Science vs. Politics: Tipping Points in Climate Change Communication

[Sorry!]

There are no such laws protecting 'their' (Hadley) data. Some of the ground station is owned by other meteorology organizations and they don't want it freely released, they want to be able to charge for it. Frankly such data should either be bought up by governments and placed in the public domain, or otherwise considered unacceptable for scientific use.

Investigate all you want. All MM data is openly available on the web. And BTW, there'd by nothing scientific about such an investigation.

Well I was responding to Evo and I wanted to know her position and reasoning for it. She posted for some reason a part of one of the e-mails that included this:

We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind.

That's where my post comes from. I wanted to know if this was what she was referring to by her post.

This is not a science forum so who cares if looking into the skeptics will be scientific, what's your point?

 

[Evo]

Here is an interesting 'brochure' style information package released on climate change recently. It's interesting to note how they've decided to bundle this information together. Makes it very clear that politics has a huge hand climate science and that their goal is to try and sway the common people of the world. (The usage of words and lots of pictures, easy lay-out etc.) What does everyone make of this?

That was posted in the Earth forum and apparently people don't think much of it. It's reads like a sensationalist ad, and errors have already been pointed out. You can discuss it over there.

Well I was responding to Evo and I wanted to know her position and reasoning for it. She posted for some reason a part of one of the e-mails that included this:


That's where my post comes from. I wanted to know if this was what she was referring to by her post.

No clue what you're talking about. Go back and read what I said about that e-mail.

 

[Sorry!]

That was posted in the Earth forum and apparently people don't think much of it. It's reads like a sensationalist ad, and errors have already been pointed out. You can discuss it over there.

Yes, to discuss the scientific aspect of it. Obviously, in a science forum with many scientists they do not care to discuss the science that politics portrays to society all that much until they find errors in it which they try to correct... I was posting about the political aspect to the whole brochue but apparently that's off topic for a thread about the political aspect of climate change. Who would have guessed? (In fact I think that the continual posting of e-mails and how science skewing of data is off-topic considering Andre's OP had to do with: What's the relation between science and politics propaganda?)

No clue what you're talking about. Go back and read what I said about that e-mail

I did read it the first time so no need to go back and re-read it. You asked for an interpretation of the following e-mail. I'm posting in reference to your question to see if that's what is off-putting to you because you keep going on about unethical science etc. etc. It's really not that hard to understand. At all.

 

[Evo]

Yes, to discuss the scientific aspect of it. Obviously, in a science forum with many scientists they do not care to discuss the science that politics portrays to society all that much until they find errors in it which they try to correct... I was posting about the political aspect to the whole brochue but apparently that's off topic for a thread about the political aspect of climate change. Who would have guessed? (In fact I think that the continual posting of e-mails and how science skewing of data is off-topic considering Andre's OP had to do with: What's the relation between science and politics propaganda?)

Sure, if you want to discuss why someone would create such an elaborate "infomercial" that's ok, discussing the content needs to go in the Earth forum.

http://www.ccrc.unsw.edu.au/Copenhagen/Copenhagen_Diagnosis_LOW.pdf

I did read it the first time so no need to go back and re-read it. You asked for an interpretation of the following e-mail. I'm posting in reference to your question to see if that's what is off-putting to you because you keep going on about unethical science etc. etc. It's really not that hard to understand. At all.

If it's not that hard to understand, what is it that you don't understand?"

 

[arildno]

While Frank J.Tipler, the cosmologist at Tulane U. is quite a bit of a maverick with his Omega Point theory and all that, he has quite a few interesting comments concerning how easily scientists will lead themselves astray and fudge away "anomalies" that can't "possibly" be right because their pet theory "must" be right:

I am automatically skeptical of any claim that by its very nature cannot be replicated by other scientists. What keeps scientists honest is not that scientists are more honest than other people — we aren’t — but that we know our colleagues are looking over our shoulders. Everyone is honest when he knows he is being watched.

We must seriously question whether climate “science” is, or even can be, a true science if skeptics cannot check its experimental claims. The only way climate “science” can approach being a real science is for all of its raw data to be made available. Only then is it possible for outsiders to check, at least partially, the claims of the insiders.

