Saturday, November 21, 2009

The Beginning of Climategate

Sometimes you wake up in the morning and everything has changed. A gear has slipped in the planet. This is going to be a big, big deal.

I was too busy yesterday to listen to much radio, so I didn't get any of this until reading Glenn Reynold's
Instapundit. Holy Data Manipulation, Batman ! Look at this stuff ! ! !

You can go
here or here or here or here or here for more info, but let's start with The Telegraph (UK). As usual, they have the best summary of what's been going on. My apologies to author James Delingpole for scraping his entire article. I had no other choice, since perfection really can't be edited. Hit the link on his name for his other recent work. Lord have mercy, that boy can type. Here's Jimmy :

If you own any shares in alternative energy companies I should start dumping them NOW. The conspiracy behind the Anthropogenic Global Warming myth (aka AGW; aka ManBearPig) has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after a hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (aka Hadley CRU) and released 61 megabites of confidential files onto the internet. (Hat tip: Watts Up With That)

When you read some of those files – including 1079 emails and 72 documents – you realise just why the boffins at Hadley CRU might have preferred to keep them confidential. As Andrew Bolt puts it, this scandal could well be “the greatest in modern science”. These alleged emails – supposedly exchanged by some of the most prominent scientists pushing AGW theory – suggest:


Conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more.


One of the alleged emails has a gentle gloat over the death in 2004 of John L Daly (one of the first climate change sceptics, founder of the Still Waiting For Greenhouse site), commenting:


“In an odd way this is cheering news.”


But perhaps the most damaging revelations – the scientific equivalent of the Telegraph’s MPs’ expenses scandal – are those concerning the way Warmist scientists may variously have manipulated or suppressed evidence in order to support their cause.


Here are a few tasters. (So far, we can only refer to them as alleged emails because – though Hadley CRU’s director Phil Jones has confirmed the break-in to Ian Wishart at the Briefing Room – he has yet to fess up to any specific contents.) But if genuine, they suggest dubious practices such as:


Manipulation of evidence:


I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.


Private doubts about whether the world really is heating up:


The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.


Suppression of evidence:


Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?


Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis.


Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address.


We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.


Fantasies of violence against prominent Climate Sceptic scientists:


Next time I see Pat Michaels at a scientific meeting, I’ll be tempted to beat

the crap out of him. Very tempted.


Attempts to disguise the inconvenient truth of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP):


……Phil and I have recently submitted a paper using about a dozen NH records that fit this category, and many of which are available nearly 2K back–I think that trying to adopt a timeframe of 2K, rather than the usual 1K, addresses a good earlier point that Peck made w/ regard to the memo, that it would be nice to try to “contain” the putative “MWP”, even if we don’t yet have a hemispheric mean reconstruction available that far back….


And, perhaps most reprehensibly, a long series of communications discussing how best to squeeze dissenting scientists out of the peer review process. How, in other words, to create a scientific climate in which anyone who disagrees with AGW can be written off as a crank, whose views do not have a scrap of authority.


“This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the “peer-reviewed literature”. Obviously, they found a solution to that–take over a journal! So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering “Climate Research” as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board…What do others think?”


“I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor.”“It results from this journal having a number of editors. The responsible one for this is a well-known skeptic in NZ. He has let a few papers through by Michaels and Gray in the past. I’ve had words with Hans von Storch about this, but got nowhere. Another thing to discuss in Nice !”


Hadley CRU has form in this regard. In September – I wrote the story up here as “How the global warming industry is based on a massive lie” – Hadley CRU’s researchers were exposed as having “cherry-picked” data in order to support their untrue claim that global temperatures had risen higher at the end of the 20th century than at any time in the last millenium. Hadley CRU was also the organisation which – in contravention of all acceptable behaviour in the international scientific community – spent years withholding data from researchers it deemed unhelpful to its cause. This matters because Hadley CRU, established in 1990 by the Met Office, is a government-funded body which is supposed to be a model of rectitude. Its HadCrut record is one of the four official sources of global temperature data used by the IPCC.

