NCDC's Dr. Tom Peterson responds

Only a small percentage of Phil Jones’ emails on that server were released
=====================================================
No one needs to see all of the emails, just the ones mentioning where the murder weapon was hidden.
A crime was committed, by anyone’s standards.
Just because the “rest of the emails” might show that the murderer loved his dog…..

Saying “we cannot afford to wait a century for views on climate change to catch up to climate science” is like saying ” we cannot afford to wait a century for views on accounting change to catch up with Enron”.

“A scientist’s response to both knives and illogic tends to be more science
-Sound, rigorous, peer-reviewed science”
Would be nice.
However, didn’t the climategate mails show how peer-review became corrupted by some cheerleading climate scientists?
Aren’t the sceptics on the knife side, facing guns, when
– peers are pre-selected,
– editors pressed,
– FOIA requests turned down?
Can’t help, but the “us humble innocent scientists” picture has some flaws.

Tom Peterson: ‘But unlike heliocentrism, we cannot afford to wait a century for views
on climate change to catch up to climate science’
Around a thousand years ago the vikings were growing crops in Greenland.
This has not been possible for the past seven hundred years or so (including recent decades), due to the fact that the temperature in Viking times was warmer than now.
Tom, when is ‘Climate Science’ going to catch up with the historical record?

When it comes to AGW, there are two types of people on that side. Stupid people that believe anything and everything someone with a Phd on the end of their name says, and the ones with an agenda that has nothing to do with true scientific procedure or saving the planet. Thankfully, the public is finally waking up to the BS the likes of Dr. Peterson are, and have been shoveling.

But unlike heliocentrism, we cannot afford to wait a century for views
on climate change to catch up to climate science

This presupposes that catastrophic climate change is strongly supported by the science at this point. I can’t see that it is.

I’m always so glad when we get a chance to see the failure of logic exercised by alarmist climate scientists. When someone demonstrates that they cannot connect the dots in a logical fashion when the subject is one which is readily understood by ordinary people, it places into question their ability to connect the dots in a logical fashion with regard to the science about which they present themselves as experts.
This argument about the e-mails being only a small subset is beyond stupid. That Peterson thinks it provides a defense for Jones and company says a lot about Peterson.

Again wondrous is it not that the high priests and doyens of AGW suddenly find it necessary to reply to a humble blog and one that so many of them along with the great and the good have repeatedly attacked with ad hominen s well as claims of junk science.
And note how open debate is characterised as a fight and the still utterly defensive position of do not get into fights: which is code for do not debate. I wonder why not?
Truly the ground is shifting and very fast too.
Kindest Regards

Dr Peterson,
Thank you for taking time to post.
You bemoan “pseudoscience”. I bemoan “pseuodologic”.
How can the sea level rise be decelerating while man-made CO2 is ever rising?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/17/sea-level-may-drop-in-2010/
How do GCM account for this La Nina pattern – a pattern highly likely to lead to cooler weather?
http://theinconvenientskeptic.com/2010/12/unusual-sea-surface-temperature-anomaly/
What is there to be overly concerned (or concerned at all) about slightly higher global temperatures? Wouldn’t an ice age or even a “little ice age” be far worse?
Do you really believe we are jeopardizing our very existence by generating a tiny fraction of CO2?
Science? Where’s your logic?

Professor Bob Ryan says:
January 17, 2011 at 8:35 am
Right to the point. Couldn’t have said it better.

With all due respect to the guy – I cannot agree with some of Dr Peterson’s reply.
As has already been mentioned in a slightly different context, it really matters not whether the climategate emails are a subset or wholly representative – the implication remains the same. That implication can only be described as a total ‘damning’ of the validity of climate science as practised by the various protagonists whose names appear within the emails. Even if say, one of those emails had been cc’d to myself (just as a ‘for example’) – I would consider myself complicit in the misdirection/fraud if I did not immediately bring it to the attention of other unconnected senior scientists, the professional organisations, journal editors and suchlike. There is no point in trying to dismiss the nature of the emails with a ‘wave of the hand’ and casual apology. Science is damaged, and the specific protagonists within climate science should hang their heads in shame. Even if the intention was not fraud, the resultant effects of the emails (as we now know) almost certainly are indicative of fraud (Carbon credits anyone?)! This wasn’t a one-off, this was a long term orchestrated spin at best; and a downright scientific fraud at worst. Over the time period concerned – that is not casual or innocent mistakes – that is intentional misdirection!
So – sorry, but until all the protagonists are fully discharged from their involvement (at least in any supervisory capacity, but preferably ‘busted down to parking attendents’ !) the whole ethos of a ‘Team’ of scientists is completely destroyed in the eyes of the thinking public and other scientists. It is so widespread too – the CRU is a sham, and in conjunction with the MetOffice has spun us a merry yarn!
If you had shares in a company and the company boss admitted fraud, but says ‘he wont do it again’ or ‘we have learnt lessons’ (yeah, like how to avoid being caught!) – are you going to invest your pension in that company whilst the same guy is at the helm? Hmm, I didn’t think so!
Pinching sweets when you are a kid from the local shop is easily dismissed as a minor (learning) offence – still doing it when you’re an adult is most definitely not!
MP’s and suchlike get hounded to resign for much lesser ‘wrong doings’ – s’funny how the climate boys are still there.

Sir, when the facts change I change my mind, what do you do?
Science? Is science the art of communication or the impartial pursuit of knowledge?
The science behind CAGW or whatever the newest trendy re branding exercise is being pushed today is not clear nor is it unequivocal. There are are valid concerns and growing doubts and uncertainties and unknowns and there is much to learn still.
The amount climate science does not know far outweighs what you are certain of yet still climate science pretends otherwise, you seek to assure us of your certainties while you know full well the massive gaps in your knowledge of climate change.
You and the climate science community are attempting to sell us a lemon, you realise it and we suspect it yet still you claim to hold the keys to to the mysteries of our climate.
Do you expect us to believe that the CAGW theory is failing because climate science is failing to sell it properly? Do you believe that by improving the ways you sell the CAGW theory to a larger world it will make the uncertainties disappear? You cannot make them go away by hiding them away, that much everyone knows.
It seems to me that you and climate science are attempting to improve the way you sell your product to those you class as somehow less expert or knowledgeable than yourselves but it seems to me that you should be attempting to improve your product instead and better yet holding forth all the uncertainties and doubts and mistakes and errors and failed predictions. Instead of hiding your mistakes bring them out into the light of day for all to see, instead of secrecy and elitism and hostility toward those you see as your enemies show us your mistakes as eagerly as you now hide them.
Communication is a two way street, if you are so sure of your findings then offer them up for all to see, if you wish us to understand then be honest and open and self critical and humble and ever ready to revise your position, that is the only way forward. In other words trust us. What climate science is doing now is morally wrong, you know it and we know it, you are attempting to persuade by domination and bullying and secrecy, you are attempting to push the political class into forcing us to acepting irreversible socio economic changes while freezing out, insulting and ignoring those who point out flaws and errors.
Climate science has forgotten that it serves society, it is clear that this young branch of science has become arrogant and elitist and too sensitive to healthy criticism, you are not the priesthood of some ancient tribe that is able to dictate and proclaim to an ignorant and servile and obedient masses, we are determined to ask the awkward questions and we will not be cowed or awed into silence by you or anyone else, if climate science will not police itself then why on earth are you surprised that we will do it for you?
Its time to stop selling us your science as if it were a new soap powder or beauty product and start proving it to us by good old fashioned scientific endeavour and honest hard work.

