Science vs. Politics: Tipping Points in Climate Change Communication

[skypunter]

Is this thread mislabeled, or is there another one to discuss the CRU hack?

 

[skypunter]

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.

I don't think anyone wants to be "watched" doing their work. Particularly sausage manufacturers.

Just release all data and methods when publishing.

 

[D H]

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.

What a pile of BS!

Briffa's tree ring data were hidden, and it was this tree ring data that formed the bulwark of the so-called hockey stick.

Another that it is sinking in -- in some quarters at least -- that the hacker represents the politicization of science.

True-believer quarters, that is. To the rest of the world this looks a lot more like a whistleblower exposing corruption, stonewalling, scientific malfeasance, political influence, and a host of other bad behaviors.

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.

Spoken like a true-believer.

By this logic, Daniel Ellsberg, Dr. Jeffrey S. Wigand, and Cynthia Cooper (just to name three) were hackers who illegally stole material (the Pentagon Papers, internal tobacco company studies, and WorldCom financial data). The data they obtained illegally should never have seen the light of day.

I was a luke-warmer until this incident. Not any more.

 

[sylas]

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.

This is flatly false. The climate models use numerical solutions of the PDEs, and they do not fit to a data set for results.

There are enormous numbers of models available, and major projects of intermodel comparison. The idea of fitting the model to a desired result defeats the whole purpose; and you couldn't possibly get away with such a thing anyway given the massive intercomparison projects that involve many participants and standard sets of boundary conditions.

The NASA models are some of the most complex and well regarded models, and they are open source. All the source code is available; it's linked above.

There is also a professional standard climate model which is available and can be used by anyone will to go to the work of compiling and running it on their own computer. It's huge and will chew up as much time as you are willing to give it; this is not a toy. It is, however, intended for anyone to use and is aiming to improve education on climate modeling. See EdGCM.

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.

Knock yourself out. The data and the code is there. There are already many independent modeling groups doing just this kind of replication. It's a big task, but an important one. The skeptics, however... not so much. As far as I know none of them have even tried to do anything like this. It's not any kind of lack of code or data that's stopping them.

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.

The markup you provided previously is broken; here is a working link for those interested.

• http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/climategate-the-skeptical-scientist%e2%80%99s-view/, by Frank J. Tipler, Professor of Mathematical Physics at Tulane University; Nov 26.

Tipler is, like anyone, entitled to his opinion. However, this is actually another blog; and I don't really understand the constraints we work under as yet for links. I'm just declaring this up front.

However, his complaint starts with a premise that just ain't so. He complains about skeptics being unable to replicate claims of climate scientists. This objection does not hold up to examination; but alas... it is another topic probably better in the science forum. In the CRU case there is a small amount of information that could not be released because it is not owned by the CRU and they don't have any right to release it. There is an ongoing effort to make this generally available; but this is far and away the exception. As the links have shown, the normal situation is for all the data to be available to anyone.

A lot of people don't understand replication. There's not much value in just repeating someone else's code and someone else's data. A real scientific replication involves scientists making an independent collection of data and doing their own independent analysis. There is certainly a lot of value in a careful repeat or examination of the code and data of someone else's experiments; but this isn't what is normally meant by scientific replication.

In any case; there's more in the world than the CRU. The NASA models and results are actually more influential and most likely more accurate; and it's all there. Always has been.

Tipler is a genius, but also something of an oddball in a number of respects -- not only climate. His claims, like those of anyone else, stand or fall on their own merits; not on his reputation. (Which may be a good thing, for those who agree with him. His reputation is a two edged sword here.)

Cheers -- sylas

 

[DrClapeyron]

I think the whole idea of the tipping point and the e-mail hacking is to illustrate that someone cannot stand popularly on two sides of the global warming issue. Could a scientist or politician claim man-made global warming exists and then say there is no need to prevent global warming? Yes, they could, but they may not be on the good side of any crowd.

You have to be on only one side of the argument or people will find your behaviour funny and out of place, and if not they will label you a scarecrow or strawman or whatever.

