Climategate

Bill Gardner

My point being: The evidence from the emails is clear, Don't trust the CRU. However, I trust the APS. And the National Academy of Sciences, and, for that matter, the national academies of all the G8 countries.

You have a problem. The NAS, APS, and other academies are basing their positions on conclusions reached by the IPCC. Those conclusions were based on CRU data. Without the foundation of accurate data the conclusions have to be reviewed and statements coming from the national academies are worthless opinions.

Let me remind you of what I wrote above. The leadership of the AMS supports the IPCC conclusions and thinks that the evidence is clear. But 50% of American meteorologists said that they did not agree with the IPCC statement, "Most of the warming since 1950 is very likely human-induced." That was twice the number that agreed or strongly agreed. When twice as many members did not agree than did agree I do not see how one can claim that the members support the statement. The same is true of other organizations. Nobody bothered to ask the members for their opinion and presented the evidence from both sides of the argument. Without a clear debate there is no way to hide behind the false argument that you have consensus.

"But 50% of American meteorologists said that they did not agree with the IPCC statement, "Most of the warming since 1950 is very likely human-induced.""

Where is the source for this? I googled this quote and it said 50% of *TV* meteorologists did not agree.

Evidence of consensus. From the American Physical Society:
"WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Council of the American Physical Society has overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to replace the Society’s 2007 Statement on Climate Change with a version that raised doubts about global warming."

Really? Just what percentage of the membership believed that man's emissions of CO2 were causing warming? You can't tell us because there has been no poll taken of the membership. All you have is a statement of support for the IPCC from the leadership, which jumped on the AGW bandwagon and is looking to save face.

Now here we have evidence of disagreement from a poll taken of members of the American Meteorological Society, people who should have a good idea about what is going on in the field of climate study. This poll had some interesting results.

When asked to evaluate the IPCC statement that, “Most of the warming since 1950 is very likely human-induced,” 50% either disagreed or strongly disagreed while only 24% agreed or strongly agreed. That means that twice as many meteorologists did not believe the warming was man made than did.

The climate models did not do very well in the poll. When asked to evaluate the statement, "Global climate models are reliable in their projections of a warming of the planet," 52% of the meteorologists disagreed while only 19% agreed.

What we have here is evidence that there isn't much in the way of consensus among the membership of organizations that claim to support the IPCC and its conclusions. Of course, science has never been about consensus and consensus does not have a great deal of credibility on its own. After all, there was consensus that ulcers were caused by stress and lifestyle choices. When I was a kid the consensus was clearly against plate tectonics. At the turn of the last century the consensus position favoured the prudence of eugenics and argued that something had to be done to protect society from the excessive breeding of inferior low IQ groups like blacks, Jews and Asians.

And who uses the idea of 'consensus' in a scientific argument? As Michael Crichton pointed out, we don't talk about consensus when trying to show that the moon is not made of green cheese or that the sun does not revolve around the Earth. All we do is to point to the evidence. That is the problem of the AGW movement; it has no empirical evidence that man is causing global warming or that the wrming is unusual so it has to manufacture consensus by fiddling with the data, hiding the fact that the ice cores show that it is temperature that drives CO2 and not the other way around, trying to hide the Medieval Climate Optimum, Little Ice Age, Holocene Optimum, and ignoring the major decadal effects of natural factors like the AMO and PDO. I note that the AMO, which was never brought up as a major factor when the temperatures were going up, now is brought up to excuse the fact that Latif, Mann, Jones, Trenberth and their pals can't explain the decadal cooling even as human CO2 emissions were at record highs.

If you wish to argue consensus go right ahead but don't give us statements by political committees that run various organizations. Show us actual polling data by the membership and include a clear statement about what they are evaluating. If meteorologists overwhelmingly reject the IPCC consensus statement (2 to 1 against) while the AMS leadership supports it how can you argue that you have evidence of consensus?

* Almost a third agreed or strongly agreed that “global warming is a scam.”
* When the meteorologists were asked to identify “the greatest obstacle to reporting on climate change,” their top answer (41%) was “too much scientific uncertainty.”

Evidence of consensus. From the American Physical Society:
"WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Council of the American Physical Society has overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to replace the Society’s 2007 Statement on Climate Change with a version that raised doubts about global warming."

Can you please remove the previous posting? I cut it off before I could complete it and had a few formatting and grammar issues that were left uncorrected.

Evidence of consensus. From the American Physical Society:
"WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Council of the American Physical Society has overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to replace the Society’s 2007 Statement on Climate Change with a version that raised doubts about global warming."

Really? Just what percentage of the membership believed that man's emissions of CO2 were causing warming? You can't tell us because there has been no poll taken of the membership. All you have is a statement of support for the IPCC from the leadership, which jumped on the AGW bandwagon and is looking to save face.

Here we have evidence of disagreement from a poll taken of members of the American Meteorological Society, people who should have a good idea about what is going on in the field of climate study. This poll had some interesting results.

