Scientific Journal Nature Finds Nothing Notable In CRU Leak 736
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Soulskill
from the nothing-to-see-here-move-along dept.
from the nothing-to-see-here-move-along dept.
eldavojohn writes with an update to the CRU email leak story we've been following for the past two weeks. The peer-reviewed scientific journal Nature has published an article saying the emails do not demonstrate any sort of "scientific conspiracy," and that the journal doesn't intend to investigate earlier papers from CRU researchers without "substantive reasons for concern." The article notes, "Whatever the e-mail authors may have said to one another in (supposed) privacy, however, what matters is how they acted. And the fact is that, in the end, neither they nor the IPCC suppressed anything: when the assessment report was published in 2007 it referenced and discussed both papers." Reader lacaprup points out related news that a global warming skeptic plans to sue NASA under the Freedom of Information Act for failing to deliver climate data and correspondence of their own, which he thinks will be "highly damaging." Meanwhile, a United Nations panel will be conducting its own investigation of the CRU emails.
Same with newscientist (Score:5, Interesting)
I imagine all scientific journals will be quite clear on this point. A few suspect emails do not destroy millions of man hours of research.
Re:Nice try (Score:3, Interesting)
This year, the Chinese government limited fossil fuel burning before the Olympics with apparently stunning results. When I was in Beijing for nearly a month 10 years ago, smog was a daily occurance. Even miles outside the city at Badaling (the Great Wall), it was hard to see for more than a mile. Smog is considered to be the third most important greenhouse gas by the IPCC. Evidence that we are changing our own atmosphere by fossil fuel emission is obvious just by looking.
This kind of trend can be seen on a daily cycle in New Delhi. Overnight, the smog over the city disperses but returns over the course of the day (typically by 11am) only to dissipate again as the city slows down for the night.
Oh, come on. (Score:5, Interesting)
The "VERY ARTIFICIAL correction" you describe is never actually used. It's commented out. [jgc.org] You can plot that array, but I'm not sure what you think you're demonstrating.
Re:Nice try (Score:5, Interesting)
As for the so called "missing data" it seems the MET have noted the advice in the Nature editorial and are now petitioning 188 countries for permission to publish the remaining few percent of records still tied up in red tape.
The sad irony here is that Jones has spent most of his carrer making the other 95% of those records easily accesible to the scientific community.
Re:How they acted? (Score:1, Interesting)
Most academic "statistics" are a load of bullshit. Like you said, "adjustments" are tolerated. Those adjustments, and thus the conclusions, become politically- or financially-driven, rather than scientifically-driven.
In the Real World, mainly in manufacturing, we don't just "normalize" away any data that we don't like, or that do not follow certain trends we wish to see. We find out why the data are they way they are, even if it means that our original assumptions were wrong.
Re:Nice try (Score:3, Interesting)
You are repeating old denialists' crap.
Do you want me to find refutations for all of your talking points in 1 min. of Google search?
Re:Nice try (Score:5, Interesting)
The researchers did not use certain tree ring data post 1960 because it was not properly calibrated to instrumental data.
This has nothing to do with the data being 'properly calibrated' and everything to do with the faulty assumption that ring width strong correlates with temperature, which is the assumption they use for pre-1960 data. They sold you another lie to explain the first, my friend.
Tree ring width correlates strongly with precipitation, not temperature. Plenty of REAL peer reviewed studies to back this up, along with validated experimental evidence (you know, that whole scientific method shit that Mann doesnt use)
Furthermore, many critics of Mann et al. have ignored the fact that this was a single line of data turning a blind eye to the numerous other data sets and proxies that support the same conclusions.
Which data sets are those? Seriously. Which? Show my a hockey stick that does not use Mann's or Briffa's data. Do it now.
I am VERY VERY sorry, this is NONSENSE (Score:1, Interesting)
The whole tone of the editorial "
The likely release was by whistle-blower, not hacking and, in any case, is publicly funded research and this reaction from Nature, New Scientist and the BBC is disgusting. These used to be respected journals and are now as corrupted as ISO.
