Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to Futurism author Lou Del Bello, demanding the data used in climate studies is evil because it leaves climate scientists open to having their work challenged.
Scott Pruitt’s Latest EPA Gambit Is As Clever As It Is Evil
Lou Del Bello
The more information, the better, right? Except when it’s not. Like when it’s just a tactic weaponized to obscure the truth. And now environmental science is about to be on the losing side of that strategy from the American Government.
Case in point: The Environmental Protection Agency may release the raw data behind every study it carries out. It’s hard to imagine this as anything but a good thing! But, believe it: Former EPA employees and scientists say the effort’s a ruse, and what appears to be a push toward openness is just another way to stifle science.
…
- Betsy Southerland, a former EPA official, explained to E&E how releasing raw data leaves scientists open to attacks from industry lobbies who may try to distort information in their own favor.
- Moreover, requiring the agency to only base new laws on studies with public, reproducible data would prevent a lot of important research from informing policy making.
- That word, “reproducible,” is key. Think of the investigation of the health damages suffered by the Hiroshima survivors, or the environmental impact studies following the BP PLC Gulf of Mexico oil spill: These are events whose baseline conditions can’t be replicated, but are important to science and policy-making alike.
Besides, they say, a process of check and balances is already at the heart of any solid scientific study — it’s called peer review. We want independent experts to assess the value of a particular study, because they have the specific skills required to do so.
…
Read more: https://futurism.com/scott-pruitts-epa-evil-transparency/
Similar arguments appear through the Climategate email chain.
For example, Climategate email 1075403821.txt (Phil Jones writing to Michael Mann):
Mike,
In an odd way this is cheering news ! One other thing about the CC paper – just found another email – is that McKittrick says it is standard practice in Econometrics journals to give all the data and codes !! According to legal advice IPR overrides this.
Cheers
Phil
Ben Santer complaining about releasing data in email 1231257056.txt
… 2. Mr. Smith asserts that “there is no valid intellectual property justification for withholding this data”. I believe this argument is incorrect. The synthetic MSU temperatures used in our IJoC paper – and the other examples of derived datasets mentioned above – are integral components of both PCMDI’s ongoing research, and of proposals we have submitted to funding agencies (DOE, NOAA, and NASA). Can any competitor simply request such datasets via the U.S. FOIA, before we have completed full scientific analysis of these datasets? …
(Climategate emails available from Wikileaks).
I’m less than sympathetic to attempts to justify withholding data. Trillions of dollars ride on the integrity and validity of climate studies. Everyone is affected by climate decisions made on our behalf by politicians, whose decisions are influenced by scientific advice. Telling people they should take the expert’s word for it simply isn’t good enough.
The white (collar) terrorists of Data Haram strike again. Are anti-scientists of the Phil Jones ilk not inimici humani generis? Do they deserve more leniency than pirates?
To quote The History of the Climate Debate in the vain hope someone will learn from the past:
2017:
Anti-Disclosure Group Exposed
For years, the existence of an extremist cell known only as Data Haram—inspired by Sayyid Quţb and opposed to the Enlightenment, science and technology, Western liberal civilization, free inquiry, the rational tradition and human knowledge—has been denied in the most strenuous terms by the sect’s leader, Stafan “al-Australyi” Lewandowsky.
Until, that is, the cult accidentally publishes its manifesto as a Nature article.
Will the leak be enough to discredit the group? Transparency advocates fear it may have the opposite effect: by unveiling its anti-epistemic misosophy on such a respectable stage, they wonder, has Data Haram taken the first step towards halal—even kosher—status?
Certainty Channel : politics ; Uncertainty Channel : scientists.
WHAT WAS THAT?!? What did you just link to? What is this “Whip It” thing?
OMG! That was…I can’t even…words fail me.
Please cease and desist from infecting this blog with such…
🙂
rip
Brad…that is funny. This is my favorite:
2007
Justice Burton of the High Court of England and Wales finds it unlawful to show An Inconvenient Truth in UK schools without ‘guidance notes’ alerting children to the film’s “political bias” and “errors of science.” Eager to win back the British education market, Gore’s editing team experiments with cutting all falsehoods and/or dishonest statements from the film. But the new, deception-free version tests poorly with teachers, who complain that its 12-minute run-time isn’t even enough to waste a school period
Hah, “misosophy.” Learn a new word a day!
