Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 11/24/2009 10:00:46 PM PST by FromLori
Russian computer hackers have published emails and source code from the UN-affiliated Climate Research Unit showing profound corruption, fraud, and criminal activity. What's really behind the Copenhagen treaty?
Video
More at site
(Excerpt) Read more at zerohedge.com ...
Are they on our side? Can they hack me?
Signed,
Concerned
These buttwipe, so-called scientists need to be prosecuted. Their credentials should be taken back.
Very informative site. The video shows Dr T Ball, I’ve heard him before complain but he had no proof, now he and other dedicated honest scientists are vinicated. I find it horrendous that it’s not being reported in the news. The media are obviously being obviously being paid off. We need to start protesting outside their quarters. I know I don’t contribute to them in any way, many others as well, but if they’re being bribed anything we do will result in zero results.
vindicated.
ZeroHedge is sloppy. “Russian Hackers” isn’t being used anymore except as a possibility. More likely is a whistle-blower. The “Russian Hacker” story appears to have come from the hoaxers themselves.
Search this post of mine on FR for the words "Pournelle" for some choice quotes.
From the site: http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=515&filename=1114607213.txt
Cheers!
Enter keywords to search (no need for quote marks)
The below is one of a series of alleged emails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, released on 20 November 2009.
Return to the index page | Earlier Emails | Later Emails
From: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: Fwd: CCNet: DEBUNKING THE "DANGEROUS CLIMATE CHANGE" SCARE
Date: Wed Apr 27 09:06:53 2005
Mike,
Presumably you've seen all this - the forwarded email from Tim. I got this email from
McIntyre a few days ago. As far as I'm concerned he has the data - sent ages ago. I'll
tell him this, but that's all - no code. If I can find it, it is likely to be hundreds of
lines of
uncommented fortran ! I recall the program did a lot more that just average the series.
I know why he can't replicate the results early on - it is because there was a variance
correction for fewer series.
See you in Bern.
Cheers
Phil
Dear Phil,
In keeping with the spirit of your suggestions to look at some of the other multiproxy
publications, I've been looking at Jones et al [1998]. The methodology here is obviously
more straightforward than MBH98. However, while I have been able to substantially emulate
your calculations, I have been unable to do so exactly. The differences are larger in the
early periods.
Since I have been unable to replicate the results exactly based on available materials, I
would appreciate a copy of the actual data set used in Jones et al [1998] as well as the
code used in these calculations.
There is an interesting article on replication by Anderson et al., some distinguished
economists, here [1]http://research.stlouisfed.org/wp/2005/2005-014.pdf discussing the
issue of replication in applied economics and referring favorably to our attempts in
respect to MBH98.
Regards, Steve McIntyre
X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 6.2.0.14
Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 13:28:53 +0100
To: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>,"Keith Briffa" <k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
From: Tim Osborn <t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Fwd: CCNet: DEBUNKING THE "DANGEROUS CLIMATE CHANGE" SCARE
Keith and Phil,
you both feature in the latest issue of CCNet:
(4) GLOBAL WARMING AND DATA
Steve Verdon, Outside the Beltway, 25 April 2005
[2]http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/10200
A new paper ([3]http://research.stlouisfed.org/wp/2005/2005-014.pdf) from the St. Luis
Federal Reserve Bank has an interesting paer on how important it is to archive not only
the data but the code for empirical papers. While the article looks mainly at economic
research there is also a lesson to be drawn from this paper about the current state of
research for global warming/climate change. One of the hallmarks of scientific research
is that the results can be replicable. Without this, the results shouldn't be considered
valid let alone used for making policy.
Ideally, investigators should be willing to share their data and programs so as to
encourage other investigators to replicate and/or expand on their results.3 Such
behavior allows science to move forward in a Kuhn-style linear fashion, with each
generation seeing further from the shoulders of the previous generation.4 At a minimum,
the results of an endeavor-if it is to be labeled "scientific"-should be replicable,
i.e., another researcher using the same methods should be able to reach the same result.
In the case of applied economics using econometric software, this means that another
researcher using the same data and the same computer software should achieve the same
results.
However, this is precisely the problem that Steven McIntyre and Ross McKitrick have run
into since looking into the methodology used by Mann, Hughes and Bradely (1998) (MBH98),
the paper that came up with the famous "hockey stick" for temperature reconstructions.
For example, this post here shows that McIntyre was prevented from accessing Mann's FTP
site. This is supposedly a public site where interested researchers can download not
only the source code, but also the data. This kind of behavior by Mann et. al. is simply
unscientific and also rather suspicious. Why lock out a researcher who is trying to
verify your results...do you have something to hide professors Mann, Bradley and Huges?
Not only has this been a problem has this been a problem for McIntyre with regards to
MBH98, but other studies as well. This post at Climate Audit shows that this problem is
actually quite serious.
Crowley and Lowery (2000)
After nearly a year and over 25 emails, Crowley said in mid-October that he has
misplaced the original data and could only find transformed and smoothed versions. This
makes proper data checking impossible, but I'm planning to do what I can with what he
sent. Do I need to comment on my attitude to the original data being "misplaced"?
