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Serious criminal activity at the University of East Anglia´s Climatic Research Unit

So despite all your accusatory, sometimes shrieking claims that you aren't allowed to question anything, you actually don't want to question anything after all.
 
Zachor said:
Partial data is the key phrase here. I'm old enough to remember the panic over 'global cooling' in the 70's and that was a panic brought about by jumping to conclusions from partial data.
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1 - Global cooling was a phenomenum largely exagerated by the press based on a misreading of the scientific data, removing the caveats about the influence of us burning fossil fuels on the actual direction of climatic change, and the fact that the scientists (mostly geologists), were talking in geological timeframes where the short term is periods of hundreds or thousands of years rather than within the lifetimes of the current or next generation.

2 - Much of the measured global cooling from the the 1940's to the early 1970's was caused by the global dimming impact of the vast quantities of soot, sulphur and other particulates that were being chucked up into the atmosphere at the time by the heavy industry, coal fire power stations, cars, trucks etc of the time that had virtually no regulations governing their emissions beyond the use of high chimneys to reduce localised pollution.

Through the 70's, 80's and 90's a raft of national and international laws and agreements were enacted that led to huge reductions in particulate emissions from all sources around the world, eg the use of particulate filters on diesel engines, low sulphur diesel, catalytic convertors on all new cars, scrubbers fitted to coal fired power stations etc etc. This resulted in a gradual reduction in both the localised and global impact of particulates in the atmosphere (eg visible reduction in smog in LA), which in turn led to a reduction in the impact of these particulate on global temperatures, and the warming trend re-emerged as the masking effect of global dimming reduced.

3 - The current scientific concensus on anthropogenic global warming is a result of over half a centuries scientific study by tens of thousands of scientists from every country on the planet, and actually combines much of the data on the impact of particulates, and solar cycles etc. that came out of the global cooling debate. There's no way it should be seen as being comparable to the concept of global cooling, which was largely based on a misinterpretation of the science by sections of the press, and the work of a very small number of scientists who even at the time were usually very cautious, and stated that the impact of increases in global CO2 levels from fossil fuel burning could well have a much greater impact in the short term than any underlying long term natural cooling trend. Bear in mind that even in the early 70's the majority of the published papers.

4 - There was no scientific concensus on global cooling in the 70's, as a recent review of all relevant articles in the major atmopsheric science journals from 1970-79 clearly shows.
The survey identified only 7 articles indicating cooling compared to 44 indicating warming. Those seven cooling articles garnered just 12% of the citations.
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At best it'd be fair to say that there was a public scientific debate going on in the period around whether the impact of increasing levels of particulates in the atmosphere would continue to have a greater cooling impact than the warming impact of increasing CO2 levels, combined with some background distraction from talk about the longer term likelihood of a new ice age at some point in the next few hundred to few thousand years based on Milankovitc cycles.
 
Nature's take on it here:
Nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real — or that human activities are almost certainly the cause. That case is supported by multiple, robust lines of evidence, including several that are completely independent of the climate reconstructions debated in the e-mails.
[...]
A fair reading of the e-mails reveals nothing to support the denialists' conspiracy theories.
[...]
The stolen e-mails have prompted queries about whether Nature will investigate some of the researchers' own papers. One e-mail talked of displaying the data using a 'trick' — slang for a clever (and legitimate) technique, but a word that denialists have used to accuse the researchers of fabricating their results. It is Nature's policy to investigate such matters if there are substantive reasons for concern, but nothing we have seen so far in the e-mails qualifies.
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This whole business, while clearly a nasty bit of ratfucking staged by the usual suspects ahead of the Copenhagen talks, really makes me wonder about the impact on the science.

Here's Feynmann:

We have learned a lot from experience about how to handle some of the ways we fool ourselves. One example: Millikan measured the charge on an electron by an experiment with falling oil drops, and got an answer which we now know not to be quite right. It's a little bit off, because he had the incorrect value for the viscosity of air. It's interesting to look at the history of measurements of the charge of the electron, after Millikan. If you plot them as a function of time, you find that one is a little bigger than Millikan's, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, until finally they settle down to a number which is higher.

Why didn't they discover that the new number was higher right away? It's a thing that scientists are ashamed of--this history--because it's apparent that people did things like this: When they got a number that was too high above Millikan's, they thought something must be wrong--and they would look for and find a reason why something might be wrong. When they got a number closer to Millikan's value they didn't look so hard. And so they eliminated the numbers that were too far off, and did other things like that. We've learned those tricks nowadays, and now we don't have that kind of a disease.

But this long history of learning how not to fool ourselves--of having utter scientific integrity--is, I'm sorry to say, something that we haven't specifically included in any particular course that I know of. We just hope you've caught on by osmosis.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself--and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you've not fooled yourself, it's easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.

