Despite regular attempts by head in the sand AGW cheerleaders to make it go away, Climategate continues to affect the path of climate science. This endorsement of the Climategate effect comes from a most unlikely source, The Guardian’s Fred Pearce, who also writes for The New Scientist. Most telling about all of the investigations so far is that they have not interviewed any of the primary investigators that question the methods and data, such as Steve McIntyre.
The investigations thus far are much like having a trial with judge, jury, reporters, spectators, and defendant, but no plaintiff. The plaintiff is locked outside the courtroom sitting in the hall hollering and hoping the jury hears some of what he has to say. Is it any wonder the verdicts keep coming up “not guilty”?
To summarize: it’s a whitewash in the purest sense of the word. I don’t expect career team player Sir Muir Russell’s report to be any different. He’s too much of an familial insider to have the courage to ask the plaintiff to get involved, and he didn’t. But Steve McIntyre is going anyway. Hopefully they’ll have the courage to hear what he has to say and not lock him out in the hallway. – Anthony
‘Climategate’ was ‘a game-changer’ in science reporting, say climatologists
After the hacked emails scandal scientists became ‘more upfront, open and explicit about their uncertainties’
Sir Muir Russell’s findings will be published on Wednesday. Photograph: University of Glasgow
Excerpts from the Guardian article:
Science has been changed forever by the so-called “climategate” saga, leading researchers have said ahead of publication of an inquiry into the affair – and mostly it has been changed for the better.
This Wednesday sees the publication of the Muir Russell report into the conduct of scientists from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU), whose emails caused a furore in November after they were hacked into and published online.
Critics say the emails reveal evasion of freedom of information law, secret deals done during the writing of reports for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a cover-up of uncertainties in key research findings and the misuse of scientific peer review to silence critics.
But whatever Sir Muir Russell, the chairman of the Judicial Appointments Board for Scotland, concludes on these charges, senior climate scientists say their world has been dramatically changed by the affair.
“The release of the emails was a turning point, a game-changer,” said Mike Hulme, professor of climate change at the University of East Anglia. “The community has been brought up short by the row over their science. Already there is a new tone. Researchers are more upfront, open and explicit about their uncertainties, for instance.”
And there will be other changes, said Hulme. The emails made him reflect how “astonishing” it was that it had been left to individual researchers to police access to the archive of global temperature data collected over the past 160 years. “The primary data should have been properly curated as an archive open to all.” He believes that will now happen.
…
“Trust has been damaged,” said Hans von Storch of the KGSS Research Centre in Geesthacht, Germany. “People now find it conceivable that scientists cheat and manipulate, and understand that scientists need societal supervision as any other societal institution.”
The climate scientist most associated with efforts to reconciling warring factions, Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology, said the idea of IPCC scientists as “self-appointed oracles, enhanced by the Nobel Prize, is now in tatters”. The outside world now sees that “the science of climate is more complex and uncertain than they have been led to believe”.
…
Roger Pielke Jr of the University of Colorado agreed that “the climate science community, or at least its most visible and activist wing, appeared to want to go back to waging an all-out war on its perceived political opponents”.
He added: “Such a strategy will simply exacerbate the pathological politicisation of the climate science community.” In reality, he said, “There is no going back to the pre-November 2009 era.”
…
But greater openness and engagement with their critics will not ensure that climate scientists have an easier time in future, warns Hulme. Back in the lab, a new generation of more sophisticated computer models is failing to reduce the uncertainties in predicting future climate, he says – rather, the reverse. “This is not what the public and politicians expect, so handling and explaining this will be difficult.”
Full story at the Guardian h/t to Tallbloke and WUWT reader Pat
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The bottom line: Climatology has been thoroughly corrupted by politics.
Deniers vs. perverts; the truth in between.
“Back in the lab, a new generation of more sophisticated computer models is failing to reduce the uncertainties in predicting future climate, …” That’s the problem in a nut shell and Hulme didn’t see it. It’s not so much the computer models that is the problem, it’s that the climate scientists have replaced observation and data for models. Models aren’t the end-all and be-all of science; they are just another tool.
The last comment from Mike Hulme says it all.
That comment would never have been printed in MSM a year ago.
Climategate will be a game-changer when the fools, sycophants, and statists in the US Congress (with the exception of the admirable Sen. Inhofe) and in the academies and the media admit they were hoodwinked about CO2 and ‘global warming’.
Until then, it’s just a foul ball in baseball, a throw-in in soccer—no change in the count or the score, and the game goes on, with the warmists way ahead.