But unlike heliocentrism, we cannot afford to wait a century for views
on climate change to catch up to climate science

This is a big fail, Mr Peterson. You are justifying brainwashing for a cause. you are saying, “We all may die, so lets all of us assume to be true what we cannot conclusively prove (otherwise known as a flight of fancy) so that we might save ourselves.”
There is only one species on earth that does this, Humans. We usually call humans who distance themselves from reality crazy, regardless of whatever situation caused it. We give these people treatment and try to bring them back into the real world with lots of attention and controlled experiences. You seem to be saying that the cause is just, therefore do not question the conclusion, ignore whatever may be reality so that we can all be saved.
That will only work if you are right in your prognostication. If you are wrong, well…, sad to say, but Jonestown was a good example of what happens when this kind of thinking is finally faced with cold reality.

Sound, rigorous, peer-reviewed science
Yes, but not in the way the Hockey Team and its cheerleaders rigorously ensured that only the “right” type of climate science was peer-reviewed.

Looks like another lesson in the dangers of snippets of an out of context quote on an emotional issue. Thanks to Dr. Peterson for responding in a civil fashion.

I find it interesting that Dr. Peterson continually refers to “collaborating with communicators.” I am going to assume that he is referring to people who can both present his message with the best spin, as well as have the ability to get this message out to the most people through the mass media. It is somewhat like propaganda in that it is one-sided. Certainly Dr. Peterson can understand that there are real, factual, scientific reasons to doubt his views, and I doubt he is planning to give this information to the “communicators.”
Also, there are two stages to this “knife fight.” The debate in the mass media continues to ignore this second stage: that is, the assumption that warming would be intrinsically bad. Many people have argued that even if AGW was provably true, humanity would certainly be able to adapt to its negative consequences (e.g., moving away from the coastline) and at the same time benefit from its positive consequences (e.g., more farmable land).

Kudos to Anthony Watts and Thomas Peterson for engaging in debate – it is interesting to watch.
The ‘knife fight’ imagery seems rooted in the fact that the only policy response to the catastrophic ending proferred was a complete re-wiring of the global economy with massive redistribution of wealth.
But when a scientist says that “we cannot afford to wait a century for views on climate change to catch up to climate science” – he has injected himself into the POLICY debate and is advocating a solution. Its just that simple. I have a different solution is all.

Where is the sound scientific evidence that proves AGW/CC/ACD?
All I see is rising polar bear populations, lower rate of rising sea levels, ice breakers stuck in ice, floods in drought areas, blizzards in snow free areas……………….
Plus continual manipulation of data to favour AGW by so called scientists working for the USA and UK governments and their politicians taking the lies and taxing the masses accordingly.
Hopefully my grandchildren will not be so gullible as the present generation seems to be.
The Greens have a lot to answer for. History’s latest Witchfinder Generals and Dragon Slayers.

Dr Peterson’s response is in the language of politicians that have dubbed “sloganbyte.” His comments are frequently irrelevant and non-responsive.

The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system – ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

Eisenhower’s Farewell Address to the Nation
January 17, 1961
Wish we would have heeded this warning…we wouldn’t be in this mess.

Well done Dr Peterson and WUWT.
To refuse to debate in an open forum with experts who hold a different view is more than strange. Just present the unambiguous evidence that rising CO2 is linked to rising temps. without mentioning computer modelling and maybe you will win the argument.
I totally agree with Prof. Ryan that the economic and energy consequences which follow on from AGW are so huge that it would be foolish in the extreme to embark on such a course without compelling evidence.

It is interesting that it was a congressman that supports AGW that brought the knife into the discussion. The congressman also indicated there was a greater need to fight back.
This is the perfect example of the real problem which is the scientists getting pressure from politicians. Supporting global warming is politically correct. The politicians have corrupted the science through a combination of money, pressure and power.
Cheers to Dr. Peterson for releasing his notes. Of course if he turned against the orthodoxy then he would really be in trouble.
John Kehr
The Inconvenient Skeptic

Dr T G Watkins says:
Just present the unambiguous evidence that rising CO2 is linked to rising temps. without mentioning computer modelling and maybe you will win the argument.
Better still, just present unambiguous evidence and leave the political arguments to politicians and better than “win the argument”, we’ll all respect you as scientists!

Jeremy says:
January 17, 2011 at 9:21 am
But unlike heliocentrism, we cannot afford to wait a century for views
on climate change to catch up to climate science
‘This is a big fail, Mr Peterson. You are justifying brainwashing for a cause. you are saying, “We all may die, so lets all of us assume to be true what we cannot conclusively prove (otherwise known as a flight of fancy) so that we might save ourselves.”’
Very well said. Long ago, Bertolt Brecht wrote a play titled “The Measures Taken.” It is about a communist cell that travels from Russia to China shortly after the end of WWI. The last act of that play shows the survivors explaining their actions to their local party back in Russia. Brecht was openly communist. He fled the US because of the McCarthy hearings. His play contains the best explication and condemnation of the dogma that all else must be subjugated to the goals set by the Communist Party.

Dr. Peterson, thank you for coming to WUWT and allowing us to see your notes and an overview of how you see things. I must shamefully admit that I chuckled sometimes as I read some the comments down to this point. I could kick you in the shins as well but prefer to not do that.
I am an engineer who has a long and extremely varied work record in many technical fields, all around the globe. I have reviewed many technical investigation reports, geology reports, research and development status reports and technical papers. I have done many, many literature searches using many libraries and have applied my library knowledge to become an excellent searcher on the internet. On the subject of climate change, I am a Lukewarmer. With that preamble, let me simply state that in many years of searching, I have yet to find anything that even starts to prove that carbon dioxide is the root cause of the observed warming from the early 1980s to 1995. I think that we are primarily dealing with natural cycle variations, not carbon dioxide. There are indeed some impacts of human activities on climate change. For example, simple calculations show that produced groundwater from no or slow to recharge aquifers account for 2.6 mm per year of the observed rise in the oceans level.
I do not share your view that we cannot wait to do something about carbon dioxide. I have 15 grandchildren, so have not drawn my conclusion lightly.

Dr. Peterson,
I wonder what unchallenged pseudoscientific nonsense it is to which you are referring?
Many of us have simply been asking for a full accounting of the methods by which you come to your conclusions. When you adjust data, we want to know how and why you adjusted the data, particularly when the unadjusted data leads one to the completely opposite conclusion you have reached.
Challenging you when you do not support that effort is a basic principle of science and engineering.