When asked to evaluate the IPCC statement that, “Most of the warming since 1950 is very likely human-induced,” 50% either disagreed or strongly disagreed while only 24% agreed or strongly agreed. That means that twice as many meteorologists did not believe the warming was man made than did.

The climate models did not do very well in the poll. When asked to evaluate the statement, "Global climate models are reliable in their projections of a warming of the planet," 52% of the meteorologists disagreed while only 19% agreed.

While only 29% of meteorologists agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, "global warming is a scam,” the result should not be surprising because there is no disagreement that the planet is warmer now than it was during the Little Ice Age. What gets me is the fact that given the obvious knowledge that the earth came out of the Little Ice Age about 150 years ago only 45% disagreed with the statement that global warming was a scam. I am assuming that many of the respondents must have been confused about the wording because the statement was unclear to them.

It is also clear that meteorologists were far more aware of the uncertainty than their leadership, which has come out of support of the IPCC. I found this part interesting.

When weathercasters were asked in this survey to identify the “greatest obstacle to reporting on climate change,” their top answer (41%) was “too much scientific uncertainty,” despite the growing consensus of climate scientists evinced by the In- tergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and in direct conflict with the AMS Statement on Climate Change. (This statement, in the February 2007 issue of BAMS, concludes that “despite the un- certainties noted, there is adequate evidence that the atmosphere, ocean, and land surface are warming . . . and that humans have significantly contributed to this change.”)...

Once again let me be clear. There is an obvious disconnect between what the leadership of the AMS says and what the membership believes. As such, I do not accept general statements from leadership groups of various organizations or government agencies as evidence of consensus of the membership.

Of course, science has never been about consensus and consensus does not have a great deal of credibility on its own. After all, there was consensus that ulcers were caused by stress and lifestyle choices. When I was a kid the consensus was clearly against plate tectonics. At the turn of the last century the consensus position favoured the prudence of eugenics and argued that something had to be done to protect society from the excessive breeding of inferior low IQ groups like blacks, Jews and Asians. All of those positions turned out to be wrong even if most people believed them.

And who would think of using the idea of 'consensus' in a credible scientific argument? As the late Michael Crichton pointed out, we don't talk about consensus when trying to show that the moon is not made of green cheese or that the sun does not revolve around the Earth. All we do is to point to the evidence. That is the problem of the AGW movement; it has no empirical evidence that man is causing global warming or that the wrming is unusual so it has to manufacture consensus by fiddling with the data, hiding the fact that the ice cores show that it is temperature that drives CO2 and not the other way around, trying to hide the Medieval Climate Optimum, Little Ice Age, Holocene Optimum, and ignoring the major decadal effects of natural factors like the AMO and PDO. I note that the AMO, which was never brought up as a major factor when the temperatures were going up, now is brought up to excuse the fact that Latif, Mann, Jones, Trenberth and their pals can't explain the decadal cooling even as human CO2 emissions were at record highs.

If you wish to argue consensus go right ahead but don't give us statements by political committees that run various organizations. Show us actual polling data by the membership and include a clear statement about what they are agreeing on. I am arguing that if meteorologists overwhelmingly reject the IPCC consensus statement (2 to 1 against) while the AMS leadership supports it, you cannot claim consensus by pointing to the statement from another leadership group. There is no consensus and there has to be debate on the actual science. Free the data and methods so that we can all have a look at the temperature reconstructions and judge about the merits of what has been done so far. If the data is not freed and the methods are not released then you have no science but are basing your position on faith based beliefs.

Thanks for your thoughts. Of course the statements from the councils of the National Academy of Science and the American Physical Society might be wrong. My view, however, is that their views are more credible than a poll of television weathercasters.

Let me be clear. While the NAS panel agreed with the Wegman findings, the Wegman Panel did not agree with the NAS conclusions that wrong data and wrong methods were not important because others have reached similar conclusions as MBH.

Wegman slammed Mann and his co-authors and showed that there was no independent peer review process and no evidence of knowledge of advanced statistical methods. First, the reviewers of the Mann, Bradley and Hughes papers had all been co-writers with the authors on many other papers. Second, the authors and reviewers were insufficiently skilled in the proper use of statistical methods and missed what were basic errors that an independent amateur had managed to find without much difficulty once he was provided with the data and was able to recreate algorithms to process that data. (MBH did not allow anyone to look at the code for obvious reasons; they cut off the proxy data after 1960 because it showed a decline. Anyone reading the Wegman report would not be surprised by the CRU leaks because they show exactly what had already been revealed.

The NAS review of Mann's MBH98/MBH99 papers agreed with the Wegman findings. It concluded that the data and methods used to create the MBH98/MBH99 Hockey Stick were wrong but that the conclusions were right because other people had supported them. The panel members must be very embarrassed because the code and e-mails show that those other people had fudged the data just as Mann, Bradley, and Hughes did. I think that what is needed is an investigation that would re-examine the way that the NAS conducts reviews. How can so-called reputable scientists come up with a statement that wrong data and methods are not important because the conclusions are correct? What the NAS should have done is to do what the statistical review panel did; clearly state that the methods were not correct and the data was inappropriate because it relied on stripbark proxies that respond to factors other than temperature. The fact that Mann cut off the data in 1960 and used instrumental data to calculate the running average should have set off alarm bells because nobody who knows anything will accept such a splice as valid, particularly when the post 1960 data is available.