/Mr Lynn
What is it going to take- a herd of Musk Ox grazing on the grounds of Hadley’s offices
or the house of Commons? Inuit hunting Seals on Thames? The Glasgow- New York
Dog Sled Marathon? I’m of course, being facetious, but things seem to be degenerating to that bygone era of Galileo and the Catholic Church…
<>
Eh?! Where has this news been hiding? Where do I learn more about these “sophisticated computer models”, and what they’ve been failing to accomplish?
The climategate file that was released was entitled FOI2009.zip. FOI was for FREEDOM OF INFORMATION. Nowhere is this more important than in science, where it is vital that science be advance by building on or disprooving prior work. In one comment that I read, somewhere, it was stated that any scientist who was not willing to share his data and methods was guilty of proffessional malfeasance Professional journals and professional societies that do not share that philosophy no longer have credibility. This issue should be pushed and pushed and pushed.
The proverbial dike has a leak…
“After the hacked emails scandal scientists became ‘more upfront, open and explicit about their uncertainties’”
Yes, and even Mann is attempting to clean up his act. Now he’s surprised his hoaky stick was the poster child.
“. But Steve McIntyre is going anyway. ”
Guys, I think there should be a “not” in there.
I suppose that we should be grateful that Hulme (and rumour has it Jones as well) have finally realised that being the custodians of the ‘Most Important Data about the Most Important Problem Mankind has Ever Faced’ brings some responsibilities as well as rights.
Until recently their approach seems to have been to pile any data they come by into an old cupboard higgledy-piggledy and chuck out the old stuff when the cupboard gets full. Also allowing their bestest friends to have a rummage for any particularly juicy stuff while making super sure that anybody who has been even the slightest bit horrible to them ever will never ever be permitted to see what’s in it. And ignoring/subverting the Law of the Land while doing so.
Apart from the e-mails Climategate also brought us Harry_Read_Me, which laid bare the shambolic state of CRU’s records. As an IT professional I would not trust them to be capable of walking to the end of the road to post a letter unsupervised, let alone giving them anything even remotely important to do. We owe thanks to Ian Harris for revealing these truths (even if unconciously)
I sincerely hope that they will start to keep their records in a responsible and systematic way. Given that they do not appear to have appointed any new staff to help in this effort, I am not holding my breath.
So … the Lord rejoices when one sinner repents. But there are many sinners still to repent. And repentance is only any good when backed up with real concrete action.
Sound of one hand clapping…………
“Guys, I think there should be a “not” in there.”
Never mind, I can’t read again today either. Looked like it said Steve was going “away” on the first pass.
Model programs do not make model scientists.
I still see that the e-mails are being reported as hacked…no big surprise, but I personally disregard pretty much every article that references that incident as having hacked e-mails.
-Scott
The biggest enduring pet peeve I’ve got from the whole incident is the continued reference to the release of the information using the terms ‘hacked’, and more egregiously ‘stolen’ or ‘purloined’.
Unless the meaning of these terms have been altered to mean ‘notice and download of information placed on a publicly visible ftp server share, with global read permissions’ – in which case, all of us, probably at some point, have been purloining, hacking thieves. Everybody say ‘arrrr’ like the pirates we must be.
otoh, the use of such terms, and their degree of abuse, do serve as handy flags to indicate where an opinion of the matter is coming from. . .
What I personally find most distressing, not to mention highly disturbing is how this can affect one’s academic career even if one has little to do with climate science.
As a junior researcher I feel tremendously pressured to keep my opinions to myself on this issue despite the fact I have spent hundreds of hours now educating myself on the topic (including many spent here). That’s not to mention the fact – one of the things that disturbs me – that most of the supposedly intelligent and critical scientists in other areas who believe the consensus view do so mindlessly. Worse, if I’m able to have an extended chat with them, they are gobsmacked when I lay out the actual alarmist case. Most of them, like much of the public, simply believe there is a linear CO2-temp relationship. They don’t even know that most of the putative predicted warming is blamed on expected positive feedbacks that so are so far failing to appear on demand; never mind the great many other complexities in the climate system that impact how it behaves.
The problem is I’m just not the kind of guy to be quiet. I regularly meet senior academic staff who will say something or other about climate change and I have to comment because they seem so unbelievably uncritical and really should know better. The circling of the wagons isn’t just limited to climate science disciplines, but from what I’ve seen, across academia generally.
