It is really too bad that I don’t have a subscription. I’m a bit late to commenting on this editorial that appeared in Nature magazine yesterday, but I feel it is important to say a few things about it, even though many WUWT readers have probably already seen the editorial.
1. For a scientific journal to use the label “denialists” is in my opinion unconscionable, and highlight’s Nature’s own bias. For the record, while there may in fact be a few people who deny any warming has occurred in the past 100 years (it has) the real issue is the cause. That is what skeptics are about. There are many academics and researchers that have questions about what is being presented in the mainstream climate science today. To put the full weight of Nature behind a broad brush labeling them as “deniers” or “denialists” is a huge mistake. The scientific integrity of one of the foremost scientific magazines has been tarnished by the use of a cheap slur.
2. The claims of harassment are ludicrous. The very foundation of science is based on the ability of other scientists to perform replication via data sharing. Finding excuses to not do this, and actively setting up hurdles to those requesting data for replication is not only not part of the scientific method, it is obstruction of the method. Had the files been provide in early FOI requests, no escalation of requests would have happened. CRU brought this on themselves, mainly due to the stubborn refusal of Dr. Jones to allow data for replication purposes. Besides, UAE has a person specifically assigned to handling FOIA requests. Jones had the data to fill the requests, all he had to do is hand them to the FOIA officer. He chose not to, further in one of the emails it was revealed that Jones and his staff lobbied that FOIA officer not to honor these requests. My hunch is that is where this row started.
3. For Nature to claim that:
Researchers are barred from publicly releasing meteorological data from many countries owing to contractual restrictions. Moreover, in countries such as Germany, France and the United Kingdom, the national meteorological services will provide data sets only when researchers specifically request them, and only after a significant delay.
Is pure rubbish. See point 5 below also – they provided the data to Peter Webster. The majority of weather stations that report data used in the CRU are from public airports worldwide. Here is a list of stations that was grudgingly provided by Phil Jones after years of effort, and it was delivered broken. McIntyre had to fix it. See the cru_station_info file. Pick a few stations in France, Germany, and United Kingdom, then go to weatherunderground.com and see if they are available as hourly reports, or check many of the publicly available climate data sistes It is public data. Yet CRU claims it is proprietary and protected by agreements and we can’t see the data they are using?. Something is wrong there.
I picked three from the countries listed at random from the cru station info file:
GERMANY HOHENPEISSENBERG See http://www.tutiempo.net/en/Climate/HOHENPEISSENBERG/109620.htm
FRANCE BOURGES See: http://www.tutiempo.net/en/Climate/Bourges/72550.htm
UK WADDINGTON See: http://www.tutiempo.net/en/Climate/Waddington/33770.htm
Anybody with a PC and Internet connection can get some of the data CRU uses that is claimed proprietary, so why the need for protectionism when a researcher asks for data from the same locations collated as used in CRU processes?
4. Nature assumes it was a hack in, but the evidence points to a leak, or even a carelessly left file on a public FTP site at CRU (which has happened before) Hackers are usually smash and grab affairs, with little time for understanding of what they are grabbing since they don’t know how long it willbe before they are discovered. They’ll sort it out later. The FOIA2009.zip appears to have been carefully assembled, pointing to someone with specific knowledge and broad access across systems. Further, hackers usually tout their exploits as “badges of honr”. We’ve heard nothing.
5. Previously, Nature reported on Steve McIntyre’s attempts to get access to this data in their report on August 12th, 2009 without so much as a disparaging word against Mr. McIntyre. They wrote then:
McIntyre is especially aggrieved that Peter Webster, a hurricane expert at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, was recently provided with data that had been refused to him.
Webster says his team was given the station data for a very specific request that will result in a joint publication with Jones. “Reasonable requests should be fulfilled because making data available advances science,” says Webster, “but it has to be an authentic request because otherwise you’d be swamped.”
Yet today, they drag out the slur denialist over the very same issue: data access and replication. If replication is not a valid request, then climate science is doomed.
Yes, I’d cancel my Nature subscription if I had one. – Anthony
Here is the Nature editorial as posted here: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7273/full/462545a.html
Editorial
Nature 462, 545 (3 December 2009) | doi:10.1038/462545a; Published online 2 December 2009
Climatologists under pressure
Stolen e-mails have revealed no scientific conspiracy, but do highlight ways in which climate researchers could be better supported in the face of public scrutiny.
The e-mail archives stolen last month from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (UEA), UK, have been greeted by the climate-change-denialist fringe as a propaganda windfall (see page 551). To these denialists, the scientists’ scathing remarks about certain controversial palaeoclimate reconstructions qualify as the proverbial ‘smoking gun’: proof that mainstream climate researchers have systematically conspired to suppress evidence contradicting their doctrine that humans are warming the globe.
This paranoid interpretation would be laughable were it not for the fact that obstructionist politicians in the US Senate will probably use it next year as an excuse to stiffen their opposition to the country’s much needed climate bill. Nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real — or that human activities are almost certainly the cause. That case is supported by multiple, robust lines of evidence, including several that are completely independent of the climate reconstructions debated in the e-mails.
First, Earth’s cryosphere is changing as one would expect in a warming climate. These changes include glacier retreat, thinning and areal reduction of Arctic sea ice, reductions in permafrost and accelerated loss of mass from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. Second, the global sea level is rising. The rise is caused in part by water pouring in from melting glaciers and ice sheets, but also by thermal expansion as the oceans warm. Third, decades of biological data on blooming dates and the like suggest that spring is arriving earlier each year.
Denialists often maintain that these changes are just a symptom of natural climate variability. But when climate modellers test this assertion by running their simulations with greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide held fixed, the results bear little resemblance to the observed warming. The strong implication is that increased greenhouse-gas emissions have played an important part in recent warming, meaning that curbing the world’s voracious appetite for carbon is essential (see pages 568 and 570).
Mail trail
A fair reading of the e-mails reveals nothing to support the denialists’ conspiracy theories. In one of the more controversial exchanges, UEA scientists sharply criticized the quality of two papers that question the uniqueness of recent global warming (S. McIntyre and R. McKitrick Energy Environ. 14, 751–771; 2003 and W. Soon and S. Baliunas Clim. Res. 23, 89–110; 2003) and vowed to keep at least the first paper out of the upcoming Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). 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.
If there are benefits to the e-mail theft, one is to highlight yet again the harassment that denialists inflict on some climate-change researchers, often in the form of endless, time-consuming demands for information under the US and UK Freedom of Information Acts. Governments and institutions need to provide tangible assistance for researchers facing such a burden.
The theft highlights the harassment that denialists inflict on some climate-change researchers.
The e-mail theft also highlights how difficult it can be for climate researchers to follow the canons of scientific openness, which require them to make public the data on which they base their conclusions. This is best done via open online archives, such as the ones maintained by the IPCC (http://www.ipcc-data.org) and the US National Climatic Data Center (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/ncdc.html).
Tricky business
But for much crucial information the reality is very different. Researchers are barred from publicly releasing meteorological data from many countries owing to contractual restrictions. Moreover, in countries such as Germany, France and the United Kingdom, the national meteorological services will provide data sets only when researchers specifically request them, and only after a significant delay. The lack of standard formats can also make it hard to compare and integrate data from different sources. Every aspect of this situation needs to change: if the current episode does not spur meteorological services to improve researchers’ ease of access, governments should force them to do so.
The stolen e-mails have prompted queries about whether Nature will investigate some of the researchers’ own papers. One e-mail talked of displaying the data using a ‘trick’ — slang for a clever (and legitimate) technique, but a word that denialists have used to accuse the researchers of fabricating their results. It is Nature‘s policy to investigate such matters if there are substantive reasons for concern, but nothing we have seen so far in the e-mails qualifies.
The UEA responded too slowly to the eruption of coverage in the media, but deserves credit for now being publicly supportive of the integrity of its scientists while also holding an independent investigation of its researchers’ compliance with Britain’s freedom of information requirements (see http://go.nature.com/zRBXRP).
In the end, what the UEA e-mails really show is that scientists are human beings — and that unrelenting opposition to their work can goad them to the limits of tolerance, and tempt them to act in ways that undermine scientific values. Yet it is precisely in such circumstances that researchers should strive to act and communicate professionally, and make their data and methods available to others, lest they provide their worst critics with ammunition. After all, the pressures the UEA e-mailers experienced may be nothing compared with what will emerge as the United States debates a climate bill next year, and denialists use every means at their disposal to undermine trust in scientists and science.
“Anybody with a PC and …” That explains the MSM environmental reporters, they all use Macs!
I assume the unsigned editorial was written by an editor of Nature magazine, i.e. someone who represents the opinions of their management. If that’s true then we have an admission from one of the most “respected” scientific journals that they have no problem with scientists who are guilty of at least the following.
(1) Publishing research, which you know will be relied on to justify making the most expensive policy change ever in the history of humankind, then actively withholding the raw data from scientists who were, in the past, instrumental in showing that similar work was flawed.
(2) Using tricks, or any method, to hide data that is contrary to what you want to prove.
I’ve seen the excuses for this on realclimate.com but they fail. The argument amounts to, “the tree-ring data after 1961 doesn’t show warming, so there must be something wrong with it, so we’re justified in hiding it.” The logical thing to do would be to question the entire data-set but instead they employ the “trick” of using the part they like, and hiding the part they don’t like. Then they have the audacity to pretend “everyone knew” that the post 1961 tree-ring data was “suspect” so they couldn’t have been hiding it.
(3) Working to manipulate the peer review process, so papers that you like get published and contrary papers don’t, so you can later claim that the unpublished scientists are obviously wrong because they’re not published, and that there is a consensus in the published literature that favors your theory.
The truth is that the conduct shown in the emails is outrageous and totally unacceptable. The fact that so many scientists are willing to explain it away scares the crap out of me and it ought to scare the crap out of any thinking person.