 

[arildno]

This is flatly false. The climate models use numerical solutions of the PDEs, and they do not fit to a data set for results.

This is just silly.

OF COURSE they solve PDEs, and so what?

Do you even know how hard it is, in the general case, to make a proper coupling of thermo-dynamic quantities in the viscosity parameter, for example?

It isn't something you can read off from statistical mechanics theory, for example, often you'll need to MODEL it, on basis of some empirical data set. In essence, you make it up.

THEN, you must gauge how your PDE works on totally independent data sets given that particular modelling of viscosity, than the one you used to construct your viscosity parameter.

 

[sylas]

What a pile of BS!

Briffa's tree ring data were hidden, and it was this tree ring data that formed the bulwark of the so-called hockey stick.

With respect, neither of those claims are actually true. However, this is now better as a topic for the science forum; and I'll put it on my to do list to post more on it there. Give me a day or two. It would be a useful topic, I think.

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.

Spoken like a true-believer.

By this logic, Daniel Ellsberg, Dr. Jeffrey S. Wigand, and Cynthia Cooper (just to name three) were hackers who illegally stole material (the Pentagon Papers, internal tobacco company studies, and WorldCom financial data). The data they obtained illegally should never have seen the light of day.

I think you misunderstand me here. I am not making any comment on legality, or on the ethics how the emails are obtained. I am speaking specifically on the content of the emails themselves; for this specific instance. There's no logical inference at all over whether the emails should be seen or not.

It would make no difference whether the file of emails was stolen, released by a whistleblower, or obtained under some kind of legal FOI or subpoena process.

Now that the emails are so readily available, the cat is well and truly out of the bag, and we can all look at them if we choose. I am saying simply that the actual content of the email... all of them... together shows that there was a long standing harassment campaign here, of which the enormous flood of frivolous and improper FOI demands was only a part.

I accept that different people have different reactions to the emails. I've suggested previously that if anyone wants to get a bit more on their own behalf, then one possible step is simply to grep the emails for FOI or "freedom of information", and then look at the 50 odd emails you get, in sequence. This tells you rather more than one or two picked out to expose Phil Jones in particular, whom everybody now has recognized made some improper suggestions, though it is not clear that they were ever carried out. The further context simply shows why he is so angry and frustrated. This is not an excuse; it is simply the other side of the picture and the questionable actions of a small number of skeptics well before the hack ever occurred.

The inquiry will hopefully help sort out a lot of this. It should not be a simple whitewash for anyone; neither a witch hunt against the CRU personnel nor an investigation to identify and expose the hackers. The BBC article I linked gives a bit of useful and hopeful information and we can all expect to hear more about terms of reference soon; maybe early next week.

In the meantime; let's relax a bit. I appreciate some people are angry with CRU and others with the hackers. But here at physicsforums we should be able to engage this together with mutual good will even if we disagree on many points of discussion.

Cheers -- sylas

 

[Sorry!]

I do not see any particular e-mails being referenced and explanations of why they are damaging. I do not see any references to sketpic made climate models using data sets explaining where 'so-and-so' organization went wrong. I also do not see any new references to specific data that was skewed or hidden in anyway or that not included evidence should actually be included with evidence that it was not necessary and was only a cover up. (Someone mentioned tree ring data, do some more research please then post your findings in the Earth forums with a detailed explanation of why you are right and they are wrong.)

What I do see is that people are taking the fact that the CRU is not releasing data to the skeptics and completely ignoring the fact that there are HUGE publicly available datasets from many MORE international organizations that support climate change. What have any of you done with these datasets?

Sylas I read earlier in one of your posts that you modeled based on local datasets maybe you could post, if you wanted, a link to the forum that you had done it for? (if any of course) to show these kind people on this forum what they are supposed to do in science. (Instead of just act exactly like most of the skeptics and make a lot of noise but substantiate very little)

 

[skypunter]

I think the whole idea of the tipping point and the e-mail hacking is to illustrate that someone cannot stand popularly on two sides of the global warming issue. Could a scientist or politician claim man-made global warming exists and then say there is no need to prevent global warming? Yes, they could, but they may not be on the good side of any crowd.