Briffa et al. (2001)
There is no listing of sites in the article or SI (despite JGR policies requiring
citations be limited to publicly archived data). Briffa has refused to respond to any
requests for data. None of these guys have the least interest in some one going through
their data and seem to hoping that the demands wither away. I don't see how any policy
reliance can be made on this paper with no available data.
Esper et al. (2002)
This paper is usually thought to show much more variation than the hockey stick. Esper
has listed the sites used, but most of them are not archived. Esper has not responded to
any requests for data. '
Jones and Mann (2003); Mann and Jones (2004)
Phil Jones sent me data for these studies in July 2004, but did not have the weights
used in the calculations, which Mann had. Jones thought that the weights did not matter,
but I have found differently. I've tried a few times to get the weights, but so far have
been unsuccessful. My surmise is that the weighting in these papers is based on
correlations to local temperature, as opposed to MBH98-MBH99 where the weightings are
based on correlations to the temperature PC1 (but this is just speculation right now.)
The papers do not describe the methods in sufficient detail to permit replication.
Jacoby and d'Arrigo (northern treeline)
I've got something quite interesting in progress here. If you look at the original 1989
paper, you will see that Jacoby "cherry-picked" the 10 "most temperature-sensitive"
sites from 36 studied. I've done simulations to emulate cherry-picking from persistent
red noise and consistently get hockey stick shaped series, with the Jacoby northern
treeline reconstruction being indistinguishable from simulated hockey sticks. The other
26 sites have not been archived. I've written to Climatic Change to get them to
intervene in getting the data. Jacoby has refused to provide the data. He says that his
research is "mission-oriented" and, as an ex-marine, he is only interested in a "few
good" series.
Jacoby has also carried out updated studies on the Gasp
******************** and another from : http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=498&filename=1109021312.txt
Enter keywords to search (no need for quote marks)
The below is one of a series of alleged emails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, released on 20 November 2009.
Return to the index page | Earlier Emails | Later Emails
From: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: Fwd: CCNet: PRESSURE GROWING ON CONTROVERSIAL RESEARCHER TO DISCLOSE SECRET DATA
Date: Mon Feb 21 16:28:32 2005
Cc: "raymond s. bradley" <rbradley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, "Malcolm Hughes" <mhughes@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Mike, Ray and Malcolm,
The skeptics seem to be building up a head of steam here ! Maybe we can use
this to our advantage to get the series updated !
Odd idea to update the proxies with satellite estimates of the lower troposphere
rather than surface data !. Odder still that they don't realise that Moberg et al used the
Jones and Moberg updated series !
Francis Zwiers is till onside. He said that PC1s produce hockey sticks. He stressed
that the late 20th century is the warmest of the millennium, but Regaldo didn't bother
with that. Also ignored Francis' comment about all the other series looking similar
to MBH.
The IPCC comes in for a lot of stick.
Leave it to you to delete as appropriate !
Cheers
Phil
PS I'm getting hassled by a couple of people to release the CRU station temperature data.
Don't any of you three tell anybody that the UK has a Freedom of Information Act !
X-Sender: f023@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 6.1.0.6
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 15:40:05 +0000
To: p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
From: Keith Briffa <k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Fwd: CCNet: PRESSURE GROWING ON CONTROVERSIAL RESEARCHER TO
DISCLOSE SECRET DATA
Subject: CCNet: PRESSURE GROWING ON CONTROVERSIAL RESEARCHER TO DISCLOSE SECRET DATA
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 15:02:37 -0000
X-MS-Has-Attach:
X-MS-TNEF-Correlator:
Thread-Topic: pressure grows on climate modellers to relase secret data
Thread-Index: AcUXiV64e/f3Ii8uQSa0X88pndSQgQAl2O1w
From: "Peiser, Benny" <B.J.Peiser@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: "cambridge-conference" <cambridge-conference@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
X-UEA-MailScanner-Information: Please contact the ISP for more information
X-UEA-MailScanner: Found to be clean
CCNet 22/2005 - 21 February 2005
PRESSURE GROWING ON CONTROVERSIAL RESEARCHER TO DISCLOSE SECRET DATA
--------------------------------------------------------------------
This should have produced a healthy scientific debate. Instead, Mr. Mann tried
to shut down debate by refusing to disclose the mathematical algorithm by which
he arrived at his conclusions. All the same, Mr. Mann was forced to publish a
retraction of some of his initial data, and doubts about his statistical methods
have since grown.
--The Wall Street Journal, 18 February 2005
But maybe we are in that much trouble. The WSJ highlights what Regaldo and McIntyre
says is Mann's resistance or outright refusal to provide to inquiring minds his
data, all details of his statistical analysis, and his code. So this is what I
say to Dr. Mann and others expressing deep concern over peer review: give up your
data, methods and code freely and with a smile on your face.
--Kevin Vranes, Science Policy, 18 February 2005
Mann's work doesn't meet that definition [of science], and those who use Mann's
curve in their arguments are not making a scientific argument. One of Pournelle's
Laws states "You can prove anything if you can make up your data." I will now add
another Pournelle's Law: "You can prove anything if you can keep your algorithms
secret."