If the conduct exposed by the emails had related to corporate financial data, a criminal investigation would ensue, and if the conduct was found to be true, people would go to jail. Enron executive used tricks to hide the decline and tried to rig the peer-review process (financial auditors) and they got put in jail for a very long time. But Enron was child’s play compared to this stuff. These emails relate to something far, far more important (and expensive) than the value of one corporation’s stock.
“It is Nature’s policy to investigate such matters if there are substantive reasons for concern, but nothing we have seen so far in the e-mails qualifies.”
Uh – redefining the peer review, threatening editors and journals, stacking peer review panels, deleting raw data, obstructing FOI requests?
SHAME ON YOU NATURE. You have demonstrated you are no long about science, but about politics, protecting special interests, and promoting an agenda. SHAME!
Not long ago I was thinking of subscribing to Nature.
Not anymore. . . .
I was even tempted to cancel my subscription to Scientific American, after I saw some of the politically-correct AGW stuff they posted on their website; and the SciAm verbiage was not nearly as bad as the above outright apologia for Jones, Mann, et. al. The above Nature piece reads like it could have come from the Huffington Post.
Nature (the journal) drank the AGW Kool-Aid long ago and it would involve too much loss of face for them to admit now their longstanding lack of healthy skepticism and objectivity on this topic. They have a longstanding bias (in a political sense) against things American, much like the BBC, and readily adopted the AGW zeitgeist because, after all, America was by far the worst “offender” and the largest target. This is completely unsurprising thought it is disappointing.
The Hacker/Whistleblower has a great vote of thanks from me as do Anthony, the moderators and others not known. The BBC reported this morning (UK) that the head of the IPCC has ordered an investigation in to the allegations.
The edifice is crumbling fiether.
Seems they have exactly the same bias as is overwhelmingly demonstrated by Jones et al.
It isn’t in the emails.
“First, let’s get this out of the way: Emails prove nothing. Sure, you can look like an unethical asshole who may have committed a felony using government funded money; but all email is, is talk, and talk is cheap.
“Now, here is some actual proof that the CRU was deliberately tampering with their data. Unfortunately, for readability’s sake, this code was written in Interactive Data Language (IDL) and is a pain to go through.
“NOTE: This is an actual snippet of code from the CRU contained in the source file: briffa_Sep98_d.pro”
http://cubeantics.com/2009/12/the-proof-behind-the-cru-climategate-debacle-because-computers-do-lie-when-humans-tell-them-to/
Now, this is what needs doing… It’s all about the code. Put the efforts there.
It’s just a sad day for Science and the reputation of Scientists. The problem is that ANY normal person with common sense can read the materials for themselves and see that wrong were committed. Sure enough we’re familiar with politicians and the like providing a cleverly worded piece of spin to throw out and then its just supposed to be accepted. Most people don’t accept such poor excuses as a winning of an argument; but then most people also recognize that you just can’t overcome that kind of complete illogic and they don’t bother. We’re now on par with Lawyers, Financial Analysts, Politicians, and the Mainstream Media when it comes to public trust. I wonder if the folks at Nature would be happy with their physicians treating them with therapy based on research that required data manipulation to prove it worked?
Dont have a subscription to nature, dont want a subscription to nature wouldn’t even buy a subscription as a gift much less refer someone to them as an example of objectivity. Their short term mentality of propping up the global warming ideology will result in the long term decline and end of their publication.
“Never let the truth get in the way of a good story!”
Completely off topic, but this I think would sail right over everyone’s heads at most blogs: http://tackyraccoons.com/2009/12/01/climategate-summarized/
Nature’s behaviour has been disgraceful for a considerable time. It has abdicated its responsibility to serve science in order to serve politics.
In doing so it has brought “peer review” into disrepute.
I wonder how many subscriptions will be cancelled for the various magazines or whether folks will want to keep them for the legitimate reports. So far this has been my choice with Scientific American but I did not renew National Geographic, and even that is a bit different than asking for your money back. For the past couple of years some of them have been half c—p but you don’t have to step in it (or read it either).
I also wonder how many flights have been cancelled to Copenhagen.
How many local speeches and events have gone bye-bye. And so on. We’ll never learn some of this but the major events and players seem to be being kept track of.
I tend to have a high threshold for what constitutes “conspiracy”, but what else do you call it when you have them agreeing to delete emails, and relaying instructions to others to do same? It certainly meets the legal definition. If they were talking about, say, suppressing evidence that second-hand smoke kills, prosecutors would have no difficulty filing RICO charges.
What’s this guy’s background anyway? Journalism? Sure doesn’t sound like a law school grad (let alone scientist).
After enduring a few years of obvious and increasing bias in the climate change arena, I finally canceled my subscription to Nature last year. The proverbial straw that dropped the dromedary came when I tried to search the Nature on-line archive for two particular articles I had noted, but neglected to copy. One (published in 2000) concluded that the greatest source of anthropogenic carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was from Third World home fires with an important contribution from the Indonesian peat fires. The other, published in 2005 also looked at sources of anthropogenic carbon in the atmosphere and concluded again that the leading source was home fires with a distinct concentration from rural China. Neither article can be found in the Nature on-line archive.
The wagons are circled and all guns are pointed outward. All who dare to question their received and perceived wisdom will be fair game to them.
The emails give us the same message. The whitehouse climate czars speak the same.
They are in the end game and NOTHING will distract them from the victory that almost within their grasp.
I canceled my subscription to Nature years ago not long after John Maddox stepped down as editor. There was a man of rigorous integrity. The new guy started a policy which I can only describe as ‘creating monetary opportunities for scientists’ by pushing for DNA testing for insurance screening.
OT, but the BBC, commonly known as the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation or the propaganda arm of the labour party, is fighting a rear guard action against ClimateGate. There are three articles at the top of the agenda on their website today. They obviously can’t ignore it anymore because it’s now’ official’ but they are still trying to discredit it:
UN body probes climate e-mail row:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8394483.stm
Climate e-mail hack ‘will impact on Copenhagen summit’:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8392611.stm
Now I know what to do if I ever have some data and emails I want to keep secret (but shouldn’t). If anyone demands to see it, I’ll release it in small increments and in a way that’s as time-consuming as possible for me. Then I can claim I’m being harrassed by the people who are requesting it.
latest from the BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8394483.stm
“stolen e-mails have revealed no scientific conspiracy,” However one-sided, biased editorials such as this one do.
I saw this earlier today. It shows that Nature is part of the problem. Peer review is part of the problem too.
From Wikipedia on
Post-Normal Science (not that this is a always a good source of info):
"…advocates of post-normal science suggest that there must be an
"extended peer community" consisting of all those affected by an issue who are prepared to enter into dialogue on it. They bring their "extended facts", that will include local knowledge and materials not originally intended for publication such as leaked official information. There is a political case for this extension of the franchise of science; but Funtowicz and Ravetz also argue that this extension is necessary for assuring the quality of the process and of the product."
(empasis mine)
Kind of an interesting statement given the the current situation.
The science journal Nature reveals a pernicious “elitism” that is pervasive in science, that of being in the “in” group. One such “in” group is having the “proper scientific qualifications”. Another example is from the Climategate alleged scientists who’s “in” group meant anyone who “agreed with their hypothesis”. The science journal Nature seems to have adopted both “in” group requirements. In groups form “cliques” or “cults” when the rules of membership get too constrained.
Read the full comment here: http://pathstoknowledge.net/2009/12/03/climategate-alleged-scientists-and-the-alleged-science-journal-nature/
The Nature stuff is amazing, or perhaps more precisely appalling. At the risk of dropping too much stuff on the comments, I reprint what I dropped on the comments at The Nation in response to a bizarre (to me) article entitled ‘Climate Fog’ that talks about talking about the climate, but then jumps to polling data as if it were evidence for the physical climate.
My purpose for the lengthy re-post (riposte?) below is to see if there can be a WUWT et al talking points put out to help journalists get a better feel for the whole story and why the released information has such impact. My effort is probably riddled with errors but this is a good place to get them fixed. With the indulgence of the moderators…
Let’s go over the score…
Postulated Driver Mechanisms for ANTHROPOGENIC Warming
1. Mid tropospheric/mid tropic warming bands – non-existent, ‘Iris Effect’ shown to selectively dissipate proposed anomalous heat islands – Empirical data available.
2. Long Wave IR reflectance – no evidence for increased or enhanced effects due to postulated increased atmospheric water vapor from ‘warming’ – no supporting evidence during nearly 9% increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration.
3. Enhanced Feedback due to ‘something’ correlated to and therefore causally linked to incresing concentration of atmospheric CO2- no empirical evidence found.
Net score for ANTHROPOGENIC warming mechanisms… zero evidence.
Ten year track record of UN cited GCM models
1. Failed to predict current south pacific basin cooling
2. Failed to predict flatlining of atmospheric temperatures
3. Failed to predict record Antarctic ice cover
4. Failed to predict recovery of annual and multi-year Arctic ice and extent of Arctic ice boundaries
Net Score… zero
Reliability of GISS data set (which Hadley’s CRU2/3 sets mirror within tenths of a degree
1. Forced to correct 1998 as warmest year in 20th century, moved to 4th warmest under intense scrutiny.
2. 1998 restored as warmest.. with no publicly available rationale or methodological review
3. Complete failure to acknowledge the average UHI effect (based on original NOAA scoring from 1950’s placement work) of ~4 deg C based on site evaluations publicly available on surfacestations.org
4. Closely aligns with now highly suspect Yamal data set uncovered by MacIntyre and several tortured to the point of disavowal by the original study authors statistical interpretations (e.g. Finnish sediment work )
5. Failure to publish methods and database for cross checking and evaluation even after FoI requests and above cited divergences from experimental and public data
Net Score… negative points for wide diversions from observed data
Tell me again where the certainty referred to by this author comes from? IT cannot proceed from science, it therefore appears to spring from an agenda, bias or simple personal need on the part of the author, editors and publishers of this publication mechanism (The Nation).
