So much is being written about Climategate and the fallout from it, it is tough to cover it all. Here I’m just going to point out a coupe of posts by Harold Ambler at Talking About The Weather that may interest WUWT readers. He’s spent a lot of time on them, give him some traffic, hit the tip jar if you feel like it.
First we have:
Phil Jones offers myriad reasons for not sharing data
The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone.
Second:
There has been a lot of interest in this here at WUWT, Ambler actually called the CEO of Google to find out what was going on.
Both are worth a read. – Anthony
In the UK this morning the East Anglia University story was first item on the BBC Radio Four news followed by a 12 minute discussion between Philip Stott and Jonathon Porritt (ex -chairman of the Green Party).
Porritt was backed on to the ropes for most of the discussion . He could not deny that this was now a serious issue but sought to limit the damage by arguing that CRU was but one small part in the jigsaw of “thousands” of studies which supported the orthodoxy of anthropogenic global warming. He alluded to other institutions which backed this view even if we questioned the work at CRU. (NASA?) Eventually , under pressure from Stott he admitted, probably through gritted teeth , that not all of those who questioned this orthodoxy were fruit cakes and that there were serious scientists out there with proper questions . (Bang goes “the science is settled”)
Stott pointed out that the IPCC ‘s structure of argument was an inverted pyramid (nice image) resting on a point which consisting of the work of 30 or 40 modellers. If that point crumbled then the whole structure would fall. Porritt resisted the conclusion but did not fight the image or the suggested numbers
There has been a sizeable retreat by the green Establishment in this country over the past 48 hours.The new line of defence seems to be that , yes , this is serious but not fatal. What they are keen to emphasise (and, I sense, dread finding news to the contrary ) is that infection is limited to East Anglia and that American ground station research has not been corrupted as well.Is there not the additional question of whether satellite data, which is above suspicion but is, I understand ,calibrated against ground station results ,in all innocence, being skewed by the results at CRU? I leave that question to greater minds.
As one with a healthy scepticism about everything, as we all should possess, it is all very plausible, the denialist view that there was no big-brother interefrence in all this. However, those of us who possess that other noble quality about modern lifesyles/attitudes/belief-systems/computer-models, etc, i.e. cynicism, cannot help but think of a maloderous rodent or icthyoid somewhere along the line!!!! Have I watched too many Alfred Hitchcock movies, or should we really be looking at the people behind the scenes, rather than those at front of house, or both?
As the UK soon heads into Pantomime Season, & all jolly good family fun it is too, I suspect that, & I beg forgiveness & indulgence from my Colonial cousins, “They know, that we know, that they know, that we know, that they know, that we know,……………..” etc. Confusing? Well yes, of course it is, that’s what they want to sow, so that Government(s) can be looked upon as shining the leading light for all to follow. Their mendacity knows no bounds, after all, they are professional politicians, & that is precisely what they do best.
TGIF rant, although I wouldn’t agree with any of them, if one of them was to get to his/her feet & just say, “Hey, look, we don’t think it is right for poor people to exist in modern times, so we want to tax you to oblivion, seize the means of energy production, oppress your freedoms & lifestyles but not ours, (naturally), give all that dosh to a semi-corrupt unelected, unaccountable, undemocratic, unsackable, Marxist Socialist World Government, & we (ooops),…. they will decide who gets what on a fair (ly) reasonable basis to erradicate poverty. The fact that I & all my colleagues will enrich ourselves at the taxpayers’ expense, (then book deals/speech circuit, on how I saved the nation, continent, world, solar system), into the bargin because you are all too stupid to deserve better, is neither here nor there. The fact that many poor countries are run by rich, corrupt, & at times plain evil people & parties & business interests, & that around £385 will go to the populace of those countries, for every £M (385ppm) slipped into the back pockets of said politicos & business interests is irrelevent. They’re socialists of sorts so it doesn’t matter any way.” I would applaud them for their honesty, I really would! Then I would sit down with a beer & watch the last 10 minutes of V for Vendetta! I cannot think of one single UN scheme that has not been corrupted for financial gain somewhere along the way. Suggestions anyone?
