It is really too bad that I don’t have a subscription. I’m a bit late to commenting on this editorial that appeared in Nature magazine yesterday, but I feel it is important to say a few things about it, even though many WUWT readers have probably already seen the editorial.
1. For a scientific journal to use the label “denialists” is in my opinion unconscionable, and highlight’s Nature’s own bias. For the record, while there may in fact be a few people who deny any warming has occurred in the past 100 years (it has) the real issue is the cause. That is what skeptics are about. There are many academics and researchers that have questions about what is being presented in the mainstream climate science today. To put the full weight of Nature behind a broad brush labeling them as “deniers” or “denialists” is a huge mistake. The scientific integrity of one of the foremost scientific magazines has been tarnished by the use of a cheap slur.
2. The claims of harassment are ludicrous. The very foundation of science is based on the ability of other scientists to perform replication via data sharing. Finding excuses to not do this, and actively setting up hurdles to those requesting data for replication is not only not part of the scientific method, it is obstruction of the method. Had the files been provide in early FOI requests, no escalation of requests would have happened. CRU brought this on themselves, mainly due to the stubborn refusal of Dr. Jones to allow data for replication purposes. Besides, UAE has a person specifically assigned to handling FOIA requests. Jones had the data to fill the requests, all he had to do is hand them to the FOIA officer. He chose not to, further in one of the emails it was revealed that Jones and his staff lobbied that FOIA officer not to honor these requests. My hunch is that is where this row started.
3. For Nature to claim that:
Researchers are barred from publicly releasing meteorological data from many countries owing to contractual restrictions. Moreover, in countries such as Germany, France and the United Kingdom, the national meteorological services will provide data sets only when researchers specifically request them, and only after a significant delay.
Is pure rubbish. See point 5 below also – they provided the data to Peter Webster. The majority of weather stations that report data used in the CRU are from public airports worldwide. Here is a list of stations that was grudgingly provided by Phil Jones after years of effort, and it was delivered broken. McIntyre had to fix it. See the cru_station_info file. Pick a few stations in France, Germany, and United Kingdom, then go to weatherunderground.com and see if they are available as hourly reports, or check many of the publicly available climate data sistes It is public data. Yet CRU claims it is proprietary and protected by agreements and we can’t see the data they are using?. Something is wrong there.
I picked three from the countries listed at random from the cru station info file:
GERMANY HOHENPEISSENBERG See http://www.tutiempo.net/en/Climate/HOHENPEISSENBERG/109620.htm
FRANCE BOURGES See: http://www.tutiempo.net/en/Climate/Bourges/72550.htm
UK WADDINGTON See: http://www.tutiempo.net/en/Climate/Waddington/33770.htm
Anybody with a PC and Internet connection can get some of the data CRU uses that is claimed proprietary, so why the need for protectionism when a researcher asks for data from the same locations collated as used in CRU processes?
4. Nature assumes it was a hack in, but the evidence points to a leak, or even a carelessly left file on a public FTP site at CRU (which has happened before) Hackers are usually smash and grab affairs, with little time for understanding of what they are grabbing since they don’t know how long it willbe before they are discovered. They’ll sort it out later. The FOIA2009.zip appears to have been carefully assembled, pointing to someone with specific knowledge and broad access across systems. Further, hackers usually tout their exploits as “badges of honr”. We’ve heard nothing.
5. Previously, Nature reported on Steve McIntyre’s attempts to get access to this data in their report on August 12th, 2009 without so much as a disparaging word against Mr. McIntyre. They wrote then:
McIntyre is especially aggrieved that Peter Webster, a hurricane expert at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, was recently provided with data that had been refused to him.
Webster says his team was given the station data for a very specific request that will result in a joint publication with Jones. “Reasonable requests should be fulfilled because making data available advances science,” says Webster, “but it has to be an authentic request because otherwise you’d be swamped.”
Yet today, they drag out the slur denialist over the very same issue: data access and replication. If replication is not a valid request, then climate science is doomed.
Yes, I’d cancel my Nature subscription if I had one. – Anthony
Here is the Nature editorial as posted here: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7273/full/462545a.html
Editorial
Nature 462, 545 (3 December 2009) | doi:10.1038/462545a; Published online 2 December 2009
Climatologists under pressure
Stolen e-mails have revealed no scientific conspiracy, but do highlight ways in which climate researchers could be better supported in the face of public scrutiny.