There is no way to spin this story. The leaked code shows the use of fudge factors, inappropriate truncation of data, and cherry picking that makes the reconstructions invalid. That means that we need to open up the process for everyone to see what the full data sets really show and what the methods really do.

Perhaps we can agree that the NAS should go back over the data and methods in the light of the emails? In general, the science community doesn't pay sufficient attention to research integrity. Moreover, climate change will, probably, be the most important science policy issue of our lifetimes -- the data and methods can't be reexamined too often. And, yes, all these data should be open and public.

That is all the sceptics have been asking for; an honest review of all of the data and methods used to come up with the reconstructed temperature profiles and an examination of the science that looks at natural factors that effect climate trends. But the problem is a bias among the established gatekeepers who are in very deep and have reputations to protect. I read Dr. North's interview and was disgusted by his lack of understanding of the methodology issue. While his committee slammed Mann, Bradley and Hughes by pointing out that the stripbark proxy data was inappropriate and the methods were wrong, it offered cover by saying that the wrong data and wrong methods did not mean the conclusion was wrong because MBH had been supported by others who had come to the same conclusions. While the Wegman committee had the sense to stick to its mandate and evaluate what was presented, the North panel did not and is now in trouble as much of the support for MBH came from papers and data provided by people who have admitted to using statistical tricks and fudge factors.

What we need is an open process in which everything that goes to the review panel is made available publically. That way nobody can try to hide the facts in order to save face for themselves or their political patrons.

Time is getting short and it is coming down to the fact, that soon I will have to pray to the good Lord to maintain our freedoms and not allow our leaders to sign the Copenhagen Treaty, which will take away our liberties, let go and let God-this being a challenge to our Lord and Saviour? However, while there is still time to prevent the loss of a lifetime, perhaps loss of life it's self - I will do what I am able to fight for our freedoms! The whole Climate change agenda is a proven fraud and racketeering, but the United Nations and Globalist governments don't care as that is just the excuse instrument they have used to ensnare us! Has everybody out there become a tree hugger? The tree will be standing 100 years from now, but will you be looking at the tree, from inside the fence of a Concentration Camp? Anyone out there want to fight to maintain their freedom anymore? Please do all you can to preserve freedom in North America!

Check out what Government is doing behind your back at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VebOTc-7shU

To request that PM Harper doesn't sign the Copenhagen Treaty, thereby causing Canadians to lose
their Sovereignty and Freedom email the PM at: pm@pm.gc.ca

Any lawyers want to help out by filing this Copenhagen Treaty be classified as an illegal Treaty, in order to, help save Freedom in North America? ( Unlimited Promotion Opportunity Here For a Law firm to Gain a favorable high profile credibility! )

The emails and data are available on the internet for anyone to download and read. I have done so, and my husband who used to use Fortran (yes he is an old nerd, one of the originals who was working with computers before PC's were developed for the rest of us - this is a very old programme), has been amusing himself working his way through the code and data. Large guffaws are coming from his desk as I write this, with snorts of disbelief when finding code fudged to get the result required.

I on the other hand, have been reading the emails, and am horrified at the arrogance, bullying, elitism, and cronyism displayed by Dr Phil Jones, who is the leading IPCC scientist and acknowledged as the number one AGW scientist.

Folks, we are not talking about any old scientist here, but the worlds leading scientist in the field, fudging his data, blocking FOI requests (thats illegal for starters), asking others to destroy emails (all required to be kept by FOI laws).
How can any of you dismiss his words and attitudes as displayed in the emails, as being of no consequence to the science of global warming? Particularly when those words were followed by the following actions - editors being sacked, scientists having careers ruined, and data eliminated that is needed to form accurate forecasts for public decision making.
Interesting enough, in one email, Prof Jones also refers to keeping quiet his own 25 year funding from the oil industry! How's that for hypocracy, when anyone who asks questions of the science, is immediately charged that they are being funded by Big Oil and co.
I also see some people on this blog and on other blogs, taking pride in not reading the emails! They are wearing this non examination of the evidence like a badge of honour! Let me explain to you how to be more scientific in your reasoning.

Scepticism is part of the scientific process. One scientist proposes a theory, supplies the data on which he bases his theory, and other scientists try to knock it down. If his thesis can stand up to this, and real world data starts to confirm the theory, then it eventually moves along the line into accepted scientific wisdom, and one theory can last for years. Eventually, however, someone else might come along and disprove it.

You can't disprove or support a theory unless you actually take the first step of reading the data! People on this forum are making fools of themselves (on both sides of the argument), because they have not read the basic data (the emails) with which sceptics are now arguing for police investigations to take place.