HAGWE!
Neither Google, Bing or Yahoo auto-suggest climategate. AltaVista does.
What else are they surpressing? Probably not a lot, but we know Google censors for China at the very least.
The only thing that makes these huge companies pay attention is if they start losing market share. So I’ve changed my home page and default search engine to AltaVista. I suggest anyone else concerned does likewise.
No auto-suggestion in Spain [for English and Spanish language pages] with:
“climategate” with about 29,000,000 pages
“climate gate” with about 9,730,000 pages
“climate-gate” with about 27,800,000 pages
But we go get:
“climate gates” with about 10,100,000 pages
But i have a feeling that entry is there because of:
Climate Auto Gates manufacture and install automated domestic and commercial gates, bespoke gates, bollards, barriers, intercom systems and access controls.
http://www.climateautogates.co.uk
Just for fun i took a look at their website where they indicate they are
“COVERING – CAMBS – BEDS – ESSEX – HERTS – SUFFOLK – AREAS”
Have a feeling there are a few people wishing that Climate Auto Gates also covered NORWICH so they could have better protected their Climate Gate data.
Note for non UK readers: Norwich is in the county of NORFOLK which has a border with the county of SUFFOLK…. so close but yet so far…
Well it made me laugh…. 🙂 🙂 🙂
Nikki (23:26:26) :
I’ve noticed that Al Gore has just backed out of a ticketed COP 15 speech , 600 dollars a head , for Berlingske tidende one of the left wing danish newspapers.
I hate to correct you, but Berlingske Tidende is definately not a left-wing newspaper. The paper is in Denmark known for its conservative stance on political and social issues. It traditionally has a primarily bourgeois readership.
PS
The StartPage search engine http://www.startpage.com/
has at least 54,299,493 matching results for climategate
Needless to say they are now my default search provider!
now at Copenhagen:
http://i45.tinypic.com/2m7dgrc.jpg
LOL…GoogleGate was a pretty amusing read…
I can’t believe how persistent this guy was…
If whitewash futures were traded in Chicago and London I’d buy as many as I could now that the UN is “investigating” the emails—no way will it accept ANY responsibility for this. Choo-choo Pachauri will say he was duped. Yeah, right… duped just after the graphs were doctored.
Some notes on the behaviour of Google in Sweden, regarding searches for “climategate”. You presently get ca 27 Mill hits. You can select hits in Swedish, which are ca 80 000.
However, on Altavista you get 492 000 hits in Swedish!
You have to use the trick of entering “climategate AND och AND det”. Altavista will only report the worldwide hits if you select Sweden, but the common Swedish words “och” (means “and”) and “det” (“that”) will indentify what in most cases would be Swedish texts.
And here’s something interesting. Searching for “watergate”, the mother of all Gate Named scandals:
Altavista: 15 Mill hits
Google: 1 Mill hits.
What does Google have against scandals named something with “-gate”?
–Ahrvid
The line from Google should be read as: “The suggestions change dynamically over time through automated processes based on relevance Al Gore-ithms”
I don’t know what is up with the auto-suggest anyway. It is all whacked anyway, just see what typing “why” autosuggests. I wouldn’t read too much into that.
If google was into conspiracies, I’d think they’d work on suppressing the 50M + entries instead of some insipid auto-suggest feature. Maybe they are, but I think that the hole in the dike is already too big.
Peter Dunford (02:32:18) :
“…… I’ve changed my home page and default search engine to AltaVista. I suggest anyone else concerned does likewise”.
AltaVista was the first and still the best in my view. I’ve been using it for over ten years, since it was released onto the web. Google is far too close to the CIA and has been caught censoring content – in UK/USA – again and again over the last several years. I’ve been aware of this long before climategate.
And I hate it when people say “Google this”, or “Google that”….