The Nature article inadvertently reveals the Alinsky tactic employed by Mann, Lewandowsky et al, of blaming others for their own crimes of smearing and character assassination.
Have you also noticed how they constantly accuse others of projecting their flaws onto them, when they’re the ones who constantly project their own flaws onto others? There’s a technical term for that, which escapes me right now.
Brad,
Pirates? yes Sir,
the cat with nine”tales”
George,
makes sense! When a problem comes along…
I am going to say it again. AGW is done and this year will be the turning point. Their theory will be obsolete before the decade ends.
Already overall sea surface temperatures and global temperatures are on the decline.
Again the weakening of geo/solar magnetic fields is what I believe rules the climate in the relative short term.
You are very optimistic. It’s a very well crafted cargo cult post normal science. It needs decades to lose the blind belief and that is only if the priests are quite unlucky.
Well maybe the crooks and charlatans doing phony science and hiding their contaminated, censored, and made-up data might not like transparency and honesty. Can good science and policy come from hidden data, models, and analyses?
But for now, don’t believe or support anyone who cannot be open, transparent, and above board in their research and data collecting and analyses.
Truth seeks the light. Honest scientists seek to enlighten.
Unfortunately, we’ve indoctrinated a generation with an uncritical belief system.
People give up their beliefs very reluctantly.
More accurately, indoctrinated into being hypercritical of everything, except for the indoctrinators’ pet beliefs.
Salvadore Del Prete, the Sun is involved in climate changes sometimes, but the main driver of short-term climate changes is probably the Oceans. And there are many other variables, some of we know and some we don’t. But we don’t understand how any of these processes work or interact, even at an elementary level.
My point is, we can’t with any certainty, claim we know what is capable of changing the climate. Maybe it’s sunspot activity, maybe not. Maybe its the Oceans up-welling and down-welling, maybe not. Maybe it’s cosmic radiation, maybe its our location as we pass through the arms of the MIlky Way. We are a century or two away from being able to predict a change in climate.
Nicely done.
No, what will happen is that refutation, ie the failure of predictions to materialize, will strengthen belief. It will also strengthen the virulence of attacks on unbelievers.
Read ‘When Prophecy Fails’.
What happens in these movements is that the rank and file become more and more extreme, just at the point when the elite are starting to get worried about the extremism some in the movement at lower levels are making. But the elite have started it rolling and find it impossible to hold it back.
As the day of the predicted apocalypse dawns, bands of the rank and file head up into the hills to await rapture. The elite meanwhile are furiously backing off.
Morning comes, nothing has happened. The rank and file climb back down the mountain with their belief strengthened.
Look up the history of the Jehova’s Witnesses, and the number of failed predictions of the end of the world they have survived.
This is going to get worse before it gets better. The Levandowsky piece in Nature, and Mann’s fulmination, are both part of clues that the elite is deeply worried. But the rank and file, well, read the Guardian comments section, or Ars Technica. They are true believers in the end of the world.
I agree. I think that people like Mann and Lewandowsky know in their hearts they are charlatans. The problem is the legion of followers for whom their bogus theories have become secular religious articles of faith. They would rather die than lose face and admit that the “right” was right all along.
Wow. The projection of the deluded is tragic. For nearly 20 years WUWT commenters and article writers went on and on and on and on and on about “the pause”. Meanwhile scientists said the world would recommence warming.
Yet you guys are right.
You are being taken for a ride. Enjoy the journey from far, far from reality.
Reminds me of the Catholic church back in the day. If we can’t read the actual text of your religion I guess we will just have to take our local stazi agw officers word for what it says.
So, hopefully, there there will be enough educated Pruittans to carry on with his heroic stance. (and to contribute to a continued honest effort at the translation).
Climatesplaining at its finest.
Oh, very good, Bruce. But may I expand on that: Mannsplaining? (But, perhaps it’s already been used…) 🙂
Pal review was taken to another level with EPA. It became pen pal panel review with money going to all participants of the panels.
It also makes courtroom stall tactics much harder.
It is Jack O’dell and John Dagre.
>
There is no real climate data used today.