You have to be on only one side of the argument or people will find your behaviour funny and out of place, and if not they will label you a scarecrow or strawman or whatever.

A good point. The reality lies somewhere in the middle. For me, the middle is that our research should be toward conserving energy and insulating ourselves (for cooler/drier or warmer/wetter), rather than attempting to "condition" the masses and the entire atmosphere.

 

[Choronzon]

I do not see any particular e-mails being referenced and explanations of why they are damaging. I do not see any references to sketpic made climate models using data sets explaining where 'so-and-so' organization went wrong. I also do not see any new references to specific data that was skewed or hidden in anyway with evidence that it was not necessary and was only a cover up. (Someone mentioned tree ring data, do some more research please then post your findings in the Earth forums with a detailed explanation of why you are right and they are wrong.)

What I do see is that people are taking the fact that the CRU is not releasing data to the skeptics and completely ignoring the fact that there are HUGE publicly available datasets from many MORE international organizations that support climate change. What have any of you done with these datasets?

Sylas I read earlier in one of your posts that you modeled based on local datasets maybe you could post, if you wanted, a link to the forum that you had done it for? (if any of course) to show these kind people on this forum what they are supposed to do in science. (Instead of just act exactly like most of the skeptics and make a lot of noise but substantiate very little)

Numerous emails have been cited in this thread, and there was a discussion about how the hockey stick graph may misrepresent data. You don't just get to scoff at us and wave your hand and claim our concerns our unfounded in one post and then a page or so later lie out of your teeth and claim that none of us have made any specific claims.

 

[Count Iblis]

This is just silly.

OF COURSE they solve PDEs, and so what?

Do you even know how hard it is, in the general case, to make a proper coupling of thermo-dynamic quantities in the viscosity parameter, for example?

It isn't something you can read off from statistical mechanics theory, for example, often you'll need to MODEL it, on basis of some empirical data set. In essence, you make it up.

THEN, you must gauge how your PDE works on totally independent data sets given that particular modelling of viscosity, than the one you used to construct your viscosity parameter.

It is true that you need to fit some effective transport coefficients, but that's not going to be useful to doctor your model in order to get to a preconceived prediction.

Another thing is that large class of climate models all with slightly different assumptions make essentially similar predictions. So, the hypothesis that there is Global Warming as a result of CO2 emissions does not depend on the very specific details of how the climate exactly works.

It is similar to putting a kettle of water on the fire after which the temperature will rise. Without any knowledge of thermodynamics, you could do a brute force calculation by modeling the watermolecules and how they interact. The model would make some prediction that is not strongly dependent on the details and the approximations made.

 

[Sorry!]

Numerous emails have been cited in this thread, and there was a discussion about how the hockey stick graph may misrepresent data. You don't just get to scoff at us and wave your hand and claim our concerns our unfounded in one post and then a page or so later lie out of your teeth and claim that none of us have made any specific claims.

Yes, but they have all been addressed. I am speaking about these new people to jump on board the discussion and make posts.

EDIT: I never even said anything about the previous posts? I would find that it is quite clear that since I have been posting in this thread since the first page that I know everything has been said back-and-forth so it would be assumed that I'm not talking about the posts made prior but the most recent ones. Unless of course you're just looking for a reason to be rude to me; then I can see exactly how you could make that mistake.

 

[mheslep]

Warmergate t-shirts now available:

http://blogs.news.com.au/dailyteleg...hp/dailytelegraph/comments/wear_the_decline/"

 

[sylas]

Warmergate t-shirts now available:

http://blogs.news.com.au/dailyteleg...hp/dailytelegraph/comments/wear_the_decline/"

Gaah. Those clowns have no idea what the decline being discussed even means. I appreciate you are simply pointing to a T-shirt so I am not aiming this at you personally. But the people wanting this shirt are so sure that someone is hiding a decline in global temperature that they've assumed this comment from the emails is related to hiding some measured decline in temperatures, a hidden cooling trend.