The vibe I get is that of someone who is not comfortable in his own skin but sees nowhere to turn to in order to free himself from a decayed paradise now rusting to bits all around him. Here come the worms.

That was sloppy, Anthony.
When you gonna start allowing posts on the widescale geoengineering that’s already going on? Many of your fellow weathermen have talked about it on the air.
Brad

Cassandra King says:
January 17, 2011 at 9:20 am
“Communication is a two way street, if you are so sure of your findings then offer them up for all to see, if you wish us to understand then be honest and open and self critical and humble and ever ready to revise your position, that is the only way forward. In other words trust us. What climate science is doing now is morally wrong, you know it and we know it, you are attempting to persuade by domination and bullying and secrecy, you are attempting to push the political class into forcing us to acepting irreversible socio economic changes while freezing out, insulting and ignoring those who point out flaws and errors.”
Wow! I wish I had said that. We must at all times and all places emphasize that selling science, as described by Ms. King, is truly a major moral wrong. It is not like selling cars. It debases its own product.

You know you are losing the argument when you have to bring a knife to a science fight.

That’s it?
I’ve seen presentations like that — by corporate administrators trying to control rumours and reports that the organisation is facing bankruptcy or litigation. They address a couple of issues tangential to the problem and assure everyone that everything is fine. At the end of it, the employees attending the presentation immediately send out our resumes with the now-confirmed knowledge that the company is going under.
It’s actually this kind of thing that first really started me leaning towards the sceptic camp. I would read something that appeared to be damning evidence against AGW, find an article responding to such critiques, and watch in mounting disappointment as the writer sidestepped the significant points (only the e-mails showing guilt were release), made non-specific attacks (“a lot of pseudoscience”), and then claim that the issue was too important to wait for all the facts to be in (“unfortunately we can’t wait a century”)
Once or twice, or even a dozen times, I would have chalked this up to a few bad communicators. But it seemed to be relentless. Some were far more complex, showing lots of graphs and figures that, when closely examined bore more resemblance to “transparent incomprehensibility” than actual arguments. And the more the fight went on, the more aggressive and irrelevant the AGW crowd’s responses became, and the more outlandish and obviously false their warnings about imminent doom.
To be honest, the Climategate emails were little more than another blip on my bullshit radar. A big blip, to be sure, but hardly the most compelling.
In the end, the AGW proponents and their incessant claims of unfair opposition did more to sway me against them than anything else. It’s been like watching the worm Ouroboros complaining about being attacked from the rear.

Dr. Peterson, thank you for responding……what happened to lesson 1 Anthony?
But do you not see you are talking of how to oppose political enemy, not address valid criticisms of science.

“But unlike heliocentrism, we cannot afford to wait a century for views
on climate change to catch up to climate science.”
In my opinion, the debate is at least 30 years ahead of the science already.
What little science there is (as far as i know) has not been replicated. Had it been replicated, there would be very little to debate. The fact that it has not and further that the actions of scientists (in particular the Hockey Team) have demonstrated that they are prepared to go to any length to withold their data,rather suggests that they have nothing of any consequence to confirm that which they claim. Climate will continue to dominate this debate and will ultimately prove to be the undoing of the whole AGW Hoax.

“But unlike heliocentrism, we cannot afford to wait a century for views
on climate change to catch up to climate science”
Then let’s wait 10 years and see whether somebody finds the missing heat, how about that?

Dr. Peterson: “But unlike heliocentrism, we cannot afford to wait a century for views
on climate change to catch up to climate science”
Maybe we can afford to wait half a century. Hopefully our grandkids will be a lot smarter about climate………. and wiser too. Does anyone think we will not learn more and make more technological progress in 50 years? Think back 50 years.
IPCC AR-4 , Working Group 1 Summary for Policymakers, Figure SPM.2 displays 9 radiative forcing components. The level of scientific understanding was judged by the authors to be high for 2 of 9, medium for 1 of 9, medium to low for 2 fo 9 and low for 4 of 9. More low understanding than anything else. That clearly says to me not enough understanding has been gathered to even define the problem, much less offer solutions or, worst of all, encourage politicians to go off helter skelter imposing non-solutions. As Pogo sez: “We have met the enemy and they is us.”

It is also very telling that Tom Peterson compares the warmist science to heliocentrism. Sometimes they compare themselves to Einstein or Newton, sometimes it’s Darwin, now Galileo. We don’t do it under that calibre after cashing in a Noble peace prize, no, we are the most important people since, well one of the mentioned geniusses.
How about comparing yourself to Faraday or Maxwell next time, maybe it impresses the engineers, or how about Turing, you might need a li’l bit of street cred with the hackers. You know, better science communication and all.

Kev-in-UK
“If you had shares in a company and the company boss admitted fraud, but says ‘he won’t do it again’ or ‘we have learnt lessons’ (yeah, like how to avoid being caught!)”
Exactly. The charge is ‘caught cheating’ folowed by a promise, ‘not to get caught cheating again’. Right.
Skeptic: “A skeptic is someone who doubts that something or other is true. The original Skeptics were members of a Greek school of philosophy who believed real knowledge was impossible (except, one assumes, the knowledge that real knowledge is impossible). The Greek source of the term is ‘skeptesthai’, “to look about,” from the Latin ‘skepticus, “inquiring, reflective.” ”
– Paul McFedries, Weird Word Origins, Alpha, 2008
Skeptically yours,
Crispin

It continues to be a puzzle that main-stream climate scientists complain about misrepresentations and simplistic arguments, but they don’t follow the obvious route of making information available. Here Tom Peterson notes that only a fraction of e-mails were released, but he doesn’t himself release exculpatory e-mails or demand that others inv0lved do the same. Similarly, there are screams of protest when requests are made for archiving and release of basic, unadjusted data and model parameters. The requests are met with (false) assertions of the proprietary nature of the data and cries that following normal procedures for data integrity and openness are cruel attacks on the “team.” Journals waive normal data availability rules without blushing when the “team” are involved. When statistical critiques and divergence of modern data for proxies from theoretical predictions do demonstrate problems with proxy modeling, the publications are delayed and “team” reviewers are allowed to publish virtually simultaneous critiques of the papers without normal access to response by the original authors.
Most of the folks who follow this website and similar climate blogs are open to science. Mostly, we believe the direct effect of CO2 is in the warming direction; but we also note that the models are suspect regarding the sensitivity to other factors–aerosols, water vapor, etc.–as well as to factors that may not be considered by current models. I am open to persuasion, but Lindzen, Happer, M&M, Spencer, Soon and other skeptics haven’t been fully answered by the climate community; and broadly supportive folks like Judith Curry and the two Pilkes are routinely denigrated as if they were “deniers.” A true skeptic like Monckton is nit-picked and denigrated for minor errors in lengthy posts, while the original presentations that he critiques (and which have major whoppers) are widely embraced.
The policies of “Real Climate,” the capture of the review process (i.e., having climate journals refuse to publish critiques of statistics as being too arcane while statistical journals reject them as too ordinary to be considered for statistical journals, as one example), excluding respected polar ice specialists from conferences on sea ice extent, and rejection of direct engagement of critics do not contribute to the moral authority of CAGW believers.
Such behavior strongly suggests that the conventional “experts” know that there are basic issues that haven’t been properly addressed. Doing so will require too much time and effort resulting in delays in implementing the revolutionary changes in energy policies favored by the “in” side and their political colleagues, and that can’t be allowed.

