Posted on 11/24/2009 10:25:48 AM PST by Red Badger
British climate centre reeling over Internet posting of sensitive material.
The online publication of sensitive e-mails and documents from a British climate centre is brewing into one of the scientific controversies of the year, causing dismay among affected institutes and individuals. The tone and content of some of the disclosed correspondence are raising concerns that the leak is damaging the credibility of climate science on the eve of the United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen in December.
The Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwich confirmed on 20 November that it had had more than 1,000 e-mails and documents taken from its servers, but it has not yet confirmed how much of the published material is genuine. "This information has been obtained and published without our permission," says Simon Dunford, a spokesman for the UEA, adding that the university will undertake an investigation and has already involved the police.
Many scientists contacted by Nature doubt that the leak will have a lasting impact, but climate-sceptic bloggers and mainstream media have been poring over the posted material and discussing its contents. Most consist of routine e-mail exchanges between researchers. But one e-mail in particular, sent by CRU director Phil Jones, has received attention for its use of the word "trick" in a discussion about the presentation of climate data. In a statement, Jones confirmed that the e-mail was genuine and said: "The word 'trick' was used here colloquially as in a clever thing to do. It is ludicrous to suggest that it refers to anything untoward."
"If anyone thinks there's a hint of tweaking the data for non-scientific purposes, they are free to produce an analysis showing that Earth isn't warming," adds Michael Oppenheimer, a climate scientist and policy researcher at Princeton University in New Jersey. "In fact, they have been free to do so for decades and haven't been able to."
"There are apparently lots of people who really do think that global warming is an evil socialist plot, and that many scientists are part of the plot and deliberately faking their science," adds Tom Wigley, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, and former director of CRU.
Alleged e-mails containing critical remarks about other climate scientists are merely proof of lively debate in the community, adds Gavin Schmidt, a climate researcher with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City.
The title of the uploaded file containing the leaked e-mails — 'FOIA.zip' — has led to speculation that the affair may be linked to the deluge of requests for raw climate data that have recently been made under the UK Freedom of Information Act to Jones (see Nature 460, 787; 2009). The source of many of those requests is Steve McIntyre, the editor of Climate Audit, a blog that investigates the statistical methods used in climate science. "I don't have any information on who was responsible," McIntyre told Nature.
Nevertheless, e-mails allegedly sent by Jones seem to illustrate his reluctance to comply with these requests. "All scientists have the right to request your data and to try to falsify your results," says Hans von Storch, director of the Institute for Coastal Research in Geesthacht, Germany. "I very much respect Jones as a scientist, but he should be aware that his behaviour is beginning to damage our discipline." In a statement, the UEA said: "The raw climate data which has been requested belongs to meteorological services around the globe and restrictions are in place which means that we are not in a position to release them. We are asking each service for their consent for their data to be published in future."
However, von Storch believes that, at least until the affair is resolved, Jones should cease reviewing climate science for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
That is a very “tame” peice for Nature. I wonder who got the despicable assignment of having to print it and what they did to deserve this?
Half the article is the defense while the direct manipulation of the peer review process and the scientific journals themselves don’t get a mention.
Interesting.
Perhaps this is the first of what will ultimately be a flood of small but important stiletto wounds that Jones can expect to suffer in the coming months. They will have to cut this guy loose to try to save themselves.
Oh, they have - in non-peer reviewed journals. That's because the AGW proponents - according to this very email dump - controlled whose work was peer-reviewed.
Look at the LAST line of the article where Nature says this..............’However, von Storch believes that, at least until the affair is resolved, Jones should cease reviewing climate science for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.’
Now look at what von Storch actually SAID ON HIS BLOG.........’Another conclusion could be that scientists like Mike Mann, Phil Jones and others should no longer participate in the peer-review process or in assessment activities like IPCC.’
Once again a supposed credible media source COVERS for the fraudsters, in this case by misrepresenting what von Storch writes in his own blog about what should happen to the likes of Mann and Jones.
I guaranty if I bring this up over the holidays nobody will know what I'm talking about and then tell me to stop listening to Rush Limbaugh.
