Posted by Patrick Courrielche Jan 8th 2010 at bigjournalism.com
How a tiny blog and a collective of climate enthusiasts broke the biggest story in the history of global warming science – but not without a gatekeeper of the climate establishment trying to halt its proliferation.
It was triggered at the most unlikely of places. Not in the pages of a prominent science publication, or by an experienced muckraker. It was triggered at a tiny blog – a bit down the list of popular skeptic sites. With a small group of followers, a blog of this size could only start a media firestorm if seeded with just the right morsel of information, and found by just the right people. Yet it was at this location that the most lethal weapon against the global warming establishment was unleashed.
The blog was the Air Vent. The information was a link to a Russian server that contained 61 MB of files now known as Climategate. Within two weeks of the file’s introduction, the story appeared on 28,400,000 web pages.
Not entirely the “death of global warming” as many have claimed – what happened with Climategate is much more nuanced and exponentially more interesting than the headlines convey. What was triggered at this blog was the death of unconditional trust in the scientific peer review process, and the maturing of a new movement – that of peer-to-peer review.
This development may horrify the old guard, but peer-to-peer review was just what forced the release of the Climategate files – and as a consequence revealed the uncertainty of the science and the co-opting of the process that legitimizes global warming research. It was a collective of climate blogs, centered on the work of Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, which applied the pressure. With moderators and blog commenters that include engineers, PhDs, statistics whizzes, mathematic experts, software developers, and weather specialists – the label flat-earthers, as many of their opponents have attempted to brand them, seems as fitting as tagging Lady Gaga with the label demure.
This peer-to-peer review network is the group that applied the pressure and then helped authenticate and proliferate the story.
Now, as expected, the virtual organism that is the global warming establishment resisted release of the weapon. At the first appearance of the Climategate files, which contained a plethora of emails and documents from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, the virtual organism moved to halt their promulgation. Early on, a few of the emails were posted on Lucia Liljegren’s skeptic blog The Blackboard. Shortly after the post, Lucia, a PhD and specialist in fluid mechanics, received an email from prominent climatologist Gavin Schmidt from the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). It said in part, “[A] word to the wise… I don’t think that bloggers are shielded under any press shield laws and so, if I were you, I would not post any content, nor allow anyone else to do so.”
In response to my inquiry about his email, Schmidt posited, “I was initially concerned that she might be in legal jeopardy in posting the stolen emails.” Gavin Schmidt was included in over 120 of the leaked correspondence.
Gavin Schmidt
When asked if she thought the Climategate documents were a big deal at first sight, Lucia responded, “Yes. In fact, I was even more sure after Gavin [Schmidt] sent me his note.”
Remember these names: Steven Mosher, Steve McIntyre, Ross McKitrick, Jeff “Id” Condon, Lucia Liljegren, and Anthony Watts. These, and their community of blog commenters, are the global warming contrarians that formed the peer-to-peer review network and helped bring chaos to Copenhagen – critically wounding the prospects of cap-and-trade legislation in the process. One may have even played the instrumental role of first placing the leaked files on the Internet.
Read the rest of the story here.
h/t to Ed Scott from a correctly admonished charles the moderator
Cliamtegate has had an even more profound impact here in the UK on the way in which the public perceive the Science-Government-Industry Complex. Like most educated lay-persons – I had generally assumed that the Science establishment was fundamentally honest – that the universities were independent and that researchers would not falsify data to achieve the results which industry or government demanded. Climategate has opened people’s eyes to the fact that the entire ‘system’ is driven and controlled by politicians and environmental and industrial lobby groups.
Sherlock Holmes has a famous story, the gist of which was ‘The Dog Which Did Not Bark in the Night’. The question I would like answered is why the entire university and science establishment in the UK fell in step behind the CRU crowd and launched such a unified barrage of attacks on sceptics. I may be missing something but I cannot recall ANY British academic or university taking a strongly sceptic position – either before or after Climategate. All of the genuine open-mindedness is coming from across the Atlantic – from the USA and Canada – or from Australia and New Zealand.
Over here in the UK we are seeing a military-style co-ordination of all major government funded institutions – who all issue the ‘Party Line’ at every opportunity: every government department from Industry to Education; all the universities, the MET Office, the Royal Society, the RSPB, the National Trust, all the wildlife bodies; all local authorities. It is astonishingly uniform -and reveals the enormous depth of political and financial patronage which the government employs to ensure a rigid adherence to the Catechism of the new Global Warming Religion.