Terry Jackson:”…Credentialed but Uneducated”
Right on!
Schooled and credentialed, but after all, uneducated. The pencil box remains but the protractor is cracked, the ruler broken and the moral compass lost more than a decade ago.
I am continuously surprised by the puerility of the responses to well-founded charges of multiple, serious malfeasance arising from the content and consequences of the actions mooted (and accomplished!) by those active in the Climategate email trails.
I think there is still time for at least some of the Team members to come clean and help get climate science back on the rails. Until then it will continue to be difficult to convince the Ordinary Man there is such a branch of science at all. Bleating and chain rattling is not science. We can do much better than that.

Dr Peterson’s language about knife fights is absurd, all that needs to happen is for the self named climate scientists to show their data and working outs. If they are unable or unwilling to then their research has no value.
A knife would be useless against his straw man arguments?
Sorry for the repetition but anyone who reads the emails and comes away saying there is nothing wrong is either:-
1 Stupid.
2 Very Stupid.
3 A pathological liar.
4 Clinically insane.
5 On the green gravy train.
Steve McIntyre draws attention to Dr Peterson’s hypocrisy in referring to Climate Fraudit. One thing about the emails i have noticed is these scientists are seem to be always travelling to exotic places, certainly not in a boat made out of balsa wood.
As I have said before the only thing worse than a hypocrite is a sanctimonious hypocrite.

Patrick Davis says:
January 17, 2011 at 8:18 am
I’ve spent some time with those raw, unadjusted CRU data sets from Dr. Phil Jones.
They show that, depending on one’s locale (I only looked at the Western US) that the warmest times were the 1870’s-1880’s and 1920’s-1930’s. After that, it’s been a roller coaster ride. Big deal. This Grand Minimum may soon change all that.

I wonder if Dr. Peterson and his ilk sleep well at night or do they lay there worrying and wondering whether or not real world observations will eventually show their computer modelling to be wrong in due time ?
I only have one thing to say to Dr. Peterson regarding this so-called “knife fight” with so-called pseudoscientific nonsense…
Your science had damn well better be spot on 100% accurate in its bleatings of catastrophic predictions as well as your CO2 trumping all other climate processes (ie: the hydrological cycle, the sun’s energy forcings), because if you’re not, you and your associates will go down as being the active participants in the most horrific faux pas, nay, scientific screw up in human history.
Do you stand 100% behind your computer models ? Are you absolutely 100% sure that you want to force world societies into irreversable public policy and economic damage caused from taking “immediate action” ?
With all due respect, I strongly suggest you think long and hard about that, sir.

Frosty says:
January 17, 2011 at 12:46 pm
‘Is he’s saying “only talk through a communicator” because only spin doctors communicators can the spin communicate their science correctly? ‘
Maybe he thinks he’s on Star Trek?

A good summary of similar issue though on a different topic by Michael
D. Gershon, M.D. (1999)
-“The experiments I conducted to this point gave me a feeling of
confidence that my work could withstand anyone’s scrutiny, which I
assumed (foolishly, it turned out) would be both logical and reasonable.”
Fee fi fo fum, do I smell a great Trenberthian leap, from the fact that there are always people who are illogical and unreasonable, to the implication that all scrutiny of Climate Science’s work is illogical and unreasonable, essentially by a kind of “null” definition, Tom’s? Or else perhaps to an inherently futile justification of Climate Science’s failure to expose its work to the sceptical scrutiny of the scientific method, when the latter is instead the only way any work alleging to be science can come to “withstand scrutiny”?
Isn’t it really just more of the same old strange, needing to be clarified, Climate Science talk and thinking?

You tell me, what lesson should Peterson and other scientists draw from Gershon’s work?

That fighting a consensus requires both bowel and gut?

Only a small percentage of Phil Jones’ emails on that server were released
-The subset that was released was not random
–So it didn’t give a fair representation
-Releasing additional selected emails would make the fight fairer
–But not civil”
The night of the Climategate release I remember well. I downloaded and isolated two separate copies of the zip file but waited to scan them for virus & malware until I heard from others that the files were genuine. Instead, I spent countless hours transfixed to the postings and observations of others here and at CA, Bishop Hill, the Air Vent and elsewhere.
It utterly astounds me that after this release there was not an immediate demand and search for the proverbial missing 18½ minutes.
If instead of climate the November FOIA file release was relating to a nuclear accident, the BP Deep Horizon blowout, or even Viagra, I cannot help believe the MSM & our politicians would not have risen to the occasion and demanded actual investigations instead of the multiple whitewashes and massive campaigns of denial we have all witnessed.
Albedo is all over the Climategate affair. It is high time to cast the clouds aside and let sunlight disinfect this truly sad episode in science!

There is a second issue related to the Climategate emails that has not gotten enough play. In those emails Phil Jones, Mann, Biffra, and the rest were asked to comment on mitigation strategies for climate change. Ok, if we take the premise, which they do, that you must be trained in the field of your expertise in order to be able to make authorative statements, then none of these gentlemen have the least expertise in systems engineering, nuclear power, or any of the other engineering disciplines that are required in order to be able to develop authorative positions on measures to mitigate CO2 production.
Why is it that all of their solutions more or less align with the position of books such as “Limits to Growth” and Al Gore’s “Earth in the Balance”. I would have much more respect for their position if they came out and said (Like James Lovelock has), that we must embrace nuclear power.
If the U.S. embarked on a program to develop 500-1000 Uranium and Thorium reactors, and used the electricity to displace oil, coal, and natural gas, and to implement a transportation technology based on fuel cells, then I could get behind their solution even if I doubted their science.
If CO2 is your problem, then in 25 years the above outline of power and transportation technology would remove the United States from the Hydrocarbon economy, and thus reduce global emissions of CO2 by 25%.
However, foolish schemes such as Cap and Trade, originally developed by none other than Enron, the elimination of the personal automobile, and the de-industrialization of the west, is nothing more than what the hippies and environmental whackos proposed during the last environmental scare period of the 1960’s and 70’s.
I am such a person as to be able to make an authorative statement regarding the engineering of this with my degrees (engineering physics), plus decades of work on power systems, transportation systems, and systems engineering for developing industrial infrastructure on the Moon and Mars.
Stay in your field of expertise of climate science and let the engineers fix the problem, if the problem indeed exists.

when so many people with Phd’s are suggesting that a theory based on incomplete computer models with limited predictive ability, using unreleased data and code is such good evidence that science has to be turned on its head and it is the job of the sceptics to disprove the conclusions of the unreleased code and data then it is hard to view them as scientists.
The “what if your wrong, think of your grandchildren” argument might have some impact if the solutions weren’t so ridiculous. Green initiatives rolled out time and time again with some immense cost of carbon, and government reports suggesting we are going to fix it with massively cheaper cost of carbon in the future. I know of no other situation where people would say “buy lots of it today because it will be cheaper tomorrow” – a difficult enough argument but to then infer a competitive advantage from un-patented investments today will be somehow uncopiable and unassailable in the future beggars belief. We are apparently to be scared of missing out on the flushing the money down the toilet party.
This appears to be the position of the warmists – believing not only that their phds should guarantee the success of the scientific argument – but should naturally give them the final say on the solution in entirely unrelated fields.

