Harvard professor weighs in on climategate

boston.com (The Boston Globe) ^ | Dec 2, 2009 | The Green Blog

[tentmaker]

A blog post that tries to brush off climategate is met with a stiff response - scroll down to #13:

I am a climate scientist, and it is clear that the evidence that "human activity is prominent [sic] agent in global warming" is NOT overwhelming. The repeated statement that it is does not make it so. Further, even if we accepted the hypothesis, cap-and-trade legislation does not do anything about it. Here are the facts.

[edcoil]

“James McCarthy, a respected Harvard professor who was a former Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change lead author, sent a letter to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) today stressing that e-mails stolen from climate scientists do not undermine the evidenc for manmade global warming.”

I can’t fix stupid.

[truthguy]

Hopefully some scientific heavyweights will have the courage to come forward and weigh in on this. Maybe the MSM will even cover it a little bit.

Courage is a rare commodity on college campuses but just maybe...

[RaceBannon]

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/04/a-devastating-response-to-theres-nothing-to-see-here-move-along/

Copied from here

[Sacajaweau]

I wish all the local weatherman....would pick a particular day and speak their piece about global warming and “the evidence” that says we can stop and/or reverse whatever is happening.

[Major Matt Mason]

I am not willing to crucify Jones on the word "trick". Nor, for that matter, on the loss of primary data, keeping only "value added" data (which is hopelessly bad science, but still conceivably not fraud). But the computer code is transparently fraudulent. Here, one finds matrices that add unexplained numbers to recent temperatures and subtract them from older temperatures (these numbers are hard-programmed in), splining observational data to model data, and other smoking guns, all showing that they were doing what was necessary to get the answers that the IPCC wanted, not the answers that the data held. They knew what they were doing, and why they were doing it. If, as Prof. McCarthy insists, "peer review" was functioning, and the IPCC reports are rigorously peer reviewed, why was this not caught?

This guy nails Jones and Mann good.

[TexasFreeper2009]

Even the egg heads at Harvard are turning on the global warming fraud peeps.

[InterceptPoint]

"scroll down to #13"

That comment is, IMHO, a MUST READ.

Here is a particularly juicy bit (I've added in some paragraphs to make it easier to read):

But the computer code is transparently fraudulent. Here, one finds matrices that add unexplained numbers to recent temperatures and subtract them from older temperatures (these numbers are hard-programmed in), splining observational data to model data, and other smoking guns, all showing that they were doing what was necessary to get the answers that the IPCC wanted, not the answers that the data held. They knew what they were doing, and why they were doing it.

If, as Prof. McCarthy insists, "peer review" was functioning, and the IPCC reports are rigorously peer reviewed, why was this not caught? When placing it in context made it highly likely that this type of fraud was occurring?

The second question is: Will this revelation be enough to cause the "global warming believers" to abandon their crusade, and for people to return to sensible environmental science (water use, habitat destruction, land use, this kind of thing)? Perhaps it will. Contrary to Prof. McCarthy's assertion, we have not lost just one research project amid dozens of others that survive. A huge set of primary data are apparently gone. Satellite data are scarcely 40 years old. Everything is interconnected, and anchored on these few studies. Even without the corruption of the peer review process, this is as big a change as quantum mechanics was in physics a century ago.

[TexasFreeper2009]

Even if the models are right... if the data they are feeding into the models has been manipulated to achieve a desired end... then none of conclusions can possibly be valid.

[goodtomato]

Trust, but verify....Remember those words. I think they need repeated to this lot. I trust your credentials, but before I commit, I will need to verify your results. Until I can verify, you are just presenting theory. Their premise simply defies logic.

[TexasFreeper2009]

I actually think this might just be the death blow to the entire environmental movement. Messing with the data will turn the REAL scientific movement on them faster and harder than anybody will expect.

Messing with the data is akin to scientific heresy.

[LibLieSlayer]

haaavaaad=lies and the lying leftist liars that lie.

LLS

[kidd]

A LOT of really good comments follow the article at the link.

An excellent (but long) comment from Sean at #13. Just outstanding

[RockyMtnMan]

It should be like high school math, if you can’t show your work and reproduce the same results then you got the answer wrong.

[iopscusa]

Sean #13 was an Immortal response to this Harvard IPCC prick....great get!

[John.Galt2012]

And you probably cheated! -F

[JohnQ1]

Sure we can: “...fields do not advance because people change their minds; rather, fields advance because people die.” Simple. Maybe not easy, but simple.

[stevem]

The robust exchange of ideas in the peer-reviewed literature regarding climate science is evidence of the high degree of integrity in this process.

For some reason liberals think if they can just use the word 'robust' in a sentence, why any nonsense they wish to spew will not only sound sensible, it will actually be sensible.

Well, I would like to offer my dissent. I guess if I'm robust in my dissent, liberals will understand that I have to be right.

[r-q-tek86]

ping

[PapaBear3625]

I actually think this might just be the death blow to the entire environmental movement. Messing with the data will turn the REAL scientific movement on them faster and harder than anybody will expect.

They committed fraud. Real science cannot tolerate it and survive, as this will taint confidence in the entire field, and the truth IS coming out and spreading wider and wider, despite anything the MSM tries to do to bury it.

The real scientists MUST come down on these clowns like the wrath of God on Sodom and Gomorrah, for their own sakes.