--Jerry Pournelle, 18 February 2005
The time has come to question the IPCC's status as the near-monopoly source of
information and advice for its member governments. It is probably futile to propose
reform of the present IPCC process. Like most bureaucracies, it has too much momentum
and its institutional interests are too strong for anyone realistically to suppose
that it can assimilate more diverse points of view, even if more scientists and
economists were keen to join up. The rectitude and credibility of the IPCC could be
best improved not through reform, but through competition.
--Steven F. Hayward, The American Enterprise Institute, 15 February 2005
(1) HOCKEY STICK ON ICE
The Wall Street Journal, 18 February 2005
(2) SCIENCE AND OPEN ALGORITHMS: "YOU CAN PROVE ANYTHING WITH SECRET DATA AND
ALGORITHMS"
Jerry Pournell, 18 February 2005
(3) OPEN SEASON ON HOCKEY AND PEER REVIEW
Science Policy, 18 February 2005
(4) CLIMATE CHANGE SCIENCE: TIME FOR TEAM "B"?
The American Enterprise Institute, 15 February 2005
(5) BRING THE PROXIES UP TO DATE!
Climate Audit, 20 February 2005
(6) CARELESS SCIENCE COSTS LIVES
The Guardian, 18 February 2005
(7) RE: MORE TROUBLE FOR CLIMATE MODELS
Helen Krueger <hkrueger@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
(8) HOW TO HANDLE ASTEROID 2004 MN4
Jens Kieffer-Olsen <dstdba@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
(9) AND FINALLY: EUROPE FURTHER FALLING BEHIND IN TECHNOLOGY AND RESEARCH
EU Observer, 10 February 2005
==================
(1) HOCKEY STICK ON ICE
The Wall Street Journal, 18 February 2005
[1]http://online.wsj.com/article_email/0,,SB110869271828758608-IdjeoNmlah4n5yta4GHaqyIm4
,00.html
On Wednesday National Hockey League Commissioner Gary Bettman canceled the season, and
we guess that's a loss. But this week also brought news of something else that's been
put on ice. We're talking about the "hockey stick."
Just so we're clear, this hockey stick isn't a sports implement; it's a scientific
graph. Back in the late 1990s, American geoscientist Michael Mann published a chart that
purported to show average surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere over the past
1,000 years. The chart showed relatively minor fluctuations in temperature over the
first 900 years, then a sharp and continuous rise over the past century, giving it a
hockey-stick shape.
Mr. Mann's chart was both a scientific and political sensation. It contradicted a body
of scientific work suggesting a warm period early in the second millennium, followed by
a "Little Ice Age" starting in the 14th century. It also provided some visually
arresting scientific support for the contention that fossil-fuel emissions were the
cause of higher temperatures. Little wonder, then, that Mr. Mann's hockey stick appears
five times in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's landmark 2001 report on
global warming, which paved the way to this week's global ratification -- sans the U.S.,
Australia and China -- of the Kyoto Protocol.
Yet there were doubts about Mr. Mann's methods and analysis from the start. In 1998,
Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
published a paper in the journal Climate Research, arguing that there really had been a
Medieval warm period. The result: Messrs. Soon and Baliunas were treated as heretics and
six editors at Climate Research were made to resign.
Still, questions persisted. In 2003, Stephen McIntyre, a Toronto minerals consultant and
amateur mathematician, and Ross McKitrick, an economist at Canada's University of
Guelph, jointly published a critique of the hockey stick analysis. Their conclusion: Mr.
Mann's work was riddled with "collation errors, unjustifiable truncations of
extrapolation of source data, obsolete data, geographical location errors, incorrect
calculations of principal components, and other quality control defects." Once these
were corrected, the Medieval warm period showed up again in the data.
This should have produced a healthy scientific debate. Instead, as the Journal's Antonio
Regalado reported Monday, Mr. Mann tried to shut down debate by refusing to disclose the
mathematical algorithm by which he arrived at his conclusions. All the same, Mr. Mann
was forced to publish a retraction of some of his initial data, and doubts about his
statistical methods have since grown. Statistician Francis Zwiers of Environment Canada
(a government agency) notes that Mr. Mann's method "preferentially produces hockey
sticks when there are none in the data." Other reputable scientists such as Berkeley's
Richard Muller and Hans von Storch of Germany's GKSS Center essentially agree.
We realize this may all seem like so much academic nonsense. Yet if there really was a
Medieval warm period (we draw no conclusions), it would cast some doubt on the
contention that our SUVs and air conditioners, rather than natural causes, are to blame
for apparent global warming.
There is also the not-so-small matter of the politicization of science: If climate
scientists feel their careers might be put at risk by questioning some orthodoxy, the
inevitable result will be bad science. It says something that it took two non-climate
scientists to bring Mr. Mann's errors to light.
But the important point is this: The world is being lobbied to place a huge economic bet
-- as much as $150 billion a year -- on the notion that man-made global warming is real.
Businesses are gearing up, at considerable cost, to deal with a new regulatory
environment; complex carbon-trading schemes are in the making. Shouldn't everyone look
very carefully, and honestly, at the science before we jump off this particular cliff?
Copyright 2005, The Wall Street Journal
=============
(2) SCIENCE AND OPEN ALGORITHMS: "YOU CAN PROVE ANYTHING WITH SECRET DATA AND
ALGORITHMS"
Jerry Pournell, 18 February 2005
[2]http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/view349.html#hockeystick
Science and Open Algorithms: You can prove anything with secret data and algorithms.