The e-mail archives stolen last month from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (UEA), UK, have been greeted by the climate-change-denialist fringe as a propaganda windfall (see page 551). To these denialists, the scientists’ scathing remarks about certain controversial palaeoclimate reconstructions qualify as the proverbial ‘smoking gun’: proof that mainstream climate researchers have systematically conspired to suppress evidence contradicting their doctrine that humans are warming the globe.
This paranoid interpretation would be laughable were it not for the fact that obstructionist politicians in the US Senate will probably use it next year as an excuse to stiffen their opposition to the country’s much needed climate bill. Nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real — or that human activities are almost certainly the cause. That case is supported by multiple, robust lines of evidence, including several that are completely independent of the climate reconstructions debated in the e-mails.
First, Earth’s cryosphere is changing as one would expect in a warming climate. These changes include glacier retreat, thinning and areal reduction of Arctic sea ice, reductions in permafrost and accelerated loss of mass from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. Second, the global sea level is rising. The rise is caused in part by water pouring in from melting glaciers and ice sheets, but also by thermal expansion as the oceans warm. Third, decades of biological data on blooming dates and the like suggest that spring is arriving earlier each year.
Denialists often maintain that these changes are just a symptom of natural climate variability. But when climate modellers test this assertion by running their simulations with greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide held fixed, the results bear little resemblance to the observed warming. The strong implication is that increased greenhouse-gas emissions have played an important part in recent warming, meaning that curbing the world’s voracious appetite for carbon is essential (see pages 568 and 570).
Mail trail
A fair reading of the e-mails reveals nothing to support the denialists’ conspiracy theories. In one of the more controversial exchanges, UEA scientists sharply criticized the quality of two papers that question the uniqueness of recent global warming (S. McIntyre and R. McKitrick Energy Environ. 14, 751–771; 2003 and W. Soon and S. Baliunas Clim. Res. 23, 89–110; 2003) and vowed to keep at least the first paper out of the upcoming Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Whatever the e-mail authors may have said to one another in (supposed) privacy, however, what matters is how they acted. And the fact is that, in the end, neither they nor the IPCC suppressed anything: when the assessment report was published in 2007 it referenced and discussed both papers.
If there are benefits to the e-mail theft, one is to highlight yet again the harassment that denialists inflict on some climate-change researchers, often in the form of endless, time-consuming demands for information under the US and UK Freedom of Information Acts. Governments and institutions need to provide tangible assistance for researchers facing such a burden.
The theft highlights the harassment that denialists inflict on some climate-change researchers.
The e-mail theft also highlights how difficult it can be for climate researchers to follow the canons of scientific openness, which require them to make public the data on which they base their conclusions. This is best done via open online archives, such as the ones maintained by the IPCC (http://www.ipcc-data.org) and the US National Climatic Data Center (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/ncdc.html).
Tricky business
But for much crucial information the reality is very different. Researchers are barred from publicly releasing meteorological data from many countries owing to contractual restrictions. Moreover, in countries such as Germany, France and the United Kingdom, the national meteorological services will provide data sets only when researchers specifically request them, and only after a significant delay. The lack of standard formats can also make it hard to compare and integrate data from different sources. Every aspect of this situation needs to change: if the current episode does not spur meteorological services to improve researchers’ ease of access, governments should force them to do so.
The stolen e-mails have prompted queries about whether Nature will investigate some of the researchers’ own papers. One e-mail talked of displaying the data using a ‘trick’ — slang for a clever (and legitimate) technique, but a word that denialists have used to accuse the researchers of fabricating their results. It is Nature‘s policy to investigate such matters if there are substantive reasons for concern, but nothing we have seen so far in the e-mails qualifies.
The UEA responded too slowly to the eruption of coverage in the media, but deserves credit for now being publicly supportive of the integrity of its scientists while also holding an independent investigation of its researchers’ compliance with Britain’s freedom of information requirements (see http://go.nature.com/zRBXRP).
In the end, what the UEA e-mails really show is that scientists are human beings — and that unrelenting opposition to their work can goad them to the limits of tolerance, and tempt them to act in ways that undermine scientific values. Yet it is precisely in such circumstances that researchers should strive to act and communicate professionally, and make their data and methods available to others, lest they provide their worst critics with ammunition. After all, the pressures the UEA e-mailers experienced may be nothing compared with what will emerge as the United States debates a climate bill next year, and denialists use every means at their disposal to undermine trust in scientists and science.