The second reason this conspiracy has been able to survive so long is simply that climatologists are now trained to believe in global warming theory. Remember the overwhelming urge of scientists to believe in their own pet theory, to believe that the data simply must confirm the theory, to believe that the only valid data points are those which confirm the theory? Data that are inconsistent with the theory are not recorded by believers, or not published. To true believers, such data are obviously due to an error in making the measurements, and so need not be recorded.

This human failing is why we need outside non-believers to check the theory against all the data — not just the data selected by the believers.

Scientific conspiracies like the global warming conspiracy are actually quite common. They occur whenever it is difficult for outsiders to check the claims and whenever a pet theory is involved.

The late Harvard paleontologist Stephen J. Gould has pointed out that punctuated equilibrium — the fact that species are typically not replaced by other species gradually, but “instantaneously” — was for centuries seen by professional paleontologists in the fossil record. But before Gould, such observations were considered inconsistent with Darwin’s theory of evolution. Thus the observations were not recorded. All paleontologists were trained to believe in Darwin, and so they adjusted the data to confirm Darwin, or did not record data “refuting” Darwin. Only after Gould showed that such data did not refute Darwin did paleontologists cease to adjust the data and start recording what they had been actually seeing.

My own field of general relativity, which is Einstein’s theory of gravity, was initially “confirmed” by “fudged” — I would say “fraudulent” — data. Einstein had predicted that stars near the Sun would appear displaced in their positions due to the Sun’s gravity, and the English astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington, a fervent believer in Einstein, set out to confirm Einstein’s theory. And confirm Einstein he did, although Eddington’s equipment was too inaccurate to confirm or reject Einstein. Eddington “showed” that Einstein was right by appropriate weighing of data points, and by throwing out observations inconsistent with Einstein’s prediction. In 1919, Eddington announced his “confirmation” at a media circus that made Einstein a world celebrity. Eddington’s experiment could only be conducted during a total eclipse of the Sun, a rare event, and so Eddington’s claim could not be checked for years.

But no experienced scientist at the time believed in Eddington’s “confirmation.” Rather, what convinced most real scientists — including Einstein — that general relativity was correct was another prediction: The planet Mercury would deviate from its path as predicted by Newton’s theory. This deviation had been observed before Einstein was born, and agreed exactly with Einstein. Since general relativity was a theory with no adjustable constants, the observation had to be a true confirmation. Since the astronomers who observed Mercury’s deviation were dead before Einstein proposed his theory, there was no chance that they had fudged their observations to agree with Einstein.

One can always trust experimenters who get the right answer when they do not know what the right answer is. One can never trust experimenters who know what the right answer is (human-caused global warming), and who have total control of the only data that can confirm or reject the theory, and whose jobs depend on confirming it.

His article at Pajamasmedia:
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/climategate-the-skeptical-scientist’s-view/

 

[mheslep]

Along those same lines see Millikan's Oil Drop experiment, related by Feynman:

[...]We have learned a lot from experience about how to handle some of
the ways we fool ourselves. One example: Millikan measured the
charge on an electron by an experiment with falling oil drops, and
got an answer which we now know not to be quite right. It's a
little bit off, because he had the incorrect value for the
viscosity of air. It's interesting to look at the history of
measurements of the charge of the electron, after Millikan. If you
plot them as a function of time, you find that one is a little
bigger than Millikan's, and the next one's a little bit bigger than
that, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, until
finally they settle down to a number which is higher.

Why didn't they discover that the new number was higher right away?
It's a thing that scientists are ashamed of--this history--because
it's apparent that people did things like this: When they got a
number that was too high above Millikan's, they thought something
must be wrong--and they would look for and find a reason why
something might be wrong. When they got a number closer to
Millikan's value they didn't look so hard. And so they eliminated
the numbers that were too far off, and did other things like that.

http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm

 

[Sorry!]

