Comments on: Climategate: it’s worse than you ever imagined

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 23:03:51 +0000

I look forward to a cooling world. I hate hot weather.

By: Geoff B.

Geoff B. — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 22:39:05 +0000

And Michael Mann is under investigation:

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/paper-trail/2009/11/30/penn-state-will-investigate-climategate.html

By: Geoff B.

Geoff B. — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 22:22:43 +0000

Phil Jones is stepping down:

http://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/uk-climate-scientist-to-221080.html

By: Geoff B

Geoff B — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 14:10:01 +0000

If anybody is still following this thread, here’s a fascinating development. When you re-run the Biffa tree-ring data using actual data rather than the “hide the decline” data, global warming in the 20th century looks virtually non-existent. Now we know why they were trying to hide it.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/30/playing-hide-and-seek-behind-the-trees/

By: Confutus

Confutus — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 05:15:30 +0000

As I understand it, the loss of original data had been rather reluctantly and mutedly conceded back in August, well before the current flap, but it hasn’t had much publicity. This is embarrassing to the CRU, as it rightly should be. Anyone in law or law enforcment could probably produce multiple examples of where breaking the chain of evidence often means losing the case.
Any long chain of reasoning going from raw temperature data to predictions of future climate is going to have to involve a mighty chain of assumptions and intermediate conclusions.
Without revealing what those assumptions were, no one can entirely trust the the conclusions, as has been demonstrated with a lesser flap over New Zealand temperatures. With different working assumptions, someone else using the exact same raw data but with different assumptions can reach entirely different conclusions. It is those hidden assumptions that need to be made transparent to skeptics and critics.
One thing that the relased material showed was that at some point in the process, the CRU’s data handling, software, and documentation were ridiculously poor and sloppy compared with statistical analaysis and computing techniques that are standard practice in other fields, especially outside the physical sciences. It is not clear what the original data was, nor what was done to it, nor why. Depending on what data handling techiques and assumptions were embedded in the code, it is entirely possible to have good data in and garbage out. It may be garbage that looks very much like what you expected to see, but subtly and seriously flawed garbage nonetheless.
Until there is more evidence, (and I was a bit hasty in my first response) it’s not necessary to assume bad faith on the part of either Anthroponenic Global Warming proponents or skeptics. Simply on the basis of how poorly the data has been handled, though, the case for AGW is not quite as sound as its more committed proponents would like to have everyone believe.

By: Mark D.

Mark D. — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 05:06:18 +0000

I imagine many of the original data sources still have the original records. New Zealand apparently has them, for example. Now all that is necessary is collect them and make a new database accessible and verifiable in a transparent fashion.

By: Geoff B

Geoff B — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 23:48:08 +0000

Wow, it’s getting worse and worse. Now the CRU admits its raw data has been dumped and nobody can get access to it. Basically, there is no way of proving any of the assumptions they have made about worldwide temperature increases.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6936328.ece

By: psychochemiker

psychochemiker — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 06:11:47 +0000

and now we find out that all along (e.i., for more than 8 years) the pro AGW scientists have been censoring truth, data.

By: John

John — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 03:17:57 +0000

Nice symmetry: for eight years the Bush Administration censored all papers on global warming, and now…

By: Bookslinger

Bookslinger — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 01:41:01 +0000

Global warming and other wacko environmentalism was debunked by Dixie Lee Ray in 1990 in her book "Trashing the Planet"(paperback). Or hardcover. Ray, with a PhD in biology, was a marine biologist, and former chair of the Atomic Energy Commission, and Washington's governor when Mount St. Helens erupted.