I would like to add something that's not essential to the science, but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool the layman when you're talking as a scientist. I am not trying to tell you what to do about cheating on your wife, or fooling your girlfriend, or something like that, when you're not trying to be a scientist, but just trying to be an ordinary human being. We'll leave those problems up to you and your rabbi. I'm talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you are maybe wrong, that you ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen.
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http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm

What bothers me is this, when you have a concerted and well-funded campaign of political ratfucking aimed at discrediting particular scientific results that big business finds inconvenient, and when there's so much at stake if the ratfuckers are allowed to get away with it, you put the scientists in a really difficult position when it comes to 'bending over backwards' in the sense that Feynmann is talking about above. The *slightest* hint of doubt is going to be picked up, reproduced all over the media by the far-right echo-chamber and used to discredit the science in the minds of the vast majority of the public who rely on the media for their views.

I haven't had anything much to say about the hacked e-mails up until now because I wanted to take the time to read them properly, but frankly, a bit of bitching and a few unfortunate but entirely explicable phrases apart, I'm quite impressed by how well the scientific integrity of the authors stands up under this vicious and well-funded propaganda assault. I'd be interested to see if hacked e-mails on the same subject from the American Enterprise Institute or the various oil industry PR companies would stand up to scrutiny nearly as well.
 
The *slightest* hint of doubt is going to be picked up, reproduced all over the media by the far-right echo-chamber and used to discredit the science in the minds of the vast majority of the public who rely on the media for their views.
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Yes. But it isn't the *slightest* hint of doubt, is it? It is a very large dollop of doubt, the stink of which your (collective) defences are not quite managing to perfume.

I think it is inconceivable that this crowd (or any of the thousands of organisations consuming 100's of millions in tax payer money while refusing Freedom of Information act demands by the same tax payers to find out what they are up to) are ever, regardless of the data, going to write to the European Environment Agency and say "Great news! We've discovered that there is no evidence of global warming, so please stop sending us cheques, since we are off to study bog cotton in Latvia, and by the way you can shut yourselves down too and save the the tax payer some of that money".

For as long as that is so, I'm afraid you are just going to have to put up with those of us who demand rather higher professional standards for our taxes than perhaps you do.

Furthermore, I find the rhetoric with which those who question bad science as "deniers" (in a way so reminiscent of George Bush's denunciation of his critics as "anti american", or perhaps the Torquemada of heretics) deeply suspicious. It's as if the whole lot of you know how thick the ice is upon which you skate, so to speak...
 
in principle, I agree that the baseline uncorrected data along with all the formulas used to correct this data should be available to the public, or at least other academics.

However, the way the debate has gone in recent years, I can really see why the UEA scientists would be extremely reluctant to do this. It's not that the ice they're skating on being really thin that's the problem, the problem is that the knowledge required to properly understand and interpret the data, the reasons for any corrections etc. is way above the level of understanding of 99% of the bloggers and 'documentary' makers who're after the data.

This is not because they're thick or anything, it's just that the corrections made by UAE are based on decades of research, the vast majority of which none of the bloggers will have read. Even most of the more academic critics have track records of taking any minor niggle with the data and blowing it out of all proportion in public, and I doubt any of them have the same level of expertise in this as the UAE team who've been world leaders in the field for 2 decades or more.

This being the case, should the UAE team really be releasing their uncorrected data so that the bloggersphere can go wild with thousands of scientifically unsound different variations on the global temperature record to hugely confuse the situation? In reality what would this actually achieve, other than adding to public confusion.
 
Falcon said:
Yes. But it isn't the *slightest* hint of doubt, is it? It is a very large dollop of doubt, the stink of which your (collective) defences are not quite managing to perfume.
<snip>
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Hmm, no. I think you're grossly exaggerating the doubt there mate. Unless you want to offer examples? I can't think of any significant difficulties with the basic anthropogenic warming thesis that match your description.

The problem is though that the questions raised in the normal working of science, in this particular field, due to it being inconvenient for big business, are immediately turned into propaganda by a host of well funded and utterly amoral PR outfits and blasted through their media outlets at full volume. These are same guys in many cases who spent decades trying to convince the public that tobacco wasn't carcinogenic. They've proved over the years that they'll stop at nothing to confuse the public about science that their employers find inconvenient. In comparison a few academics bitching and making ill-considered suggestions to each other while worrying about what these creeps might do with their emails pales into insignificance.

Not unnaturally, that causes significant problems for the normal workings of science and forces climate scientists to try to get to grips with the utterly alien mentality of PR creeps and far-right shills. As the e-mails show, some of them cope with this pressure better than others. I don't see the e-mails calling any of the basic science into question though. Just the judgement of certain academics when put under serious pressures they're not trained for.
 
This stuff provides ample ammunition for those who already had doubts, and reasons not to want to believe in climate change or the perceived agenda that surrounds the issue.

I havent seen anything compelling that would get many people to change their minds on this issue as a result of these leaks, it just serves as a reinforcement for those that want to disbelieve at a time when they dont have much else to cling to.

Plenty of the beliefs of either side are based on things besides the data. If you go in with the existing belief that we're straining the environment in all sorts of ways, its a smaller leap to believing that climate change is a big and imminent threat than if you think that planet is coping with our lifestyles ok or that this kind of stuff is mostly some weird hippy agenda.