There is a long piece on the global "hockey stick" in today's Wall Street Journal that
explains something I didn't understand: Mann, who generated the "hockey stick" curve
purporting to show that the last century was unique in all recorded history with its
sharp climb in temperature, has released neither the algorithm that generated his curve
nor the data on which it was based.
I had refrained from commenting on the "hockey stick" because I couldn't understand how
it was derived. I've done statistical analysis and prediction from uncertainty much of
my life. My first job in aerospace was as part of the Human Factors and Reliability
Group at Boeing, where we were expected to deal with such matters as predicting
component failures, and deriving maintenance schedules (replace it before it fails, but
not so long before it fails that the costs including the cost of the maintenance crew
and the costs of taking the airplane out of service are prohibitive) and other such
matters. I used to live with Incomplete Gamma Functions and other complex integrals; and
I could not for the life of me understand how Mann derived his famous curve. Now I know:
he hasn't told anyone. He says that telling people how he generated it would be
tantamount to giving in to his critics.
More on this after my walk, but the one thing we may conclude for sure is that this is
not science. His curve has been distributed as part of the Canadian government's
literature on why Canada supports Kyoto, and is said to have been influential in causing
the "Kyoto Consensus" so it is certainly effective propaganda; but IT IS NOT SCIENCE.
Science deals with repeatability and openness. When I took Philosophy of Science from
Gustav Bergmann at the University of Iowa a very long time ago, our seminar came to a
one-sentence "practical definition" of science: Science is what you can put in a letter
to a colleague and he'll get the same results you did. Now I don't claim that as
original for it wasn't even me who came up with it in the seminar; but I do claim
Bergmann liked that formulation, and it certainly appealed to me, and I haven't seen a
better one-sentence practical definition of science. Mann's work doesn't meet that
definition, and those who use Mann's curve in their arguments are not making a
scientific argument.
One of Pournelle's Laws states "You can prove anything if you can make up your data." I
will now add another Pournelle's Law: "You can prove anything if you can keep your
algorithms secret."
=============
(3) OPEN SEASON ON HOCKEY AND PEER REVIEW
Science Policy, 18 February 2005
[3]http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/climate_change/000355open_seaso
n_on_hocke.html
By Kevin Vranes
The recent 2/14 WSJ article ("Global Warring..." by Antonio Regaldo) addresses the
debate that most readers of this site are well familiar with: the Mann et al. hockey
stick. The WSJ is still asking - and trying to answer - the basic questions: hockey
stick or no hockey stick? But the background premise of the article, stated explicitly
and implicitly throughout, is that it was the hockey stick that led to Kyoto and other
climate policy. Is it?
I think it's fair to say that to all of us in the field of climatology, the notion that
Kyoto is based on the Mann curve is utter nonsense. If a climatologist, or a policy
advisor charged with knowing the science well enough to make astute recommendations to
his/her boss, relied solely on the Mann curve to prove definitively the existence of
anthropogenic warming, then we're in deeper trouble than anybody realizes. (This is
essentially what Stephan Ramstorf writes in a 1/27 RealClimate post.) And although it's
easy to believe that national and international policy can hinge on single graphs, I
hope we give policy makers more credit than that.
But maybe we are in that much trouble. The WSJ highlights what Regaldo and McIntyre says
is Mann's resistance or outright refusal to provide to inquiring minds his data, all
details of his statistical analysis, and his code. The WSJ's anecdotal treatment of the
subject goes toward confirming what I've been hearing for years in climatology circles
about not just Mann, but others collecting original climate data.
As concerns Mann himself, this is especially curious in light of the recent RealClimate
posts (link and link) in which Mann and Gavin Schmidt warn us about peer review and the
limits therein. Their point is essentially that peer review is limited and can be much
less than thorough. One assumes that they are talking about their own work as well as
McIntyre's, although they never state this. Mann and Schmidt go to great lengths in
their post to single out Geophysical Research Letters. Their post then seems a bit
ironic, as GRL is the journal in which the original Mann curve was published (1999, vol
26., issue 6, p. 759), an article which is now receiving much attention as being flawed
and under-reviewed. (For that matter, why does Table 1 in Mann et al. (1999) list many
chronologies in the Southern Hemisphere while the rest of the paper promotes a Northern
Hemisphere reconstruction? Legit or not, it's a confusing aspect of the paper that
should never have made it past peer review.)
Of their take on peer review, I couldn't agree more. In my experience, peer review is
often cursory at best. So this is what I say to Dr. Mann and others expressing deep
concern over peer review: give up your data, methods and code freely and with a smile on
your face. That is real peer review. A 12 year-old hacker prodigy in her grandparents'
basement should have as much opportunity to check your work as a "semi-retired Toronto
minerals consultant." Those without three letters after their name can be every bit as
intellectually qualified, and will likely have the time for careful review that typical
academic reviewers find lacking.
Specious analysis of your work will be borne out by your colleagues, and will enter the
debate with every other original work. Your job is not to prevent your critics from
checking your work and potentially distorting it; your job is to continue to publish
insightful, detailed analyses of the data and let the community decide. You can be part
of the debate without seeming to hinder access to it.