It isn't.

I've explained what the email is question is ACTUALLY talking about in [post=2453564]msg #9[/post] of thread "HadleyCru data hacked" in the Earth forum, which is now locked.

If anyone is inclined to accuse me of being biased or being a "true believer" or otherwise refusing to admit the obvious, please read the post first. This is actually very straightforward if you actually know what the topic of discussion in the email is about, and as all the participants in the email discussion understood without needing any long explanations.

The "decline" is not a decline in measured temperatures, but a known "divergence" of a certain limited set of proxys, from tree rings in the Northern Hemisphere. It's not hidden in the science at all... it is extensively discussed in the literature and in all the papers that use this data. The proxies in question are simply not accurate after about 1960, and this has been discussed and explained and explicitly shown in all the literature. ALL the literature that uses this particular data set. All they mean with this remark is that in a diagram meant to show temperatures, you need to avoid using that part of the proxy set known to be inaccurate... and for which we have good direct measures of temperature anyway. That is, you need to remove the spurious decline when you are wanting to show temperature.

I know people have all kinds of concerns with proxy reconstructions. But honestly, this is way out of step with what is going on with the science. Contrary to claims in this thread, it is not all dependent on this tree ring data set. You can toss this set completely and you still get the same basic result. You can use this set in isolation, and you get a reasonable result, though only for a limited regional area, and one that diverges after about 1960 due to changes -- still being studied -- of the growth pattern of trees in that region that are known to be not a reflection of temperature. The study of this -- there's a LOT of it -- indicates that the proxy is still useful for earlier periods, and that is what it is used for.

In brief. The decline is more usually called the "divergence problem", and it is the right thing to do to get rid of that decline when you are plotting for temperature.

When you are studying the particular proxy in more detail -- you show clearly the actual divergence.

Nothing is "hidden" in the sense of being a big bad secret. It's in all the literature, it's well known, and in particular it is extensively discussed in the references provided for the data used in the summary diagram that was being produced.

This "hide the decline" meme is all over the web now, and nothing better shows how much this climategate nonsense is all politics, and the massive disconnect between science and public perception.

Cheers -- sylas

 

[Evo]

Is this thread mislabeled, or is there another one to discuss the CRU hack?

The thread was originally about ethics in science, so I added the CRU hack to the thread. Since the release of the data from Hadley Cru has becuase the primary focus, I agree a title change is appropriate.

 

[sylas]

The thread was originally about ethics in science, so I added the CRU hack to the thread. Since the release of the data from Hadley Cru has becuase the primary focus, I agree a title change is appropriate.

Excellent idea, but it isn't actually anything to do with the http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/science/hadleycentre/. The Hadley Centre is part of the UK Met Office, and has no special connection with the CRU, any more than any other research facility around the world working on climate science.

The CRU is part of the University of East Anglia.

This misconception has plagued the story from the start. Let's not contribute to it!

Cheers -- sylas

 

[Count Iblis]

Another indication that the claims made by sceptics about the emails are unlikely to be true is to read wat Rush Limbaugh wrote about this:

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_112509/content/01125106.guest.html

 

[D H]

Oh, FFS, Count. Who cares what Limbaugh says?

Stop poisoning the well.

 

[Phrak]

told ya-all repeatedly that this this global warming industry wasn't science (but good psycodrama none the less).

Where can I get a download of FOIA's file? Send me a PM.

 

[skypunter]

The "decline" is not a decline in measured temperatures, but a known "divergence" of a certain limited set of proxys, from tree rings in the Northern Hemisphere. It's not hidden in the science at all... it is extensively discussed in the literature and in all the papers that use this data. The proxies in question are simply not accurate after about 1960, and this has been discussed and explained and explicitly shown in all the literature. ALL the literature that uses this particular data set. All they mean with this remark is that in a diagram meant to show temperatures, you need to avoid using that part of the proxy set known to be inaccurate... and for which we have good direct measures of temperature anyway. That is, you need to remove the spurious decline when you are wanting to show temperature.

