Several people have asked me to write a summary for laypeople of the entire CRU hacked emails and files affair, since it is so complex. They wanted something they could send to mom, dad, aunts, uncles who haven’t a clue about the hockey stick, CRU, HadCRUT, PCA, and YAD061.
I started to do so, but noticed that a blogger in my own hometown, Lon Glazner, who writes “Commission Impossible” dealing with local issues, had written up a pretty good summary on the issue, so I asked if I could print some excerpts of it. He gladly obliged. Here are excerpts from his post “Men behaving badly“.
What’s the hubbub? It all comes down to men behaving badly. Emails and files related to top scientists that support man made global warming theory were released in the hacked files. These scientists have authored/co-authored many of the studies relied on by the UN IPCC, and world governments. The studies have been used to pronounce global warming an immediate, and therefore taxable, threat.
Here are some of the highlights of the documents released.
1. The scientists colluded in efforts to thwart Freedom of Information Act requests (across continents no less). They reference deleting data, hiding source code from requests, manipulating data to make it more annoying to use, and attempting to deny requests from people recognized as contributors to specific internet sites. Big brother really is watching you. He’s just not very good at securing his web site.
2. These scientists publicly diminished opposing arguments for lack of being published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. In the background they discussed black-balling journals that did publish opposing views, and preventing opposing views from being published in journals they controlled. They even mention changing the rules midstream in arenas they control to ensure opposing views would not see the light of day. They discuss amongst themselves which scientists can be trusted and who should be excluded from having data because they may not be “predictable”.
3. The scientists expressed concern privately over a lack of increase in global temperatures in the last decade, and the fact that they could not explain this. Publicly they discounted it as simple natural variations. In one instance, data was [apparently] manipulated to hide a decline in temperatures when graphed. Other discussions included ways to discount historic warming trends that inconveniently did not occur during increases in atmospheric CO2.
4. The emails show examples of top scientists working to create public relations messaging with favorable news outlets. It shows them identifying and cataloging, by name and association, people with opposing views. These people are then disparaged in a coordinated fashion via favorable online communities.
What the emails/files don’t do is completely destroy the possibility that global climate change is real. They don’t preclude many studies from being accurate, on either side of the discussion. And they should not be seen as discrediting all science.
Kudos to Anthony for being there, online, and being prepared to handle the traffic this topic generated. I would hope that this event would precipitate a greater openness regarding publicly funded research. It would be nice to see better adherence to scientific method. At the very least it has exposed some well funded, ivory tower thinkers, behaving very poorly.
I should mention that we all owe Lon Glazner a debt of gratitude, because it was a discussion with him on the science and engineering of thermometer systems that got me thinking about the surface measurement systems in place today used to record climate, and the problems they might have.
See it here, one of my early blog posts: In search of the perfect thermometer.
About two months after that discussions, the surfacestations.org project started.
Be sure to drop a note of thanks for building that fire under me on Lon’s blog, he deserves a traffic flood 😉
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Something this mess reminds me of is how in several cases contractors being paid to develop new military hardware have falsified their test results in order to keep the money coming in.
The difference is those companies have mostly really believed they could get the problems resolved, given enough time and money. In some cases (the Bradley Fighting Vehicle) the bugs eventually did get fixed and the product ended up being quite good, though at a huge cost overrun. In some cases taking shortcuts has cost lives, see Apollo 1 and the Therac 25. (Therac 25 is often used as a case study in how NOT to design a software control system.)
In contrast, these scientists *know* they’re peddling crap and their “fix” is to make it stink even worse.
R Taylor (16:41:21) :
Gavin says he has gone home for Thanksgiving, but there’s a rumor that he and Jim are dumping files into the East River. So non-delusional drivers should keep a look out for cardboard boxes on East River Drive.
Well, he *did* predict the river would be 20 feet higher by 2010, and he’s only got another five weeks to raise that water level up…
I’d still like to make sure my understanding is right about some particulars. If I remember correctly something I gleaned from WUWT, there are about 4 major metrics of the “temperature of the globe”, and one of them is Hadley CRU — is that right? And is Hadley CRU owned by the institution that got hacked? And is Hadley CRU the metric that is usually showing warmer temperatures than the other major metrics?
“What the emails/files don’t do is completely destroy the possibility that global climate change is real.”
Of course climate change is real. The default state of climate is that of constant change in a random, variable extent and rate.