Mark Robertson (22:16:07) :
“Anybody with a PC and …” That explains the MSM environmental reporters, they all use Macs!
Easy Tiger, he types, on his Mac Mini (lowest carbon footprint, apparently).
From what I am hearing/seeing, most of these fine folk studied Medieval Illuminated Script at University, not the warming of that period, and are required to do no more than take press releases from various bods they used to punt the Cam with and who are now either spin doctors for Miliband. E or if they did ‘do’ science them, refer to what they come out with as ‘Scientists say this could be…’. And if nailed then run to their best buds and wail ‘but it’s peer reviewed’.
I doubt a computer of any hue, at least in the ‘news’ rooms of the majority of the MSM, was ever involved.
This is a supreme example of damage control propaganda in a fascist state with a pretend free-press. It could have been written by any of the great truth twisters, Joseph Goebbels, Alan Dershowitz (whose falsehoods were exposed by Professor Finkelstein in one of the best tv debates ever http://tinyurl.com/ykbw87j )…
You have got to be impressed by the authors grasp of how to manipulate weak minds though. It is so good that I will have to check that it is not plagiarized from a George Orwell novel. Is Nature trying to compete with Popular Mechanics for Shaitan’s favour?
Nature are having a Nelson moment.
I see no corruption says the editor closing both eyes. What on earth is the nitwit thinking. That nobody can work out what was going on at UEA!!!
D King
That one has just been published on British news channel. SKY TV are working with the other crooks WWF for the whole of this week to try to persuade everyone that COP15 is a necessary success
Ben M (23:46:36) :
“One wonders how many sleight-of-hand tricks Nature has used in the past to keep the lie alive.”
Correct, it is not only the peer review process that’s broken, it’s also the journals. In order to repair our scientific peer review mechanism and prevent future erroneous scientific consensuses we will need to replace both the process and the journals.
Maybe after we’re done debunking catastrophic anthropogenic global warming Anthony can leverage WUWT to develop the first widely respected online interactive unfiltered open source open access peer reviewed website. It is already well on its way…
We can say what we like about the leak / hack however, Nature should be careful about coming to conclusions and name calling (deniers) prior to the release of the inquiry’s findings. The reason is simple: the inquiry may come out with conclusions that are the opposite of what Nature has concluded about the affair and they will be left looking biased and with egg-on-face.
At which point we might see Nature’s editor being forced to resign or retire to spend more time with the family. I’m sure Anthony would be more than happy to come back to the story should that happens.
Late News:
“The UN Panel on Climate Change is to probe claims UK scientists manipulated global warming data to boost the argument that it is man-made. ”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/science/nature/8394483.stm
The worst thing I find in the editorial is what they don’t say. They are perfectly content that data and processes which are being used (explicitly) to radically change the way we all live should remain secret.
Morally, this stuff can’t be kept private anymore, no matter what contractual arrangements exist. There is a moral burden to disclose everything, now. Even terrorist suspects are eventually allowed to know the case against them when they go on trial. We are being denied full disclosure and Nature is OK with that.
I can and do forgive individual scientists for being ambitious and underhanded and perhaps even wrong; they are only human. I can’t forgive an entire editorial board for failing to condemn the behaviour. Nature is a fine, glossy-looking fruit that is superficially wholesome, but it is rotten at the core.
Time for an Orange Revolution!
Ok, this was obviously written by someone with connections to the “Team” – this is apparent due to the language, the fact that it was unsigned, and that Nature may be implicated (I used Mike’s Nature trick) in this entire affair.
Global Warming or Pants on Fire?
People have got to stop being so terrified of theories that propose that two or more people have conspired against others, i.e. conspiracy theories, provided that there is enough robust evidence to support that theory, of course.
I make this point because I’ve noticed a lot of people saying things like, “I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but…”
Unfortunately the term “conspiracy theorist” has been totally hijacked over the decades such that it is now synonymous with “nutjob”. This can be attributed to the fact that there are many “theorists” who propose outlandish theories of conspiracy with scant evidence. And so they taint the better conspiracy theorists.