Try searching for Googlegate I got 12,600 hits… on google. That must hurt… snigger
Google tries to eliminate duplication, so it an item contains multiple instances of a single term, or if a post is re-posted on several places, google will initially count all instances, but later prune away the duplicates. I think.
Not sure if anyone else is aware, but Al Gore is involved with Google…
http://www.generationim.com/about/team/gore.html
Google-gate may have some legs after all. And I think I’ve found an Google-Gore links somewhere besides Generation Investment…
As of 8:23am CST I do not think the autosuggest is working in the United States via Google.
I typed “climateg”and it shows up with “climateguard” as the first auto suggest.
There is clearly intervention preventing climategate from being suggested.
I accept that the algorithms have a “life of their own.” However, “global warming” and other terms that I have been searching do not appear to get tossed around on the sea of algorithm this way. Google is counting on algorithm idiosyncracies to lend their actions plausible deniability here. Bear in mind that this is one of the biggest news stories of 2009, growing in the number of hits by the hour. The algorithm had figured out how to auto-suggest Climategate when it only had a few million hits. The fact that the auto-suggest function is not working with Climategate at 10 times that number of hits does give one pause.
There is no smoking gun here, merely food for thought.
When I type in “climatega” or “climategate”, Google auto-suggests
“climate guatamala.” Either Google can’t spell or they think I can’t type.
I think Bob might have struck on something in his post on Talking about the weather.
“Ok, some people believe “climategate” surpassed “global warming”. Take a look at this link:
http://google.com/trends?q=climategate,+global+warming,+al+gore
You can see “climategate” is a blink in the rader, even if it surpasses “al gore”. It does however also report “climategate does not have enough search volume for ranking” which seems to indicate that the index hasn’t made it a “real term” yet.”
This definitely seems like a plausible reason. It doesn’t explain why it has popped in and out the way it has, but it does explain why it doesn’t come up in auto suggest yet. My speculation is that there are multiple algorithms in place, when a hot term pops up it gets added and then removed again when the longer term algorithm kicks in. Basically, to keep current they have a short term filter, after a few days it kicks over to the long term filter (typical news cycle for trendy stories is typically only a few days). Since this is a new term, it doesn’t register on the long term filter yet.
Just a thought.
Brian B (06:22:32) :
Not sure if anyone else is aware, but Al Gore is involved with Google…
http://www.generationim.com/about/team/gore.html
Google-gate may have some legs after all. And I think I’ve found an Google-Gore links somewhere besides Generation Investment…
Try Kleiner Perkins
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/business/energy-environment/03gore.html
News stories of 2010. Last summer Joe Romm commented that we may be near having the last Winter Olympic games ever. No snow and not cold enough. whistler has 18 feet of snow at the end of November breakin the old alltime record by 19%. 18 feet deep is a lot 3 weeks before winter.
When we google, we forget false forcasts. I will look to see who forcasted record snow. I suspect no one. They have their math models cramked up to the “hot” setting.
Precipition is condensation of water. The physics behind it tells us it takes energy out of the air.
Whistler is inland from the Japanese current. This is curent events. The media will talk about 2050 weather when current recordings don’t fit the scheme.
Google-gate must be tracked also. There is a lot of disinformation by googling.
The IPCC to investigate Climategate emails?
That’s like asking Bernie Madeoff to investigate Bear Stearns.
Yo, the Market ok down there? Great. Listen, I gotta run. See ya.
Good luck with that.
I’m not sure if I’m searching wrong, but I only get 13,800,000 results from Google for “climategate” and 12,000,000 for “global warming.” How are people getting over 100 million results?
The president of Google was at the White House yesterday for the “Jobs Conference,” along with union leaders and other supporters of Obama’s agenda. The US Chamber of Commerce and others who are in disagreemant with the administration, but could contribute a lot to the the understanding of the country’s economic problems, were not.
There is a self serving cozinesss between Google and the administration. Google has problems in the anti-trust arena and wants help on copyright issues. They probably don’t need any prompting to tamp down on the climategate story, especially when Google would be meeting with Obama.