What Dr Phil Jones and the Hockey Team have done is to stop any verification of their theories, by deliberately withholding the original data of temperature readings from around the world, and also hiding the maths in the programme used to try to sort the whole lot into one unified whole temperature reading for the globe.
In addition, he systematically went about knocking out papers opposing his theory, from the IPCC reports, and furthermore, in the summary of the reports, which politicians base their policies on, he and the team deliberately wrote misleading conclusions. It is well documented elsewhere that over the years, other scientists have resigned in protest at this activity.

i think this could be an important outcome. if the code and data are available, others will test both to see how accurate the conclusions were.

will look foward to these findings being made public and discussed.

"Many skeptics have gone too far in using the revelations as grounds for casting doubt on the entire scientific case for AGW. "

I don't see how the sceptics can go 'too far' when the e-mails and code show that the global temperature reconstruction was obtained by fudging the data and that the raw data set is kept from being examined. The fraud has already been established so if the AGW movement wants to be credible it will have to argue the science rather than pretend that there is consensus.

"The scientific implications of the Climategate files are probably small, but the political implication is certainly large–because of the politicized nature of climate science confirmed by the files."

Actually, the scientific implications are huge because it is clear that the scientific method was not followed. For an paper to be scientifically valid it is required that the data and methodology are fully documented, archived, and available for scrutiny by other scientists who may wish to verify the results. In the case of the climate papers, it has been clear that the statistical methods are inadequate ever since the Wegman commission evaluated Mann, Bradley and Huges (MBH98/MBH99). Wegman's social network analysis also showed the potential problems with the peer review system, which were clearly exposed by the e-mails.

Let us be very clear about one thing. When you hide your data from scrutiny and use methods that add fudge factors to produce something you do not have science, no matter how many other like minded individuals you get to agree with you. To have science you need to have empirical data and well documented methods that show exactly how the conclusions were reached. The math and logic also must work. In the case of the dendro and surface record reconstructions they do not work. There is no warming since the 1930s in the raw data; all of the warming comes from adjustments that are not adequately justified and use a flawed 1990 paper by Phil Jones, which includes Chinese data that the e-mails admit to be fraudulent. If Dr. Jones' 2008 paper on the UHI is used instead, all of the warming signal disappears.

re; Your self satisfaction/denial-
Horseshit! The Shroud of Turin proves Christianity doesn't exist...discuss. That's as fallacious an argument as yours.

You write:
Many skeptics have gone too far in using the revelations as grounds for casting doubt on the entire scientific case for AGW.

I think if you look at how much the temperature record has been adjusted from the raw data (where such raw data is still known) you'll see that without confidence in those adjustments the case for (net non-zero) amplification of GHG climate forcings has room for doubt.

We are told that certain raw data is unavailable and we see e-mail discussion of how to get to certain desired levels of adjustments (re: "1940s spike").

So, being as the IPCC mean estimate for equilibrium climate sensitivity to doubling of CO2 is approximately three times the estimate of direct (radiative) effect of doubling of CO2, I'd say that having less confidence in two-thirds of the entire scientific case is not outrageous.

Much of the IPCC case comes down to requiring amplification of GHG radiative forcing to explain the modern temperature record. There's now another obvious mechanism to explain *away* the modern temperature record.

This science may be politically charged, but it is obvious that these fellows *encouraged* that political charging. I find that one of the most distasteful things about the whole episode. Threatening people with assault, forcing out colleagues who don't toe the line (didn't that woman from the weather channel also try that?), building a fortress so that inquiry would fail.

That is the work of scientists in the USSR, isn't it, didn't they also forge on in this primal tribal way.

It's just pathetic.

Found your blog today, good stuff. Cheers!

I had a small moment of smiling during the initial dustup when I thought of Popper's criticism of Kuhn--that Kuhn had introduced the language of politics into the study of the history of science.

I had a small moment of smiling during the initial dustup when I thought of Popper's criticism of Kuhn--that Kuhn had introduced the language of politics into the study of the history of science.

It is understandable that many people have latched on to the emails, but in their defense the people at CRU indicate that the emails are ‘without context’ or somehow ‘normal banter’ in a scientific institution.

The program code however is different.

It is the actual program code, the modeling code and the data that contains the most damaging evidence. I am not talking about the 'comments' in the code but rather the actual computer program source code itself.

Unlike comments and emails the computer code can only be interpreted in one way. Unlike the comments and the emails the computer code is whole unto it self and requires no external context.

So now everyone has the code.

However now CRU have somehow ‘lost’ the world’s raw climate data.

It may have been necessary for them to have lost the raw temperature data. If the raw temperature data was available then they might be asked to reproduce Exactly The Same Results, in front of skeptical witnesses, as they had used in their peer-reviewed publications that were distributed to the world. This might have been impossible without using some infected modeling code, which an investigating scientist might discover.

If the results can not be reproduced the paper that used the results should be withdrawn. Then every paper that cited that paper, and so on until the whole web of pseudo-science that can be traced back to the original fabrication has been purged from the libraries

It is not scientific unless an independent body can reproduce the results.

For information on the possible code infection see:

Anthropogenic Global Warming Virus Alert.

http://www.thespoof.com/news/spoof.cfm?headline...