If you want to be taken seriously, respond… might I say in advance, without ad hominem attacks on my non-climate scientist status… to those talking points, developed all on my own through research, alas without a single cent of funding from an oil company.
As a citizen I have a right and a duty to demand clear, concise answers from the government on these points. As a journalist, I expect you to have the same questions to raise, or to be able to point me to already published answers.
Show me the answers, show me your inquiries to date to get the answers or cease pretending to be a journalist.
Pick one and let us all know.
Not exactly on topic but to any canadians out there I hope you watched the news tonight because they finally reported on climategate.
CTV had a report which included a brief apperance of Steve McIntyre, and CBC’s Rex Murphy also commented on it at the end of the national.
No wonder Al is running scared because there was brief mention of calls to investigate the very science of climate change.
Clearly Nature is supporting attempts to manipulate public opinion, and support denying attempts to replicate results. These guys are corrupting science. They and others have been very quiet about deleting the raw data, choosing instead try to portray these scientists as harassed. Damn! Man up! A true scientist presents his thesis and then endures all attempts to to disprove it. That is science. Instead these weenies destroy data, manipulate public opinion and degrade anyone that criticizes with their Orwellian-speak. The higher we look the crookeder this gets!
“Nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real — or that human activities are almost certainly the cause.”
That is a blatant lie, which also happens to be a travesty.
And i love the “almost certainly.”
This entire piece is so loaded with trigger words: paranoid, obstructionist, propaganda, climate-change-denialist fringe (!), “worst critics with ammunition” …
This isn’t scientific language, it’s emotive.
One respected daily paper here in South Africa has started covering the issue. The Business Day (www.businessday.co.za) has for some time accepted letters on both sides of the debate, but has recently given a good deal of editorial and comment inches to the issues.
http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=88813
http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=88798
http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=88810
(I had to put one of my own letters in here)
http://www.businessday.co.za/Articles/Content.aspx?id=87726
http://www.businessday.co.za/Articles/Content.aspx?id=87233
http://www.businessday.co.za/Articles/Content.aspx?id=87134
I don’t understand the value of Nature and other scientific pubs in the era of the worldwide web Google (or other search engines). What is the point of having such elitist gatekeepers? Seems like the scientists in each field should be able to perform their own “peer review”. After all, the Internet was originally set up so that researchers could more easily collaborate and share knowledge. Oh I guess that is the point of “Nature”–to hinder the free exchange of knowledge. I wonder what George Orwell would have to say about this.
I have never read anything a tenth as polemic described as an “abstract”.
Astoundingly unprofessional.
Continually referring to sceptics as “denialists” only displays their own phobia and hysteria.
Prof Aynsley Kellow summed them up well when he described them all as the self appointed “gatekeepers of science”.
I wonder what the World Jewish Congress thinks of labeling people who are skeptical of the consensus ‘deniers’ (which is obviously a much to casual parallel with holocaust deniers). It just cheapens everything.
Consensus think based on biased evidence, slander, and hostility to other points of view will never lead us forward.
I am a British ex-patriate scientist living in the US. I am a moderate climate sceptic and, like Anthony, I resent the silly term “denialist” as used here by Nature. One thing in addition to Anthony’s good comments is that the Nature Editorial displays a very irritating anti-American bias. There is currently growing climate scepticism all over the world – look at recent events in Australia, for example – and to try to blame their concerns about scepticism on “bad republicans” is a naive, cheap and self-righteous shot more often seen in newspapers like the notoriously anti-American Guardian than in respected scientific journals. Thanks for the post and for this website, Anthony. – John Game
I had already recommend that in Quadrant Online:http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2009/11/peer-review-locks-gate
This is the text:
November 30, 2009
The only thing that the Climategate emails tell us about the peer review process is that it was used as a gate-keeping exercise to keep sceptical papers out of the system. For those of us who served in the trenches in the climate battle, part of the much larger culture wars, this revelation is not news. In disparaging my papers, one of the first things that warmers would say was that they were not peer reviewed. They were, but that did not matter either, because like the warmer scientists, I got to choose my own reviewers. One of my papers passed a higher test than peer review. Real Climate devoted a post to attacking it, which was fabulous because it told me that I was having an effect, and gave me encouragement to keep going.
My nemesis in the solar science trench of the climate battle recently retired from the fray. One of the things he used to say was that bad papers will be forgotten and that they would be replaced by good papers. Of course, another researcher told me that he had to publish to counter the misinformation from my nemesis, who had taken it upon himself to go through the solar record, flattening out the bumps so that the Sun could not have an effect on climate. All that means is that good and bad papers will be published, nothing can stop that from happening, but the truth will finally out.
I don’t believe that changing the peer review system will help, in fact any prescribed changes are likely to make it worse. As the Climategate emails show, the warmers captured the whole system – all the journals, all their editors and the journals’ boards. They successfully removed inconvenient editors. As a last line of defence, they were going to change the definition of what peer review meant. Making the system more prescriptive will simply entrench the corrupted establishment, similar to what happened as a result of the ban on tobacco advertising. With no advertising, new brands could not enter the market and the existing brands were spared the expense of advertising, increasing their profitability.
The way to improve the review of papers is to break the power of the corrupted establishment. Two of the most prestigious science journals have been Science and Nature, but both of these now publish a certain amount of twaddle. In fact Nature seems to have degenerated to occupy the niche formerly occupied by New Scientist, and New Scientist has degenerated into the publishing arm of Greenpeace. There are two ways to break the power of the corrupted establishment. In the first instance stop subscribing to journals that have promoted the climate fraud. If you work in any sort of academic establishment, it is your responsibility to the nation to recommend to your librarian that the subscription to Nature not be renewed. Secondly, we need more online journals so that good work can more easily find a home. This would increase the rate of creative destruction in the journal space.
CO2 Realist (22:56:44) :
I saw this earlier today. It shows that Nature is part of the problem. Peer review is part of the problem too.
From Wikipedia on
Post-Normal Science (not that this is a always a good source of info):
“…advocates of post-normal science suggest that there must be an
“extended peer community” consisting of all those affected by an issue who are prepared to enter into dialogue on it. They bring their “extended facts”, that will include local knowledge and materials not originally intended for publication such as leaked official information. There is a political case for this extension of the franchise of science; but Funtowicz and Ravetz also argue that this extension is necessary for assuring the quality of the process and of the product.”
(empasis mine)
Kind of an interesting statement given the the current situation.
I have been having a fun and informative email exchange with Jerry Ravetz over the last few days. He and his ideas about ‘post normal science’ have come in for some stick over the last week or so, but I think that since I pointed him at a lot of info he hadn’t seen before that he is more and more coming over to our side of the debate.
As a historian and philosopher of science, he is more willing to re-evaluate than some who are more deeply enmeshed in the situation.
Here is Rex’s commentary:
Nature does not have a very good track record in filtering out hoax science, so if I were them I would not sit so firmly on one side of the fence over this issue. Back in 1999 to 2001 a guy called Hendrik Schon managed to get 7 papers published over the course of 2 years with some fantastic claims (and to the frustration of many researchers who could not repeat his work). See his entry on Wikipedia for more information. He was only eventually found out due to the fact he cut and pasted the exact graph from one publication into 2 others (in one case he flipped one axis) and someone noticed the remarkable similarity between the noise in the low current levels!
Shame Nature doesn’t seem allow reader comments on its site. I wouldn’t mind sending them a little editorial of my own!
Here is an article from Liberal Conspiracy, a Warmist mouthpiece, plotting strategy. It’s very interesting, especially in relation to terminology:
http://www.liberalconspiracy.org/2009/12/03/re-tuning-the-environmental-movement/
“No retreat, no surrender on the terminology.
Jack of Kent asks whether ‘denialism’ is too strong a word. Look at the people who push global warming denialism: Fox News (enough said), The Telegraph (enough said), The Spectator (recently promoting AIDS denialism), Melanie Phillips (enough said), Christopher Booker (has anyone read his Wikipedia entry recently?), James Delingpole (enough said).
These are the kind of fuckwits (Delingpole, Richard North) who think there’s a conspiracy when their article doesn’t appear on Google News or use Google search hits as example of how big the story is.
Calling them ‘denialists’ is being too kind: they should be abused at every instance for the stupidity they churn out. They should be ridiculed, parodied, cussed, and constantly called out for the idiots they are because they deserve it.”
I’m glad to see that the Warmists are supportive of reasoned debate. Surely the way to convince the skeptical among us of the merits of their viewpoints is to ridicule, parody and cuss at us. In fact it’s working already, here I am staying up late just to help them get the word out. As more people see the incisive commentary and respectful tone in Nature and Liberal Conspiracy, I’m sure that they will be inspired and compelled to embrace the flimsy catastrophic anthropogenic global warming narrative…
It’s like they are trying to have us believe that 99% of journalists and 99% of scientists believe in anthropogenic global warming. These numbers would certainly be real if we were under a global dictatorship (come to think if it!!!)In a normal world, every journalist must be neutral and so should any scientist be. Both types are there to observe and report, in one case it’s the news, the other what nature is trying to tell us.
The Brit scientific establishment is very left wing and shot through with leftist politics. Has been since the 30s. You can see echos of this reading old articles in the “New Scientist”. Articles in the 80s like penguins going blind in Argentina due to ozone layer depletion over the antarctic. Tabloid rubbish, of course, but still published in a supposedly respectable science journal.
just remember as I pointed out in my comments about the Piltdown Mann….
or Penn State Mann…
Nature continued to publish articles about the piltdown man after it was clearly demonstrated that it was a hoax.
Nice track record there.
Of course Nature came out with this tripe. Nature is implicated in the emails. Remeber that “mike” use a “Nature trick”. Presumably he’d done it before the Briffa paper.
One wonders how many sleight-of-hand tricks Nature has used in the past to keep the lie alive.