Some more politicalization?:
New Zealand
http://briefingroom.typepad.com/the...-accused-of-cru-style-temperature-faking.html
(This site shows the response to the allegations and portrays how the scientists must all feel about the skeptics and why they do not feel obligated to release information to them)

There's also something going on in Japan at this same time; it's weird how it's happening all at once.

 

[sylas]

That was posted in the Earth forum and apparently people don't think much of it. It's reads like a sensationalist ad, and errors have already been pointed out. You can discuss it over there.

Here's a link to the thread: [thread=358328]Climate Science Update[/thread]. Further discussion belongs over there, for those interested. So far no error has been pointed out; only an apparent misunderstanding of a graph by one poster who thought it was inconsistent with numbers in the text. It will all get sorted out in the other thread as discussion proceeds.

Cheers -- sylas

 

[skypunter]

I don't know whether this site would permit linking or posting of the emails, considering they were stolen, but you can find them on wikileaks, as well as many other sites.

It's also quite blatant—there is even at least one email from one scientist saying that he was extremely uncomfortable with the censorship of data that was going on. If these emails are real, every scientist involved should be out of work on Monday. I know I wouldn't trust anything told to me by an organization that employed them.

Honestly, I don't really care all that much about climate change—I've always felt that humanity would adapt and survive whatever consequences were likely to occur.

I shudder to even think about what creationists are going to do with this scandal. They'll go right to the American people and say "Look! You were wrong to trust the Climate Scientists, so why should you trust Biologists?"

There is a good article in Wired Magazine this month related to our ability to adapt to change, and how we should be directed toward better adaptation methods (through technology and strong economy) rather than by "cutting back".

 

[skypunter]

Yes it does need to be interpreted. The RealClimate discussion shows how some of the points are much more innocent than are being claimed.

And it needs to be read in the context that some of these email go back a decade, so had plenty of opportunity to be cherry picked. If you assume from the timing that this attack was designed to disrupt public support for agreement at Copenhagen, then it can be assumed that this is a very biased sample.

So we know from the last 25 years of scholarly research that climate change is real, and is attributable to human activity to a "very likely" confidence. These emails don't show a huge international conspiracy, so that is still the case. We can assume that the missing emails are the ones that show the research to be valid and genuine.

If we needed to. Of course the research at UAE isn't the word of God. It has to be reproduced just like everyone else's. So there's no genuine question that results have been created and sold to the scientific community without their due consideration.

Some people are enjoying mileage out of taking some of them out of context, and pretending "trick" means sneaky thing and not mathematical technique, but that deserves to be flatly denied. Because its wrong.



I think that it is important to understand that the keystone of the denialists position is that the scientists are all lying so that they can get funding.

We have anectodes that this doesn't work, and a scientist will generally quit if asked to do that.

But the broader evidence is important to understand. Governments don't want to have to change an economy. Government don't want to consider the environment. They want a steaming along economy and near full employment, with few companies going bust and being replaced, because this is good for what they want ... re-election.

And in science it is generally never good for one's career to respect the status quo. It is the overturning of paradigms that is most respected, so claiming the tow the line for career purposes is equally crazy.

But certainly Obama is much more pro-science than Bush was ... but Governments come and go. There'll be more Bushes to come.

Bringing up the spectre of a "huge international conspiracy" is a strawman.
Climatology is a relatively young branch of science, with relatively few practitioners. It's more like an old boy network which clings to the thing that makes their practice most important, and most profitable...involvement with politics. It's also supported and encouraged by a fledgeling industry owned in some cases by major corporations (for example GE). Politicians will use whatever means they can find, including, but not limited to a "climate crisis", to extract money from industry on both sides of the issue (petroleum, coal and their alternatives). All of this money they play with originates with our labor and comes from our pockets.

 

[russ_watters]

No, but we have to look at the circumstances which is what I said. Feynman says that you shouldn't omit information/data from reports unless you explain why (which they do) and I still have yet to see the climate scientists skew any data... I've read every e-mail you've posted to seemingly prove this point and I'm not convinced yet.

Not that I want to get too far into this thread, but I don't see any justification given for the removal of data:

Yeah, it wasn't so much 1998 and all that that I was concerned about, used to dealing with that, but the possibility that we might be going through a longer - 10 year - period of relatively stable temperatures beyond what you might expect from La Nina etc.