"It may have been necessary for them to have lost the raw temperature data. If the raw temperature data was available then they might be asked to reproduce Exactly The Same Results, in front of skeptical witnesses, as they had used in their peer-reviewed publications that were distributed to the world. This might have been impossible without using some infected modeling code, which an investigating scientist might discover."

I think that CRU will claim that most of the data still exists but that it has somehow lost the metadata explaining which stations were used and what adjustments were made for documented moves. That would allow them a way out because they can still show the data but have no way to reproduce it exactly. They can also claim that given the new Jones paper on the UHI effect, the old adjustments need to be reduced and by doing so they can produce a temperature profile that is closer to reality.

Of course, there is no way to get out of the dendro mess because McIntyre has documented the issues too well and has all the evidence that he needs to show exactly what happened. Is it too late to get the IPCC Nobel money back and give it to him and the other sceptics?

I'm still a little confused -- though much Will's response, which seems perfectly reasonable*, I think his response (which is common throughout the skeptic's response) fails to account for how wide the consensus is, and how small a role these people played.

These e-mails are limited to CRU, of University of East Anglia. Research used to support climate change extends well beyond their walls. Unless this can be shown to be part of a pattern throughout the global community of scientists studying global warming, I think claims to "consensus" are still safe.

Am I mistaken? How big would you say is the "part" in "at least in part"?

*This in particular makes sense, in light of these events:

"Climate science will become more transparent and more rigorously by-the-book because climate scientists are becoming more fully aware that the impulse to jealously protect a public perception of consensus can undermine itself by producing questionable science and a... skeptical public.

The source of the emails is CRU, but the correspondents include other researchers from other institutions and countries (e.g., Mann) . A top ten list of central members of the email network reverse engineered from the emails is here, with weightings:

Phil Jones: 1.0 CRU
Keith Briffa: 0.86 CRU
Tim Osborn: 0.80 CRU
Jonathan Overpeck: 0.57 University of Arizona
Tom Wigley: 0.54 University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR)
Gavin Schmidt: 0.54 NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS)
Raymond Bradley: 0.52 UMass
Kevin Trenberth: 0.49 National Center Atmospheric Research (NCAR)
Benjamin Santer: 0.49 Lawrence Livermore National Labs
Michael Mann: 0.46 Penn State

(see http://computationallegalstudies.com/2009/11/27...)

This overlaps with the social network identified by Wegman 2006:

"...In our further exploration of the social network of authorships in temperature
reconstruction, we found that at least 43 authors have direct ties to Dr. Mann by virtue of coauthored papers with him. Our findings from this analysis suggest that authors in the area of paleoclimate studies are closely connected and thus ‘independent studies’ may not be as independent as they might appear on the surface..."

(see http://www.climateaudit.org/pdf/others/07142006...)

The existence of a social network does not imply a problem or collusion. But note that the network of emails spans a significant portion of the key peer reviewers of climate research (directors of institutions).

Furthermore, as noted by Wegman, the climate research has had little review by expert statisticians or software engineers (that is, mathematicians/modelers outside the "elite" clique of climate researchers). To make a comprehensive external review of the data collection, data provenance, adjustments, statistical methods, and climate models requires much more open access to the data (including original data) and methods (algorithms *and* implementations) than has heretofore been available.

Well, I know when I've got egg on my face.

"The scientific implications of the Climategate files are probably small, but the political implication is certainly large–because of the politicized nature of climate science confirmed by the files." (My emphasis.)

In other words, from a science perspective - which is to say, from an empirically normative perspective - the whole affair should be (for the most part) a “Move along! Nothing to see here!” Right?

I meant the immediate scientific implications are small. As I note, I think the large political implications will have significant long-term positive implications for climate science.

I think Will just means that (1) the emails show that we do need to carefully scrutinize the science, rather than simply accepting the "consensus", but (2) the orthodox view will probably turn out to be mostly correct, even if we're less certain of that than before the email scandal broke.

Well, I think the idea that "we" are competent to engage in meaningful scrutiny of science is presumptuous, though it's fair to say that the science should be scrutinized by scientists. (Maybe you are; I'm not.) But we already knew that, and it already is.

Similarly, these emails should only make us less certain of the consensus (such as it is) if we believe that (1) the emails contain truly, substantively (as opposed to merely politically) damning evidence, (2) the emails are representative, and (3) the email bins of the denialists are bereft of equally damning evidence or worse. So far, I've seen little reason to believe that any of these are true. Though admittedly, and unlike Will, I'm just a motivated cognizer.

I don't understand this. (1) The emails are clearly substantively damning. The reliability of science is a function of its methods and norms, which have been violated. (2) Others in the thread have pointed to the centrality of these guys in the network of climate researchers. (3) If people who say P do bad science and people who say not-P do worse science, that shouldn't prevent us from taking the faults of those who say P into account when judging the probability of P.

Point 1 goes much too far. The history of science does not bear out the idea that rational, apolitical deliberation is the exclusive path to advances. Crick, Newton, Edison -- all brilliant pioneers, and all colossal jerks who did their best to destroy their rivals. This is far from an exhaustive list.