1) To a scientifically skeptical person this is a fight for the truth…
2) To the AGW supporting scientists this is a knife fight…
Everyone chooses who to follow.
But people, if one day it becomes apparent that you are clearly scientifically wrong, please swallow your pride and admit it, for the moment, that goes for both sides, but even that conclusion could revert futher into the future, science is always moving.
Someof these scientists need to just grow up.

Perhaps Peterson’s reference to heliocentrism and Galileo has it exactly backwards. The cAGWers are the gospel preaching Pope and McIntyre is Galileo.

ScientistForTruth

what if climate science is wrong on attribution, or models, or understanding, or physics? Do we really want to advance “views” and policies towards what is wrong, then?

If the science turns out to be wrong and yet we’re already some way down the road of transitioning our economies to a post-fossil fuels world, building nuclear power stations, investing in and developing renewables, well, this is something we’d have had to have done sooner or later as these fossil fuels are running out, plus our dependance on them binds us to some pretty unsavoury regimes. But if the science turns out to be right but we have not taken action to reduce our emissions, then the consequences could be grave.

matt v.

“We cannot afford to wait a century for views
on climate change to catch up to climate science”
Neither can the world risk or wait 100 years to see if the current version of global warming science is even valid.

So what is the sensible course of action? Do we start building nuclear power stations and phasing out coal burning planets, or do we burn ever more fossils fuels, pumping up atmospheric CO2 to levels the earth hasn’t seen for millions of years in the hope that the science is wrong?

“–Just ask Galileo” (re heliocentrism, no doubt!)
If only. He would turn in his grave at the thought that his lonely courageous stand against a corrupt or pig ignorant establishment would be twisted so perversely in defence of to-day’s corrupt or pig ignorant establishment.
@ ScientistForTruth January 17, 2011 at 10:03 am:
“Heliocentrism would have caught on a lot quicker if he hadn’t tried to paint those who were sceptical of his views – including the Pope, who was originally his friend – as ignorant fools.” They were just that.

To follow on to my previous comment, here is the CAGW mindset writ large.
The Price of Change by James Hansen
I found this cited at Lubos Motl’s blog, The Reference Frame. It was originally published in the South China Morning Post, and therefore is meant for a Chinese audience.
The money quotes:

“Burning all fossil fuels would increase carbon dioxide to more than 550 ppm and create a different planet – a desolate, ice-free planet with sea levels 75 meters higher than today.”

and…

“Climate change will soon emerge as the great moral issue of the 21st century, a matter of intergenerational justice.”

Read it all. It is quite chilling to me, especially since he seems to have developed a seething and irrational hatred for all fossil fuel companies – the same fossil fuel companies that right now are helping deliver power, heat, food, and water to the NASA GISS headquarters in New York City (and to Jim Hansen’s home, no doubt).
Humorously, the paper cites Jim Hansen as writing “as a private citizen” – errr a private citizen pushing a new book and whose day job just happens to reap huge sums of money by scaring the public about climate change.
What say you, Dr. Peterson?

Let’s see, then – if a non-team person wants to replicate work and asks for the data and methodology and metadata, and he is stonewalled to the point of needing to use FOIA, is that FOIA request the knife fighting?
Or is the knife fighting when emails are circulated to increase the stonewalling?
Is being astounded that the data isn’t made public the knife fight?
Or is it when the hopeful replicators are called “deniers”?
Is it a knife fight because team members circle the wagons when they could more easily have simply told everyone, “The dog ate my homework” (Phil Jones, on his slovenly record keeping)?
Or is the knife fight when an disillusioned insider who knew where all the skeletons were buried decided to out the cover-up?
If this was Watergate, was the knife fight when the cops arrested the burglars?
Or was it when Nixon, Haldeman and Ehrlichman covered it all up?
It was a knife fight in all of those (and more) because the ones who jealously guarded the power they thought the possessed paranoically thought they had enemies all around them, and they went into battle mode to protect that perceived power. That kind of mentality happens all the time with institutions: Those who find themselves at the center of things believe they are infallible as long as they are “defending the faith.” And when that happens, all rules of gentlemanly behavior (such as the scientific method and objective peer review) are repealed – and the gloves come off. That is Climategate in a nutshell. Everyone “out of the loop” who read any of the damning emails and files could see it plain as day. The insiders are still deluding themselves that they are the good guys in this.

Bob Barker

IPCC AR-4 , Working Group 1 Summary for Policymakers, Figure SPM.2 displays 9 radiative forcing components. The level of scientific understanding was judged by the authors to be high for 2 of 9, medium for 1 of 9, medium to low for 2 fo 9 and low for 4 of 9. More low understanding than anything else. That clearly says to me not enough understanding has been gathered to even define the problem

Here’s the page you’re referring to. Note the error bars, indicating the levels of uncertainty. The two radiative forcing components where the level of scientific understanding is judged to be high are also the two components with the greatest (positive) radiative forcing. They are carbon dioxide and methane, both major products of human activity. Thus they can conclude that the total net anthropogenic forcing is positive and almost certainly lies between +0.6 and +2.4 Watts per square meter, though is probably close to +1.6 Watts per square meter.

“But unlike heliocentrism, we cannot afford to wait a century for views
on climate change to catch up to climate science”
Well…uhm…I hate to break it to your buddy…but, climate science HAS become just LIKE “heliocentrism”, EVERYTHING revolves around AGW…..Okay…”egocentrism”.
No debate simply means you can’t defend your position…whatever the excuse to avoid debate.

Anthony

Heh, lame, can’t win your argument so you throw up an aberration. As we both know, the UK is not Wisconsin, and the ICO would have prosecuted them if he could.

Sorry, I didn’t realize this was an argument. I’m not a lawyer. I’m more interested in the science than this legal stuff. If you say the emails of government employees are not private then I take your word for it. It’s not something I’d investigated, until just now I tried googling it and came up with that Wisconsin teachers case, which it seems to me suggests there may be cases when the law decides that certain instances of electronic communication by government employees may be deemed private.
I’m aware that Wisconsin is not in the UK, but I’m assuming Dr Peterson also wasn’t in the UK when he sent the email, and I’m not sure where the server the emails were taken from was located, or whether that even matters. The law is whatever it is, and that’s only really ever known for sure when it’s tested in court my legal friends tell me, but I’d say taking without permission correspondance that was intended to be private and publishing it is a tad unethical, unless one can clearly demonstrate that disclosure is in the public interest (not simply that the public are interested in it) and that that overrides any personal harm that could result from publication (I guess that applies as much to Wikileaks as to this).
Anyway, I suppose the next time I email a government employee I’d better be careful what I say, or perhaps I’ll use the phone instead.