Speculation, but if I see this as a possibility then others might also.

Anyway, I'll maybe cut the last few points off the filtered curve before I give the talk again as that's trending down as a result of the end effects and the recent cold-ish years.

It sounds to me like he's saying 'this data doesn't support my thesis and I'm not sure why, but I'm removing it to make my thesis stronger.'

Perhaps this is an issue for the thread in Earth Sciences, but it seems to me that if an effect can only be revealed via "corrections" to data, then that means the theory is highly succeptible to bias. I'm not saying that data corrections can't be made, but in that Australian case, all of the effect they are claiming comes from the corrections.

 

[skypunter]

Unpublished data and processing methods should be inadmissable.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

Am I mistaken in thinking that it is generally considered unscientific to process information over and over in an attempt to make it fit your theory? If your theory is correct shouldn't the same process be effective every time? Does it make sense scientifically to use which ever process produces results that best fit your theory when processing information from different sources?

Unpublished data and processing methods should be inadmissable.

Why should we not see what they used to come to their conclusions and how they got there? That which they choose to leave out may be at least as important as what is published.

 

[lisab]

Unpublished data and processing methods should be inadmissable.

Hmm...it isn't clear what you mean here. Do you mean there should be a requirement to publish data and reveal analysis methods?

 

[skypunter]

Yes, perhaps I was too concise.

 

[Evo]

Hmm...it isn't clear what you mean here. Do you mean there should be a requirement to publish data and reveal analysis methods?

I think from their other posts that what they meant was that if you ommited the data from your work, your work should be inadmissable.

 

[skypunter]

I know that data and methods in the private sector are necessarily proprietary, but in the public sector, such as universities?
Particularly if the findings are to be used for public policy.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

I know that data and methods in the private sector are necessarily proprietary, but in the public sector, such as universities?
Particularly if the findings are to be used for public policy.

Unless I am mistaken copyright on publicly funded scientific research in the US lasts only one year. They are attempting to extend that last I heard. Unfortunately I am having trouble finding a source on the one year copyright.

 

[mheslep]

Some more politicalization?:
New Zealand
http://briefingroom.typepad.com/the...-accused-of-cru-style-temperature-faking.html
(This site shows the response to the allegations and portrays how the scientists must all feel about the skeptics and why they do not feel obligated to release information to them)

Don't you grow tired of claiming to know how 'all' scientists must 'feel'?

 

[Sorry!]

Don't you grow tired of claiming to know how 'all' scientists must 'feel'?

I never made a claim about all scientists I made a claim about:
Knowing how any scientists feels. I was merely giving my opinion on the matter.--Which is what we do on a Politics forum isn't it? (this is clear when I say "portrays how 'insert whatver person here' must feel, this isn't me saying anything in regard to me knowing how anyone feels.)

Or how all scientists feel, what I said was about THE scientists (in regard to the scientists in question) must all feel. (surely you won't dispute this further since most have already come out with responses to allegations)

Don't you grow tired of trolling me on this thread?

 

[skypunter]

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/#GCM_code".

 

[Sorry!]

Not that I want to get too far into this thread, but I don't see any justification given for the removal of data: (Evo's email quote) It sounds to me like he's saying 'this data doesn't support my thesis and I'm not sure why, but I'm removing it to make my thesis stronger.'

Finally, someone who comes in the thread portrays their counter-opinion and isn't being hostile about anyone elses opinion to start everything off. A few people would do good to read over this post a few times and learn from it.

Anyways, yes I am sure that there were instances that these scientists quite possibly did exclude data to strengthen their point without referencing to it. This occurs in most fields of science and, I feel that they are probably not numerous in this particular field. If you follow the link in one of sylas's posts or just head over to the Earth sciences forum you can go to a recently released report for the Copenhagen meeting. It's pretty easy to read and if you go through sylas's post in that thread you can find more links to references etc. (I would post it here but I think it may get deleted again) So it's not really necessary for them to do this...