===============
(4) CLIMATE CHANGE SCIENCE: TIME FOR TEAM "B"?
The American Enterprise Institute, 15 February 2005
[4]http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.21974/pub_detail.asp
By Steven F. Hayward
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is currently working on its fourth
assessment report. Despite the IPCC's noble intent to generate a scientific consensus, a
number of factors have compromised the research and drafting process, assuring that its
next assessment report will be just as controversial as previous reports in 1995 and
2001. Efforts to reform this large bureaucratic effort are unlikely to succeed. Perhaps
the time has come to consider competition as the means of checking the IPCC's monopoly
and generating more reliable climate science.
As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) moves toward the release of its
fourth assessment report (fourth AR) in 2007, the case of Chris Landsea offers in
microcosm an example of why the IPCC's findings are going to have credibility problems.
Last month Landsea, a climate change scientist with the U.S. National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), resigned as a participant in the producing the
report. Landsea had been a chapter author and reviewer for the IPCC's second assessment
report in 1995 and the third in 2001, and he is a leading expert on hurricanes and
related extreme weather phenomena. He had signed on with the IPCC to update the state of
current knowledge on Atlantic hurricanes for the fourth report. In an open letter,
Landsea wrote that he could no longer in good conscience participate in a process that
is "being motivated by pre-conceived agendas" and is "scientifically unsound."[1]
Landsea's resignation was prompted by an all too familiar occurrence: The lead author of
the fourth AR's chapter on climate observations, Kevin Trenberth, participated in a
press conference that warned of increasing hurricane activity as a result of global
warming.[2] It is common to hear that man-made global warming represents the "consensus"
of science, yet the use of hurricanes and cyclones as a marker of global warming
represents a clear-cut case of the consensus being roundly ignored. Both the second and
third IPCC assessments concluded that there was no global warming signal found in the
hurricane record. Moreover, most climate models predict future warming will have only a
small effect--if any--on hurricane strength. "It is beyond me," Landsea wrote, "why my
colleagues would utilize the media to push an unsupported agenda that recent hurricane
activity has been due to global warming."[3] Landsea's critique goes beyond a fit of
pique at the abuse of his area of expertise. The IPCC, he believes, has become
thoroughly politicized, and is unresponsive to criticism. "When I have raised my
concerns to the IPCC leadership," Landsea wrote, "their response was simply to dismiss
my concerns."[4]
Landsea's frustration is not an isolated experience. MIT physicist Richard Lindzen,
another past IPCC author who is not participating in the fourth report, has written: "My
experiences over the past 16 years have led me to the discouraging conclusion that we
are dealing with the almost insoluble interaction of an iron triangle with an iron rice
bowl." (Lindzen's "iron triangle" consists of activists misusing science to get the
attention of the news media and politicians; the "iron rice bowl" is the parallel
phenomenon where scientists exploit the activists' alarm to increase research funding
and attention for the issue.[5]) And Dr. John Zillman, one of Australia's leading
climate scientists, is another ex-IPCC participant who believes the IPCC has become
"cast more in the model of supporting than informing policy development."[6]
And when the IPCC is not ignoring its responsible critics like Landsea and Lindzen, it
is demonizing them. Not long ago the IPCC's chairman, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, compared
eco-skeptic Bjorn Lomborg to Hitler. "What is the difference between Lomborg's view of
humanity and Hitler's?" Pachauri asked in a Danish newspaper. "If you were to accept
Lomborg's way of thinking, then maybe what Hitler did was the right thing."[7] Lomborg's
sin was merely to follow the consensus practice of economists in applying a discount to
present costs for future benefits, and comparing the range of outcomes with other world
problems alongside climate change. It is hard to judge what is worse: Pachauri's
appalling judgment in resorting to reductio ad Hitlerum, or his abysmal ignorance of
basic economics. In either case, it is hard to have much confidence in the policy advice
the IPCC might have. [...]
Time for "Team B"?
The time has come to question the IPCC's status as the near-monopoly source of
information and advice for its member governments. It is probably futile to propose
reform of the present IPCC process. Like most bureaucracies, it has too much momentum
and its institutional interests are too strong for anyone realistically to suppose that
it can assimilate more diverse points of view, even if more scientists and economists
were keen to join up. The rectitude and credibility of the IPCC could be best improved
not through reform, but through competition....
FULL PAPER at [5]http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.21974/pub_detail.asp
===========
(5) BRING THE PROXIES UP TO DATE!
Climate Audit, 20 February 2005
[6]http://www.climateaudit.org/index.php?p=89#more-89
Steve McIntyre
I will make here a very simple suggestion: if IPCC or others want to use "multiproxy"
reconstructions of world temperature for policy purposes, stop using data ending in 1980
and bring the proxies up-to-date. Let's see how they perform in the warm 1990s - which
should be an ideal period to show the merit of the proxies. I do not believe that any
responsible policy-maker can base policy, even in part, on the continued use of obsolete
data ending in 1980, when the costs of bringing the data up-to-date is inconsequential
compared to Kyoto costs.
I would appreciate comments on this note as I think that I will pursue the matter with
policymakers.