Roger Otip says:
January 17, 2011 at 5:11 pm
ScientistForTruth
what if climate science is wrong on attribution, or models, or understanding, or physics? Do we really want to advance “views” and policies towards what is wrong, then?
If the science turns out to be wrong and yet we’re already some way down the road of transitioning our economies to a post-fossil fuels world, building nuclear power stations, investing in and developing renewables, well, this is something we’d have had to have done sooner or later as these fossil fuels are running out, plus our dependance on them binds us to some pretty unsavoury regimes. But if the science turns out to be right but we have not taken action to reduce our emissions, then the consequences could be grave.
========================================================
Hi Roger, hope you’re still here………a response to your response…..
Errr, no, we’re not building new nuclear plants. At least not anywhere near what is necessary. What we are doing is building wind and solar plants. We’re a few centuries or so away from running out of fossil fuels. And no, you nor anyone else knows what we would have done 10/20/50/100 years from now. As to wind and solar, REE are necessary materials for these to work. The U.S. mines none. China does. Nice, we’re spending billions so we can be more dependent on a leftist regime as opposed to being more dependent on a leftist regime. (China or Venz.) Somehow, I don’t feel good about this. Strange. But here! This is your money quote!…….
“But if the science turns out to be right but we have not taken action to reduce our emissions, then the consequences could be grave.”
There is a large body of science that says it isn’t correct. So much so, it would be ludicrous to act before more information is available. But, as you’ve stated we’ve already taken steps towards these goals. Indeed, we have. We’ve come up with a wonderful scheme to turn a food source into a fuel source for motorized vehicles. Brilliant! The fuel is less efficient and costs more to produce. That on it face really isn’t what the problem is, though. But, I’m sure you know all of this already. What the problem is, a very foreseeable consequence was that food prices have dramatically risen. We’re now using wind and solar generation for electricity, backed up by natural gas. This in turn has raised the price of both electricity and natural gas(used for cooking and heat). For everybody! So, in sum, in our Quixotic quest, we’ve managed to raise the cost of food, fuel, and electricity, for nearly every person on this planet! I’ll repeat what you said, “then the consequences could be grave.”
Sir, have you check the alarmist body count lately? People have starved. We’ve doubled the price of corn! This in turn has raised the prices of all other commodities! How many died in the U.K. because they had to choose between food or warmth? And that is just one very affluent nation! What of the less fortunate nations? Why? Because we’re afraid of 1 or 2 degrees more warmth? History tells us this is good for the world. Because someone thinks an essential molecule is evil? Even if all of the dark fantasies of the warmists were true, this would only present a slight challenge for mankind to overcome just as all of our predecessors had done ins the past. The cowardice displayed by a significant portion of this planet disgusts me to the point of revulsion. Scared, others have to die because you and people like you are scared of the unknown.
The consequences could be grave and indeed they were. Many souls took your consequences to the grave. And you and I helped pay for it.

I am not sure I understand the point of the rebuttal.
1. If I have thousands of emails in my account but only two of them describe my shoplifting, am I any less of a shoplifter because there are thousands of other emails that don’t describe shoplifting?
2. The idea that one is “in a fight” assumes they have set their sights on a goal. They aren’t allowing they data to lead them where they will, this shows an almost limbic protection of their hypothesis in the face of criticism. It is a matter of protecting the conclusion and not a matter of close analysis of the data. A scientist or (worse) a group of scientists striving to be victorious seems somehow anti-science. The truth doesn’t “fight”, it just is.
Nobody is “fighting” the AGW scientists but many are looking closely at the data and saying, “wait a minute, 2+2 does not equal 5”. The adjustments; the removal of rural, high latitude, and high altitude stations; the continuing changing of the adjustments over time that walk older data colder and newer data warmer; all of this is giving people pause. Added to this the appearance of hiding data and methods, and finally the climategate emails on top of all of that like a nice neat ribbon with a bow to wrap it all up … it looks bad. It looks very bad.

Roger Otip says:
January 17, 2011 at 7:17 pm
“ICO would have prosecuted them if he could.”
_______________________________________________________
I admire your implicit faith that there is no corruption in AGW science circles.

“-Releasing additional selected emails would make the fight fairer
–But not civil”
History is not filled with civility in the quest for truth.
Ergo, is the call for civility a quest for lies?
The same people that will cry fowl at the the medieval persecution of scientific persuits, not acknowledging the lack of civility in attainment of scientific freedom, now call for civility against scientific freedom, lest exposure of bad science and ego’s fall. Science for the sake of science?
Wether it’s the squabbling over the “Hobbits” hominids because it doesn’t fit a concensus that is based in theory only, anyway. Or, the concensus of Dr. Hawass in his overbearing assurtions of Egyptology providing, once again, civility in place of debate.
Science should be a Donnybrook, let the best science win.

@roger Otip

If the science turns out to be wrong and yet we’re already some way down the road of transitioning our economies to a post-fossil fuels world, building nuclear power stations, investing in and developing renewables, well, this is something we’d have had to have done sooner or later as these fossil fuels are running out, plus our dependance on them binds us to some pretty unsavoury regimes. But if the science turns out to be right but we have not taken action to reduce our emissions, then the consequences could be grave.

This is just a re-wording of the precautionary principle.
A brief analog: My ex-wife and I used to argue over whether to go see what our first baby daughter was squawking about. I’d tell her she needed to not respond immediately, that sometimes babies just squawk and then calm down. Early on she asked, “But what if she puked and is lying in it?” Well, of all the things that might have been bothering the baby, lying in puke wasn’t the most urgent, not by several magnitudes.
Climate scientists have pulled up every form of “puked and lying in it” poppycock since AGW was first considered a possibility – from rising sea level to coral reefs to ice sheets falling into the ocean to leaving our grandkids a desert planet, everything but “the sky is falling.” As soon as facts refuting one of the claims are brought into the argument, they shift to one of the others, giving us skeptics (not Trenbreth’s “deniers”) a moving target – a moving target that we’ve gotten pretty adept at hitting.
Peak oil has been dredged up by every Boy That Cried Wolf since Malthusian Paul Ehrlich told us not only oil but all our raw materials were going to run out – soon. As has happened many times since Ehrlich, we’ve found new oil fields right and left and are no closer to running out now than we were in 1975.
No, the world did not puke and it is not lying in it. We do not have to run scared every time an alarm is sounded by the same crowd. That was the lesson of that Boy Who Cried Wolf, wasn’t it – that after a while people stop listening? What is it about “false alarms” do you not understand?