I fisked the article here – http://www.di2.nu/200912/03.htm – I think we pretty much agree on what’s wrong
David Davidovics (23:27:46) : Here is Rex’s commentary:
Thanks for that. I’ve saved a link to show to friends. Never heard of Rex Murphy before but that is a very good summary of ClimateGate
Slightly OT. The BBC is starting to report climategate on headline news. But I cannot beleive what I just heard Roger Harrabin just say on BBC Radio:
“I approached the IPCC last week .. and they said, actually this can’t be brushed under the carpet, it has to be taken seriously ..”
Err, what was that about brushing under the carpet? Does that not speak volumes about Roger’s inital approach to the issue.
Just in case of minor inaccuracies in the above quote (which I don’t intend to make), I’ll post a link to the interview later in the day when it is put on the BBC website. Hear it for yourself.
The Nature Editorial reads like something lifted directly from Realclimate. Coult the author be a member of the team?
As with many other articles I read now, I will save this for posterity. How the world will laugh (or cry?) in years to come.
The Royal Society (in London) is currently celebrating its 350 year anniversay, claimed to be the first and oldest scientific society in the world. It has a great history. One of its earliest publications (in the late 1600s) was Newton’s Principia. However, its current declarations on global warming are a scientific travisty – for which it should be ashamed – and I hope will be embarassed by in the future.
(Historical anecdote – The original Principia has on the front the signature of Samuel Pepys – London’s famous diarist of the 1660s. Pepys, though not a scientist was a great lover of life and relentlessly curious about all things, including the new scientific discoveries of that time, becoming an early member of the RS. As a great adminstrator, who was well suited to be President of the RS for a time, which covered the time of Principia’s publication. See http://www.pepysdiary.com)
The list of “institutions” in which my faith is shaken grows by the day. I’venever subscribed to Nature, but assumed that the journal represented the pinnacle of scientific propriety. It is very disappointing to learn that such an overt bias exists there.
I used to read New Scientist but a lack of discourse on these events leads me to lump that magazine withe he rest of MSM. Sadly we no longer have Woodward and Bersteins, just journalism from press releases. Churnalism.
I once help the BBC in high esteem, probably for more jingoistic reasons than reason. Now I find I cannot justify that esteem. This undoubtably will have a knock-on effect in their other reporting as I no longer see the BBC as an independent entity, but an organisation for the enforcement of government policy. I have no reason to believe that this isn’t the case in other areas such Afganistan.
I was very interested in the forthcoming Google OS and was in favour of Google’s challenge to the conventional business model. Now I see suspicion caste on the search term rankings and find from wikipedia that Al Gore is a “senior advisor” to them.
I really do not want to become a conspiracy theorist, and I’m not there yet, but there does seem to be a broad agenda behind all of this to treat the populus as a herd of cattle to be milked financially by presenting a kind of “other reality” to which we must all subscribe without question.
I suppose that it was always thus, but I was happier when I was treated as an intelligent individual rather than taken for a mug. It now seems that I must get my news information from the full range of internet blogs (lunatic fringe included) and then reach a considered opinion by weighing the relative merits of all sides. This is the true value and curse of the internet – Solomon-like I must weigh EVERY issue myself rather than consider “informed” opinion.
I find myself wondering what the point of the MSM and politicians is anymore since I cannot rely on their informed comments especially in areas where I had little interest and to whom I readily deferred in the past.
Winge over. Apologies for the Loser-Length-Post to those of you who have read this far.
“Nature trick”
It must be embarrassing for them. The whole world
knows they were “tricked” into printing faked science.
What’s next for them…”The oceans are turning to acid
and will burn your face off.”
They have an office in the building where I work.
It annoys me to no end.
Mark Robertson (22:16:07) :
“Anybody with a PC and …” That explains the MSM environmental reporters, they all use Macs!
Easy Tiger, he types, on his Mac Mini (lowest carbon footprint, apparently).
From what I am hearing/seeing, most of these fine folk studied Medieval Illuminated Script at University, not the warming of that period, and are required to do no more than take press releases from various bods they used to punt the Cam with and who are now either spin doctors for Miliband. E or if they did ‘do’ science them, refer to what they come out with as ‘Scientists say this could be…’. And if nailed then run to their best buds and wail ‘but it’s peer reviewed’.
I doubt a computer of any hue, at least in the ‘news’ rooms of the majority of the MSM, was ever involved.
This is a supreme example of damage control propaganda in a fascist state with a pretend free-press. It could have been written by any of the great truth twisters, Joseph Goebbels, Alan Dershowitz (whose falsehoods were exposed by Professor Finkelstein in one of the best tv debates ever http://tinyurl.com/ykbw87j )…
You have got to be impressed by the authors grasp of how to manipulate weak minds though. It is so good that I will have to check that it is not plagiarized from a George Orwell novel. Is Nature trying to compete with Popular Mechanics for Shaitan’s favour?
Nature are having a Nelson moment.
I see no corruption says the editor closing both eyes. What on earth is the nitwit thinking. That nobody can work out what was going on at UEA!!!
D King
That one has just been published on British news channel. SKY TV are working with the other crooks WWF for the whole of this week to try to persuade everyone that COP15 is a necessary success
Ben M (23:46:36) :
“One wonders how many sleight-of-hand tricks Nature has used in the past to keep the lie alive.”
Correct, it is not only the peer review process that’s broken, it’s also the journals. In order to repair our scientific peer review mechanism and prevent future erroneous scientific consensuses we will need to replace both the process and the journals.
Maybe after we’re done debunking catastrophic anthropogenic global warming Anthony can leverage WUWT to develop the first widely respected online interactive unfiltered open source open access peer reviewed website. It is already well on its way…
We can say what we like about the leak / hack however, Nature should be careful about coming to conclusions and name calling (deniers) prior to the release of the inquiry’s findings. The reason is simple: the inquiry may come out with conclusions that are the opposite of what Nature has concluded about the affair and they will be left looking biased and with egg-on-face.
At which point we might see Nature’s editor being forced to resign or retire to spend more time with the family. I’m sure Anthony would be more than happy to come back to the story should that happens.
Late News:
“The UN Panel on Climate Change is to probe claims UK scientists manipulated global warming data to boost the argument that it is man-made. ”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/science/nature/8394483.stm
The worst thing I find in the editorial is what they don’t say. They are perfectly content that data and processes which are being used (explicitly) to radically change the way we all live should remain secret.
Morally, this stuff can’t be kept private anymore, no matter what contractual arrangements exist. There is a moral burden to disclose everything, now. Even terrorist suspects are eventually allowed to know the case against them when they go on trial. We are being denied full disclosure and Nature is OK with that.
I can and do forgive individual scientists for being ambitious and underhanded and perhaps even wrong; they are only human. I can’t forgive an entire editorial board for failing to condemn the behaviour. Nature is a fine, glossy-looking fruit that is superficially wholesome, but it is rotten at the core.
Time for an Orange Revolution!
Ok, this was obviously written by someone with connections to the “Team” – this is apparent due to the language, the fact that it was unsigned, and that Nature may be implicated (I used Mike’s Nature trick) in this entire affair.
Global Warming or Pants on Fire?
People have got to stop being so terrified of theories that propose that two or more people have conspired against others, i.e. conspiracy theories, provided that there is enough robust evidence to support that theory, of course.
I make this point because I’ve noticed a lot of people saying things like, “I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but…”
Unfortunately the term “conspiracy theorist” has been totally hijacked over the decades such that it is now synonymous with “nutjob”. This can be attributed to the fact that there are many “theorists” who propose outlandish theories of conspiracy with scant evidence. And so they taint the better conspiracy theorists.
But the biggest conspiracy of all is that there “are no conspiracies”. As this latest Climategate scandal shows, conspiracies do indeed exist. All it takes is two or more people to conspire against another group of people. Why is it so hard to understand that governments and other organisations have been conspiring against the public since time immemorial? Small groups of people hiding things from larger groups of people in order to support an agenda, thereby increasing their power, is certainly nothing new. And neither are conspiracies.
Before this latest Climategate scandal, there were many in the climate science community who had very good reasons and evidence to theorise that data was being suppressed to support an agenda. Although they would never admit it, due to the negative connotation, they were very good conspiracy theorists. And now we should all be conspiracy *factualists* — people who can admit that what has transpired was indeed a conspiracy involving two or more scientists.
Reading this pompous piece of … is making my blood boil, so, bear with me and forgive me if I veer off into a momentary rant.
A number of years ago I was offered membership to MENSA. After careful consideration I declined. I did not then (and still don’t) believe it fitting to belong to any organization whose principle criteria for being allowed to join is how well one does on a test. [FWIW, the last time I tested, over a decade ago, the results put me in a percentile of +99.8] I am especially disgusted by rankings that describe people with higher test scores as “superior” and “very superior”. I’ll accept the older description of “genius”, but when someone with a high test score starts to believe that their worth is “superior” just because they’ve done well on a test, then it is time for a serious reality check.
Now, as for Nature.
Having followed the numerous stories over the past couple weeks as email files as well as many other text and program files were revealed displayed a disturbing leitmotif of intellectual superiority being brazenly flaunted toward anyone questioning the science being practiced. This self-serving piece in Nature is now the most outrageous display of pompous and pretentious arrogance toward all serious scientists and well educated laymen questioning (as properly they always should) a scientific hypothesis. What’s worse is that this hypothesis seems to have exploded fully formed into a well established theory with what can most kindly be described as a well orchestrated and funded support program from various politicians and bureaucrats internationally.
There is no serious doubt that the climate has warmed considerably over the past couple centuries. I doubt anyone would welcome a return to the conditions of the Little Ice Age. But any serious attempt at ascribing the warming that continued on into the latter part of the 20th century as being a result of mankind’s emissions of CO2 had best be vigorously argued — something that seems to have been lacking. This position seems to be less a scientific hypothesis or theory and more a dogma, with those advocating this dogma wrapping themselves in a cloak of science and intellectual superiority, and addressing all who would question this belief system with patronizing condescension.