This sort of behavior shouldn't be excused, as it's unpleasant and seems unlikely to be a necessary condition for the progression of science. But I don't think you can safely assume that this behavior retards the overall project of scientific advancement.

The basic mechanism for global warming has been known for a very long time. Carl Sagan talked about it in Cosmos. I am not an expert in this field, but the basic mechanism here is completely plausible. Moreover no matter how politicized this is, if a scientist was able to show that this was bunk they could make a real name for themselves while embarrassing their enemies. The coal industry would happily fund their research. Science probably works better when it is politicized.

That the science is conducted in a politically-charged atmosphere can't be disputed, but I do wonder whether there is any science that can come under politically-motivated attack and not then proceed in a 'politically-charged atmosphere'. Even if the scientists involved master the urge to circle the wagons, there will still be pressure on each to deny potential attackers fuel.

Likewise, the claims of a conspiracy to suppress competing narratives have been exaggerated, as far as I can tell - the experience with Soon and Baliunas's AGW-skeptical paper resembles evo-devo's later episode with Meyer's paper against evolution-skeptical paper. In both cases it was charged that the editors lowered the bar for peer review due to some personal alignment, and in both there was strong pressure for the editors and journals involved to be fired or boycotted. I doubt evo-devo has suffered for it, at least.

But the charge of making favorable evidence look more favorable does seem reasonable, and troubling.

One of the more interesting things to watch over the next few months is presumably Steve McIntyre; his central claim has principally been that the data has not been provided. Well, now he has the data. What does he think?

Will,

As usual, your take on the situation is thoughtful and sensible. I too am an amateur in these matters, but I wonder if the most damaging (to the warmists) thing to come out of this is the subsequent admission that CRU dumped all their pre-1980 raw data. As the Times article on this particular sub-scandal said, this "means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years."

The pre-1980 data was dumped in the 1980s, before AGW became heavily politicized, apparently.

For reference, here is the Times article.

It had not been politicized, perhaps, but it sure as heck had been scientificalized. Making it impossible for others to check your results is not good scientific practice. Plus, I am sure it was obvious all along it was potentially relevant to policy (hadn't we just come through a global cooling scare?) and that a lot of people might care whether these results could be checked, some day.

"But the Climategate files strongly suggest that at least some of the science is not rock solid and that the scientific consensus is at least in part the product of silencing or marginalizing those who might upset it."

Because most people (myself included) don't have the necessary background to evaluate competing claims of scientists on the subject of AGW, the appeal to authority of scientific consensus was a pretty effective argument in practical terms.

The release of these emails (and the third-party analyses of the computer program making up the climate model itself) severely undermine the argument that the consensus should be deferred to.

It is one thing to defer to a consensus that was the result of open debate and publicly available data. It is another to defer to a consensus manufactured (at least in part) from attempts to keep dissenting voices out of peer reviewed journals and data and models that were not publicly released for fear they would breed skepticism.

It is not surprising to see a “Move along! Nothing to see here!” response from alarmists, but there is certainly something to see. Though I’m sure some ideologues will merely amp up their armtwisting thug tactic to protect the fragile perception of consensus they had achieved (precioussssssss!), I predict that the overall response from the scientific community will be healthy and invigorating. Climate science will become more transparent and more rigorously by-the-book because climate scientists are becoming more fully aware that the impulse to jealously protect a public perception of consensus can undermine itself by producing questionable science and a justifiably skeptical public.

This is true, and will be wonderful for climate science. If the alarmists are right -- still certainly a possibility -- it won't be nearly as good for the earth. Those that believe in the alarmist case are morally obligated to paper over this controversy in exactly the way you describe, because the skeptical case for inaction has a massive structural advantage (doing things is hard!). That's admittedly logically and ethically unsatisfying, but I have a hard time assigning alarmists much blame for doing what they're inevitably going to do.

If the alarmists are right -- still certainly a possibility -- it won't be nearly as good for the earth. Those that believe in the alarmist case are morally obligated to paper over this controversy in exactly the way you describe, because the skeptical case for inaction has a massive structural advantage (doing things is hard!). That's admittedly logically and ethically unsatisfying, but I have a hard time assigning alarmists much blame for doing what they're inevitably going to do.

I could not disagree with this more.

Consider the treatment of Levitt and Dubner. Any honest alarmist could be easily convinced of the reality that emissions reduction is actually a very poor strategy for addressing AGW... especially because of China and India. There's a bit of low-hanging fruit to be found there, yes, but it doesn't take long before you have to start paying very high prices to reduce the estimated chance of disaster by microscopic amounts. My favored analogy is to optimizing code without improving the core algorithms.

Suppose the "hockey stick" projection was right. Doesn't it follow that we need to develop, and maximize the safety of, far more powerful and cost-effective methods of manipulating climate than cap-and-trade? But look at the political pressure that was exerted against even considering that idea, just because it would give countries a justification for avoiding large sacrifices!

"I have a hard time assigning alarmists much blame for doing what they're inevitably going to do."