Dr Peterson has forgotten that science is a bit like pregnancy-you can’t be a little bit pregnant and in science you can’t be a little bit dishonest. [one email is sufficient]. In Oz we had the sad spectacle of a scientist winning fame for noting the connection between thalidomide and birth defects. He became so enthused that he fudged the results that didn’t fit until his staff were compelled to expose the matter and he duly went to goal. In my estimation the actions of the climate enthusiasts were as bad and they would be wise to be humble amd polite lest they be judged by less complaisant committees. Geoff Broadbent

“A good summary of similar issue though on a different topic by Michael
D. Gershon, M.D. (1999)
-“The experiments I conducted to this point gave me a feeling of
confidence that my work could withstand anyone’s scrutiny, which I
assumed (foolishly, it turned out) would be both logical and reasonable.””
So are you saying that scientific work no longer has to withstand scrutiny? That is NOT science.
“A scientist’s response to both knives and illogic tends to be more science
-Sound, rigorous, peer-reviewed science
-What we do best
-And in the end it will win the day”
Please define “winning the day”? How can you win anything if you haven’t already set a goal – and by doing so you already have a preferred outcome. This is NOT science.
Please Dr. Peterson, do answer these worrysome questions.. I have no knife 🙂

William McClenney says:
“Personally, I rather doubt it is possible for this long practicing scientist to effectively communicate the contempt that we hold for the rather young science of climatology, and the even lower esteem that we have for climatologists. ”
Now here I think I can mount a defence of the subject. Climate is a long term phenomena and any change occurring over periods of less than a decade really aren’t meaningful. So, in essence we can boil down the whole of this global warming “theory” into 16 decadal measurements from 1851 to 2011.
Now that we’ve had the first measurement of this century, what have the climate “scientists” got to do for the next 9 years of the decade except speculate and discuss the last 16 data points?
There is simply so little real data in global warming “science” that the whole of the measurement system could be done by three people almost literally sitting in the pub once a month with a laptop spreadsheet whilst watching football on TV.
That’s the science of global warming and what on earth was left to these guys to do for the remaining 99% of the time except make wild speculations and because they can’t honestly create new data, what other alternative did they have to expand their subject other than to try to find new ways to “interpret” the same data to better “explain” their speculative theories.
The devil makes work for idle hands, and perhaps if those in related fields like geology and archaeology and weather forecasting had paid closer attention to what these guys were doing, then they would have paid more heed to what the data really said rather than what they wanted it to say and we wouldn’t have created such a contemptible subject.

But unlike heliocentrism, we cannot afford to wait a century for views
on climate change to catch up to climate science
Seems the esteemed Dr. James Hansen concurs.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jan/17/china-style-dictatorship-of-climatologists/
http://hauntingthelibrary.wordpress.com/2011/01/12/hansen-us-democracy-not-competent-to-deal-with-global-warming-calls-on-communist-china-to-save-humanity/
http://motls.blogspot.com/2011/01/hansen-chinese-communists-have-to-lead.html
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2011/1/12/more-green-tirades-against-democracy.html
Somehow I missed hearing about these enlightened views of Dr. Hansen until I noticed the Washington Times piece, where Climate Depot was mentioned. Went there, found these links.
I think all WUWT readers should examine Dr. Hansen’s remarks. And wonder exactly what Hansen’s fellow (C)AGW-accepting climatologist Dr. Peterson means by “…we cannot afford to wait…” As well as what “we” are willing to do instead of waiting.

How can Dr P know that the released Climategate emails were a biassed sample?
I suppose good ole honest Phil told him.
How about he gets ALL GOHP’s emails and lets us decide.

From Brent Hargreaves on January 18, 2011 at 2:49 am:

Aye, there’s the rub. If Dr. Peterson wishes to stand or fall by the content of his science, may he make falsifiable predictions. A statement such as “If the UAH MSU stays below +0.6C for the next decade, at New Year 2021 I will concede defeat and declare the AGW theory refuted,” would show his integrity.

From this would come the deadline of “before New Year 2021” for Dr. Peterson et al to maneuver the installation of “qualified individuals” to facilitate the “scientifically valid adjustments” to the UAH satellite records to ensure that doesn’t happen. ☺

Dr. Peterson writes:
A scientist’s response to both knives and illogic tends to be more science
-Sound, rigorous, peer-reviewed science
A statement which I would have immediately agreed with 20 years ago, but what climategate has demonstrated is yet another example of the failure of peer review in science. The delusion that since everyone who is working in the same area agrees with ones conclusions then ones research findings must be true may be of no consequence if one is studying mating habits of mosquitoes. In the area of climate “science” the incestuous relationship between statist politicians and proponents of CAGW threatens fundamental freedoms and external auditing of CAGW conclusions is mandatory.
The effect of factors unrelated to the subject being studied is well known in medical research and researchers are required to list in detail the sources of their funding and if they sit on pharmaceutical company advisory boards. The role of politics in climate “science” is paramount and I am immediately suspicious of any research that is funded by a government which will use the results as the basis for increased regulation or to increase taxes. Scientists working in such areas should be subject to the same sort of scrutiny as medical researchers who have to indicate whether they own significant amounts of stock in the drug company whose drug they are researching.
Almost two decades before climategate, Dr. E. Suter published a paper entitled Guns in the medical literature, a failure of peer review which provided an damning indictment of the research findings of researchers who had anti-gun views and published numerous papers supporting their views in such prestigious journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine. This was an example of political interference with science and fortunately the majority of Americans saw through the invalid conclusions from this “peer reviewed” research.
When I see a medical paper in the area of pharmacology whose funding is from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, I immediately downgrade the significance of the paper in my mind as my experience has been that researchers funded by NIDA tend to publish alarmist interpretations of pharmacology. As one of the primary drives of most grant supported scientists is to obtain future research grants, then publishing papers whose views reflect those of the granting agency occurs.
Climate science is not a difficult discipline. The raw data is available to anyone who has a computer and sufficient disk storage for temperature records. 20 years ago performing calculations of mean world temperature required computing capacity which was only available to universities but now every person with a PC has the equivalent of a 1980’s supercomputer on their desktop. This is an area which is well within the reach of any amateur climatologist and people who frequent WUWT have an impressive array of academic credentials. If they fail to replicate results of “peer reviewed” climate science then it is likely that the inbred climate “science” establishment is at fault, not the non-government grant supported amateur scientists.
It is no longer sufficient to state that a paper is “peer reviewed”, but one must also indicate the source of the research grants and personal interest that the authors of the paper have in their conclusions. I only hope that climategate doesn’t lead to a massive public distrust of science.