For example, in Mann's famous hockey stick graph, as presented to policymakers and to
the public, the graph used Mann's reconstruction from proxies up to 1980 and
instrumental temperatures (here, as in other similar studies, using Jones' more lurid
CRU surface history rather than the more moderate increases shown by satellite
measurements). Usually (but not always), a different color is used for the instrumental
portion, but, from a promotional point of view, the juxtaposition of the two series
achieves the desired promotional effect. (In mining promotions, where there is
considerable community experience with promotional graphics and statistics, securities
commission prohibit the adding together of proven ore reserves and inferred ore reserves
- a policy which deserves a little reflection in the context of IPCC studies).
Last week, a brand new multiproxy study by European scientists [Moberg et al., 2005] was
published in Nature. On the very day of publication, I received an email from a
prominent scientist telling me that Mann's hockeystick was yesterday's news, that the
"community" had now "moved on" and so should I. That the "community" had had no
opportunity to verify Moberg's results, however meritorious they may finally appear,
seemed to matter not at all.
If you look at the proxy portion of the new Moberg graphic, you see nothing that would
be problematic for opponents of the hockey stick: it shows a striking Medieval Warm
Period (MWP), a cold Little Ice Age and 20th century warming not quite reaching MWP
levels by 1979, when the proxy portion of the study ends. (I'm in the process of
examining the individual proxies and the Moberg reconstruction is not without its own
imperfections.) In the presentation to the public - see the figure in the Nature article
itself, once again, there is the infamous splice between reconstruction by proxy (up to
1980) and the instrumental record thereafter (once again Jones' CRU record, rather than
the satellite record).
One of the first question that occurs to any civilian becoming familiar with these
studies (and it was one of my first questions) is: what happens to the proxies after
1980? Given the presumed warmth of the 1990s, and especially 1998 (the "warmest year in
the millennium"), you'd think that the proxy values would be off the chart. In effect,
the last 25 years have provided an ideal opportunity to validate the usefulness of
proxies and, especially the opportunity to test the confidence intervals of these
studies, put forward with such assurance by the multiproxy proponents. What happens to
the proxies used in MBH99 or Moberg et al [2005] or Crowley and Lowery [2000] in the
1990s and, especially, 1998?
This question about proxies after 1980 was posed by a civilian to Mann in December at
realclimate. Mann replied:
Most reconstructions only extend through about 1980 because the vast majority of
tree-ring, coral, and ice core records currently available in the public domain do not
extend into the most recent decades. While paleoclimatologists are attempting to update
many important proxy records to the present, this is a costly, and labor-intensive
activity, often requiring expensive field campaigns that involve traveling with heavy
equipment to difficult-to-reach locations (such as high-elevation or remote polar
sites). For historical reasons, many of the important records were obtained in the 1970s
and 1980s and have yet to be updated. [my bold]
Pause and think about this response. Think about the costs of Kyoto and then think again
about this answer. Think about the billions spent on climate research and then try to
explain to me why we need to rely on "important records" obtained in the 1970s. Far more
money has been spent on climate research in the last decade than in the 1970s. Why are
we still relying on obsolete proxy data?
As someone with actual experience in the mineral exploration business, which also
involves "expensive field campaigns that involve traveling with heavy equipment to
difficult-to-reach locations", I can assure readers that Mann's response cannot be
justified and is an embarrassment to the paleoclimate community. The more that I think
about it, the more outrageous is both the comment itself and the fact that no one seems
to have picked up on it.
It is even more outrageous when you look in detail at what is actually involved in
collecting the proxy data used in the medieval period in the key multiproxy studies. The
number of proxies used in MBH99 is from fewer than 40 sites (28 tree ring sites being
U.S. tree ring sites represented in 3 principal component series).
As to the time needed to update some of these tree ring sites, here is an excerpt from
Lamarche et al. [1984] on the collection of key tree ring cores from Sheep Mountain and
Campito Mountain, which are the most important indicators in the MBH reconstruction:
"D.A.G. [Graybill] and M.R.R. [Rose] collected tree ring samples at 3325 m on Mount
Jefferson, Toquima Range, Nevada and 11 August 1981. D.A.G. and M.R.R. collected samples
from 13 trees at Campito Mountain (3400 m) and from 15 trees at Sheep Mountain (3500 m)
on 31 October 1983."
Now to get to Campito Mountain and Sheep Mountain, they had to get to Bishop,
California, which is hardly "remote" even by Paris Hilton standards, and then proceed by
road to within a few hundred meters of the site, perhaps proceeding for some portion of
the journey on unpaved roads.
The picture below illustrates the taking of a tree ring core. While the equipment may
seem "heavy" to someone used only to desk work using computers, people in the mineral
exploration business would not regard this drill as being especially "heavy" and I
believe that people capable of operating such heavy equipment can be found, even in
out-of-the way places like Bishop, California. I apologize for the tone here, but it is
impossible for me not to be facetious.
There is only one relatively remote site in the entire MBH99 roster - the Quelccaya
glacier in Peru. Here, fortunately, the work is already done (although, needless to say,
it is not published.) This information was updated in 2003 by Lonnie Thompson and should
be adequate to update these series. With sufficient pressure from the U.S. National
Science Foundation, the data should be available expeditiously. (Given that Thompson has
not archived data from Dunde drilled in 1987, the need for pressure should not be
under-estimated.)