I am not a professional scientist but the massive flaws in the AGW hypothesis are self evident wherever one turns in looking at the evidence. So what REALLY annoys me is that famous organisations like THE ROYAL SOCIETY – stuffed to the gunnels with eminent scientists – is so utterly conformist and un-sceptical.
The UK Science Establishment will NEVER be forgiven for “selling its birthright for a mess of pottage” – and jettisoning the 400 year reputation for logic and sceptical Science laid down by Locke, Newton, Rutherford, Maxwell, Crick & Watson – and a hundred other great scientists.
We will NEVER trust any government-funded university department ever again; it is clear that they are just ‘cogs in the machine’ which is funded and greased by £billions of government cash to ‘produce the results demanded’.
E. M. Smith: May I slip my one-liner under yours?
“The truth needs no Gatekeeper.” -E.M.Smith
“There is no concern of man, either real or imagined, which cannot be manipulated for profit.” -Roger Carr
This is another interesting article:
http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/01/07/the-truth-is-out-there-somewhere/print/
“It is grotesque to lump nuanced skeptics like Freeman Dyson, perhaps the most celebrated physicist alive, in with creationists and 9/11 “truthers.””
Quote: Borderer (03:08:59) :
“Climategate has had an even more profound impact here in the UK on the way in which the public perceive the Science-Government-Industry Complex. Like most educated lay-persons – I had generally assumed that the Science establishment was fundamentally honest – that the universities were independent and that researchers would not falsify data to achieve the results which industry or government demanded.”
Very sadly I must admit that I watched helplessly as the integrity of science gave way to the need for research funds in NASA’s space science program for the last four decades (1969-2009).
NASA hid or manipulated any data that suggested the Sun is anything but a ball of hydrogen (H) heated by H-fusion [which is empirically false]. NASA was in no position to express an opinion when global warming propaganda came into vogue, because NASA could not even explain solar cycles!
Before Climategate, I had no idea that the corruption I experienced in NASA and in the Geophysics Division of NAS was so widespread.
As climategate unfolds, I expect more corruption will be exposed.
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA PI for Apollo
Thank crunchie Al invented the interweby thing. Darwin had to endure months, years event, between letters and papers to peers. Now it takes nano-seconds.
Once again, thanks Al!
It’s clear to me that the “silent majority” are wising up to the AGW nonsense. The more people like Al Gore, Mann, etc. talk or publish the bigger the hole they are digging for themselves. In time they will have to realize how stupid they look.
Oliver K. Manuel (03:53:04) :
WOW! There must be more of your ilk about…spread the word.
Borderer (03:08:59) :
It is astonishingly uniform -and reveals the enormous depth of political and financial patronage which the government employs to ensure a rigid adherence to the Catechism of the new Global Warming Religion.
Have you not noticed that all of the EU is behind the band wagon of AGW? We all ready have made Al Gore et al rich with carbon trading for goodness sake!
What has been happening with the academia of the west is the centralization of research financing and the decision of what is good and what is bad science is up to scientific bureaucrats in some central spot. For EU it is Brussels. They do have committees, but who decides on the committees? centralized bureaucrats.
This has resulted in two detrimental for science results:
1) Independent budgets for academia have been reduced, certainly not augmented
2) hierarchy within the universities (and research institutes) is destroyed . The fellow who can write good proposals and shovels in the money has the power.
This has created the means by which a cabal could take over climate studies by controlling a few central bureaucracy decisions on who gets financed.
Politicians, particularly in the EU are out on every occasion parroting AGW. Who trained them?
This centralized method of financing has destroyed the independent schools of research according to universities that gave the necessary intellectual competition of differing research results and theories. Large inter university collaborations are encouraged in order to get more money. One more nail on the coffin of independent research. That is why the mantra of AGW can be found in the most disparate funding proposals: it is a way of getting the project through the bureaucrats and getting funded.
I think the only solution would be to start financing seriously the universities independently. The departments within the universities should distribute the money according to proposals with internal peer review from all disciplines within the university. This will leave researchers free to do research instead of spending half their time in filling up bureaucratic forms asking for money and defending the spending.