I dont expect data to change many more minds, those who dont believe it will have to be handled in a different way. But if we wait till a time where climate change is easy for a person to detect by experiencing the weather or sea level changes for themselves in a pretty conclusive way, its obviously far too late. As most powers seem in broad agreement about the need for change, the deniers are likely to be overcome by the sheer momentum of the transition, with any backlash overcome by the inevitability of the agenda, although things could still get very messy at some point once the real hard changes are enforced.
 
there is some truth to what you're saying, however the significant immediate impact of the screening of the 'global warming swindle' bollocks on channel 4 on public perception was very noticeable, and to a large extent is still the route cause of most of the scepticism / confusion in this country IMO.

a lot of the problem being the difference in the level of exposure given to such a programme or issue compared to the rebuttal.

so the impact of these leaked emails on the public mindset has little to do with the actual content of them, as it's more to do with it just being another source of controversy to muddy the waters in people minds. The initial impact of the headlines splashed across most of the worlds newspapers and tv news etc being much greater than any longer rebuttals that most people won't actually get to see, and most who do won't actually read.

erm, actually you are right, it's not data that's changing people's minds, it's the amount of noise that the other side can make in order to make it seem in the public mind like there still is a scientific debate going on around the core issue, and undermine the idea of their being a scientific consensus. This is pretty much the entire pr strategy of the 'deniers', create noise, create doubt.
 
Bernie Gunther said:
Hmm, no. I think you're grossly exaggerating the doubt there mate. Unless you want to offer examples?
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1. Having to lodge a freedom of information request to look at the supporting data, codes and programs
2. Having the request denied
3. Deleting the material covered by the request.
Free Sprirt: the reasons for any corrections etc. is way above the level of understanding of 99% of the bloggers and 'documentary' makers who're after the data.
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I have a simple rule in life: never, ever let anyone do my thinking for me. I especially will not let anyone who's ability to pay the mortgage depends on a certain interpretation of ambiguous data do it for me, and I will discount to zero the value of any conclusions they wish me to accept the moment I learn they have been tampering with the data with which they support the conclusion.

Curiously, the proper value for the charge on an electron was established only after others "took minor niggles with the data and blew it out of all proportion".
 
I was thinking of starting a poll to correlate level of scientific understanding versus AGW denial.

I always wanted to know if, for example, our energy ministers had the basic understanding of energy and power we learned prior to O level ....
 
Falcon said:
I especially will not let anyone who's ability to pay the mortgage depends on a certain interpretation of ambiguous data do it for me, and I will discount to zero the value of any conclusions they wish me to accept the moment I learn they have been tampering with the data with which they support the conclusion.
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Sadly science is no longer the preserve of amateur aristocrats. Get used to it.

Tampering, not the right word.
 
Falcon said:
1. Having to lodge a freedom of information request to look at the supporting data, codes and programs
2. Having the request denied
3. Deleting the material covered by the request.
I have a simple rule in life: never, ever let anyone do my thinking for me. I especially will not let anyone who's ability to pay the mortgage depends on a certain interpretation of ambiguous data do it for me, and I will discount to zero the value of any conclusions they wish me to accept the moment I learn they have been tampering with the data with which they support the conclusion.

Curiously, the proper value for the charge on an electron was established only after others "took minor niggles with the data and blew it out of all proportion".
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If you actually look at the e-mails you would find that they are hit with whole series of FoI requests. It isn't a case of not wanting to respond to one request. The level of requests was making it difficult for them to work, nor were they funded to spend that much time dealing with that sort of work. It was a paperwork version of a denial-of-service attack. I can understand the exasperation they felt towards it leading them to suggest such a thing. You might also note that there is no evidence to suggest that they actually followed through on the suggestion.

Do you prefer Steven McIntyre's view on the data?
 
Surely it would be OK to hack the emails of ClimateAudit and other 'sceptic' websites and industry front organisations.

Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander. What could they possibly have to hide?
 
free spirit said:
This being the case, should the UAE team really be releasing their uncorrected data so that the bloggersphere can go wild with thousands of scientifically unsound different variations on the global temperature record to hugely confuse the situation? In reality what would this actually achieve, other than adding to public confusion.
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this, is pure stalinism
 
Dr Jon said:
Corrected.
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To be strictly accurate it would be "to discover the truth and get a paper about it published before that bastard who got the grant I was after can".

One of the problems with this particular bit of denialist propaganda is that too many people have no idea how the actual process of science works, but think they do because they've seen scientists portrayed in books and films.
 
ericjarvis said:
<snip> but think they do because they've seen scientists portrayed in books and films.
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this-island-earth.jpg
 
Sarah Palin on Copenhagen and why we shouldn't believe scientists :D

With the publication of damaging e-mails from a climate research center in Britain, the radical environmental movement appears to face a tipping point. The revelation of appalling actions by so-called climate change experts allows the American public to finally understand the concerns so many of us have articulated on this issue.
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source
 
Bernie Gunther said:
Sarah Palin on Copenhagen and why we shouldn't believe scientists :D

source
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The only interesting question about that is: who wrote it for her?

(I do not base my conviction that it was written for her on her being an incoherent hick. I've written speeches and ghosted articles. I can spot a ghost.)
 
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