This what von Storch actually said on his OWN blog........... A conclusion could be that the principle, according to which data must be made public, so that also adversaries may check the analysis, must be really enforced. Another conclusion could be that scientists like Mike Mann, Phil Jones and others should no longer participate in the peer-review process or in assessment activities like IPCC.’
Quite a bit different than the hacks at Nature ‘quoted’ him as saying
That isn't the refute, a$$bagger. The refute is that 1) is not caused by CO2 and humans and 2) It has been warmer as recently as the Medieval Warming Period and the cycles are normal.
BTW - Analysis showing the earth warming has been replicated. Unfortunately, it showed that your hockeystick missed the Medieval warming period and some cooling again during the industrial age. When you said they were wrong, they asked for your data so they could prove it with your own data. But, alas, first it was lost, then it was confidential, then it was proprietary.
Give those liars the Haman treatment.
What a non-sequitor!
Falsifying data is fraud in and of itself. It has nothing whatsoever to do with any other analysis.
That's like saying "If anyone thinks I shot and killed somebody, they are free to go and prove that somebody else didn't shoot someone!"
Then it was hacked.............
Whistling past the graveyard alert...
If the facts speak for themselves then why not release the actual data?
We all know why now. It's because the data doesn't show warming until you massage, twist, and manipulate it .
“There are apparently lots of people who really do think that global warming is an evil socialist plot, and that many scientists are part of the plot and deliberately faking their science,”
“I DO I DO!”
“We must embrace Environmentalism, for Socialism to survive”
-Hans-Jochen Vogel, Chairman of the West German Social Democratic Party-1989
“The threat of environmental crisis will be the ‘international disaster key’ that will unlock the New World Order.” — Mikhail Gorbachev 1996
Nah... It’s not an evil Socialist plot, right???
Where is Algore? I would think an interview with him right now would be very interesting.
Yes, seems to be a rather coy article.
What you said.
It's also worth pointing out that any data supporting the claim of AGW, if it exists, these "scientists" will refuse to produce to the public.
Algore is the 21st century’s version of Piltdown Man, another famous fraud uncovered in England after decades of scamming science.
Devilishly clever. Hide your conspiracy right out in the open.
Oh Algore - you have some ‘splainin to do ...... Please he never deserved a capitol A
Here is a quick primer on reproducibility.
It is fundamental that scientific results have to be reproducible in order to be accepted as valid. You have to describe exactly what you did, in sufficient detail for somebody else to be able to reproduce what you say you did. If they can't, and you can't explain where they went wrong, then the result should be written off as erroneous or even fraudulent
Publications have a data availability policy. This varies from publication to publication, but it is a common condition of acceptance that authors agree to honour any reasonable request by other researchers for materials, methods, or data necessary to verify the conclusion of the article. This policy is in support of experimental replication. Because without data availability you don't have science, you have assertion.
For an example of a DAP: Nature's data availability policy can be viewed here
And I quote:
An inherent principle of publication is that others should be able to replicate and build upon the authors' published claims. Therefore, a condition of publication in a Nature journal is that authors are required to make materials, data and associated protocols promptly available to readers without preconditions.
Some publications, notably Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B (the Biology journal of the Royal Society) go further than this, requiring their authors to place the supporting data in the public domain prior to submission. This is an example of a ‘strong’ DAP.
Are these DAPs enforced? In the case of the journals Science or Nature, I get the impression that they’re not well enforced – at least not with respect to AGW articles. In the case of Philosophical Transactions, they are rigorously enforced. In passing, the PT’s rigorous DAP is the reason why we now know that Briffa’s hockey stick graph was based on modern data taken from a mere dozen trees while masses of other tree-ring data was ignored. This is the so-called "Yamal Implosion".
Seriously, if you have an ‘extremely well-regarded peer-reviewed journal’ that doesn’t both require and enforce rigorous data-availability on its contributing authors then it might as well be a children's comic.
These CRU emails are apparently genuine: which means that some or all of the writers were holding back or even destroying experimental data. And - apparently - in defiance of an FOI. That’s not science, but it might be jail-time.
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