I'm not aware of which situation is being mentioned in the e-mail Evo quoted from so I can't give you an explanation as to why they may be discussing the possibility of excluding data from a presentation. I'll look further into it though to see what's going on. As Evo has posted it it does seem quite odd... I will say though that most reports I've read included why they decided to leave out some data... maybe it was as a side-note or footnote maybe it was 1/2 sentence in the beginning of the report who cares? The methods are internationally accepted (unless someone can point directly to the methods they use that are not internationally accepted then we have a problem).It should be noted however that just because the CRU doesn't want to release data to skeptics (if you read through a few of the e-mails the the 'why' probably becomes clear to you) doesn't really mean anything IMO. There is more than one organization working on climate research and they all deal with the skeptics in different ways. Some ignore them and shoo them away others give them information:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/ This is from NASA/GISS
http://www.ccsm.ucar.edu/ This is from NOAA (it has some datasets and a sourcecode for research tools)
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/gridded/ Here is NOAA/ESRL
http://www.arl.noaa.gov/ Here is ARL/NOAA
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/ncdc.html ...NCDC

The list goes on but of course there are also other organizations that decide to not give into the skeptics because they are just being nuissances... Yes, that is my opinion, but show me what exactly have the skeptics come up with to prove say NASA wrong with all the data available? Nothing (that I know of anyways).

I believe that the fact that a hacker (presumably a skeptic) hacked into the CRU and released e-mails to supposedly try to damage the organizations credibility before a pretty important meeting shows that the skeptics are playing a more politics and hostility than anyone. I wasn't going to post any of this stuff because I wasn't sure if it'd be ok to put it in the politics forum... if not then could the moderator move it to somewhere appropriate cause it took awhile to type out. Lol.

EDIT: I've noticed that skypunter has posted a link to data and sourcecode as well. A few of the links on that site point to sites I've listed in my post, I never saw that site before though or else I would have just posted that.

 

[sylas]

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/#GCM_code".

That is a link to a directory of many readily available data sources, and is a great resource for people who like to play with data themselves. But it is not a new release of data.

Gavin Schmidt and NASA have always made their data and code available, for years. See http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/modelE/modelEsrc/ , at NASA. Your link is to a convenient directory for lots of other data sources as well.

The common meme that someone is hiding data is just not true. There are definitely issues with getting a valid release to propriety data provided to the CRU by meteorological institutes all over the world, many of which use their data weather data as an important commercial asset. There is already a huge amount of data available which has been used by various amateur and professional enthusiasts to replicate various important features of the analysis.

This link is intended to help people find what is already available and being used by professional researchers. You would be able to reproduce your own global temperature anomaly from this data, run the major models, and much else besides... if you have the time and ability to do that kind of work. I've done a few simple analyses of my own in the past from readily available data to respond to some of the more outlandish claims that fly around in this whole area, to calculate some regional anomalies; although private investigations like that are not something I do at physicsforums because of the nature of the site.

Cheers -- sylas

 

[Zantra]

Can we afford to be wrong?

Are we ready to gamble with humanity? If AGW is a fairy tale then we'll have lost time effort and energy expended on this, but if AGW is RIGHT, and we ignore it, or waste time debating the validity of the scientist, or the data, and other polical squabbles.. well the stakes are the highest imaginable. Better to be wrong and alive than wrong and watch the species take a big step towards extinction...

It makes me think of this SNL skit called "Mcgrueber", a parody of Mcgyver, where he sits around and debates unimportant minutae and always ends up dying in a horrible explosion because he's too focused on the unimportant details. That's us and global warming right now. Let's hope it's all a big hoax, because we're so busy squabbling, that if it is, humanity could perish still disputing the validity of AGW...

Eye on the ball people.. don't get mired in the details..

 

[skypunter]

The Germany analogy is offensive and highly inappropriate here. This is not fox news. People are not being exterminated, just used to promote schemes for financial gain and political power.
Science is suffering because good minds are diverted into a kind of witch hunt. These minds should be aimed at building tecnology which can help us use energy more efficiently so that we can survive future changes. The ideas in the Wired Magazine (this month's issue) illustrate a good turning point from todays sad revelations.
Science is also suffering because the general public can no longer trust what scientists publish. This mistrust has been building since before the AGW scare. Medical researchers were on the forefront of creating a crisis to garner research funding from government and industry.