I asked in my title whether this will be the final nail in the coffin of Anthropenic Global Warming. This was wishful thinking, of course. In the run up to Copenhagen, we will see more and more hysterical (and grotesquely exaggerated) stories such as this in the Mainstream Media. And we will see ever-more-virulent campaigns conducted by eco-fascist activists, such as this risible new advertising campaign by Plane Stupid showing CGI polar bears falling from the sky and exploding because kind of, like, man, that’s sort of what happens whenever you take another trip on an aeroplane.

The world is currently cooling; electorates are increasingly reluctant to support eco-policies leading to more oppressive regulation, higher taxes and higher utility bills; the tide is turning against Al Gore’s Anthropogenic Global Warming theory. The so-called “sceptical” view is now also the majority view.

Unfortunately, we’ve a long, long way to go before the public mood (and scientific truth) is reflected by our policy makers. There are too many vested interests in AGW, with far too much to lose either in terms of reputation or money, for this to end without a bitter fight.

But if the Hadley CRU scandal is true,it’s a blow to the AGW lobby’s credibility which is never likely to recover.

All this, just in time for the big Hopenhagen summit in Denmark. When saying your Thanksgiving prayer next Thursday, remember to express your gratitude to God for creating hackers.

9 comments:

Cedric Katesby said...

The conspiracy behind the Anthropogenic Global Warming myth...

(rolls eyes)

There is no conspiracy.
A global conspiracy is an oxymoron.
It's physically impossible.

You can't create a conspiracy and have it cover the globe.
It doesn't work.
It's self-defeating.

The article is about somebody hacking into e-mails at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU).

They got about a thousand e-mails and various documents.
So?
Even if all of these documents were signed by the Dark Lord Himself (Al Gore), do you really think that a climate research center based in Norwich is a 'smoke-filled room' where shadowy figures decide the fate of billions and give NASA and NCAR and the Royal Society their marching orders?

Is that really how reality operates?
Does that sound sane to you?

Even when you look at the e-mails themselves, you have to work hard to find anything terribly dastardly.

I'm sure that some people are going to be embarrassed by having their private e-mails revealed.
Yet, ultimately, the e-mails themselves are not important.

Imagine for a moment that they found the following e-mail:
##########
Bob, have just doctored my research paper. Al Gore gave the check last night. I'm $10,000 richer.
All I have to do now is contact Ying and get her to "slice the lemon" with the ice-core sample. Remember, delete this e-mail after reading and eat the hard-drive! We can't afford to have this incriminating evidence to fall in to the wrong hands! We are so close now.
########

Max, just send the boys round to have a little "chat" with that pesky retired high school maths teacher that's been double checking the flowchart numbers.
Curse those blogs.
Got a call from the strike team leader just now.
As soon has the little bastard's children leave the playground, we'll have the black helicopter swing over and snatch 'em.
Don't worry about the police. We have an insider who is a Greenpeace volunteer and is willing to look the other way.
Death to the American Dream.
P.S.
Don't forget the pool party Friday.
###########

These e-mails (though disturbing) do not a global conspiracy make.
Even if every single researcher in Norwich had sworn a blood-oath to prevert the scientific method and was hell-bent on controlling the planet's scientific community, it wouldn't work.
It can't work that way.


The University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit is just that.
A Climate Research Unit.
Not exactly sexy.
It's not the headquarters of Dr Evil.

For a more level-headed look at the e-mails and what they may or may not portend, you might want to check out this.
Climate change Deniers hoax themselves … again.

The Whited Sepulchre said...

Cedric,
I don't think you've ever heard me say that there's a conspiracy.
If there is a major human contribution to global warming, cooling, or whichever one is supposed to be bad this week, then climatologists become the most important people on the planet.
No conspiracy necessary.
Self-interest is explanation enough.

Pogo said...

Allen,
It's OK. Cedric is spinning so fast knocking over his straw men that he suffers from serious vertigo.