The surface average temperature compilations
are data-free.
They consist of wild guess infilling (over 50%)
and “adjusted” raw data (under 50%).
“Adjusted” raw data are what someone
— a government bureaucrat with a science degree —
THINKS the data would have been,
if measured accurately in the first place.
So once raw data are “adjusted”,
you no longer have real data.
Raw surface data are real data
— but they may not be accurate,
because they are affected
by the urban heat island effect,
inaccurate measurements
(such as thermometers in buckets
of sea water, that can’t be accurate
measurements of sea surface temperatures),
and repeated changes of weather station
locations, downsizing Stevenson box sizes,
and changes of measurement instruments,
which are not checked for accuracy every year.
In addition, the surface measurements don’t
match weather satellite or radiosonde measurements,
(both of which correlate well with each other).
My common sense climate change blog
(meaning liberals should stay away):
http://www.elOnionBloggle.Blogspot.com
Agreed 100%. “Adjusted” data IS NOT “data” at all. If the ACTUAL (raw) data is suspect, the solution to that should be to increase the size of error bars, or to simply exclude any obvious results of malfunctions, i.e., impossibly high or low readings (NOT “change them to what we think they would have been,” NOT “infill the erroneous data with guesswork,” just remove it).
As soon as you start “adjusting” data, it is simply NO LONGER DATA. It is guesswork, assumption, and scientifically speaking, ultimately nonsense. If “climate science” were being properly done, this is how the weather data would be treated – the lack of precision and accuracy would be accepted, and the ridiculous notion that we have “measured” an amount of warming that is little different than the range of errors in the measurements would put to death the whole climate panic campaign.
AGW
First the warmunists would
have to learn what “error bars” are!
Then they have to learn
that if individual surface measurement
instruments have an accuracy rating
of +/- 1 degree C.,
which is typical,
then the average of their data can not
be assumed to be better than +/- 1 degree C.
… and that’s not even accounting for
the wild guess infilling,
and “adjusting”
“re-adjusting”, and
“re-re-adjusting”
that’s going on.
I suppose even the wild guess infilling
gets “adjusted” too!
This is not real science.
It is haphazard, inaccurate measurements,
and wild guesses of the future average temperature,
with 30 years of wrong predictions so far,
providing strong evidence that
the future climate is unpredictable !
If your methods and data are irrefutable, wonderful. If they are questionable, they aren’t actionable.
Exactly. And when they are “adjusted” by people who start with their conclusion and work their way backwards looking to support it, your statement’s accuracy increases exponentially (no pun intended).
One must work “backwards”
to get the right (already “known”)
climate conclusion!
That is the foundation of modern climate science !
The equivalent is to shoot an arrow
into the side of a barn, and then paint
a target around it, with the bulls eye
painted around where the arrow
is stuck in the barn wood.
I have experience with bows and arrows:
As a kid I set a local record for shooting
an arrow so high that it became invisible …
until it came down and went through
my next door neighbors’ screen and window.
The graphic needs the vertical red column for 2020….. after “extremely likely”… I believe
the red column for 2020 it is called “VIRTUALLY CERTAIN” and then in 2025 we will
have it “TOTAL, VIRTUALLY, EXTREMELY CERTAIN”. and this will finally silence all the sceptics.
By the year 2025 we find out if we are on track, or not. The next several years can be attirbuted to normal solar minimum drop in temps. The years following should reflect a cooling trend, imo. If they don’t, then that would be reason to reassess my views on how this works.
But that is part of the problem – you’ve locked yourself into thinking there is a SINGLE variable that should be *immediately* reflected in the temperature readings (“several” years being, in “climate” terms, an eye blink), without considering that there are multiple influences at work which are not all identified or understood or quantified, and so not seeing its effect within some short time frame may well tell you nothing – simply because other factors are counteracting it somewhat or because the time lags involved are longer than you anticipate.
Our “climate science” problems begin with the fact that relatively little is understood, but the so-called “climate scientists” act as if they know enough to draw conclusions from, and make predictions based on, their laughingly inadequate knowledge.