To the editors of Nature and to the posturing scientists they seem to support who have embraced this AGW dogma:
It is time for a reality check and for you to get off your pedestals. You may be good at taking tests and grasping broad abstractions but as far as the workings of the real world are concerned, you’ve really lost it. I would rather spend a lifetime working with the fine folks in the labor pool who populate the warehouses of this country than spend an afternoon with the likes of you.
There. Rant over.
Is it typical for Nature editorials to go unsigned like this? I’d like to know who wrote this.
“The Royal Society (in London) is currently celebrating its 350 year anniversay, claimed to be the first and oldest scientific society in the world. It has a great history. One of its earliest publications (in the late 1600s) was Newton’s Principia. However, its current declarations on global warming are a scientific travisty – for which it should be ashamed – and I hope will be embarassed by in the future.”
Yes, it’s kind of ironic to find a body whose definingly scientific motto is “not because people say so” resorting to arguments of scientific authority to defend people who have been withholding data precisely to prevent other researchers from duplicating their work and so avoiding a “because I say so” situation!
What I’m not sure on is whether they’re stuck riding a tiger because they initially assumed they were defending properly peer-reviewed science against (what myth had it) were the evil oil-funded lunatic fringe – which is understandable but now a position they should be backing away from, whatever the embarrassment. Or whether those who are setting its agenda are of the same stripe as the Nature editorialiser, those who are allowing their politics and beliefs to override their scientific principles.
I let my subscription to Nature lapse some years ago after reading a review of Lomborg’s Sceptical Environmentalist If I remember correctly it was written by Stuart Pymm. I am still astonished and appalled that it was published in Nature.
Now if we ARE bashing journalists, on a slightly different tack, ITV (the main commercial rival to BBC in the UK) sent some journalists to the Himalaya to investigate glacier retreat/melting there.
Now they spoke with a guide who said that 2009 saw warming on Everest at the South Col at 8000m and even some melting further up. This is apparently highly unusual and, not surprisingly, coincided with considerable melting of the Khumbu glacier lower down.
Now this to me DOES seem worthy of discussion.
A few points might be raised:
1. How long has ANYONE been going anywhere near Everest? [More than 60 years on the South side and I’d be surprised]
2. How do we know what the ‘normal’ state of Everest and its glaciers is supposed to be?
3. What do we know about weather patterns in this region and how it links in to the major weather drivers in the Pacific and the Asian continent?
4. Whilst making the Khumbu glacier dangerous would affect tourist income through mountaineering permits, how many years of similar melting would it take to destroy the Khumbu glacier as a source of water for the people of Nepal?
5. Do we have any evidence yet on how rapidly the Khumbu responds to interannual variations in snowfall and temperature? Are we scaremongering due to one freakish year or is there genuinely a long-term retreat ongoing?
At least the journalists went there and spoke with local guides who know the mountain.
Now perhaps we need to find more hard data over decades, not tree ring or ice core but REAL TEMPERATURE, SNOWFALL AND GLACIER MASS-BALANCE DATA.
Calvin Ball (22:38:32) :
Completely off topic, but this I think would sail right over everyone’s heads at most blogs: http://tackyraccoons.com/2009/12/01/climategate-summarized/
Neat
Actually, don’t laugh. Reality is stranger than fiction.
I once can across a web page that purported to chart the world cover of snow and ice. Started by presenting the data as a time series graph. It was clearly a random walk.
So our erstwhile genius scientist proceeded to apply various ‘adjustments’ to it to eventually, a few steps later, come up with a steeply declining graph.
I suppose it does take genius to turn a random series of numbers into a steep decline of snow and ice cover over time.
Amazingly, all the comments left by the adoring crowd hailed this brilliant work.
Unbelievable.
AGW is more than confirmatory bias. It is collective insanity. It is the Red Queen believing six impossible things before breakfast.
It’s fine if they do have agreement that covers data from specific countries – but then I think Steve requested those agreements and of course they couldn’t find them or claimed they were verbal!
All Steve or anyone else really needs is the list of stations used to create the temperature reconstruction and the code used to apply adjustments to the raw data. It’s really not a lot to ask.
Oh boy! The best thing to do is not to subscribe to this stuff. Everything is available today on the Internet, and I’m absolutely sure this peer-review thing will collapse, and that we’re headed for open-source R&D
Ecotretas
Interview with Philip Campbell, editor-in-chief of Nature:
http://english.cri.cn/7146/2009/12/03/1901s533264.htm
He has few words about Climategate … I wonder if he was behind the editorial.
You guys reckon Nature is a rag… check out Un-Scientific American….
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=climate-change-cover-up-you-better-2009-11-24
Holy cow…. They’ll be marching into Poland next!
This editorial could have been written by Sir Humphrey Appleby. It certainly would have delighted PM Jim Hacker – yes, a topical name, that. If you haven’t seen the Yes Minister/Yes Prime Minister BBC series, do check them out. They are just the thing to compose one’s mind for ClimateGate.
Back to the Nature editorial. Mention of Arctic ice melting – no mention of the Arctic Oscillation which is thought by experts to be the main explanation. Mention of seas rising – the IPCC thinks they will, by about one whole foot. Climate models – can they predict the weather one month ahead? Human activities are almost certainly the cause, we read – no mention of recent alternative natural factors like solar variation and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. And the language, starting with ‘denialist’ with its holocaust overtones.
Tell them what you think, I just did.
http://www.nature.com/authors/editorial_policies/feedback.html
Following on from Peter Jones (22:34:05):
“I wonder if the folks at Nature would be happy with their physicians treating them with therapy based on research that required data manipulation to prove it worked?”
Would the staff of Nature fly in a plane that was designed by engineers with similar leaked emails and data of CRU? Would the MSM writers fly? These are important questions for people with a conscience to ask themselves privately and act accordingly.
International government policy is about to be radically changed which could cost people their lives, think about it. Land for biofuels causing hunger, money away from other killer diseases such as Malaria and hypertension, cost of electricity up killing more old people in NH winter. The law of unintended consiquences will kick in, mark my words.
Just The Facts (23:34:02)
“First they ignore you, then they mock you, then they fight you, then you win”
Way off topic here, but since it relates to Nature and Science policy and the use of “Deniers” and big money interests, I urge those who may be interested in another great scientific fraud to look at: http://rethinkingaids.com.93.seekdotnet.com/
Much the same game.
Disclosure: I am a signatory
I would like to propose that the UN establish an new panel to establish who in the IPCC (which should be suspended immediately without pay), who in the scientific publishing industry and other media (substansial fines), which politicians, which NGOs and which commercial organisations are innocent or guilty of fraud.
Perhaps it could also be given teeth to remove these people from circulation and help clean up the reputation of real hard science.
That’s a really bad editorial. I don’t think the writer(s) even read the emails. Who is the denialist here when you don’t want to account for the attitude that shows from these mails.
As to point one. I am a Biologist and was thinking it might be a good idea to call ourselves CLIMATE NATURALISTS from now one. Nature (the paper) wouldn’t like that for sure and it is true: I think most of us see the present warming as a natural proces were a lack of nature (changes in land use) helps.
What else do you expect from the RealClimate House Journal?
At John Sebastian’s prompting, I looked up the Wikipedia article on Jan Hendrik Schön’s fraudulent work on molecular transistors. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Hendrik_Sch%C3%B6n)
This bit resonated:
‘[The Bell labs investigating committee] examined electronic drafts of the disputed papers which included processed numeric data. The committee requested copies of the raw data but found that Schön had kept no laboratory notebooks. His raw-data files had been erased from his computer. According to Schön the files were erased because his computer had limited hard drive space. In addition, all of his experimental samples had been discarded, or damaged beyond repair. […]
‘They found that whole data sets had been reused in a number of different experiments. They also found that some of his graphs, which purportedly had been plotted from experimental data, had instead been produced using mathematical functions.’
Déjà vu, eh?
Harassment is when McIntyre organises his entourage to send over 40 (probably nearer 100) FOI requests to CRU requesting confidentiality agreements.
He even admits this:
http://camirror.wordpress.com/2009/11/22/curry-on-the-credibility-of-climate-research/#comment-2069
Each request if actioned would cost UEA money and take researchers time.
40 requests in my book is harassment.
Now that the doors of “ClimateGate” have been opened and the “Hockey Stick” is broken perhaps those at ‘Nature’ should stop and think who the real denialists are!
I agree with designation CLIMATE NATURALIST.
An excellent fisking of this appalling editorial here:
http://www.di2.nu/200912/03.htm
As a practical matter I decided not to remain a member of the AAAS a while back. If I were still a member I would be resigning from the AMS and the AGU also. But things being what they were, I ceased being a member in those organizations for other reasons years ago.
Regarding the phrase “Nature trick?”
Q.
Was Nature helping out with the “trick” or did the Hockey Team “trick” Nature?
On the question of the Jan Hendrik Schön science fraud I have noticed that “virtually all primary (raw) electronic data files were deleted…” reason being because his computer had limited hard drive space.
http://www.engineering.utoronto.ca/Assets/graduate/The+Schoen+Affair+at+Lucent–Report+Summary.pdf
(PDF)
Sound familiar? Heh heh heh!!! If I were investigating Jones and CRU I would smell a rat.
The title “Nature” comes from a poem by William Wordsworth. “To the solid ground of Nature, trust the mind that builds for aye”. If you can find the whole poem, I suggest people read it. I hope that Nature soon returns to it’s roots. I can remember when I was studying at Cavendish Labs, how we rushed to read the new edition of Nature. How are the mighty fallen!!!
Dear All. It didn’t realize that this journal was so trashy. The language about denialists etc. is certainly repugnant and inappropriate for a journal of this type, or anywhere for that matter. I hope one day to see this language banned under anti-vilification laws.
However, to my mind the most damning paragraph is the infantile logic that warming is caused by carbon dioxide, because the results of their models “bear little resemblance to the observed warming”. This is the logic of a nine year old child (apologies to our younger readers). And then the call to action at the end, curbing the worlds appetite for carbon. It’s grossly prejudiced.