I know people have all kinds of concerns with proxy reconstructions. But honestly, this is way out of step with what is going on with the science. Contrary to claims in this thread, it is not all dependent on this tree ring data set. You can toss this set completely and you still get the same basic result. You can use this set in isolation, and you get a reasonable result, though only for a limited regional area, and one that diverges after about 1960 due to changes -- still being studied -- of the growth pattern of trees in that region that are known to be not a reflection of temperature. The study of this -- there's a LOT of it -- indicates that the proxy is still useful for earlier periods, and that is what it is used for.
Cheers -- sylas

Sylas,
Perhaps you know the answer to this.
Is it common for the newest tree rings to be unuseful as a proxy?
We learned in grammar school that tree rings undergo a change as they age, eventually becoming dead "heartwood" which is primarily strucural support for the tree. The younger, outer tree rings carry the nutrients to the rest of the tree, and so are surely of different composition and/or structure than the deadwood.
If this is not the case, then what might be the reason that they are eliminated from the dataset? What might cause unusual growth such as this?

 

[wimpy]

I have been following global warming etc for quite awhile and the arguments are really starting to irritate me. I just want to make a couple of points to get them off my chests.

1. First of all there is no "consensus" about GW's cause, it even seems that there might be a "Cooling". I don't know who's right but it's annoying with Copenhagen and Cap & Trade looming.

2. The recent CRU and New Zealand revelations might be political but they certainly bring into question ANY DATA PRESENTED BY ANYONE about climate change. What I mean is without a full audit of every data point in the data set I won't trust any of them.

3. Does anyone have a solution to bringing about a consensus on GW? Any plans to put forth a "bipartisan" plan to resolve the outstanding questions?

4. Last but not least is that the politicians are running with this any it's going to cost us badly in the long run. I have no issues with CO2 causing GW, no issues with SOL causing GW. I would just like to know as I'm sure I will be taxed to death either way.

Thanks for letting me vent guys. Carry on.

 

[jostpuur]

What is unfortunate with this "hide the decline" stuff, is that deniers are trying to make it look like that scientists would have been trying to censor some alleged cooling, while in reality the hack exposed a fact that the tree ring reconstructions of the past are not as reliable as some reports may have let the public believe.

 

[Proton Soup]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/nov/25/monbiot-climate-leak-crisis-response

Some people say that I am romanticising science, that it is never as open and honest as the Popperian ideal. Perhaps. But I know that opaqueness and secrecy are the enemies of science. There is a word for the apparent repeated attempts to prevent disclosure revealed in these emails: unscientific.

 

[sylas]

Sylas,
Perhaps you know the answer to this.
Is it common for the newest tree rings to be unuseful as a proxy?
We learned in grammar school that tree rings undergo a change as they age, eventually becoming dead "heartwood" which is primarily strucural support for the tree. The younger, outer tree rings carry the nutrients to the rest of the tree, and so are surely of different composition and/or structure than the deadwood.
If this is not the case, then what might be the reason that they are eliminated from the dataset? What might cause unusual growth such as this?

I don't really know how common it is; but it is not universal. The divergence problem is specific to certain regions in the Northern Hemisphere forests. There are many other factors that have been considered (precipitation, pollution, non-linear response from heat stress, and plenty more) but the bottom line is that it is still an open question. The latter half of the twentieth century is marked by a number of significant changes in such factors in excess of rates of change over the last couple of millennia, so there are all kinds of credible possibilities. Here are some relevant references (also in [post=2453564]msg #9[/post] of a locked thread). Just reading these, especially D'Arrigo et al, would give better answers than I could manage; or it could be the basis for a new focused thread in the Earth forum.