It’s somewhat ironic that one of these staff, my most recent boss, who was quick to criticise me (his exact words were “you should’nt believe everything you read in the papers”(!)) for being credulous in criticising the “consensus” view was the same member of staff who said of our own research institute that for many of the senior staff, “science was just a hobby” and everything – everything – focused on the grant income. And you don’t get grant income through rocking the boat or being a maverick.
I’ve found this attitude seeping in even to my own areas though and its really making me start to rethink my career, it’s also filling me with a creeping sense of dread more generally. If the academic-scientific establishment continues to be corrupted in this way, the damage to wider society will be incalculable. My boss was slightly off target with his second comment – what he should have said is that “truth is just a hobby”.
Please can someone bring some sense to http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/07/the-climate-scandal-that-never-was.html
REPLY: No, this is an impossible task. The New Scientist is beyond redemption. The only tool left is subscription cancellation. – A
And I learned a new tune. It comes back into my head every now and then.
Hide the decline, Hide the decline….tralla-llalla-la…hide the decline…
@Wind Rider
“The biggest enduring pet peeve I’ve got from the whole incident is the continued reference to the release of the information using the terms ‘hacked’, and more egregiously ‘stolen’ or ‘purloined’.”
I have a very similar reaction. Computer forensics is one of my areas of practice and research, and so I find my blood absolutely boiling when I read comments like those over here at the Daily Kos. I’m told at places like this to shut up because I’m “not a climate scientist”, yet when this lot are babbling on a topic I do have expertise in, I’m still told to shut up. I’ve yet to see a single shred – just one – to prove that it was an actual “hack”. I thought about pointing this out over at the Daily Kos, but looking at the absolute certainty (terrifying on its own to see) not to mention the continual hatred of sceptics (we’re all “anti-science” doncha know?) I thought – ‘what’s the point?’
No scientist, climate or otherwise, should have an easy time. Good science is hard to do and part of the job is to be rigorous and accept challenges. It used to be the challenges just came from competing scientists; now anybody armed with data and a computer can challenge. In the end that’s a good thing for scientific progress, even if it means a bit more work for professional scientists.
I think these comments represent the thoughts of the few like Hulme and Pearce. Given the behaviour over Amazongate browbeating The Times into a retraction without even presentation of the evidence, I think less has changed than those two would like to believe.
The real lesson of the last six months is detectable in the serial whitewashing of bad behaviour. That has reduced us to the situation where the BBC feel no compunction in presenting Bjorn Lomborg as a climate change skeptic repressenting “the other side of the arguement”.
Don’t get me wrong, if the alarmists are right, I believe Bjorn’s position is the most sensible. I’ve read his books, he makes a lot of sense, if there is a problem.
The change, if there is any, is for the worse. They’re not questioning whether the downside is exaggerated, whether the range of error makes the results meaningless, whether there is corroboration of models with actual data, or even if the temperature record is reliable enough to draw any conclusions from.
The MSM, the governments and the institutions that have bought the global warming worst case scenario are asking themselves how they can win round all those deniers (but we mustn’t call them that anymore), or at least bypass them and do what they want to do anyway. the whitewashes prove they aren’t interested in the uncertainties in the science.
If you want to read some bizarre/disturbing conversations, visit Realclimate.org and check out some of the comment threads.
Here’s a doozy:
“It is time scientists realised that they are in a war. There are no rules in love and war. The sceptics know that. So long as they can get away with their lies and false accusations scot-free, then the battle for the future of the planet will be lost.”
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/07/penn-state-reports/
Re: Brian says
Please can someone bring some sense to http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/07/the-climate-scandal-that-never-was.html
REPLY: No, this is an impossible task. The New Scientist is beyond redemption. The only tool left is subscription cancellation. – A
Yep, I cancelled my subscription 2 years ago!
Wind Rider says: July 5, 2010 at 11:44 am
The biggest enduring pet peeve I’ve got from the whole incident is the continued reference to the release of the information using the terms ‘hacked’, and more egregiously ‘stolen’ or ‘purloined’.
Agreed. This is code for ‘my comments are supporting the Warmist Church’. But further, there seems to be no official release of information regarding the ‘apprehension’ of the perpetrators of the deed, whether data on the method of gathering the material, or the person responsible for the ‘leak’, or that it was a file that was compiled for official information purposes that was released in toto. I would have thought that by now HM constabulary would have been able to provide a full report on this. So we are left permanently in the speculative phase with no clarity of what really did happen there.
Doug
The most interesting is the last paragraph. I read it in this way: “Now, when the damn skeptics watch us and the public believes them, no one dare make a new politically ordered IPCC prediction.”