It’s worth pondering the offending paragraph in it’s entirety:
“Denialists often maintain that these changes are just a symptom of natural climate variability. But when climate modellers test this assertion by running their simulations with greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide held fixed, the results bear little resemblance to the observed warming. The strong implication is that increased greenhouse-gas emissions have played an important part in recent warming, meaning that curbing the world’s voracious appetite for carbon is essential”
Rutherford famously said that “all science is either physics or stamp collecting”. What we are seeing here is definitely not physics, or science.
I stopped reading the Nature article at “climate-change-denialist fringe” in the first line.
You can post comments, on the Nature Climate Feedback blog.
http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/
I just posted this:
This editorial can only be described as disgusting.
How can a formerly highly regarded journal have sunk so low?
First we have the repeated use of the ‘denialist’ smear, more worthy of an political activist blog.
The article is just full of false statements, and repeats the usual spin and exaggeration of the global warming fanatics. In fact the only ‘denialist’ here is the person who wrote this ridiculous article.
One false claim is about the word ‘trick’. This word is used by mathematicians for a clever way to solve an equation. But a reputable scientist would NEVER use the word ‘trick’ to describe a way of presenting data, let alone in conjunction with the phrase ‘hide the decline’ .
It is amazing how swiftly things are moving. Whilst Nature said it sees nothing in the e-mails that it thinks requires an investigation, the head of the IPCC is reported on the BBC as saying that UK scientists manipulated data should be investigated. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8394483.stm)
If I was on the Nature editorial board I would be feeling a bit isolated, not to mention out of touch.
FWIW, my observations on some time stamp issues (for example, in the “Harry Readme” file there are dates that indicated age of the entry) and the nature of the “collection” along with the “negative space issues” (what ought to be, but isn’t) all point to the highest probability being an internal leaker.
Next lower probability is a fumbled FOIA preparation that was supposed to be pulled but instead got released via an administrative error.
If it was a “hack” from outside, it would have to be the luckiest hack in the world, and then stopped with nothing else done. “I don’t think so, Tim!”.
Basically, as a guy who has done security audits at companies, this does not look at all like an external hack and has no signs of “theft”. It has every marker of a well thought out ‘leak’ being dressed up as a hack (ie washed through pub servers et. al.; date stamps washed; focused content; no “taking coup”…)
FWIW I used to buy “Nature” at the news stands. About 2 years ago the articles just lost their science and took on a propaganda feel with a lot of ‘infotainment’ spin. I’d stop buying it at the news stands except I already did… about 2 years ago. Guess they are only left with “The Faithful”…
Same thing happened with Sci. Am. right after it was sold to the Germans. Used to buy it almost every month (had a subscription for some years). Can’t remember the last one I bought… Did look at one about a year ago on the news stand. It was another greenwash job. Just put it back and have not even looked at the covers since.
Oh Well. There is better stuff here than they have anyway. And more timely too…
bill (03:38:55) :
“40 requests in my book is harassment.”
If they had cooperated in a professional manner with the first one instead of looking for ways to obstruct the request, maybe the other 39 wouldn’t have been necessary.
Just The Facts (00:19:24) :
Maybe after we’re done debunking catastrophic anthropogenic global warming Anthony can leverage WUWT to develop the first widely respected online interactive unfiltered open source open access peer reviewed website. It is already well on its way…
I’ve been pondering just that…
It would not be hard. A “blog” format with tabs for major disciplines. A private “log in to read and review” area for folks who want a quite circulation among peers – id’s handed out to academics with credentials in that field (ie. you can have a private screening prior to going public to catch the real howlers without shame…) but all reviewers are identified. None of this “single blind” stuff.
Then a “front room” where “public review” happens for a period of time; articles moved here at the authors discretion. Anyone can toss rocks or praise. No logins needed to read, login available to anyone for comments.
After a suitable period of time, the article, with public comments, goes to “reviewed” status and is part of the “published peer and public reviewed literature”. No paywall, but maybe an advert or two to fund the operation.
All code and data to be included with the articles.
It could be fairly easily set up with existing blog software and sites. Would work one heck of a lot better than the present system of social gamesmanship.
That Nature editorial really is disgraceful.
In the end, what the UEA e-mails really show is that scientists are human beings — and that unrelenting opposition to their work can goad them to the limits of tolerance
That’s the excuse of a wife beater or worse.
Over the past decade I have abandoned associations with APS, SEG, AAAS, and Scientific American over the endless politization of science, political hackery, and, yes, global warming was the focal point of most of it, but not all of it. We are suffering under a tyrany of “experts”.
All one needs to eventually break the backs of the science journal monopolists is the internet, where anyone can post a scientific paper, and then a sort of peer-review process that gains these on-line submissions respectability. The model of Wikipedia comes to mind first, but it became suspect early, then an embarrasment, because of the pranksters and occasional incompetents that polluted its pages (BTW Wikipedia is still full of very useful information). However, considering what Climategate shows, how could any bunch of amateurs, operating under any model, do a worse job of representing science?
So, the mission is to come up with an open, transparent, no anonimity allowed, credible peer-review process for wide open, transparent, credible on-line publication.
Here’s something from the October 2, 2009 issue of Science:
Climate Change:
What Happened to Global Warming? Scientists Say Just Wait a Bit
Richard A. Kerr
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/326/5949/28-a
“Pinning the cause on natural variability makes sense to most researchers. “That goes without saying,” writes climate researcher Stefan Rahmstorf of Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany by e-mail. “We’ve made [that point] several times on RealClimate,” a blog. Solar physicist Judith Lean of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., and climate modeler David Rind of GISS reached the same conclusion in a peer-reviewed 15 August paper in Geophysical Research Letters. They broke recent temperature variation into components attributable to greenhouse gases, pollutant aerosols, El Nino/La Nina, and solar variability. Combined, those influences explain all the observed variability, by Lean and Rind’s accounting. But unlike the Hadley Centre’s model-based analysis, this assessment attributes a good deal of climate variability to variability in solar activity. That’s because most models can’t translate solar variability into climate variability the way the actual climate system can (Science, 28 August, p. 1058), Rind says.”
I dunno, guys… this might be a keeper! The petulant whining in this editorial might mark one of those “jump the shark” moments. Cut out the editorial and mount it in a nice picture frame. Give it a read whenever you need a good laugh that will leave you shaking your head at the same time.
Jim Hodgen (23:00:50) :
I liked your post.
Yes, I like your idea of a talking points memo to help out the journalists, but will providing them with more information actually help the situation? The journalists are 1) not scientifically literate for the most part, 2) drawn to the emotional aspects of any topic, 3) have short attention spans (equal to the duration of a publication cycle), 4) skeptical only of the value of skepticism, 5) occasionally unable to provide sustained rational attention, 6) unduly influenced by celebrity, and on and on…. They possess exactly the least useful skills for dealing with global warming, climate change, and climategate.
I know it sounds like I am contemptuous of journalists, which is no way to start a productive relationship, but I am actually more frustrated with them.
Moreover, what about the size of such a memo? A succinct memo on the one hand leaves open all sorts of avenues for a clever opponent to change the subject and appear, to the scientifically illiterate, to have answered criticism. In order to provide barracades against escape, the memo might become too large to be useful.
Maybe your suggestion is more useful if turned into a sort of scoreboard for failures of the current “concensus” model of climate change, which is of course AGW. Maybe it would also help to score other models that appear regularly here.
E.M. Smith’s suggestion, which occurred just ahead of mine (he must have pushed his “submit” button just as I started typing) is certainly along the right lines. This is likely to be a huge effort, however, and maybe we need to unload Anthony and WUWT. This site seems like it is doing enough already.
Funny that nobody would even put their name directly on that piece of opinion!
“…and that unrelenting opposition to their work can goad them to the limits of tolerance, and tempt them to act in ways that undermine scientific values.”
I read this as a “Throw Phil under the bus” statement.
I think this is bull… when climate scientists jumped into bed with politicians they had to start acting and thinking as politicians. Phil Jones hid and deleted emails because he became a political hack.
In my publishing days, Nature and Science were not considered the best journals to present your research results. They were considered to be a way to get something published fast without true critical review by your actual peers. I chose to publish in journals of professional organizations that have good peer review processes. I chaired committees and research symposia and did my share of reviews. I suspect global climate science hasn’t matured enough to develop a critical peer review process.
Re, Mark Robertson (22:16:07):
I’m a skeptic and I use a Mac…
From their mission statement, their first priority is to serve scientists.
I suppose one could say this editorial qualifes. Too bad it is at the expense of everything else, including the magazine’s integrity.
“Nature’s mission statement
First, to serve scientists through prompt publication of significant advances in any branch of science, and to provide a forum for the reporting and discussion of news and issues concerning science. Second, to ensure that the results of science are rapidly disseminated to the public throughout the world, in a fashion that conveys their significance for knowledge, culture and daily life.”
Disquisitive (22:32:24) :
This link
http://cubeantics.com/2009/12/the-proof-behind-the-cru-climategate-debacle-because-computers-do-lie-when-humans-tell-them-to/
is very useful but look at the comment by rainfade which refers to
documents/osborn-tree6/summer_modes/pl_decline.pro
and provides the following quote from the code:
“; … In fact we compute its mean over
; 1856-1930 and use this as the constant level from 1400 to 1930. The
; polynomial is fitted over 1930-1994, forced to have the constant value
; in 1930”.
If this doesn’t mean “we take an average for the 75 years up to 1930 and then pretend that was the figure fot the previous 455 years”, then what does it mean?
@ Anthony
Point taken regarding the use of the word “conspiracy”, however, you use it the purely legal sense whereas it’s read by many in the colloquial sense i.e. watergate, kennedy assassinations, moon landings etc.
One can see individual legal conspiracies but also self interested organisations aligning their agendas such that what results, when viewed from the outside, appears to be a colloquial conspiracy.