Cedric Katesby said...

I don't think you've ever heard me say that there's a conspiracy.

Look at the article that you blithely posted on your blog.
You are promoting conspiracy theories.

The conspiracy behind the Anthropogenic Global Warming myth blah, blah, blah…

Notice the “conspiracy” part?
Hmm?
How many times have you called global warming a “hoax”?
Hmm?
Be honest.

If there is a major human contribution to global warming(…) then climatologists become the most important people on the planet.

How exactly do climatologists become “the most important people on the planet” because of global warming? How does that work?
Don’t just wander off muttering to yourself.
Give us the information.
Why only climatologists? Don’t other scientists get a look-in?

Many earth-science disciplines contribute to the scientific and public understanding of the complex, global climate change issue, including sedimentary geology, Quaternary geology, geochemistry, paleontology, and paleohydrology, in addition to oceanography and atmospheric sciences. The understanding of the full spectrum….
The Geological Society of America (more Commie hoaxers, b’gosh!)

How do the climatologists get to rule the world while the rest of the earth-sciences looking over their collective shoulders?
How do climatologists corrupt the young ones fresh out of university?
Is there some secret initiation rite? Are their parents held hostage?
What about the retired climatologist lying on his/her deathbed? How come they don’t spill the beans?
How does one power-mad NASA climatologist publish specialized data in a paper without accidentally upsetting the apple cart of another, different power-mad Royal Society climatologist publishing a paper on the other side of the world?

No conspiracy necessary. Self-interest is explanation enough.

Total nonsense.
You haven’t thought this through. Take a moment to think about how fantastically HUGE is this "hoax". We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of people covering multiple disciplines all over the world with no personal allegiances to each other at all. There is no central clearing house. No globe-spanning censorship committee. Scientists from different cultures, languages, political affiliations, religious groups, young, old, rich, poor etc.
Getting scientists to agree on anything is like herding cats.
Damned near impossible.
The obvious and simple way to provide evidence of the alleged conspiracy is to publish the research proposals that were turned down. Let the world see how the applications were rational, robust proposals for solid science.

However, all you have is paranoia.
Naked, unhinged paranoia about “them there science people.”
You are no better than the creationists railing againt the biology departments of the world.

NASA is not lying to you. They are not trying to steal your money.
They don’t want to be “the most important people on the planet”.
(Ooh, spooky)

...global warming, cooling, or whichever one is supposed to be bad this week...

If you genuinely don't understand how NASA uses these terms then go to their web-site.
It's basic stuff.

The Internet is full of references to global warming. The Union of Concerned Scientists website on climate change is titled "Global Warming," just one of many examples. But we don't use global warming much on this website. We use the less appealing "climate change." Why?

To a scientist, global warming describes...

NASA

Democracy is utterly dependant on an electorate that is accurately informed.
Do some fact checking.
Get your science from science sources.

ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ said...

"Get your science from science sources."

Of course you mean sources from "scientists" like Phil Jones, (oops, seems he deleted the data rather than release it under the FOIA) after urging Michael Mann et al to do the same. These "gentlemen" are not scientists. They are simply prostitutes turning tricks in exchange for taxpayer cash.

Cedric Katesby said...

Of course you mean sources from "scientists" like Phil Jones...

I have never heard of Phil Jones before.
Neither have you.
I have however heard of...Issac Newton. :)

This will come as a shock to you but the the whole science behind the "global warming conspiracy hoax" is bigger than just one guy.
Much, much bigger.
Checking out some guy's stolen e-mails does not equal a conspiracy.
One spring does not a swallow make.

When I talk about getting your science from science from science sources, I mean precisely that.
Science sources.

Say it with me slowly.
S.C.I.E.N.C.E
(big breath now!)
S.O.U.R.C.E.S.

