Posted by Laura Glendinning in News and Analysis on December 8, 2009
LOS ANGELES (YBH.ME) – Climategate’s hacked emails from Britain’s East Anglia University number at about 1000, but the words from Michael Mann of the University of Pennsylvania’s one email stating “hide the decline” are ringing across the web like a call to arms for both sides of the debate. They have popped to the forefront of web coverage, web satire (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEiLgbBGKVk) and serious analysis of the email fallout.
Michael Mann, Hockey Stick Graph Creator
Critics say the damning emails suggest Mann’s chart of Northern Hemisphere temperatures since the year 1000 purportedly hid data, based on conjecture and timeline reconstructions, that would have shown less of a warming trend and thus diminished the case for global warming.Mr. Mann, creator of Al Gore’s famed “hockey stick” – the scary, immediate trajectory of fast-climbing global temperatures - said ”decline” refers to the decline in the reliability of tree rings to reflect temperatures after 1960, not an instruction to fudge data. Meanwhile Phil Jones, head of East Anglia’s Climate Research lab, has resigned over the leaks as his university investigates.
Others have weighed in, among them:
Granger Morgan heads the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University and directs the Center for Climate Decision Making. He has stated, “the fundamental science, that more carbon dioxide in the climate warms up the atmosphere, is not subject to any significant academic debate.”
A recent Wall Street Journal editorial by Brett Stephens pointed out that a vested interest in continuing one’s climate research funding if it follows a popular direction can hardly argue for perfectly dispassionate science in the field. A popular blog for data crunchers and code writers who are poring over the data lapses in the climate research, now revealed for all to see, had a wealth of comments. As one said, quoting eminent chemist Fred Menger, “If you torture data sufficiently, it will confess to almost anything.”
Politically adroit climate bandwagon members are ignoring the scandal and data questions, and focusing on Copenhagen as a place where agreements will be forged to transfer wealth from developed nations to newly industrializing, high polluting third worlders. A popular Australian columnist, contemplating their Prime Minister’s planned action in this direction, says this:
Is [Kevin] Rudd really going to approve a draft treaty that could force Australia to hand over an astonishing $7 billion a year to a new and unelected global authority?
Yes, that’s $7 billion, or about $330 from every man, woman and child. Every year. To be passed on to countries such as China and Bangladesh, and the sticky-fingered in-between.
Meanwhile, lone wolf anti-climate change bloggers like Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit, a trained mathematician, geologist and sometime Canadian government advisor, are looking prescient. In 2007, McIntyre started looking at temperature gathering for the global warming data project and found aberrations such as this: one of the “rural” temperature gauges was located next to a boiling parking lot in downtown Tucson, Arizona.
As one blogger put it: are the Climate Research Unit folks self-inflicted victims of “Weapons of Math Destruction”?
#1 by Andrew30 on December 8, 2009 - 6:39 am
The science must stand on its own.
In science the burden of proof is on the theory.
The theory must provide the proof.
If the theory makes a prediction, which it must to not simply be a hypothesis, and the prediction is wrong then the theory is discarded.
That is part of the scientific method.
The AGW theory predicts that CO2 causes global warming.
CO2 is higher now then it was in 1998.
Average global temperature has been declining since 1998
The prediction made by the theory is wrong therefore the AGW theory must be discarded.
QED.
It is called the scientific method. It only takes one wrong result to discard a theory.
'No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.' Albert Einstein
Please see also:
scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/climategate.html
For a satirical look at the climategate computer programming:
Anthropogenic Global Warming Virus Alert.
http://www.thespoof.com/news/spoof.cfm?headline=s5i64103
#2 by jallen on December 8, 2009 - 10:10 am
From the National Academy of Sciences, Here is the crux of climategate (assuming the reader is familiar with the FOIA and the "lost" source data aspects of the issue):
Ensuring the Integrity, Accessibility, and
Stewardship of Research Data in the Digital Age
ISBN: 978-0-309-13684-6 National Academy of Sciences.
http://www.nap.edu/html/12615/12615_EXS.pdf
Data Access and Sharing Principle: Research data, methods, and other information integral to publicly reported results should be publicly accessible.
Data Stewardship Principle: Research data should be retained to serve future uses.
Recommendation 9: Researchers should establish data management plans at the beginning of each research project that include appropriate provisions for the retention of research data.
The solution to this problem — as with so many others — is honesty.
At the minimum, the CRU utterly failed in the Data Access and Data Stewardship principles. Unforgivable.
#3 by VGI on December 8, 2009 - 9:11 pm
How are they going to explain this one away?
Its prison time for some of the methinks
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/08/the-smoking...
#4 by guest on December 9, 2009 - 11:32 am
God did not come out with a new and improved tree circa 1960. Either the tree ring data is accurate from 800 till present or it is not accurate at all.
other thoughts are McIntyre is hardly a "lone wolf" in climate change dissent, here is a link to at least 450 peer reviewed papers which questions the science of climate change
http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-rev...