@ur momisugly AGW ….my idea is based on the current state of the climate as being in a cooling mode. That means all variables are considered. The sum total of all of the variables should reflect a cooling trend or my entire premise is wrong. That is that the climate shift points run approximately from 2006/07, 1976/77, 1946/47, and basically around every 30 years into the past. The recent El Nino is a great example of why patterns are not easily discerned in the long term record, imo. Existing conditions will take their time dissipating especailly when the existing condition was a warm trend, and in this case also at a peak point of warming.
And so my thought that after the end of the solar minimum the years which follow should reflect a continued cool trend visible with the passage of years. There will still be warm years mixed in.
What can be done about all these irreparable minds and institutions as this massive deceit continues to unwind? Will this third of a century of wholesale destruction of economic and human resources by wanton gl9balist “progressives” be prosecuted? Will we have to let broken institutions, universities collapse on themselves and simply build new ones?
com’ on mods this is mild stuff.
When you hide the information which you are using to harm people you are a criminal, time to treat these people exactly as what they are. And take our tax dollars back, by force if necessary. US Marshals kicking in doors and seizing bank accounts, safe deposit boxes, money from under mattresses, wherever they have hidden it.
“Telling people they should take the expert’s word for it simply isn’t good enough.”
Problem number one is demonstrating “expertness” from a group whose predictions have been so inexpert. Problem number two is assuming an expert is infallible.
The Church of the Holy Moonies believe in the Holy Lie. This De Bello needs to join.
Thanks, Eric – excellent piece. I especially like the graph showing increasing confidence in AGW BS in reverse correlation with the accuracy of predictions. Priceless! Every “believer” should be confronted with that graphic.
I personally have NO tolerance for the withholding of scientific data, because absent the disclosure of said data, “science” can’t be properly done, PERIOD. Limiting the disclosure to the PALS that “review” it doesn’t promote the pursuit of science, it promotes group-think and ideology that can then masquerade as “science,” doing tremendous damage to humanity and discrediting “science” in general in the process.
And their arguments against it are vacuous; nobody’s “personal information” need be disclosed to share “data,” it can (to the extent even present) be redacted. Hiroshima survivor data can absolutely be “reproduced.” It’s called NAGASAKI survival data. The people whining about the requirement that science that is to be the basis of policy be required to be publicly available are just whining about being exposed to those who might actually disagree with them, and who are able to support their disagreement. Too [bleep]ing bad.
That sort of refusal to provide actual data is beyond parody, but common in some politically sensitive fields, like gun control research or climate and environmental studies. We peons just have to accept the word of our betters./sarc
So we don’t have to release data because we can’t drop another atomic bomb?
I don’t care what discipline you are in, if you won’t release the data, your work should be ignored. The history of science is littered with those who won’t release – and the vast majority turned out to be wrong or frauds.
As for the claim that people might misuse the data….if people misuse data, then why WHY would trust any people?This absurd, trust me but not them, because I am good and they are not is simply Kafkaesque because the “me good, him bad” is based on whether you believe what those claiming to be good say.
Are we seriously at this point of maximum insanity?
I guess he meant they can’t release the data they don’t have because they didn’t do an experiment (the atomic bomb) in the first place. And their code is protected by IPRs, so they’re a trade secret they don’t need to give to competitors.
And asking the code is harassment… only friends may do that, you can trust them.
Looking into the fact we’re about 40 years into the greenhouse scare and about 50 years into the environmentalist paradigm, I do hope the end is nigh.
“Think of the investigation of the health damages suffered by the Hiroshima survivors”
These findings only relate to the kind of exposure caused by bombs. (Or possibly excursions in fission reactors, if there are people exposed; AFAIK, nobody has ever survived enough to suffer from that irradiation.) It does not apply to people working in the nuclear industry. It does not happen to people manipulating radioactive materials in any case. That data is not applicable to the impact on the population of any nuclear accident, ever.
We have a lot of data on exposure to radiation at various levels of radiation flux; a rate of exposure much lower than an explosion.
The veneration of the atomic bomb health data we see in the radioprotection community is unhealthy. That data provides gross estimates of effect of doses (not exactly known) over a biologic instant (an “infinitely short time” of exposure from the point of view of biological mechanisms). This is the kind of exposure you can get in a medical context (even then, it would not be the gamma rays of the nuclear fission).