And although the emails do not “completely destroy” the man-made climate change hypothesis, (all they do is remove any credibility from the peer-review pronouncements of that change), the data (in the raw code and comments and read me files), itself kills the temperature record that the MMGW hypothesis hangs upon. As posters above state, the raw data contained data elements, some of which were either incomplete, missing, wrong, duplicated, or utterly unintelligable (eg not being able to decipher what continent a particular station was located on) in other words, a complete and unreliable mess!
Based on this there is no way to reconstruct a reliable definitive record, but they needed to prove that the earth has warmed, (rather than prove what really happened regardless of bias) and in the code and comments of the program, appear damning comments that show wilful and deliberate falsification of temperatures. Lowering temperatures in earlier years and inventing other sets of temperatures from missing databases and raising recent temperatures in ways that “hide the decline” (yes that song is still going through my head).
Based on that alone, how can anyone have any confidence that the temperature record is an accurate reflection of what has actually happened in history? The code and the comments show, clearly, that the temperature record is false. It is no longer showing the same data as the originating station’s temperature data. The record HAS been altered.
If you are basing your hypothesis that the earth has warmed, on a temperature record which we now know to be false, then that hypothesis is wrong, it is void, it is shamefully a fraud.
As far as I can tell, there is nothing else that MMGW can be measured against other than the actual temperature record. IF the temperature record does NOT actually show warming, then man-made global warming cannot exist and we are only left with Mann made global warming.
This is the specific and absolute heart of the MMGW hypothesis. If the increase in atmospheric concentration of CO2 from 200ppm to 380ppm over the last 150 years has actually NOT seen a significant increase in global temperature, then there can be NO evidence whatsoever to support the hypothesis. The hypothesis fails. Is is false. It is dead.
let’s look to this story : http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/25/uh-oh-raw-data-in-new-zealand-tells-a-different-story-than-the-official-one/ which actually shows that an ‘unadjusted-by-man’ record of the temperature at least in one location has NOT warmed significantly at all over that timescale. The only temperature records which do show ‘significant’ warming appear to be ones which have been adjusted.
So yes, a combination of the emails (which discredit the entire peer-review process in climatology) and the data (which demonstrates that the temperature record itself is false) DOES completely destroy the possibility that MAN MADE global climate change is real.
Any warming is entirely coincidental to CO2 increases, not causative.
Now can we all, finally dump and destroy this fraudulent AGW dream once and for all, and agree to CLEAN UP the planet? Plant more trees, restore areas blighted by real chemical pollution? save the millions of species threatened with extinction by the destruction of natural habitats? Hmmmmmmm? All this CO2 distraction is an evil and dangerous sideshow.
Agreed, as I stated in my previous and other posts. Plainly the work of an inside whistle-blower and hero.
Re: Ken Hall (06:43:22) :
” the data (in the raw code and comments and read me files), itself kills the temperature record that the MMGW hypothesis hangs upon.”
So how come almost all the glaciers in the world are melting?
It looks like global warming was underestimated.
@Robert M. Marshall (17:30:06) :
I have some of the same experience as you in the nuclear industry. I’ve been looking at the science of global warming for about 6 months now, reading the IPCC reports, etc. If you do the same, I suspect you will find its definitely amature hour with these climate so-called scientists. They have no clue what a configuration management program is, what a truly rigorous, structured oversight process is, or what a quality assurance and control program is. In the nuclear industry we learned a long time ago that the scientific peer review process is a joke.
Today’s Climategate Enabler: The Lancet
http://nygoe.wordpress.com/2009/11/26/global-warming-hoax-enabler-the-lancet/
I am curious as to how much of this “mountain” of evidence and studies for AGW remains after you take out all of the studies/statements/models/etc that were in anyway affected by the scientists implicated in this exposure.
The supporters keep saying that there is a mountain of evidence out there even without this group, I ask that somebody proves it.
Ken Hall
Thanks for your post. It takes effort to express things simply, and you have done it brilliantly. I have taken a copy, and I wish it would appear in the MSM.
Bishop Hill Smoking gun?
November 26, 2009
Climate On the code thread, James Smith has just posted this comment:
From the file pl_decline.pro: check what the code is doing! It’s reducing the temperatures in the 1930s, and introducing a parabolic trend into the data to make the temperatures in the 1990s look more dramatic.
Could someone else do a double check on this file? Could be dynamite if correct.
Update on November 26, 2009 by Bishop Hill
This is what all the fuss is about, but the reader who sent it thinks perhaps it may be a storm in a teacup. Still, it is strange that one would want to put an adjustment like this through a temperature series.