I realize that the rings need to be measured and that the field work is only a portion
of the effort involved. But updating 28 tree ring sites in the United States is not a
monumental enterprise nor would updating any of the other sites.
I've looked through lists of the proxies used in Jones et al. [1998], MBH99, Crowley and
Lowery [2000], Mann and Jones [2003], Moberg et al [2005] and see no obstacles to
bringing all these proxies up to date. The only sites that might take a little extra
time would be updating the Himalayan ice cores. Even here, it's possible that taking
very short cores or even pits would prove adequate for an update and this might prove
easier than one might be think. Be that as it may, any delays in updating the most
complicated location should not deter updating all the other locations.
As far as I'm concerned, this should be the first order of business for multiproxy
studies.
Whose responsibility is this? While the costs are trivial in the scheme of Kyoto, they
would still be a significant line item in the budget of a university department. I think
that the responsibility here lies with the U.S. National Science Foundation and its
equivalents in Canada and Europe. The responsibilities for collecting the proxy updates
could be divided up in a couple of emails and budgets established.
One other important aspect: right now the funding agencies fund academics to do the work
and are completely ineffective in ensuring prompt reporting. At best, academic practice
will tie up reporting of results until the publication of articles in an academic
journals, creating a delay right at the start. Even then, in cases like Thompson or
Jacoby, to whom I've referred elsewhere, the data may never be archived or only after
decades in the hands of the originator.
So here I would propose something more like what happens in a mineral exploration
program. When a company has drill results, it has to publish them through a press
release. It can't wait for academic reports or for its geologists to spin the results.
There's lots of time to spin afterwards. Good or bad - the results have to be made
public. The company has a little discretion so that it can release drill holes in
bunches and not every single drill hole, but the discretion can't build up too much
during an important program. Here I would insist that the proxy results be archived as
soon as they are produced - the academic reports and spin can come later. Since all
these sites have already been published, people are used to the proxies and the updates
will to a considerable extend speak for themselves.
What would I expect from such studies? Drill programs are usually a surprise and maybe
there's one here. My hunch is that the classic proxies will not show anywhere near as
"loud" a signal in the 1990s as is needed to make statements comparing the 1990s to the
Medieval Warm Period with any confidence at all. I've not surveyed proxies in the 1990s
(nor to my knowledge has anyone else), but I've started to look and many do not show the
expected "loud" signal e.g. some of the proxies posted up on this site such as Alaskan
tree rings, TTHH ring widths, and theories are starting to develop. But the discussions
so far do not explicit point out the effect of signal failure on the multiproxy
reconstruction project.
But this is only a hunch and the evidence could be otherwise. The point is this: there's
no need to speculate any further. It's time to bring the classic proxies up to date.
=============
(6) CARELESS SCIENCE COSTS LIVES
The Guardian, 18 February 2005
[7]http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1417224,00.html
Dick Taverne
In science, as in much of life, it is believed that you get what you pay for. According
to opinion polls, people do not trust scientists who work for industry because they only
care about profits, or government scientists because they suspect them of trying to
cover up the truth. Scientists who work for environmental NGOs are more highly regarded.
Because they are trying to save the planet, people are ready to believe that what they
say must be true. A House of Lords report, Science and Society, published in 2000,
agreed that motives matter. It argued that science and scientists are not value-free,
and therefore that scientists would command more trust "if they openly declare the
values that underpin their work".
It all sounds very plausible, but mostly it is wrong. Scientists with the best of
motives can produce bad science, just as scientists whose motives may be considered
suspect can produce good science. An obvious example of the first was Rachel Carson,
who, if not the patron saint, was at least the founding mother of modern
environmentalism. Her book The Silent Spring was an inspiring account of the damage
caused to our natural environment by the reckless spraying of pesticides, especially
DDT.
However, Carson also claimed that DDT caused cancer and liver damage, claims for which
there is no evidence but which led to an effective worldwide ban on the use of DDT that
is proving disastrous. Her motives were pure; the science was wrong. DDT is the most
effective agent ever invented for preventing insect-borne disease, which, according to
the US National Academy of Sciences and the WHO, prevented over 50 million human deaths
from malaria in about two decades. Although there is no evidence that DDT harms human
health, some NGOs still demand a worldwide ban for that reason. Careless science cost
lives.
Contrast the benefits that have resulted from the profit motive, a motive that is held
to be suspect by the public. Multinationals, chief villains in the demonology of
contemporary anti-capitalists, have developed antibiotics, vaccines that have eradicated
many diseases like smallpox and polio, genetically modified insulin for diabetics, and
plants such as GM insect-resistant cotton that have reduced the need for pesticides and
so increased the income and improved the health of millions of small cotton farmers. The
fact is that self-interest can benefit the public as effectively as philanthropy.
Motives are not irrelevant, and unselfish motives are rightly admired more than selfish
ones. There are numerous examples of misconduct by big companies, and we should examine
their claims critically and provide effective regulation to control abuses of power and
ensure the safety of their products. Equally, we should not uncritically accept the
claims of those who act from idealistic motives. NGOs inspired by the noble cause of
protecting our environment often become careless about evidence and exaggerate risks to
attract attention (and funds). Although every leading scientific academy has concluded
that GM crops are at least as safe as conventional foods, this does not stop Greenpeace
reiterating claims about the dangers of "Frankenfoods". Stephen Schneider, a
climatologist, publicly justified distortion of evidence: "Because we are not just
scientists but human beings as well ... we need to ... capture the public imagination
... So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements, and
make little mention of any doubts we have."
