[pieceofthepuzzle]

I understand your point, but it's irrelevant in my view. First, if the data was supposedly dumped in 1980, then the validity of the current assessments should always include the disclaimer that the raw data was not accessed by the scientists doing the analysis. When they publish data that claims to reflect measured values over the past century, most who read those papers will assume that the analysis is based on primary data, not secondary data. This is really not much better than a meta-analysis study, and those are notoriously useless.

Second, whereas it might take lots of data storage space to store data analysis, it doesn't take a ton to archive measured temperatures. If temperature was measured every hour, for 100 years, that would be only 876,000 separate data points. You could easily write those numbers down on less than 2000 pieces of paper, less than the size of the current health care bill. The only reason they may have had too much data to store is if they had massaged it so much already that there were file upon file of altered data. I just don't buy the data storage issue.

You can't have it both ways. You can't stand by the quality of your data, and then say that a lot of your assessment is based on raw data that you've never seen.

These guys really irritate me. Science is an incredibly hard profession that involves struggling for money, lots of disappointing experimental results, and for most scientists obscurity outside of a relatively small circle of peers. When arrogant butt heads like the ones involved in the released emails are exposed writing about essentially destroying the credibility of other scientists, there is no room for excuses. They need to be investigated and they need to be able to prove the credibility of their findings. Their funding should be suspended until they have sufficiently proved that they are objective truth driven members of the scientific community, not self-annointed climate rock stars.

[nina0113]

Second, whereas it might take lots of data storage space to store data analysis, it doesn't take a ton to archive measured temperatures. If temperature was measured every hour, for 100 years, that would be only 876,000 separate data points. You could easily write those numbers down on less than 2000 pieces of paper, less than the size of the current health care bill. The only reason they may have had too much data to store is if they had massaged it so much already that there were file upon file of altered data. I just don't buy the data storage issue.

And some little freebie intern could knock it out in two weeks and be thrilled to death to be a part of it.