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2009/11/26/smoking-gun.html#comments
@ur momisugly RR Kampen:
http://www.iceagenow.com/Growing_Glaciers.htm
Here’s an oldie but goodie:
Dave Wendt (13:44:31) :
Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to believe.
–Laurence J. Peter
RR Kampen (08:35:07) :
Re: Ken Hall (06:43:22) :
” the data (in the raw code and comments and read me files), itself kills the temperature record that the MMGW hypothesis hangs upon.”
———
“So how come almost all the glaciers in the world are melting?
It looks like global warming was underestimated.”
==========
This is why we have to avoid the temptation to overstate and declare victory–it sets us up for counterpunches like that. In particular, we must avoid implying that the world isn’t warming, because there are clear natural proxies that show that it has been.
We must instead merely play for time, and ask only that some panels of non-Team scientists hold hearings on this whole CAWG business for a year or two and rout out the rot. It’s the least that science can do. That’s an offer they can’t refuse.
Given time, and a neutral forum, sanity will reassert itself.
Bob T
re tim mitchell and your searches:
BTW THE POSSIBLE RELATIONSHIP WITH JOHN MITCHELL SHOULD ALSO BE EXPLORED…
Climate Cat out of the Bag? Potentially dynamite revelations
Yes, this is the guy harry is referring to in that Harry_Read_Me.txt file, ‘what did tim do’ while trying to make sense of all the code, recreate data, etc,etc,etc.
“On we go.. firstly, examined the spc database.. seems to be in % x10.
Looked at published data.. cloud is in % x10, too.
First problem: there is no program to convert sun percentage to
cloud percentage. I can do sun percentage to cloud oktas or sun hours
to cloud percentage! So what the hell did Tim do?!! As I keep asking.”..
EXCERPTS: Dr. Tim Mitchell,
Highbury Baptist Church;
formerly of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research…
Tim Mitchell bio: ( a little bit changed to CAPS by me)
In 1997 I moved to Norwich to carry out the research for a PhD at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia. My subject was the development of climate scenarios for SUBSEQUENT USE BY RESEARCHERS investigating the impacts of climate change. I was supervised by Mike Hulme and by John Mitchell (Hadley Centre of the UK Meteorological Office). The PhD was awarded in April 2001.
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timm/personal/index.html – Cached ..
just an observation, Tim Mitchell isn’t by any chance RELATED to Dr John Mitchell(now Professor John Mitchell OBE – Director of Climate Science – Met Office), his supervisor… probably not, just possibly bizarre coincidence, anybody want to find out….
So basically 12 years ago , a phd student working on thesis, put together some code, which has evovoled into the mess ‘harry’ is trying to sort out make sense of, reproduce results of previously published data….
Did anyone think, it was teams of professional programmers developing robust code?
testing models, etc,etc,etc…
http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=205&t=775382&i=2500&mid=0&nmt=Climate%20Cat%20out%20of%20the%20Bag?%20Potentially%20dynamite%20revelations
Today the Toronto Sun had a half page column on this, opinioning that the facts do not matter as they say “it not about science but money and power, your tax money and their power” and went on to say this will not stop them and advised its readers to email PM Harper and gave contact details for email, phone and fax. This seems a good strategy we perhaps should all start on it at home.
Roger Knight said, “so why are almost all of the glaciers in the world melting…”
Were you watching Fox Business Channel?
That excuse was used by one of their Liberal commentators today.
Many of those glaciers are at altitudes that are never above freezing. From what Ikve read here and elsewhere the cause is (I hope I get this right) ablation where ice Evaporstes. The shrinking of the ice caps is due to lack of precipitation to replace the missing snow. Corrections. Welcome from any real climate scientist.
As for your plan to play nice and let a “neutral” panel sort it out, I respectfully submit that, at this point there can be no such thing as neutrality in this environment. Rest assured, AGW advocates will exploit any sign of wait and see on our part as a weakness to be exploited. They must be aggressively exposed as the frauds they are. We cannot let this chain of event fade into history as the one chance we had to restore integrity to science passed us by. .
RR Kampen (08:35:07) :
So how come almost all the glaciers in the world are melting?
It looks like global warming was underestimated.
They’re ablating, not melting. That’s what glaciers *do* during Interglacial Periods, and we’re living during one.
The problem is that WE, THE PEOPLE, are being blamed and the ELite scum are intending to tax us to death, and reduce us back to serfdom, like the Dark Ages.
These Elite/ptb SCUM-are hand in glove, one and the same as the CORPORATIONS, the VERY ones who are responsible for the detriment of the Planet, in the first place.