I will try to break this to you gently. The deniers are the members of the staff of Nature. They are, by their endorsement of the work of the CRU, implicitly denying the Medieval Warming Period, or MWP. This is a staggering leap of faith, flying in the face of reams of archaeological evidence.
Farley Mowat, in his wonderful The Farfarers, chronicles the evidence he found in eastern Canada of the Viking settlements there. I will not go into the colonization of Greenland (which was given that name because, at the time, it was GREEN).
The MWP is historic fact. Agriculture, human settlements, the movement of various animal species, the melting of glaciers, are all documented in extant records which are centuries old.
The Little Ice Age which followed is also historic fact, as is the Maunder Minimum from 1650 to 1715. Be it noted that many observers castigated Galileo for his insanity of claiming spots on the sun. It got quite cold in Europe towards the end of the Maunder Minimum, which is also historic fact.
That there is no MWP in the publications of the CRU is also fact, nor any subsequent Little Ice Age.
I suppose that there is nothing more humorous than watching a cat try to cover up on linoleum.
Stay tuned. This will be fun.
I read Nature’seditorial last night and felt I had to let them know how I felt. I sent their editorial department the following E-mail:
Ladies and Gentlemen:
I just finished reading your “Climatologists under pressure” article in Vol 462, Issue no. 7273, 3 December 2009 and I am appalled.
(1) You start out by declaring that the CRU e-mail archives were stolen. I have seen no proof of this. The archives may have been leaked and/or inadvertently placed on a public server.
(2) You say “Nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real — or that human activities are almost certainly the cause.” Your statement is nonsense. When people coooperate to prevent opposing scientific opinions from being published in “peer-reviewed” journals and then argue often and loudly that all “peer-reviewed journals support their position (in this case, anthropogenic global warming) so their science must be correct, anyone who can’t see that this undermines the scientific case for anthropogenic global warming, much less global warming, is blind. Warren Meyer put it well: it’s kind of like the Catholic Church imposing a book banning policy and then claiming that all books in print support the Catholic Church’s position. Furthermore, you forgot to mention the “leaked/hacked” code and the comments therein, both of which paint a picture of utter confusion regarding the raw data that were used to make the global warming case. I’d say that alone undermines the scientific case for global warming.
(3) The AGW case may be “supported by multiple, robust lines of evidence”, but the case is not proven by any/all of them–except to those who want to believe.
(4) Some glaciers are retreating, some are growing. Some ice is thinning and some ice is thickening. Greenland ice may be decreasing, but Antarctic ice is increasing. In any event, none of these items or any of the other items you mention indicates much less proves that man’s burning of fossil fuel is their source. Your claim that “when climate modellers test this assertion by running their simulations with greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide held fixed, the results bear little resemblance to the observed warming” is laughable. Are these the same models that in 1998 predicted increasing temperature for the next decade and beyond? Somehow I find it hard to put much faith in those models.
(5) And contrary to what you claim, a fair reading of the e-mails reveals “everything” to support a coordinated effort among the senders and recipients of the e-mails to tell a story, the whole story and the nothing but the story. I call such action a conspiracy, and I believe most people would agree.
(6) You state that if there are benefits to the e-mail theft (there you go again with the declaration of a theft when none has been proven) one is to highlight yet again the harassment that denialists inflict on some climate-change researchers. This statement is also laughable in face of the harassment of deniers by AGW alarmists openly stated in the e-mails.
(7) You argue that the e-mail theft (there you go again) makes it difficult for climate researchers to follow the canons of scientific openness. How so? All the CRU ever had to do was put the raw data on a server open to the public. How can the e-mails have conceivably hindered their doing so?
(8) You then argue that the researchers are barred from publicly releasing meteorological data from many countries owing to contractual restrictions. But as I understand it, the researchers did release some of their data to a few preferred individuals. If true, how can not releasing the data to non-preferred individuals be justified?
NATURE can decide to investigate, or not. That’s your prerogative. The fact that you see nothing in the e-mails that passes the “qualifies for investigation test” says as much about your motives and agenda (you have at least one and probably many) than it does about your objectivity (you have none).
Finally, I mostly agree with you when you write: “After all, the pressures the UEA e-mailers experienced may be nothing compared with what will emerge as the United States debates a climate bill next year, and denialists use every means at their disposal to undermine trust in scientists and science.” I would change the word “denialists” in your statement to “realists” or “people who want to know why they are being asked to change their lifestyles” or “people who don’t like being duped”, etc. However, even without my suggested change, with all my heart and soul I hope your prediction turns out to be true.
Please do not send me a NATURE subscription application. Your article has destroyed all credibility NATURE has or will likely ever have with me.
Thank you for your time,
Reed Coray
IN THE LAST HOUR !!!!!
Google climategate has gone from 26,800,000 to 32,400,000
(Standard European Time now 1800 hours )
Obama, when you leave, turn out the lite !!
Denialists often maintain that these changes are just a symptom of natural climate variability. But when climate modellers test this assertion by running their simulations with greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide held fixed, the results bear little resemblance to the observed warming.
Has anyone pointed out that these are the same models that cannot explain the current lack of warming? (What a travesty!)
This is not science! It is amazing how the climate models are assumed to be magically infallible. This presumes the knowledge of the modelers is complete; that because they cannot conceive of other variables that none exist, or that they have somehow tamed non-linear Chaos.
I wonder: Had this editorialist had been around a century ago would he have railed then against the Newtonian deniers? “There is a consensus! The Mercury anomaly is just a measurement error — as soon as the data are corrected it disappears.”
If this is what passes for logic and rigor at Nature, I propose the magazine rename itself Human Nature, for they are pursuing personal emotional satisfaction at the cost of objective truth.
Nature is part of the Nature Publishing Group. This is ultimately owned by “Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck. http://www.holtzbrinck.com/”
Here is my email to them:
“Please review this editorial from your magazine Nature:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7273/full/462545a.html
The tone and type of argumentation contained in this editorial would shame the most zealous confessional zealot from the 30 Years War. No person capable of writing such a piece should be permitted any position associated with any aspect of science. If your company wishes to maintain the prestige of magazines in the Nature Publishing Group, this person, and all others substituting the attitudes and behaviors of religious fanaticism for scientific method, should be encouraged to seek new employment.”
The have a contact page at: http://www.holtzbrinck.com/artikel/779466&s=en
I used to subscribe to Scientific American, but I cancelled my subscription years ago, when the science disappeared. I replaced it with a subscription to American Scientist, which seemed more like the old Scientific American. Not so long ago I was offered a renewal, with some highlights from the latest issue. The main story was a pro AGW article, so I wrote to the subscription department:
I received the following answer:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/45235382@N05/4157719153/
Well I have had a subscription to Scientific American for at least 40 years, and have also paid for a subscription for a long time friend (fly fishing Guide). More in the nature of general curiosity, about numerous fields, but not expecting deep science.
And I have had a membership in the AAAS and SCIENCE subscription for a much shorter time; mainly to get access to some quite serious scientific papers.
Three months ago, SciAm informed me that my subscription was about to expire; even though my last paid for issue would be Jan 2010. I recently renewed it for one year, and told them I didn’t like being treated as a mere servant. One month ahead is time enough to renew any magazine subscription. Well now I don’t have that concern, because that renewal was my final one. I’ll likely keep paying for my friend who is a non-scientist; but the staff of SciAm have lost me for good.
I’m no more thrilled with the staff of AAAS and SCIENCE; but sometimes it is helpful to have an ear under the scoundrel’s tent. I won’t call them the enemy; because science to me is not a battle; but I’m incensed that there are those in postions of influence who would corrupt science for any political or self serving end.
Science is our only pathway out of ignorance or stupidity; and I can’t abide anybody who would deliberately corrupt that discipline.
“”” Karl Maki (09:11:34) :
Denialists often maintain that these changes are just a symptom of natural climate variability. But when climate modellers test this assertion by running their simulations with greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide held fixed, the results bear little resemblance to the observed warming.
Has anyone pointed out that these are the same models that cannot explain the current lack of warming? (What a travesty!)
This is not science! It is amazing how the climate models are assumed to be magically infallible. This presumes the knowledge of the modelers is complete; that because they cannot conceive of other variables that none exist, or that they have somehow tamed non-linear Chaos.
I wonder: Had this editorialist had been around a century ago would he have railed then against the Newtonian deniers? “There is a consensus! The Mercury anomaly is just a measurement error — as soon as the data are corrected it disappears.” “””
An interesting case you chose there Karl. According to some recent papers there is a possibility that Newton may in fact have been correct, and maybe it is Einstein who was wrong.
Einstein’s General Relativity; for all of its success is still incompatible with Quantum Theory. And there is so much more of our every day experience, that is in agreement with quantum theory, than there is that agrees with general relativity.
A new theory gives the appearance of being able to explain virtually all of known (observed) cosmology; without having to invent “inflation”, or “Dark Matter” or “Dark Energy”, or any of the other bizarre trappings of present day cosmology theories. Hopefully it will eliminate strings and other silly things like parallel universes,a nd yet be consistent with all that we presently “know” from observation.
I believe the new theory replaces the “:Big Bang”, with a “Big Bounce”; so that the singularity disappears, so inflation becomes superfluous. No Einstein is not sent to the woodshed; but Newton does enjoy a reformation, or renaissance.
I’ll have to dig out what I found, and learn some more about it.
But your basic point Karl is certainly on the mark; we don’t expect Science Journals; at least serious ones to speak in such emotional terms, as “denialists”.
Maybe the Mayan Calendar has it figured about right; perhaps we will know more after Copenhagen; in any case, we will get another Presidential election before they pull the plug and close the curtains.
Karl Maki,
“This presumes the knowledge of the modelers is complete; that because they cannot conceive of other variables that none exist, or that they have somehow tamed non-linear Chaos.”