But the biggest conspiracy of all is that there “are no conspiracies”. As this latest Climategate scandal shows, conspiracies do indeed exist. All it takes is two or more people to conspire against another group of people. Why is it so hard to understand that governments and other organisations have been conspiring against the public since time immemorial? Small groups of people hiding things from larger groups of people in order to support an agenda, thereby increasing their power, is certainly nothing new. And neither are conspiracies.
Before this latest Climategate scandal, there were many in the climate science community who had very good reasons and evidence to theorise that data was being suppressed to support an agenda. Although they would never admit it, due to the negative connotation, they were very good conspiracy theorists. And now we should all be conspiracy *factualists* — people who can admit that what has transpired was indeed a conspiracy involving two or more scientists.
Reading this pompous piece of … is making my blood boil, so, bear with me and forgive me if I veer off into a momentary rant.
A number of years ago I was offered membership to MENSA. After careful consideration I declined. I did not then (and still don’t) believe it fitting to belong to any organization whose principle criteria for being allowed to join is how well one does on a test. [FWIW, the last time I tested, over a decade ago, the results put me in a percentile of +99.8] I am especially disgusted by rankings that describe people with higher test scores as “superior” and “very superior”. I’ll accept the older description of “genius”, but when someone with a high test score starts to believe that their worth is “superior” just because they’ve done well on a test, then it is time for a serious reality check.
Now, as for Nature.
Having followed the numerous stories over the past couple weeks as email files as well as many other text and program files were revealed displayed a disturbing leitmotif of intellectual superiority being brazenly flaunted toward anyone questioning the science being practiced. This self-serving piece in Nature is now the most outrageous display of pompous and pretentious arrogance toward all serious scientists and well educated laymen questioning (as properly they always should) a scientific hypothesis. What’s worse is that this hypothesis seems to have exploded fully formed into a well established theory with what can most kindly be described as a well orchestrated and funded support program from various politicians and bureaucrats internationally.
There is no serious doubt that the climate has warmed considerably over the past couple centuries. I doubt anyone would welcome a return to the conditions of the Little Ice Age. But any serious attempt at ascribing the warming that continued on into the latter part of the 20th century as being a result of mankind’s emissions of CO2 had best be vigorously argued — something that seems to have been lacking. This position seems to be less a scientific hypothesis or theory and more a dogma, with those advocating this dogma wrapping themselves in a cloak of science and intellectual superiority, and addressing all who would question this belief system with patronizing condescension.
To the editors of Nature and to the posturing scientists they seem to support who have embraced this AGW dogma:
It is time for a reality check and for you to get off your pedestals. You may be good at taking tests and grasping broad abstractions but as far as the workings of the real world are concerned, you’ve really lost it. I would rather spend a lifetime working with the fine folks in the labor pool who populate the warehouses of this country than spend an afternoon with the likes of you.
There. Rant over.
Is it typical for Nature editorials to go unsigned like this? I’d like to know who wrote this.
“The Royal Society (in London) is currently celebrating its 350 year anniversay, claimed to be the first and oldest scientific society in the world. It has a great history. One of its earliest publications (in the late 1600s) was Newton’s Principia. However, its current declarations on global warming are a scientific travisty – for which it should be ashamed – and I hope will be embarassed by in the future.”
Yes, it’s kind of ironic to find a body whose definingly scientific motto is “not because people say so” resorting to arguments of scientific authority to defend people who have been withholding data precisely to prevent other researchers from duplicating their work and so avoiding a “because I say so” situation!
What I’m not sure on is whether they’re stuck riding a tiger because they initially assumed they were defending properly peer-reviewed science against (what myth had it) were the evil oil-funded lunatic fringe – which is understandable but now a position they should be backing away from, whatever the embarrassment. Or whether those who are setting its agenda are of the same stripe as the Nature editorialiser, those who are allowing their politics and beliefs to override their scientific principles.
I let my subscription to Nature lapse some years ago after reading a review of Lomborg’s Sceptical Environmentalist If I remember correctly it was written by Stuart Pymm. I am still astonished and appalled that it was published in Nature.
Now if we ARE bashing journalists, on a slightly different tack, ITV (the main commercial rival to BBC in the UK) sent some journalists to the Himalaya to investigate glacier retreat/melting there.