The study of atomic bomb survivors should be used only as a upper bound on the possible health effects of exposure to radiations over a short time. Radioprotection for nuclear industry workers should not be based on that data: we have plenty of data on exposure to a continuously radioactive environment.
See Pr Pierre Pellerin, Maurice Tubiana, Pr André Aurengo… and Bernard Leonard Cohen, of course. On this subject, the French academies are not useless and lost, unlike the NY academy of sciences.
How can genuine data be “misused”?
There is absolutely NO EXCUSE for keeping scientific data secret.
I think that “the doubt is their product” means that “some dishonest commentators and analysts will always find something not quite right and try to exonerate a chemical|an industry based on nitpicking”.
Just like “OJ was declared not guilty so from now on we will not provide evidence for cross examination by the defenders”.
Oh no, nobody said that ever.
Strange.
Re:The Gulf of Mexico link, if it was to be destroyed it would have been in WWII. The first exhaustive study done on oil there (1947-1962) was funded by the petroleum industry. They did not hide their data. Cure may be worse than disease.
http://www.gulfspillrestoration.noaa.gov/sites/default/files/wp-content/uploads/Front-Matter-and-Chapter-1_Introduction-and-Executive-Summary_508.pdf
“Extensive response actions, including cleanup activities and actions to try to prevent the oil from reaching sensitive resources, were undertaken to try to reduce harm to people and the environment. However, many of these response actions had collateral impacts on the environment.”
Summary of oil study noted above
https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/22811
Another more offshore study, conducted by the Gulf Universities Research Corporation was published in Rice University Studies, 1980, volume 65, numbers 4 and 5.
Trust, kneel, but don’t verify.
“Scott Pruitt’s Latest EPA Gambit Is As Clever As It Is Evil”
Ah….the unending hubris of the self-anointed enlightened! Making the data public will expose them as frauds and charlatans, and that is the ‘evil’ that they fear. What they are calling evil, is a blessing to everyone else.
As written in the book of Isaiah, “Woe to they who call evil good, and good evil.”
Acts 1:18 should be their fate.
Arctic sea ice… when stuck , always blame climate change…
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/arctic-sea-ice-research-1.4583150
Obviously, in 2018 Barber is not following his own field very carefully as he should know by now what’s happening:
As opposed to 2008
Yet, none of these maps are quoted in the CBC article…
And Barber to predict in direct contradiction with measurements:
But no journalist will hold him accountable, hence the renewing call for more of the same…
Perhaps my comment could be moved to the Beaufort Ice post. Thx
If the public pays for the data we should be able to use it for our own analysis, plain and simple
If the data is to be used to create policies that impact the public it must be made public before the policy can be reviewed or acted open or the data and study must be ignored.
YES – that. If you want to “push policy” based on your “science,” your “science” first needs to be open to ALL for review, testing, and replication, NOT just to your “PAL review” buddies who will cast a bed of roses on your BS.
Ceteris Paribus and Global Warming; Ground Measurements are Garbage
One of the key principles to sound science is “ceteris paribus.” With any experiment, one wants to “control” as many outside forces as possible to isolate the impact of the independent variable upon the dependent variable. The posting: Isolating the Contribution of CO2 on Atmospheric Temperature attempted to demonstrate an experiment where CO2’s impact on the climate was … Continue reading
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2018/03/20/ceteris-paribus-and-global-warming-ground-measurements-are-garbage/
Climate “Science” on Trial; If Something is Understood, it can be Modeled
The Climate Sophists’ main argument is that there is a scientific “consensus,” and that this “consensus” supports the conclusion that this is “settled” science. First, science is never settled. Science is a process, a method, real science falsifies claims, it never proves something is true. Claiming that an understanding of something as infinitely complex as … Continue reading
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/02/06/climate-science-on-trial-if-something-is-understood-it-can-be-modeled/
co2islife,
There, fixed it for you with the new word I learned from BK today!
(hope I got the tags right.)
Ignorance and delusion have been ‘weaponized’ by the warmistas. Those are the only weapons that have to bring to the fight.
“weapons they have”. ‘Scuse, please?
Checks and validation via buddy review? Bullshit.
If the conclusion can’t stand on its own merits, then it is erroneous.
Yup – and if it can’t withstand public scrutiny, then it should never be used as a basis for public policy, period.