 

[arildno]

The Germany analogy is offensive and highly inappropriate here.

2. Science, and scientists should NOT, ever, compromise standards of science out of a desperate feeling that they must save the world.
That is what these climate "scientists" have done, throwing out elementary precautionary measures for ensuring quality of data and predictions, because human "survival" has been more important than doing good science.

The future of mankind (or for that matter, the universe, or any part of it), even its imminent demise is not, and should not, be of any scientific concern whatsoever.

That merely leads to debasement of scientific standards, and HENCE, more than any other reason, to the loss of credibility of science.


If you can't say anything on a scientific basis, then that is what you are obliged to say to the public.

 

[skypunter]

Can we afford to be wrong?

Are we ready to gamble with humanity? If AGW is a fairy tale then we'll have lost time effort and energy expended on this, but if AGW is RIGHT, and we ignore it, or waste time debating the validity of the scientist, or the data, and other polical squabbles.. well the stakes are the highest imaginable. Better to be wrong and alive than wrong and watch the species take a big step towards extinction...

It makes me think of this SNL skit called "Mcgrueber", a parody of Mcgyver, where he sits around and debates unimportant minutae and always ends up dying in a horrible explosion because he's too focused on the unimportant details. That's us and global warming right now. Let's hope it's all a big hoax, because we're so busy squabbling, that if it is, humanity could perish still disputing the validity of AGW...

Eye on the ball people.. don't get mired in the details..

No one is promising that we can have any substantial effect upon climate regardless of what we do. No one is promising that warming will exterminate humanity. The worst case scenario is that things will change, much as they always have. We have the ability to adapt. With a sound economy we can insulate ourselves (or escape) from warm or cool climate changes.

 

[skypunter]

1.I couldn't care less however much you wail about being thrown out of your feely-good state of mind.

2. Science, and scientists should NOT, ever, compromise standards of science out of a desperate feeling that they must save the world.
That is what these climate "scientists" have done, throwing out elementary precautionary measures for ensuring quality of data and predictions, because human "survival" has been more important than doing good science.

The future of mankind (or for that matter, the universe, or any part of it), even its imminent demise is not, and should not, be of any scientific concern whatsoever.

That merely leads to debasement of scientific standards, and HENCE, more than any other reason, to the loss of credibility of science.


If you can't say anything on a scientific basis, then that is what you are obliged to say to the public.

Aside from our innate curiosity, discovery of the past, understanding of the present, and using what we know to advance technology is primarily for the benefit of humans. It's not strictly "because it's there".

 

[arildno]

Aside from our innate curiosity, discovery of the past, understanding of the present, and using what we know to advance technology is primarily for the benefit of future living things, primarily humans. It's not strictly "because it's there".

The only way that science CAN be of benefit to humanity, is if it provides quality-checked, presumably correct, information about how the world works that would not otherwise flow into the public domain. (A technological innovation based on that information is one such benefit).

It is NOT for scientists to act upon, or urge others to act upon, scientifically insufficient information.

That is the task of POLITICIANS, who out of time-concerns cannot wait for the scientists to find the correct answers.


The scientists themselves ought to be scrupulously UN-political.

 

[sylas]

That is what these climate "scientists" have done, throwing out elementary precautionary measures for ensuring quality of data and predictions, because human "survival" has been more important than doing good science.

I don't see any indication that this is even remotely true for the conventional mainstream of climate science.

However, I do have a long standing interest in good and bad science, in many different fields; and am keen to consider possible examples, on a case by case basis, on their own merits. This is actually my major interest; not climate science specifically; and I won't presume conclusions in advance based on preconceived ideas of what science ought to show. I really will look honestly at any examples on their real merits, case, by case, by case.

However, it seems to me that actual examples of this really belong in the science forum. This will mean you need credible scientific references of your own. If you think there is some problem in the quality of science which has not actually received any notice in the peer reviewed scientific literature, then we have a problem.

