good bye (phil jones).
This can't be good for his career.