The US has rightly pointed at corruption at the UN, but this brings subverting world institutions for gain to a new level.
They are however right about one thing, no matter how they spin, this game is over, since both in the EU and US, remember Mann is at Penn State, the raw data will now be subpoenaed, and the CON is OVER!, whether the subpoena issues from the Hill or a US FOI request.
These crooks need to go to jail like the Ponzi artists.
Re:Nice try (Score:2, Interesting)
Does anyone really believe that a real attempt at fraud would be blatantly labeled in the code?
When they had no intention of ever releasing it to the public, yes I do.
..and prior to this event, several years back, there was an absent minded climate scientist (Mann) who put his data up on a public FTP because of a request by the Nature journal in response to mistakes found in his work, and one of the folders was named CENSORED DATA, and contained data that didnt fit with the theory. Specifically this data was on tree ring's correlation with temperature, proving that Mann had KNOWN that tree rings were not a good proxy of temperature, but instead of working on the problem of why tree rings dont correlate well with temperature.. he simply only kept datasets that didn't conflict with the theory that tree rings correlate with temperature. To this day, Mann is allowed to use this bullshit technique of selective data.
Jones deleted code and data ON PURPOSE so that the public would never see it, and ASKED OTHERS to do the same. Thats all right there in the emails. There is no context to understand in THOSE emails. Jones also told others in emails not to worry about FOI requests because the man in charge, and I quote, "knows what to do."
He also said he would delete EVEN MORE stuff, rather than let McIntyre get his hands on it, in those emails. You want to know why? Because McIntyre has made a name for himself correcting these people. He's done it more than a few times, and on one occasion NASA ITSELF thanked McIntyre publicly for his careful attention to detail that caught Hansen's bad data.
So yes.. I really do believe that these folks really didn't think that the public will ever see their code or data. They certainly made many extensive and coordinated efforts to prevent the public from seeing it.
Re:Nice try (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Nice try (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not demanding perfection. I'm saying that, as a minimal threshold for using a proxy for past data is that it should match our most solid data. When you're allowed to arbitrarily graft new data at arbitrary points to data sets, you can make any data say anything -- that's not what science is supposed to be.
Are there other proxies that meet this minimum threshold I described? Great. Use those. But you don't get to count these tree rings in question as additional, independent confirmation. That would be like saying, "We manipulated data set B to look like data set A, therefore we have two data sets validating the hypothesis." And it's that kind of information cascade that has allowed the CRU to be held as the gold standard that all the other data sets get adjusted to match, destroying the notion of independence of the data sets.
At best, this data is too unreliable to incorporate. At worst, it's showing that temperatures actually went down. But these scientists are so far off the scientific method that they think it's okay to tweak them to say whatever they want, and call any deviation from what they wanted to see, a "problem" that needs to be corrected.
Re:Nice try (Score:3, Interesting)
Please study the propoganda you have been fed more carefully, it's not a smoking gun, it's a smoking iceberg [thedailymash.co.uk].
Re:Nice try (Score:4, Interesting)
If it is valid before 1960, it is valid after 1960.
Not if there's some environmental factor skewing the results that's significant after 1960 but not before it.
Re:Oh, come on. (Score:4, Interesting)
It is not a matter of trust. It is a matter of learning to read IDL code (which is not that hard) and comparing the plotting commands to the published plot.
As for the "hopeless state" comment, that sounds quite plausible, and it is fully consistent with the way the code appears to have been use to experiment with various ways of correcting the data for the various problems in the data. This sort of thing goes on all the time. It is called experimentation, and it is the way that science is done. In real life things do not wok like they do on CSI.
Peer reviewed? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Nice try (Score:3, Interesting)
Which data sets are those? Seriously. Which? Show my a hockey stick that does not use Mann's or Briffa's data. Do it now.
This straw man is old and has been debunked so often it's silly. Realclimate deals with it on their page Myth vs. Fact Regarding the "Hockey Stick" [realclimate.org]:
Paleoclimate evidence is simply one in a number of independent lines of evidence indicating the strong likelihood that human influences on climate play a dominant role in the observed 20th century warming of the earth’s surface.