It is not that in this case some research could not be high jacked by a monomaniac like Mann and go off the rails. It is that there will be many independent university researchers who could check and balance the monomaniacs. In addition, no research result could acquire this mantle of “science is settled” when there will be many schools with different nuances on the science.
onlyme (02:11:46) :
Unfortunately the bigjournalism website is censoring posts. In response to a comment that the data, though removed from the CRU site, was still available, I posted links to 3 stories in MSM that discussed the CRU statement regarding their removal of the original data. The post including links was deleted, a follup post discussing the refusal of the CRU to supply the station names that were used was allowed to stand.
Umm, I found what looks like your post, going by your description of the reply to it. A link, the words “CRU removed raw data, kept only adjusted.”, followed by four links.
For one thing, if replying to a comment then use the reply button, keeps the threads orderly and it quickly identifies to readers what you are replying to.
For something else, the Breitbart sites (except the video one) use the Intense Debate comment system. Which is… quirky. ID uses automatic word filtering software, which is a pain. A “bad” word normally trips an automatic “This comment must be approved by the administration before appearing publicly” message, although certain ones get “This comment has been deleted by the administration” as soon as you hit the “Submit Comment” button.
The word lists used are… strange, and currently vary between the sites. They often are set to capture spam posts, and the software hunts out words (actually the sequences of letters) within other words. Thus on Big Government, a political site, people kept getting the “must be approved” messages for using “socialist” because the ID system was blocking “Cialis,” the drug name. ID will even complain if they are within URL’s.
Otherwise, there is no censorship on the Breitbart ID sites. Period. There is automatic word filtering. People can hit the “Report” button and complain about something offensive and the admins may delete that comment. But active monitoring by humans, selectively deciding which posts to allow and which to delete? Censorship by definition? Never saw it, doesn’t happen. The sites, as in Intense Debate, are just not set up for it.
And so, the Meltdown Man was finally exposed for what it really was:
A spliced-together hoax.
I liken this to the outing of Catholic priests as child molesters. The majority of the faithful forgave them, a minority of the faithful questioned their faith and those who were delivering the message unto them while a small sect in the hierarchy of that religion worked at casting doubt on the accusations of children.
It is really signicficant that the establishment views are being challenged by thousands of individuals working collectively using blogs. The timing of the Climategate info on to the blogosphere was very convenient and helped to get the corruption into the media who are often too slow to report these heretical stories.
Climategate has also stimulated political (rather than science) blogs to dig up the political aspects of Climategate and these stories are now coming into their own. The political aspect of Climategate is now reaching the media; tonight expect more to come out this weekend in the Sunday Telegragph from the team of bloggers working with Richard North on EUreferendum.
Again the stories have arrived at an opportune moment because the extreme cold in the UK is already a topic of conversation amongst ordinary folk and people are wondering how it can be blamed on extreme weather caused by AGW.
Just read the Sunday Telegragph story has been put off a week because:
“The Sunday Telegraph, in common with other Sunday newspapers, is having to scale back production and cut back the size of their papers. Our piece, therefore, has been held over until next week.
That said, we have some stunning revelations to make – we have clearly landed some blows and there are white flags flying in certain quarters, with “Patchy”, as he likes to call himself, squealing with indignation about a “vendetta.”
However, perforce, I am in purdah for the time being. My lips are sealed and the blog must remain silent for a week on Patchygate, not through any legal intervention – white flags are being run up the mast in that quarter as well – but simply, I have to give the newspaper the first crack of the whip.”
anna v (04:23:46) : “Have you not noticed that all of the EU is behind the band wagon of AGW? …”
Much to think about in this short essay, Anna. Thank you.
Well, more than nanosceoconds really; just try a ‘ping’ of the website here for instance:
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>ping www.wattsupwiththat.com
Pinging wattsupwiththat.com [72.233.2.59] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 72.xxx.xxx.xxx: bytes=32 time=20ms TTL=52
Reply from 72.xxx.xxx.xxx: bytes=32 time=21ms TTL=52
Reply from 72.xxx.xxx.xxx: bytes=32 time=19ms TTL=52
Reply from 72.xxx.xxx.xxx: bytes=32 time=20ms TTL=52
Ping statistics for 72.xxx.xxx.xxx:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 19ms, Maximum = 21ms, Average = 20ms
Average time: About 20 milliseconds.