Graham says:
January 17, 2011 at 5:26 pm
“–Just ask Galileo” (re heliocentrism, no doubt!)
If only. He would turn in his grave at the thought that his lonely courageous stand against a corrupt or pig ignorant establishment would be twisted so perversely in defence of to-day’s corrupt or pig ignorant establishment.
@ ScientistForTruth January 17, 2011 at 10:03 am:
“Heliocentrism would have caught on a lot quicker if he hadn’t tried to paint those who were sceptical of his views – including the Pope, who was originally his friend – as ignorant fools.” They were just that.
********************************************************
No, this is naive. Sure, some scientists and historians and playwrights have distorted the history to make Galileo’s position seem like a “lonely courageous stand against a corrupt or pig ignorant establishment”, but that is just junk history. Sure, the Roman Catholic church was a corrupt establishment; everything else in that sentence is false. The establishment was by no means ‘pig ignorant’, nor were those who defended geocentrism ‘ignorant fools’. Sure, by and large, the establishment didn’t agree with Galileo, though many Jesuit astronomers did. Although the counter arguments now seem to have been wrong (no parallax detected, vertical projectiles not falling sideways etc) Galileo had no real answers to the objections. Although he had abandoned the Aristotelian idea of geocentrism, he still clung to the idea that circular motion was essential, even though Kepler showed that the planets move in ellipses. Galileo was rude to Kepler, and just about anyone else who didn’t agree with him. Had he published his work as a theory there would have been no problem, but he went about promoting it as a fact and regarding everyone else as stupid who did not agree with him: he was arrogant and unpleasant to the point of rudeness. Considering he enraged one of his best friends (who became Pope) by breaking his agreement with him and painting him into a dialogue as a fool, and for persisting in publishing his views when Europe was fighting the bitter Thirty Years War over religion, Galileo was lucky not to come out worse than he did. Yes, Galileo was right on a few things, we now know with the benefit of hindsight, but the establishment was not ignorant (though it was, ultimately, wrong) and Galileo should not be painted as some sort of martyr for science – he would have been far more effective if he had behaved reasonably and honourably.

Chris Wright says:
January 18, 2011 at 5:46 am
“In his day Galileo was the sceptic. He was a “the world goes around the sun denier”. ”
Think you mean “the sun goes around the world denier”.
Why all this adulation of Galileo, anyway? He didn’t believe that the planets were attracted to the sun but that they went in perfect circles because that was perfect motion – an Aristotelian dogma. He opposed Kepler who had data showing that the planets move in ellipses – and Kepler knew about the sun’s attraction: he was within a whisker of Newton’s law of gravitation, and was trying to figure out what the ‘power’ of the distance factor in the denominator should be. When Newton postulated that it was a square law he proved it by demonstrating that this was consistent with Kepler’s laws. In 1604 Kepler had published showing the inverse square law for light. The first published work defending heliocentrism, after Copernicus, was by Kepler in 1596, which he sent to prominent astronomers and patrons in 1597, and he worked out the laws of planetary motion in several important publications up to 1621. Galileo only built a telescope in 1609 after he learned how to make one when in Venice, and others were using telescopes before him and drawing pictures of the moon. Kepler improved telescopic optics in 1611 by substituting a convex lens for an eyepiece, allowing much higher magnification. Kepler’s ‘Epitome of Copernican Astronomy’ (seven books, completed 1621) was read all over Europe and by 1630 was the most popular astronomy textbook, supporting heliocentrism, with planets following elliptical paths due to helio-attraction (unlike Galileo’s idea of perfect circular motion, where they moved in perfect circles because they were NOT acted upon by a force – a bastard Aristotelian concept). Galileo’s ‘Dialogue concerning the two chief world systems’ came out in 1632, very, very late in the game, and Galileo’s troubles through this were almost entirely his own making: political and personal rather than scientific.

Dr Petersen deserves some credit for taking up Anthony’s offer and I applaud him for that. Anthony, kudos to you for offering Dr Petersen this forum to explain himself.
One of the facets of this discussion and of Dr Petersen’s comments that fascinates me is the idea that civilised professionals in the 21st century might take weapons along with them to settle arguments. This highlights a psychological aspect of American society wherein protagonists in a discussion go as far as to perceive themselves as embattled and anonymous historical characters which, to me, seems juvenile and silly. Life is not a game of ‘Cowboys and Injuns’ which most boys in the Western world played until it become definitely non-PC to refer to Native Americans as ‘Injuns’ and we all grew up and learned that the ‘Cowboys’ were not always pure and morally upright and that the ‘Injuns’ were frequently the good guys..
Most of the mythology of the ‘Wild West’ is just that, but some Americans seem to have a deep psychological need to see themselves as the mythological good cowboys who always wore white 10-gallon hats.
As I see it, Dr Petersen, you do not qualify for a white 10-gallon hat as you fired a nasty sneak shot at a reputation from behind the saloon; this shot was the term ‘Climate Fraudit’. Cowboys who qualify for white hats have a code; they are so expert at what they do, including being amazingly fast on the draw, they always wait for their opponent to go for their six-guns first, they always tell the truth and they always face life squarely and with honour.
And sorry, Dr Petersen, but casting yourself as taking a similar position on science and truth as Galileo did is just a transparent piece of utter silliness.

@Ian H January 18, 2011 at 12:53 am:

That only some of the emails were leaked raises the very interesting question of the process by which the leaked emails were selected. Tom Petersen invites us to infer that some malicious person went through all Phil Jones’ emails and picked out only the most incriminating. I find this unlikely.

A: Dr. P’s term “malicious person” argues that the attitudes in the emails themselves was not malicious, but that a whistleblower’s actions are. (It has never been determined that the release was an outside job, so an internal whistleblower is very much still on the table.)
B: Unlikely? I do expect that it is very likely that the emails were targeted and not random. At the same time, I do not believe that all the damaging ones have been released. The other shoe may yet be dropped.

So if not all emails were leaked, how were the leaked ones selected?
As I understand it the CRU was resisting/ignoring several FOIA requests at the time. It seems quite likely that data responsive to these FOIA requests may have been assembled at some point just in case, but then not actually released. Perhaps what was dumped on the net was such a cache of assembled information.

This logic would work if these emails were not damaging ones, but were on-topic for a FOIA request. They are anything but that.

Seems like the file released from UEA contained about the sorts of files; e-mails and code and the like, that would comply with an FOI request; and seeing that such a request was on file; then it seems that the released file; was it FOIA2009, contained only the materials being requested.
Maybe that is why it didn’t contain all the unrelated e-mails of Phil Jones. Remind me again; what was the name of the gal who was convicted of stealing all those files illegally; I can’t seem to remember who it was now; it’s been so long.

From Peterson’s Lesson 2 he says, “Only a small percentage of Phil Jones’ emails on that server were released
-The subset that was released was not random.”
This suggests to me, if Jones was not the leaker, that someone else had access to many or all of Jones’ emails. It could be that, as George E Smith says above, ” that the released file; was it FOIA2009, contained only the materials being requested. Maybe that is why it didn’t contain all the unrelated e-mails of Phil Jones.”
Or could it be that the subset emails (FOIA2009?) were taken out so as to be NOT included in the FOI request, as they are (presumably) the most damning. Just a thought.

So, it seems that random snapshots of the gang leaving in the getaway car aren’t reflective of the actual crime. Hmmm.

steven mosher

In all of his private communications with me and his public communications, steve has never suggested that Mann is a fraud.

In fact, he’s asked people to stop claiming that the hockey stick is fraudulent. I applaud him for that and I hope the people making those claims take heed of his words. Sometimes your most fanatical supporters can do more harm to your reputation than your worst enemies.