But in the end motives are irrelevant to the validity of science. It does not matter if
a scientist wants to help mankind, get a new grant, win a Nobel prize or increase the
profits of her company. It does not matter whether a researcher works for Monsanto or
for Greenpeace. Results are no more to be trusted if the researcher declares his values
and confesses that he beats his wife, believes in God, or is an Arsenal supporter. What
matters is that the work has been peer-reviewed, that the findings are reproducible and
that they last. If they do, they are good science. If not, not. Science itself is
value-free. There are objective truths in science. We can now regard it as a fact that
the Earth goes rounds the sun and that Darwinism explains the evolution of species.
A look at the history of science makes it evident how irrelevant the values of
scientists are. Newton's passion for alchemy did not invalidate his discovery of the
laws of gravitation. To quote Professor Fox of Rutger's University: "How was it relevant
to Mendel's findings about peas that he was a white, European monk? They would have been
just as valid if Mendel had been a Spanish-speaking, lesbian atheist."
Don’t anybody get their hopes raised high. I remember when I thought Starr obtaining a blue stained dress was going to make all the difference...
Good to have these things plastered you never know I bet Inhofe could get a lot of info right here on FR.
KILL JOY!
Moonbats aren’t going to believe this. Global Warming/Climate Change is a religion to them.
Here’s a nice comment on the Fortran.
Yes, I used to code in Fortran—and I *never* read or wrote stuff even 1/10th this bad.
Climate Research Unit FORTRAN code backs up claims of fraud and corruption
Neal from Climate Audit writes:
“People are talking about the emails being smoking guns but I find the remarks in the code and the code more of a smoking gun. The code is so hacked around to give predetermined results that it shows the bias of the coder. In other words make the code ignore inconvenient data to show what I want it to show. The code after a quick scan is quite a mess. Anyone with any pride would be to ashamed of to let it out public viewing. As examples [of] bias take a look at the following remarks from the MANN code files:”
function mkp2correlation,indts,depts,remts,t,filter=filter,refperiod=refperiod,$
datathresh=datathresh
;
; THIS WORKS WITH REMTS BEING A 2D ARRAY (nseries,ntime) OF MULTIPLE TIMESERIES
; WHOSE INFLUENCE IS TO BE REMOVED. UNFORTUNATELY THE IDL5.4 p_correlate
; FAILS WITH >1 SERIES TO HOLD CONSTANT, SO I HAVE TO REMOVE THEIR INFLUENCE
; FROM BOTH INDTS AND DEPTS USING MULTIPLE LINEAR REGRESSION AND THEN USE THE
; USUAL correlate FUNCTION ON THE RESIDUALS.
;
pro maps12,yrstart,doinfill=doinfill
;
; Plots 24 yearly maps of calibrated (PCR-infilled or not) MXD reconstructions
; of growing season temperatures. Uses “corrected” MXD – but shouldn’t usually
; plot past 1960 because these will be artificially adjusted to look closer to
; the real temperatures.
;
“Spin that, spin it to the moon if you want. I’ll believe programmer notes over the word of somebody who stands to gain from suggesting there’s nothing “untowards” about it.
Either the data tells the story of nature or it does not. Data that has been “artificially adjusted to look closer to the real temperatures” is false data, yielding a false result.”
-Anthony Watts, Meteorologist
Cheers!
Cheers!
Thanks for the info. So many good scientists branded as heretics - then the destroyers like the ban on DDT.
Read later
I pretty much agree...it’s an insider. The thing that the entire establishment of global warmers have to worry about...within their secure server at anyone of the one hundred universities supporting them...is that someone within the group already has the admin password and has a copy of every email over the past decade. I would suspect that various people are now rushing to delete their emails...but it’s probably too late.
In the end...the intellectuals probably felt everyone around them was one and the same...and they were wrong.
I hope not too many Freepers, who should know better, will "get sucked into" this.
This is planted. Damage control from the manipulators.
Create a "Russian Mafia" alternative to the real criminal fraud and make the gullible (and the real story) look silly.
It's a wonderful strategy.
I just wonder if they can make it work.
please keep us informed about any responses and updates to this- We all need to be encouraging Inhofe to keep the ball rolling, and not let it slip by the wayside, and to encourage him to hold our representatives, whom we trusted, accountable for the crime of fraud against us- especially during a time of financial hardship here in America when we least could afford it- Congress wanted to prey on we the people, and we need heros like Inhofe to lead the way because apparently noone else is goign to in congress
These people are bullies and bullies are cowards when a bigger person arrives on the scene. See Inhofe's letters to Dr. Mann and others? They must be wetting themselves. The letters told them to secure everything (research material, dairies, logs, calendars, phone records, records of trips etc) and then warned of both federal and state civil and criminal penalities if something goes missing. Imagine how violated these sanctimonious snots feel tonight. Everything they have, all their work for over a decades is no longer under their control.
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