I do know of a number of examples of bad science that gets past peer review and into the mainstream of science discourse (I've blogged about a couple of really spectacular examples of this just a couple of days ago: see https://www.physicsforums.com/blog.php?b=1493 at my PF blog.) Mostly, poor quality science doesn't end up having much impact. I also know of a couple of cases of poor quality science and errors which have shown up in the climate area; but mostly they are comparatively isolated; have been picked up and refuted pretty thoroughly by other scientists; all within the normal work of science and conventional scientific literature.

It seems to me that a claim like this is pretty important, but it belongs in the science forum... as long as you have some kind of credible backing for the examples you are thinking of, consistent with guidelines.

Part 2; added in edit.

The scientists themselves ought to be scrupulously UN-political.

Just quickly. I'll add that I disagree with this very strongly. It is the SCIENCE that must be un-political.

Scientists are people, and they do more than only research. They have as much right and obligation as any of us to be concerned about political issues and act as they see fit, as citizens. That applies to everyone; there are scientists who get involved in political and policy questions on all sides of these debates.

This is perfectly right and proper, and does nothing to invalidate their science. Science, being un-political, should be evaluated on its own intrinsic merits and nothing else. It doesn't matter in the slightest what political views a scientist has (and scientists like ALL of us will have political views) or what other actions they become in involved in other than research. Their research is STILL evaluated in the same way as ever -- or should be!

If a scientist is led into bad science by their own views that go beyond science, that is still discovered by looking at the science on its own merits. Nothing else.

Cheers -- sylas

 

[skypunter]

A better analogy might be:
Let's not cure the common cold with chemotherapy.

 

[skypunter]

That is a link to a directory of many readily available data sources, and is a great resource for people who like to play with data themselves. But it is not a new release of data.

Gavin Schmidt and NASA have always made their data and code available, for years. See http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/modelE/modelEsrc/ , at NASA. Your link is to a convenient directory for lots of other data sources as well.

The common meme that someone is hiding data is just not true. There are definitely issues with getting a valid release to propriety data provided to the CRU by meteorological institutes all over the world, many of which use their data weather data as an important commercial asset. There is already a huge amount of data available which has been used by various amateur and professional enthusiasts to replicate various important features of the analysis.

This link is intended to help people find what is already available and being used by professional researchers. You would be able to reproduce your own global temperature anomaly from this data, run the major models, and much else besides... if you have the time and ability to do that kind of work. I've done a few simple analyses of my own in the past from readily available data to respond to some of the more outlandish claims that fly around in this whole area, to calculate some regional anomalies; although private investigations like that are not something I do at physicsforums because of the nature of the site.

Cheers -- sylas

Right you are about the links being nothing newly released by Gavin. The compilation does indicate an attempt to revive the spirit of cooperation among scientists, so perhaps something good will come from this mess. Lots of chatter about open source these days. Perhaps the scientific community will now adapt and take advantage of the real collaborative power of internet tecnology. It's not about ego.

 

[sylas]

Right you are about the links being nothing newly released by Gavin. The compilation does indicate an attempt to revive the spirit of cooperation among scientists, so perhaps something good will come from this mess. Lots of chatter about open source these days. Perhaps the scientific community will now adapt and take advantage of the real collaborative power of internet tecnology. It's not about ego.

I almost agree with all the above... except the idea that this is anything new.

If you look at the links in this directory, you'll find many of them are themselves directories. Scientists, more than anyone else, are the ones who actually drove the collaborative power of the internet, and the rest of the world caught up later.

Long before this brouhaha, the internet has been used by scientists to give data, visualizations, convenient comparisons, on-line calculations, and much else beside. It's much much more than merely making data available. The internet gives amazingly sophisticated capacities to navigate and visualize data and climate scientists have been at the front line of this from the start.

There may be good things to come out of this. One possibility is that some people will realize the meme of hidden data is bunk, and always has been. Another that it is sinking in -- in some quarters at least -- that the hacker represents the politicization of science. Although it is true that the emails do show some poorly chosen responses by the scientists, there's good reason to think that the most serious problems (deleting of emails to avoid FOI requests) never actually happened anyway. There is an inquiry that will take place and the terms of reference will be known soon. I think this will be very revealing indeed.