It's certainly not inevitable that people will do what they think is morally imperative!

True. Does it count to say their motives are pure? Wait, stop laughing, what I mean is this. Consider a simplified set of outcomes: either side may be right, and either side may be victorious. Four outcomes, two of which we should all be pleased by and which we'll therefore ignore.

As for the remaining two: each will have costs. If the alarmists' crusade turns out to be unjustified, I think it's likely that those costs would be substantially born by the world's richest people. The milk that is to be spilled will have been collected in a relatively just manner (admittedly, as judged by my own prejudices). If the skeptics win the day but were wrong to do so, the costs are likely to be spread in a relatively unjust manner. (I'd also argue that those costs likely to be substantially higher than those imposed by wrongheaded alarmists, but that's an argument for another day -- a day when I'm willing to contemplate the phrase 'discount rate'. Which is definitely not today.)

I think this makes the alarmists' zealotry one that's easier to forgive than, say, that of a religious crusader intent on murdering nonbelievers. If his *isn't* the one true god, then his project will have resulted in some things considerably worse than making some people -- most of them already rich -- somewhat less rich than they might've been. Which is what I think we're ultimately facing.

This sort of metaanalysis is not a great way to make policy. But in the face of what may be an existential threat and a completely muddied debate surrounding it, it's basically all I have to go on.

I very much doubt any significant costs will be born by the world's richest people however this plays out, but I do think the poor will get shafted either way .

If the alarmists' crusade turns out to be unjustified, I think it's likely that those costs would be substantially born by the world's richest people.

I suppose that's true if you're only talking about the spilled milk and not the milk that's never gathered, but I hardly think it's very just to prevent (or seriously deter) those who are currently not the world's rich from ever pulling themselves up to a higher standard of living. That does have its costs too of course.

No, I'm speaking of that hypothetical future milk, too. Exactly how much of it there is (and is being foregone) is a topic that's almost wholly immune to conclusive argument. Suffice it to say that you and I probably have different ideas about the appropriate discount rate on future wealth and the rate at which the marginal utility of wealth declines.

"The files show that suspicion is warranted."

Evidence?

Really? My point was that you can continue to try to play it like that, but it won't help your cause. The evidence is a bunch of guys clearly working very hard to make sure that certain people weren't able to look at their data, that certain people aren't taken seriously, etc. , etc.

I should have been clearer. As a working scientist, I am familiar with scientific group think and massaging of evidence. I wouldn't shock me to find it here. I haven't read the emails, and I am sure I never will. So I wanted someone who has to show me the evidence. The discussion of the code that Sigivald links to is the kind of thing I wanted to see.

One of your points is that transparency is essential to science. Yes. Are you suggesting further that the agreement among the various national academies, the editors of Science and Nature, etc., is explained by the silencing and marginalizing of dissenters?

The shortest evidence:


1. "We’ve not deleted any emails or data here at CRU. I would never manipulate the data one bit – I would categorically deny that"

Phil Jones, an interview for the Guardian, 24 November 2009

2. "About 2 months ago I deleted loads of emails, so have very little – if anything at all"

Phil Jones, a letter to Ben Santer, 3 December 2008




Just compare the two statements and judge yourself if they can be both true at the same time.

Thanks, that is helpful.

"But the Climategate files strongly suggest that at least some of the science is not rock solid and that the scientific consensus is at least in part the product of silencing or marginalizing those who might upset it. The files have made “How can we be sure that you did not fudge your data” and “How do we know that dissenting voices have been given a fair hearing?” questions that we now must ask rather than questions skeptics can be effectively shouted down for asking."

To my knowledge, nothing in the e-mails suggests that any data was fudged or that the scientific consensus is flawed*.

Either you are confusing poor science with poor treatment of dissent, or there is an aspect to these e-mails I missed.

*Even if the means by which it became "consensus" is.

this seems to suggest that the code was actually correct:

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/quote_m...

Oh, and daklute's link is pointing to the "d" file,
http://www.di2.nu/foia/osborn-tree6/briffa_sep9...

where valadj feeds into yearlyadj, which is indeed commented out. But in the "e" file,

http://www.di2.nu/foia/harris-tree/briffa_sep98...

valadj feeds into yearlyadj which feeds into densadj and densall, and each of these seems to be intrinsically important for the plots and correlations that are output from the program.

And if this programmer is like me, he/she used the "e" file -- because "e" comes after "d", it's most likely an updated version. (And there is no "f" file.)

It's not just the emails.

Look at the Harry_Read_Me file, and all of the "manual adjustments" that were made to data.

Given that these adjustments have been heaped upon adjustments, and now there is revelation that the source data no longer exists, then there are indeed serious questions to ask, because now you can't replicate the models.

What the emails do suggest is there was a concerted effort to keep people from realizing just how hosed the data really was, and how irrecoverable it had become.

"To my knowledge, nothing in the e-mails suggests that any data was fudged or that the scientific consensus is flawed*."

Perhaps you've only been exposed to the emails dealing with publishing and the like, and not the source code for the models and all the "very artificial corrections" to the now conveniently lost "original data".