• Briffa, K.R. (2000) http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0277-3791(99)00056-6" , in Quaternary Science Reviews 19(1), pp 87-105.
• D'Arrigo R. et. al. (2007) http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2007.03.004" in Global and Planetary Change 60(3) Feb 2008 pp289-305

Cheers -- sylas

 

[Zantra]

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.

ROFL.. Allow me to elaborate on my "german anology"..someone's not an SNL fan:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKKaZhNXJe0&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41lTZaHMTCw&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy_IxhLL5vQ&feature=related

I agree that there is a duty to the truth, but that doesn't mean we bury our heads in the sand at the first hint of impropriety.

 

[Andre]

meanwhile it seems that there is http://www.thegwpf.org/news-a-events.html :

Six days after Lord Lawson, the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the GWPF, called for an independent inquiry into the CRU data affair, it would appear that such a public investigation may now be set up. It will be absolutely crucial that the inquiry is beyond reproach. For this reason, the Global Warming Policy Foundation calls for the inquiry to be carried out by a High Court judge...cont'd.

But this is not looking good:

SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years...cont'd

 

[Coldcall]

Macintyre did not really correct a major eror, the hockey stick is still an accepted fact. All he did is point out that the result may be less statistically significant as proof that GW exists based only on the data that went into the hockey stick.

It is similar to astrophysicists doing loads of data processing on the shapes of far away galaxies in a cluster to extract the dark matter signal (dark matter would warp the apparent shape of galaxies via weak gravitational lensing). If some dark matter skeptic comes along and criticizes some statement by these astrophysicists on this being proof that dark matter really exists, because this is not 8 sigma proof but only 4 sigma, so be it.

LOL, Now you are backpeddling as you claim Macintyre "did not really correct a major eror". So you are splitting hairs between what constitutes an error and what a "major eror". Thats just too funny!

By the way have your read the Harry Readme file associated with their models? You really should because even the programmers who had the impossible job of trying to write the software for the models complained about the quality of data, and in fact numerous times in their comments on the code they admit to having to fudge and botch the programming.

Sorry mate but the party is well and truly over.

 

[Coldcall]

Can anyone believe CRU actually dumped the raw temp data? So the end result being "trust us" because we don't have the raw data and you'll just have to take our word for it.

Is this a new precedent being set for scientific process? Ya right :-)

 

[Andre]

... Sorry mate but the party is well and truly over.

That may be a bit premature. Whereever the truth is, it's not going to bother http://www.citeman.com/3177-group-think-and-group-shift/ a lot.

 

[Coldcall]

That may be a bit premature. Whereever the truth is, it's not going to bother http://www.citeman.com/3177-group-think-and-group-shift/ a lot.

Oh it will eventually because CRU have now made a big U-turn and agreed to release all the data they have (of course that won't include the data they conventiently dumped).

Climategate will also now make it possible for other climate researchers who are sceptics come out of the closet and i think the final end for the agw hysteria will be led by principled scientists who are sick of having their repuation tarnished by the anti-scientific practices of people like Jones, Mann, Hansen, Briffa et al.

 

[sylas]

meanwhile it seems that there is http://www.thegwpf.org/news-a-events.html :

Yes. I agree this is an appropriate response. I've already linked to the BBC original for this back in [post=2463251]msg #145[/post], and again in [post=2463317]msg #154[/post]. The story is Inquiry into stolen climate e-mails, an early look at the inquiry now being set up, by Roger Harrabin for the BBC.

But this is not looking good:

There's a certain irony in that. This is a story alleging that original raw data has been lost; but does not let you discover the original sources for their story.

As described, the story is incorrect in the details -- like many other stories that have been rapidly circulating based apparently on assuming the worst. It is also old news; not some new discovery in the light of the stolen emails.

The real details of what is alleged in this story is contained in the CRU page on data availability, which is currently down precisely because of the problems caused by the illegal access. However, the information can still be found in, for example, a google cache of the page. The original https://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/availability/, and I am using a snapshot of the page as it appeared on 21 Oct 2009 12:27:45 GMT, shortly before the hack.