What the hack and the contents of the emails do show is that climate scientists are under a campaign of harassment and attack from a small number of so-called skeptics who are not actually involved in the science and who are determined to disrupt the work of these scientists. Perhaps they honestly believe that the scientists are the ones who are corrupt and believe that this justifies their actions. I don't know. But the emails show no sign of corruption of the science; at worst they show people getting frustrated and a couple of isolated improper responses to the harassment campaign, with no sign they were acted upon and some sign that they were not.

The BBC has been giving some good coverage on the story, and will be a good source to watch for news as the inquiry takes place. Here are some articles worth looking at.

• Hacked climate e-mails and FOI, Nov 23, by the BBC's resident FOI expert Martin Rosenbaum.
• Harrabin's Notes: E-mail impact, Nov 24, the regular column by the BBC's environment analyst, Roger Harrabin.
• Inquiry into stolen climate e-mails, an early look at the inquiry now being set up, by Roger Harrabin.

 

[skypunter]

IMHO the emails do show corruption.
Lots of iteresting talk about "method of payment" and "avoidance of taxes" Just search the term "money".
Hopefully publicly funded American scientists were not engaged in such behaviour.
It is nonetheless a setback for the IPCC and for public policy promoters, since some of the data used to formulate the "diagnosis" is suspect.

 

[arildno]

However, I do have a long standing interest in good and bad science, in many different fields; and am keen to consider possible examples, on a case by case basis, on their own merits. This is actually my major interest; not climate science specifically; and I won't presume conclusions in advance based on preconceived ideas of what science ought to show. I really will look honestly at any examples on their real merits, case, by case, by case.

However, it seems to me that actual examples of this really belong in the science forum. This will mean you need credible scientific references of your own. If you think there is some problem in the quality of science which has not actually received any notice in the peer reviewed scientific literature, then we have a problem.

I'll make one analogy:
Turbulence modelling.
Time-averaging Navier-Stokes gets you into an open system of equations, where you no longer have sufficient physical laws in order to determine the components of the Reynolds' stress tensor.

The typical way of handling this is, of course, to make up some simple law on basis of a restricted data set, so that the solution confirms to that data set.

Unfortunately, when compared with OTHER situations, these "laws" show themselves to be just curve-correlation techniques that gives totally wrong answers.

However, this is not particularly damaging from an engineering point of view, because the use of "thumb rules" is an indispensable tool, anyway, more important than a theoretically coherent model.

Furthermore, because there exists a lot of independent turbulence modelling milieus, methodological flaws (say, in terms of model applicability) made in one milieu will be discovered.

And, because it is comparatively easy to conduct a turbulence modelling experiment, such exposures will come pretty fast.


The "Climatic Sciences" model, relies at least as much upon a number of parameters for which we have no natural laws to prescribe them. Thus, instead, the programmer must "make up" some law, and pick the one that fits his data set.

But here, the differences begin to show themselves:
Because the Climatic Science model is based on an immense number of averaged data, a single experiment cannot disqualify the model used, in the way it can disqualify a particular turbulence model.

Thus, it is CRITICAL, that full access to the data set is provided upfront, so that INDEPENDENT communities may make use of them, for example to construct different models with.


Furthermore, when one is in the phase of setting up some probability distribution model on basis of some data set, it is COMMON (and perfectly acceptable) to use weighted average techniques to "toss out" "probably spurious" data.

The only REAL justification for such averaging techniques, is of course, that the model THUS CONSTRUCTED, shows itself valid for a much larger data set than the one used to construct it in the first place.

But, precisely because these Climate Centres are the ones holding tight onto the only data set comparable in size to what would be needed to dis-confirm its results nobody else can do any basic research on these issues, nor do the Climate Centres themselves possesses independent data sets that could be used as a much-needed control over their data.


Again, I refer to Tipler's article for the need of every scientist to have a possibly "ungracious" colleague to watch them and their work.