Now they spoke with a guide who said that 2009 saw warming on Everest at the South Col at 8000m and even some melting further up. This is apparently highly unusual and, not surprisingly, coincided with considerable melting of the Khumbu glacier lower down.
Now this to me DOES seem worthy of discussion.
A few points might be raised:
1. How long has ANYONE been going anywhere near Everest? [More than 60 years on the South side and I’d be surprised]
2. How do we know what the ‘normal’ state of Everest and its glaciers is supposed to be?
3. What do we know about weather patterns in this region and how it links in to the major weather drivers in the Pacific and the Asian continent?
4. Whilst making the Khumbu glacier dangerous would affect tourist income through mountaineering permits, how many years of similar melting would it take to destroy the Khumbu glacier as a source of water for the people of Nepal?
5. Do we have any evidence yet on how rapidly the Khumbu responds to interannual variations in snowfall and temperature? Are we scaremongering due to one freakish year or is there genuinely a long-term retreat ongoing?
At least the journalists went there and spoke with local guides who know the mountain.
Now perhaps we need to find more hard data over decades, not tree ring or ice core but REAL TEMPERATURE, SNOWFALL AND GLACIER MASS-BALANCE DATA.
Calvin Ball (22:38:32) :
Completely off topic, but this I think would sail right over everyone’s heads at most blogs: http://tackyraccoons.com/2009/12/01/climategate-summarized/
Neat
Actually, don’t laugh. Reality is stranger than fiction.
I once can across a web page that purported to chart the world cover of snow and ice. Started by presenting the data as a time series graph. It was clearly a random walk.
So our erstwhile genius scientist proceeded to apply various ‘adjustments’ to it to eventually, a few steps later, come up with a steeply declining graph.
I suppose it does take genius to turn a random series of numbers into a steep decline of snow and ice cover over time.
Amazingly, all the comments left by the adoring crowd hailed this brilliant work.
Unbelievable.
AGW is more than confirmatory bias. It is collective insanity. It is the Red Queen believing six impossible things before breakfast.
It’s fine if they do have agreement that covers data from specific countries – but then I think Steve requested those agreements and of course they couldn’t find them or claimed they were verbal!
All Steve or anyone else really needs is the list of stations used to create the temperature reconstruction and the code used to apply adjustments to the raw data. It’s really not a lot to ask.
Oh boy! The best thing to do is not to subscribe to this stuff. Everything is available today on the Internet, and I’m absolutely sure this peer-review thing will collapse, and that we’re headed for open-source R&D
Ecotretas
Interview with Philip Campbell, editor-in-chief of Nature:
http://english.cri.cn/7146/2009/12/03/1901s533264.htm
He has few words about Climategate … I wonder if he was behind the editorial.
You guys reckon Nature is a rag… check out Un-Scientific American….
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=climate-change-cover-up-you-better-2009-11-24
Holy cow…. They’ll be marching into Poland next!
This editorial could have been written by Sir Humphrey Appleby. It certainly would have delighted PM Jim Hacker – yes, a topical name, that. If you haven’t seen the Yes Minister/Yes Prime Minister BBC series, do check them out. They are just the thing to compose one’s mind for ClimateGate.
Back to the Nature editorial. Mention of Arctic ice melting – no mention of the Arctic Oscillation which is thought by experts to be the main explanation. Mention of seas rising – the IPCC thinks they will, by about one whole foot. Climate models – can they predict the weather one month ahead? Human activities are almost certainly the cause, we read – no mention of recent alternative natural factors like solar variation and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. And the language, starting with ‘denialist’ with its holocaust overtones.
Tell them what you think, I just did.
http://www.nature.com/authors/editorial_policies/feedback.html
Following on from Peter Jones (22:34:05):
“I wonder if the folks at Nature would be happy with their physicians treating them with therapy based on research that required data manipulation to prove it worked?”
Would the staff of Nature fly in a plane that was designed by engineers with similar leaked emails and data of CRU? Would the MSM writers fly? These are important questions for people with a conscience to ask themselves privately and act accordingly.
International government policy is about to be radically changed which could cost people their lives, think about it. Land for biofuels causing hunger, money away from other killer diseases such as Malaria and hypertension, cost of electricity up killing more old people in NH winter. The law of unintended consiquences will kick in, mark my words.
Just The Facts (23:34:02)
“First they ignore you, then they mock you, then they fight you, then you win”