This is a type of argument known as argumentum ignoratum – deducing a conclusion because no known alternatives explain the phenomenum A very famous example of argumentum ignoratum was that used by Paley in 1802 to argue for the existence of God – the watchmaker analogy. The argument leads to the conclusion that life has an intelligent designer because no KNOWN mechanism could account for the complexity of life. Enter Charles Darwin and the fallacy of argumentum ignoratum is easily exposed.
Global climate models are a testimony that argumentum ignoratum is alive and well.
On a second reading of Nature’s editorial, I had to temper my disgust. Nature gave the ultimate condemnation of the UAE/team when they wrote:
“In the end, what the UEA e-mails really show is that scientists are human beings…”
To “mankind loathers: there can’t be a bigger insult than being called a “human being”.
It strikes me that all the chief collaborations between scientists were outgrowths of some professional journal or magazine that patronized them.
Perhaps it’s useful to re-examine Wegman’s “clique”, or social network of connected climate scientists:
http://www.probeinternational.org/old_drupal/UrbanNewSite/Wegman%5B2%5D.pdf
… and the graphs at the end, illustrating their interconnectedness, including their patterns of collaboration. Though journals are never named, they now must be.
There are some 206 references to “Nature” in the whistleblower e-mails. From what I’ve seen so far, a safe guess would be that those e-mails have more to do with the strategies of getting into print than with nnature.
Read here, for example
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=18&filename=848679780.txt
If Wegman didn’t get enough first time round, perhaps he could be persuaded to do a map of climatologists’ professional connections as well. A ghastly thought to dig through it all, but…
It might be argued that a wheel has fallen off the juggernaut, but that the true believers have heroically determined to bear it along on their shoulders, at least for the time being. Let us add more weight.
Unfortunately Nature, Science, Scientific American, and loads of others – have been infected with “Climavirus.” This is a deadly virus that corrupts once-highly regarded journals, institutions and publications. It is easy to diagnose – just check to see if there is ANY semblance of balance in the way skeptics are treated. If there’s little or no balance – it is a case of Climavirus.
While there is no cure at this time – knowledge exposes entities suffering Climavirus and new, clean, uncorrupted replacements are arising. In the meanwhile keep getting news and updates from the internet where there is little restriction on what you see and hear – thus far more truthful.
Nature is now not much more than a shadow of its former self. Dark, flailing in the death throes of Climavirus – it will collapse, along with IPCC, Nopenhagen and East Anglia U.
“Third, decades of biological data on blooming dates and the like suggest that spring is arriving earlier each year.”
Leave it to the gov’t to stop this illicit, early blooming on trees.
“They wilt the grass they walk upon, they leach the light out of a room.”
Joni Mitchell
Notice that in the concluding sentence, the passage of the climate bill in the US Senate is said to be the goal. It says so much, in so many words.
Interesting look behind the iron curtain of modern science.
Nature’s POV may portend trouble with the UEA investigation if approached with the same controlling agenda of See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil. As has been repeated several times here on various posts, the proof is in the code. The emails are mere reflected glimpses of trouble within.
WUWT, please push the code inquiry wherever it leads. Make the powerful respond to the data and the contemporaneous recorded remarks.
Vincent, way OT, so I’ll not address the substance directly, but just point out you are way off base with your example of Paley/Darwin.
Your main point about argumentum ignoratum is well taken, however.
So? There hasn’t been any warming in the last 1000 years. There, that make you feel better?
. For Nature to claim that:
Researchers are barred from publicly releasing meteorological data from many countries owing to contractual restrictions. Moreover, in countries such as Germany, France and the United Kingdom, the national meteorological services will provide data sets only when researchers specifically request them, and only after a significant delay.
Is pure rubbish.
And yet is exactly what is done as shown by the Met Office Conditions of Use: http://badc.nerc.ac.uk/data/surface/met-nerc_agreement.html
“Arrangements have been set in place whereby bona fide academic researchers working on agreed NERC-endorsed scientific programmes may obtain access on favourable terms to UKMO data (and associated software). To streamline the process, UKMO is providing relevant datasets / software ‘wholesale’ to NERC and NERC will then undertake the subsequent sublicensing and distribution to individual scientists………
Data sets must not be passed on to third parties under any circumstances. Any scientist requiring data which happens to have been supplied already to someone else, even within the same institute or programme of research, must first approach one of the NERC Data Centres, who have agreed to maintain records of data users for UKMO.”
REPLY: and they are going to publish it now that the pressure to do so is there http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8396696.stm
REPLY: and they are going to publish it now that the pressure to do so is there http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8396696.stm
‘They’ being the Met Office which always had the ability to do that if they so chose, the CRU and other researchers did not based on the terms of the agreement. Clearly the statement in Nature was not ‘rubbish’ as you asserted.
There is no guarantee that the other 188 other countries will be willing to publish their data, in which case we’re no better off.
Phil. (23:01:40) :
REPLY: and they are going to publish it now that the pressure to do so is there http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8396696.stm
“‘They’ being the Met Office which always had the ability to do that if they so chose, the CRU and other researchers did not based on the terms of the agreement. Clearly the statement in Nature was not ‘rubbish’ as you asserted.
There is no guarantee that the other 188 other countries will be willing to publish their data, in which case we’re no better off.”
The Met never had the “ability” to release the data from the other “188 countries” on their own authority, and they give no guarantee now that they will, only that they are attempting permissions. CRU was in no different a position than the Met is now when CRU provided Webster with the data, and clearly what Nature claimed is rubbish:
“the national meteorological services will provide data sets only when researchers specifically request them, and only after a significant delay.”
Glenn:
FOI requests were sent for any non-disclosure agreements, all CRU could come up with were three documents, none of which prohibited release of data for non-commercial purposes. They then claimed that these documents were representative of agreements they made with almost everyone, and yet there was not one single non-disclosure agreement produced which prohibited release of the data received from any country.
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6789
Dear Anthony,
The post above says “there may in fact be a few people who deny any warming has occurred in the past 100 years (it has)..”. How do we know “it has”? It seems likely from the data that the thirties – i.e nearly eighty years ago – were warmer than now. We actually don’t have accurate enough measurment to know how warm it is now with respect to only forty years ago, let alone 100. I have a sneaking feeling – not very scientific I know – that if you were to take out the UHI effect from the current land station data, and various other corrections and quality control measures from the historical data, you might find that, in an historical context, we are cooler than we think. Certainly there were not that many accurate thermometers in the world one hundred years ago that we are able to give a very precise value of what the global mean temperature was back then.
The trees implicated in the “hide the decline” scandal seem to think we have cooled quite a bit recently. I am coming to the point that I would rather trust the trees than the manipulated data.
A once well loved big publication
Used to inform and enthrall the nation
But hubris and lies
Have caused it’s demise
Now it’s prints fluff and disinformation
[snip]
Why was there so much ice in the Bering Straights in 1958 that the Nautilus couldn’t go underneath while that ice is absent today?
Cargo ships, without escorts, traversed the Northeast passage this last summer. Where are the records of any ships doing that prior to 1900?
What happened to the winter ice on the Great Lakes. The lakes are no longer freezing as they did thru-ought the 1920’s and 1930’s, the supposed, warm period.
You can deny all you want but great ice deposits of the world are still melting.
Pangolin (19:20:34),
Global ice cover is increasing. Unless you want to argue with the NOAA: click
Pangolin (19:20:34) : ..You can deny all you want but great ice deposits of the world are still melting.
Glaciers have been melting since 1850, have you only just noticed?
We are recovering from the little ice age, the coldest it has ever been in the last 10,000 years. Would it not be natural for the glaciers to advance during that period and retreat since the recovery?
The question to ask is – Is the present situation unprecedented or alarming? And the answer to that is – I think not.
“The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consul Ifft, at Bergen, Norway.
Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers, he declared, all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met with as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm.
Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared. Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts, which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds.”
US Weather Bureau
Year of that report – 1922
Think about the Medieval Warm period when it was even warmer.
PS – The Article “Battle lines drawn over e-mail leak” has been restricted. I managed to put in a few comments before that, unfortunately not proof read, and with mistakes.
http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091202/full/462551a.html
Before nature snips my comments – have a look and let me know what you think.
People still read Nature? !
haha…..I know plenty of scientists of all fields, being one, and NONE of them have any good words to say about Nature. Unless of course they have a vested interest. Nature is a tool for corporate scientists, and to spread controversy and pety insults against their competition. Nature has and always will be a tool used to try and discredit reliable science by way of accusations and labels. For example “denialists”.
Besides the AGW scam, Nature has also been complicit in delaying the efforts of scientists who are researching methods of Nuclear Fusion. A type of energy source that could power the entire world for extremely low cost(basically free), and without any of the detrimental effects of every other energy source. It has absolutely no negative effects or dangers implicit with its use. Contrary to what some might believe, fusion causes no nuclear waste or fallout.
Given that, Nature has continued to attempt to bash and tarnish the reputations of good scientists rather then publish scientific arguments.
For example; A hit squad lead by Nature of jealous scientists from a competing research group caused one very good scientist to be placed under investigation, who eventually had to hire a lawyer who advised him from researching the topic for which he has advanced the most out of any other scientist in the field.
Their basis?
They claimed he faked the data, or was “mistaken”. They claimed a plutonium source from across his lab triggered a signature for which he confused with the signature of Tritium. First of all here is no way a plutonium signature can be confused with a Tritium signature. And second of all the source was too far away to produce a signature. BTW, a tritium signature is evidence that nuclear fusion did in fact occur, which would prove his theory known as Sonofusion or Bubble Fusion. He provided all his data and figures and despite their lack of any significant reason, Nature still published hit piece after hit piece. Since then he has been ostracized from the science community despite the dismissal of 10 charges of fraud and misconduct.
Long story short, Nature is a tool for the unscientific PTB, who want to stifle the truth.
Here are a few background articles
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4270297.stm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/experiment_prog_summary.shtml
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1C1CHMB_en-USUS295US304&q=sonofusion&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g2
such a cool word play between issue as in magazine and issues as in troubles:) love the pic, where did you get it BTW?