The code analysis of their software has revealed a mixture of rank incompetence (which is said to be typical of academic software made by non-programmers) and purest fudging.

And, of course, if the "consensus" is based on data that was "corrected" arbitrarily (and of course only in one direction), then the "consensus" is flawed, at least for any meaningful sense of the term.

Consensus made from analysis of bad data (and bad models) is worthless. Garbage comes in, garbage goes out; you cannot get scientific truths about the real world from data that does not describe the real world.

regarding the "very artificial correction", reading a line or two further in the code shows that the only instance of the adjustment being applied is preceded by a semicolon--that is, it is commented out of actual operating code. The adjustment never happens.

Regarding the "lost original data", it was "conveniently" lost over 20 years ago. Oh, and it isn't actually lost--the original collectors of the data still have it.

So, yes, garbage in garbage out. When you base your assesment on adjustments that were never actually applied and lost data that isn't lost, you are bound to reach a garbage conclusion

"regarding the "very artificial correction", reading a line or two further in the code shows that the only instance of the adjustment being applied is preceded by a semicolon--that is, it is commented out of actual operating code. The adjustment never happens."

That is not true. The analysis of the code shows that the adjustments were made. If you want to be accurate, you need to do a bit more research before you post. If you don't care about accuracy and just want to propagate the myth you are on the right track and no research is required.

You are wrong about the "very artificial correction" never being used in the code. The code where it occurs can be seen at

http://www.di2.nu/foia/harris-tree/briffa_sep98...
and
http://www.di2.nu/foia/osborn-tree6/briffa_sep9...

(at http://www.di2.nu/foia/foia.pl you can search the code for whatever term you like; I searched for "fudge")

A semicolon indicates to the compiler that whatever is after the semicolon on that same line should not be read or processed. It indicates that anything after the semicolon, up to the next line feed (the newline character created when you hit "Enter"), is a comment meant to be read by humans only.

Every place that valadj (the array of numbers to which the "fudge factor" of 0.75 is applied) appears that I have found, there is no semicolon preceding it on the same line. Therefore the line with valadj on it is being processed by the compiler.

So the "fudge factor" as the programmer himself or herself refers to it, is being applied when this program is run.

The idea that some outside programmers can come in and in a few days dissect the code and then make a judgement on its accuracy seems quite dubious. Would you expect to be able to look at code designed to simulate quantum mechanical collisions without any training at all in quantum physics? Even if you were an expert programmer? That's like having a 2nd grader judge the literary genius of Shakespeare simply because he or she can read English! Let's keep in mind that climate scientists are not computer programmer's and their code likely reads like---how should I put it---crap to a professional programmer. Conversely, most programmers are not climate scientists and therefore lack the training to make intelligent comments on the details of some poor guy's sloppily written code. How does one know that a computer simulation is reliable? It has to produce readily verifiable and independently (experimentally) verifiable results. i.e. it must track the measured data. The idea that the whole community of climate scientists just accepted the output of CRU's code without cross-checking is ludicrous. The unfounded accusation that CRU scientists applied arbitrary corrections to "cook" the data are slanderous. Exactly what data did they cook? What exactly did theses corrections do to the code? What parts of the code were affected? How was the code's output affected? What does the code even do? These questions are apparently not important to the "ClimateGate" discussion. They are, however, VERY important to scientists who make a living building computational models of the earth's climate system. This whole discussion reveals a complete ignorance of how computational science is done and what it is that scientists actually have to do to convince themselves and their peers that any computer model is good or bad.

If the program is poorly written you can't trust the results. The programmer himself admits it's buggy in his own remarks. Even if these people were the most honest people on the planet it would mean you couldn't trust the results. It's the old GIGO factor, Garbage In Garbage Out. If you put silly data or formulas in the input the output is garbage. If he applies even correct formulas incorrectly he is getting back garbage and when you use buggy spaggetti code and skip over errors that is very possible

"The unfounded accusation that CRU scientists applied arbitrary corrections to "cook" the data are slanderous. "

Do you know what the terms "fudge factor" and "kludge" and "hack" mean in the context of programming?

the answer to your questions is irrelevant.

If I put a comment in my code saying \\This is where the magic happens!\\ Is this evidence that I believe in magic?

Consider a triangle whose three sides have lengths FudgeFactor, Kludge, and Hack. Isn't it still true that FudgeFactor^2+Kludge^2=Hack^2?

I reiterate: "Exactly what data did they cook? What exactly did theses corrections do to the code? What parts of the code were affected? How was the code's output affected? What does the code even do?"

and I add: Does CRU's data match up with other data sets obtained by other independent scientists?

Yikes -- I had forgotten that part. Thanks*.

*Seeing as it slipped me before, I won't weigh in definitively on whether or not this is "fudging" -- though I've come across arguments that it's pretty standard -- though I'm adding something below on whether this calls the larger consensus into question.

Thanks, that's what I had in mind. That and the very strenuous efforts to prevent the "wrong" people from getting access to their data.