Is NASA a science source?
Yep.
How about the National Acadamy of Sciences?
Yep.
The European Acadamy of Science and Arts?
Yep.
The Royal Meteorological Society?
Oh yes.
The Royal Society?
Yes.
The CSIRO?
Sure.
The NCAR?
Yep.
International Council of Academies of Engineering and Technological Sciences?
No Problemo.
The British Antarctic Survey?
Yep.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration?
Yes.
The US Geologial Survey?
Yes.
How about the Geologial Society of America?
Fine.
Royal Society of New Zealand?
Yes.
The American Association for the Advacement of Science. (the one founded by Abraham Lincoln)?
Heck Yeah.
American Geophysical Union?
Yep.
European Federation of Geologists?
Yes.
The American Meteorological Society?
Yes.
American Astronomical Society?
Sure.
The American Chemical Society?
Yep.
Americal Institute of Physics?
Yep.
Canadian Federation of Earth Sciences?
Yes.

These are all science sources.
In fact, they are all excellent science sources.
They represent millions of working, active scientists all over the world.

This list is just a small sample.
There are no scientific communities on the planet who consider global warming to be a hoax or conspiracy.
None.
Not even a couple.
None.

They are simply prostitutes turning tricks in exchange for taxpayer cash.

It easy to talk big over the Internet. You are safe and anonymous. I understand you very well.
Is this woman a prostitute?
Would you say that to her face?
Would you say that to her family?
Shame on you.

Your side has nothing.
A few retirees who were once scientists long ago.
A small business investor in Pheonix. Some astroturf conservative think-tanks talking all sciencey to fool the public.
Little else.
Indeed, you have so few real scientists on your side that you have to commit fraud to bolster your numbers.

You know what the biggest problem Deniers have?
They're boring. Deadly boring.
Think about it.
All they can do it whine and bitch about the other guy doing all the work.
Taking the back seat and farting is easy. Yet it's boring and ultimately unproductive.
You'd never in a million years catching a climate warming denier doing something as smart as this.

Anonymous said...

@Cedric. Amazing. Even when mocked by reality the faithful shalt certainly not be swayed.

Did you miss the part about how they would try to influence the peer-review system. how they peer-reviewed each others works and tried (if not succeeded) in creating a closed loop circuit from which dissenting voices would be cut out.

Most scientists that "peer-review" does so by looking at the scientist in questions reputation and go by their gut-feeling and whatever information that they had been send beforehand. They dont all go and try to recreate the bloody experiment. It is a case of "does this make sense in relation to the information I have been given all ready and is this a guy I know (of)?", now add to this a closed information loop. I know what standards science ideally have, but are also aware that they are people for sale like the rest of us.

I hate it when scientists is ascribed some "for the good of all" philosophy in everything that they touch, but it just isn't so. There is A LOT of money in this if you know how the future will play out, even more so if you are the one who gets to dictate it. Right?

"Get your science from science sources."

Sources like the CRU? thanks but I will pass.

Anonymous said...

and to futher add. People who think that big conspiracies is impossible because 'that many people could not keep quiet' have apparently never heard about 'intelligence services' that employ in the 100.000's from all nationalities around the world. There is an organisation known as military well known to be able to 'keep a secret' as well as having a high count of people connected and even 'in the know' etc.. I could go on all day long. The thing is, people DO come out to try and blow the whistle every now and again only to find themselves muffled by current opinion and silenced by the press and the true believers. Manmade global warming is nothing but a new eco religion of guilt. SHAME ON YOU FOR BEING A CONSUMING ANIMAL!!!

Anonymous said...

Also, the big conspiracies is impossible argument works by assuming that everybody in the conspiracy are aware of the full scope of it. If we look at the military for an example. Do the soldier on the field know that he is but a pawn in economic policies or do you think he has more earthly worries, like; food on the table? staying alive? feeling a need to trust those he has sold his very life to for money as to not go insane? Is he given the full plans for all the military actions to come, or is he only told what he needs to know right here and now?

It is a false premise since most organisation be they legal or not; have a core of decision makers, an outer ring of well informed people and then several layers of 'the great unwashed' who are only part of it for the paycheck and only informed of what 'they need to know'.