We are not in a position to supply data for a particular country not covered by the example agreements referred to earlier, as we have never had sufficient resources to keep track of the exact source of each individual monthly value. Since the 1980s, we have merged the data we have received into existing series or begun new ones, so it is impossible to say if all stations within a particular country or if all of an individual record should be freely available. Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites, only the station series after adjustment for homogeneity issues. We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (i.e. quality controlled and homogenized) data. The priorities we use when merging data from the same station from different sources are discussed in some of the literature cited below. Parts of series may have come from restricted sources, whilst the rest came from other sources. Furthermore, as stated in http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/landstations/ we have never kept track of changes to country names, as it is only the location and the station's data that are important. So, extracting data for a single country isn't always a simple task.​

This isn't new information; it's been known for some time, and is a major reason many of the FOI requests cannot be granted.

The claim that original data is now gone is simply incorrect. The original data is, as always, kept with the owners of that data -- the various national bodies who keep their own national weather and climate records. They have it still.

The backdrop to this -- which is perfectly apparent if you read more of the hacked emails in a real attempt to figure out the whole story, rather than merely isolated examples chosen to suggest the worst of the scientists involved -- is a long standing campaign of harassment from individuals who cannot or will not accept the constraints under which the CRU is obliged to act. It's led to a dreadful situation of frustration and anger on the part of the scientists, and with good reason.

There is also a common misunderstanding of what replication means in science. Genuine replication does not mean getting exactly the same data and repeating exactly the same calculations. That is more of a verification or audit; which might indeed be a useful internal exercise for an organization, if they have the resources.

Scientific replication means another independent collection of data, preferably from independent data sources. With historical data that is not always possible; but certainly there are other major efforts that repeat the same measurement, but using different data as they can obtain themselves and using different algorithms. If you don't trust the CRU... then use one of the others. If you don't trust them either; then do it yourself. Get as much raw data as you can -- the vast majority of it is readily available -- and repeat a calculation. It's a big job but not actually prohibitive. If you don't get approximately the same result using the 95% of the data that has always been available, then that is a genuine exposure of a problem... in your processing or in theirs.

The problem with the so-called skeptics is that they just want to take the data already assembled by others. There's nothing wrong with that... except that they want ALL of it, NOW, and will not accept that this can't actually be legally done, unfortunately.

The major advantage of a truly independent inquiry is that it would not be merely a witchhunt to seek out any failings of the CRU staff, but would actually look at all aspects of the difficulties of dealing with critics who will never be satisfied under any circumstances.

Cheers -- sylas

 

[Proton Soup]

if they don't have original data, then everything is suspect. you might as well start over.

 

[Coldcall]

Sylas,

"The claim that original data is now gone is simply incorrect. The original data is, as always, kept with the owners of that data -- the various national bodies who keep their own national weather and climate records. They have it still."

CRU has admitted dumping their raw temp data. That data was primary for the alarmist models they have produced and the fact they dumped it is in itself tremendously serious failure of traditiional scientific methodology.

So in order to validate CRU's models someone is going to have to collate all that temp data all over again.

One would think that when making such catastrophic predictions the scientists behind such work would feel inclined to have kept their raw data available for colleagues to re-check the validity of proxies emanating from that raw data.

In fact even more disturbing is that CRU only admitted to having dumped all their raw data after various requests from Macintyre which had gone totally unanswered.

You can spin this anyway you want but in my opinion this is a huge scientific fraud and will remain so until the raw data has been collated once again and checked against the "homogenized" data which was used for the alarmist models.

This is science and in science there is no such thing as a benefit of doubt. Those models today are worthless because they cannot be reverse engineered without the raw data.

 

[Coldcall]

put crap in, you'll get crap out. Reading the Harry ReadMe file, one can obviously see that there was a lot of inaccurate crap that ended up in the so-called "homogenised data".

Hence any model emanating from that crappy input will inevitably be bigger crap.

 

[skypunter]

There really is no excuse for dumping raw data. A hard copy would suffice.
No data...no publish.