So, the “papers to peers” time (getting info before another reader’s eyeballs) would seem to work out to be to be at least 20 ms ( which was established experimentally above) and more likely 20 ms x2 (this yields round-trip time of poster->web_sitesite->reader) _plus_ moderator approval time (which seems to be a _lot_ longer than 20ms!)
Therefore the “papers to peers” time would at a minimum be:
“papers to peers” = ( 20 ms * 2 ) + Moderator_approval_time
.
.
eo (01:55:46) :
It is not just climate science peer review process that is under fire. The British Journal Lancet has also found a number of fraudulent researches passed through the peer review process.
I put together a post for the London Telegraph due to someone claiming that the “emails” indicated nothing untoward re. peer review and while doing so came across a few links that may be of interest.
http://omniclimate.wordpress.com/2009/10/16/med-journals-adopt-new-disclosure-rules/ It discusses new requirements for personal as well as other elements of disclosure.
“Editors at leading medical journals have agreed to adopt a new standard conflict of interest disclosure form that probes deep into the financial and nonfinancial interests of published authors”
Also came across this NYT article of a couple of years ago.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/02/health/02docs.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1
Nay; Your post is showing up over there now.
Time stamped ATTM as “10 hours ago”.
.
.
Why didn’t Algore (and George) come to a decision sooner? As it was, the Supreme Court rendered their second and final ruling on Tuesday night, December 12 and Algore finally conceded on Wednesday Dec. 13th after thirty six days of political and legal turmoil.
What information specially indicates the “9th” for you; did I somehow miss out on another conspiracy theory? (Perhaps I missed the sarc tag in which case “never mind”!!???)
Timeline of events for 2000 Election and after up through Gore Concession
.
.
And AGW has produced so much snow the newspapers cannot be delivered.
anna V – I agee with what you say
“_Jim (05:23:15) :
Patrick Davis (03:53:48) :
Thank crunchie Al invented the interweby thing. Darwin had to endure months, years event, between letters and papers to peers. Now it takes nano-seconds.
Well, more than nanosceoconds really; just try a ‘ping’ of the website here for instance:
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>ping http://www.wattsupwiththat.com
Pinging wattsupwiththat.com [72.233.2.59] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 72.xxx.xxx.xxx: bytes=32 time=20ms TTL=52
Reply from 72.xxx.xxx.xxx: bytes=32 time=21ms TTL=52
Reply from 72.xxx.xxx.xxx: bytes=32 time=19ms TTL=52
Reply from 72.xxx.xxx.xxx: bytes=32 time=20ms TTL=52
Ping statistics for 72.xxx.xxx.xxx:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 19ms, Maximum = 21ms, Average = 20ms
Average time: About 20 milliseconds.
So, the “papers to peers” time (getting info before another reader’s eyeballs) would seem to work out to be to be at least 20 ms ( which was established experimentally above) and more likely 20 ms x2 (this yields round-trip time of poster->web_sitesite->reader) _plus_ moderator approval time (which seems to be a _lot_ longer than 20ms!)
Therefore the “papers to peers” time would at a minimum be:
“papers to peers” = ( 20 ms * 2 ) + Moderator_approval_time
.
.
”
Is this post tongue in cheek? Compared to Darwin, yes nanoo-nanoo seconds for us today.
Scientific peer review is a be-atch. It’s no wonder the Team members developed a bunker mentality and decided they needed to “redefine the peer-review process”. Here, unauthenticated, but quite possibly actual footage from inside the CRU:
Is it time to drop the “gate”? The CRU affair is much more significant than just being caught doing something we all know they do anyway. They could have walked away with a “fair cop gov” and their tails between their legs, but they’re too big to admit defeat. A “grad” is the all-or-nothing defence of the indefensible. And the parallels of being encircled by reality on the frozen steppes are cherries waiting to be picked. So given that hubristic overreach is inevitably followed by epic downfall, would “Climategrad” now be more apropos?
Kadaka, Jim, thx for the correction. Guess I need to wait longer than I did for any review process to complete. My bad, and apologies to the Breitbart folks.
Oops, sorry, I only meant to post the link. Mods, forgive me, without a preview function, I know not what I post.
S.
julian in wales. what telegraph story is being put off? please tell me it`s more on paruchai 🙂