Nearly a dozen model-based and proxy-based reconstructions of Northern Hemisphere mean temperature by different groups all suggest that late 20th century warmth is anomalous in a long-term (multi-century to millennial) context (see Figures 1 and 2 [realclimate.org] in “Temperature Variations in Past Centuries and The So-Called ‘Hockey Stick’” [realclimate.org]).
Mann et al produced an updated paper in 2008 using a more diverse and larger dataset, showing that recent increases in northern hemisphere surface temperature are anomalous relative to at least the past 1300 years [pnas.org].
You didn't seriously think all of climate science hinged on one study, did you?
Re:Nice try (Score:3, Interesting)
"Finally, here is a question for all the deniers out there. If the engineering feat required today was to actually warm up the planet, how would we do it? I think that the best answer would be to do what were are already doing today."
Depends on the feedback mechanisms between CO2 and the really potent greenhouse gasses. Which it is now very clear that the researchers in question haven't got a very good handle on.
Finally, about the term "denier" - this little "trick" (sorry) to tie a broad range of "unacceptable" opinions to holocaust denial, etc. is a departure from good science, which is not supposed to be conducted through invective and ostracism against differing viewpoints, etc.
That the AGW club have taken the right to depart from this, in order to behave as assholes when silencing non-conformist voices places an immense burden on them to follow the most stringent scientific protocol imaginable.
I think it's pretty clear by now that they fail to live up even to that standard.
War is Peace: The Exponential Growth of Nonsense (Score:4, Interesting)
On reading many of these posts that show up whenever climate change is mentioned, I am reminded of the following article, which I will quote below in its entirety. I found it in Scientific American [scientificamerican.com].
Re:Nice try (Score:5, Interesting)
Jones suggested deleting data (not emails, actually temp data) rather than share it:
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=490&filename=1107454306.txt [eastangliaemails.com]
The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear
there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I'll delete the file rather than
send to anyone.
So before filing FOI requests it sounds like they were making requests through normal channels. Of course I'm sure Jones was only joking about deleting the data before he would share it, right? Note that Jones also makes numerous references to "hiding" behind various things (non-publishing agreements, data secrecy acts, etc.) This is hardly the acts of someone who loves to share data.
Also note that the data he was "sharing" is his already "adjusted" numbers. Yes there are perfectly valid reasons to adjust data, however the CRU kept no record (apparently) of how or why the numbers were adjusted. Now they say the raw data was thrown out in the 80's (even though they were discussing how to keep it hidden as recently as this summer.)
Whether you agree or disagree with the whole AGW thing, the fact is these guys were not conducting science so much as politics. Anyone looking at this who loves science and believes fully in the peer-review process should be disgusted by what these guys were up to. We essentially have a giant table of numbers they created and their word that nothing is wrong and we should believe them. That's not science.
Re:Nice try (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Worst case (Score:4, Interesting)
1) they're guilty of not properly responding to a FOIA request
It's more than that. Phil Jones, the head of the CRU, wrote that he'd delete the data before he'd turn it over to "skeptics". Then they claim that they "lost" the data some time in the 80's. That seems to imply that he deleted the data far more recently than the 80's, say in the last couple of years. That would be a crime, not merely "not properly responding to an FOIA request".
2) they've said nasty things about certain colleagues work (but still cited it)
3) they've discarded some data for reasons they should have better explained (reasons that were valid -- it wasn't properly calibrated)
4) they arranged to have a journal editor fired for publishing a peer reviewed article that questioned conclusions reached by AGW promoters.
5) They arranged to have certain research excluded from IPCC's survey of climate science literature. The influence of the CRU on the IPCC process (which in turn provides the primary political justification for carbon emission reduction) was significant.
6) The code comments indicate that much of the data was poor quality, further that much of the "improperly calibrated" data wasn't afterwards "properly calibrated" (at least to the knowledge of the programmer).