Hacked E-Mail Data Prompts Calls for Changes in Climate Research

NY Times ^ | November 28, 2009 | ANDREW C. REVKIN

[neverdem]

Some prominent climate scientists are calling for changes in the way research on global warming is conducted after a British university said thousands of private e-mail messages and documents had been stolen from its climate center.

The scientists say that the e-mail messages, which have circulated on the Internet and which disclose the inner workings of a small network of climatologists who chart the planet’s temperature, have damaged the public’s trust in the evidence that humans are dangerously warming the planet, just as many countries are poised to start reining in greenhouse gas emissions.

“This whole concept of, ‘We’re the experts, trust us,’ has clearly gone by the wayside with these e-mails,” said Judith Curry, a climate scientist at Georgia Institute of Technology.

She and other scientists are seeking more transparency in the way climate data is handled and in the methods used to analyze it. And they argue that scientists should re-evaluate the selection procedures used by some scientific journals and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the panel that in 2007 concluded that humans were the dominant force driving warming and whose findings underpin international discussions over a new climate treaty.

A fierce debate over the significance of the hacked material erupted as soon as the e-mail messages and other documents surfaced on Web sites just over a week ago. Some see in the e-mail correspondence — which includes heated discussions about warming trends, advice on deleting potentially controversial e-mail messages and derisive comments about climate skeptics — evidence of a conspiracy to stifle dissenting views and withhold data from public scrutiny, or, as some have put it, “Climategate.”

To others, the e-mail messages are merely evidence that climate scientists can be as competitive, proprietary, defensive and caustic as people engaged in any other high-level enterprise. They cast...

[grey_whiskers]

I searched for the word "Revkin" in the email sites and downloaded all of them.

Selected CRU Emails, Part II: Independence of the Press?

Cheers!

[ricks_place]

Somewhere in the global warming emails, the scamientist say Andy is not to be trusted, perhaps referring to Andrew Revkin. Maybe he wasn’t on the “team”.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Nice.

[brityank]

Check this out - you'll love it:

Hide the Decline - Climategate

[neverdem]

Thanks for the link.

[kcvl]

I think we can safely say that Andy and Mike are friends.

On Sep 29, 2009, at 5:19 PM, Andrew Revkin wrote:

thanks heaps.
tom crowley has sent me a direct challenge to mcintyre to start contributing to the reviewed lit or shut up. i'm going to post that soon.

just want to be sure that what is spliced below is from YOU ... a little unclear . ?

I'm copying this to Tim, in hopes that he can shed light on the specific data assertions

made over at climateaudit.org.....

I'm going to blog on this as it relates to the value of the peer review process and not on the merits of the mcintyre et al attacks.

peer review, for all its imperfections, is where the herky-jerky process of knowledge building happens, would you agree?

p.s. Tim Osborn ([1]t.osborn@uea.ac.uk) is probably the best person to contact for further details, in Keith's absence,

mike

[kcvl]

Thank you!

[kcvl]

About 2 months ago I deleted loads of emails, so have very little - if anything at all.

This legislation is different from the FOI - it is supposed to be used to find put why you might have a poor credit rating !

In response to FOI and EIR requests, we’ve put up some data - mainly paleo data. Each request generally leads to more - to explain what we’ve put up. Every time, so far, that hasn’t led to anything being added - instead just statements saying read what is in the papers and what is on the web site!

Tim Osborn sent one such response (via the FOI person) earlier this week. We’ve never sent programs, any codes and manuals. In the UK, the Research Assessment Exercise results will be out in 2 weeks time. These are expensive to produce and take too much time, so from next year we’ll be moving onto a metric based system.

The metrics will be # and amounts of grants, papers and citations etc. I did flippantly suggest that the # of FOI requests you get should be another.

When you look at CA, they only look papers from a handful of people. They will start on another coming out in The Holocene early next year. Gavin and Mike are on this with loads of others.

I’ve told both exactly what will appear on CA once they get access to it!

Cheers Phil

[BunnySlippers]

BUMP

[chris_bdba]

Take the big grants away and turn it back over to real science where real data makes a big difference.

[neverdem]

Thanks for the link.

[neverdem]

Thanks for the link.