sylas said:As usual, none of this makes any difference to the science; only to the human failings and personal inconsistencies of two people.
Please note: this is a thread for discussion of the political implications of the CRU hack only. Please use our Earth sciences forum for discussion of the technical merits of AGW.Coldcall said:Okay I have a question i was wondering if anyone can enlighten me on this discrepancy.
I asked Gavin Schmidt on RC whether he thought the climate was a chaotic system. He said he did not know (seriously)...
russ_watters said:Please note: this is a thread for discussion of the political implications of the CRU hack only. Please use our Earth sciences forum for discussion of the technical merits of AGW.
Last year the IPCC "review" process was exposed as being highly biased. They had refused to release the WG1 review to the public. It was only after a FOI suit that they decided to release it.sylas said:As it turns out, of course, the IPCC process does not follow what Professor Jones is advocating; but something more like what you would prefer. See, for instance this response from IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri: (Guardian, UK, Nov 29)
Pachauri said the large number of contributors and rigorous peer review mechanism adopted by the IPCC meant that any bias would be rapidly uncovered.
"The processes in the IPCC are so robust, so inclusive, that even if an author or two has a particular bias it is completely unlikely that bias will find its way into the IPCC report," he said.
"Every single comment that an expert reviewer provides has to be answered either by acceptance of the comment, or if it is not accepted, the reasons have to be clearly specified. So I think it is a very transparent, a very comprehensive process which insures that even if someone wants to leave out a piece of peer reviewed literature there is virtually no possibility of that happening."
And indeed, the papers under discussion were in the report. Consensus in science is not enforced; it is descriptive, not prescriptive. The tiny number of papers that go against the fundamentals of AGW are not because they are being banned, but because (almost) no one is writing them (not counting people who don't have a background in climate science and couldn't get a paper on climate science published no matter what its spin).
Is there actually a problem here? Not of ethics, or corruption, surely. It's just that some of these guys have a different idea from you on what might be best for the IPCC. Is it so bad that we find them saying so in a personal email? Should they be punished for that, or actually excluded from any further participation in the IPCC? That has actually been suggested! I don't take that seriously, they've got no more hope of excluding Professor Jones that Professor Jones was able to determine himself what could belong in the IPCC report. I just toss out another ruined irony meter with amusement.
Cheers -- sylas
The numbers of scientist reviewers involved in WG I is actually less than a quarter of the whole, a little more than 600 in total. The other 1900 reviewers assessed the other working group reports. They had nothing to say about the causes of climate change or its future trajectory. Still, 600 “scientific expert reviewers” sounds pretty impressive. After all, they submitted their comments to the IPCC editors who assure us that “all substantive government and expert review comments received appropriate consideration”. And since these experts reviewers are all listed in Annex III of the report, they must have endorsed it, right?
Wrong.
For the first time ever, the UN has released on the Web the comments of reviewers who assessed the drafts of the WG I report and the IPCC editors’ responses. This release was almost certainly a result of intense pressure applied by “hockey-stick” co-debunker Steve McIntyre of Toronto and his allies. Unlike the other IPCC working groups, WG I is based in the US and McIntyre had used the robust Freedom of Information legislation to request certain details when the full comments were released.
An examination of reviewers’ comments on the last draft of the WG I report before final report assembly (i.e. the “Second Order Revision” or SOR) completely debunks the illusion of hundreds of experts diligently poring over all the chapters of the report and providing extensive feedback to the editing teams. Here’s the reality.
A total of 308 reviewers commented on the SOR, but only 32 reviewers commented on more than three chapters and only five reviewers commented on all 11 chapters of the report. Only about half the reviewers commented on more than one chapter. It is logical that reviewers would generally limit their comments to their areas of expertise but it’s a far cry from the idea of thousands of scientists agreeing to anything.
Compounding this is the fact that IPCC editors could, and often did, ignore reviewers’ comments. Some editor responses were banal and others showed inconsistencies with other comments. Reviewers had to justify their requested changes but the responding editors appear to have been under no such obligation. Reviewers were sometimes flatly told they were wrong but no reasons or reliable references were provided.
In other cases reviewers tried to dilute the certainty being expressed and they often provided supporting evidence, but their comments were often flatly rejected. Some comments were rejected on the basis of a lack of space - an incredible assertion in such an important document.
sylas said:I wouldn't panic on that score.
Cheers -- sylas
russ_watters said:This is really bad because the unity of the consensus position is often touted as de facto evidence of how strong it is. I believe someone even mentioned it earlier in the thread how of several hundred mainstream peer reviewed articles over the past few years, not one forwarded a thesis counter to the AGW position. But if "skeptics" research is being actively suppressed, that creates a self-reinforcing appeal to authority type argument.
We've had some pretty lively debates among the moderators about what kind of evidence/papers/blogs/etc should be acceptible for use on PF and the starting point of such debates is the sanctity of the peer review process. If the peer review process has been compromised when it comes to climate research, then it all but necessitates opening the door for a free-for-all of unverified research. It's a really, really bad situation.
If someone told a story like what we're getting here without these emails, they'd probably have been banned as a conspiracy theorist/crackpot. But what we're seeing is equal in concept (scale still unknown) to the worst of what guys like Rush Limbaugh claim (that AGW is a conspiracy by some scientific establishment). No, he doesn't get a win for making something up that happened to turn out to be true, but it is a very bad situation when a crackpot turns out to be right. It's instant credibility.
...This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the
"peer-reviewed literature". Obviously, they found a solution to that--take over a journal!
So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering "Climate Research" as a
legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate
research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal...
Proton Soup said:sylas said:As usual, none of this makes any difference to the science; only to the human failings and personal inconsistencies of two people.
yes, as usual, politics influences science not one iota. it beats to its own drum, completely oblivious to the world around it. what a wondrous thing it must be to be above all this foolishness. oh, how i envy you scientists.
Why certainly a long time ago? Because this http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/bios/pachauri.htm" is beyond reproach? He didn't become chairman of the IPCC until 2002.sylas said:PS. I do think he could do more about curtailing his own flying; but to be fair, the cricket story is almost certainly from a long time ago; before he or others had recognized a particular importance for curtailing of carbon emissions.
FOX said:The loss of the data prevents other scientists from checking it to determine whether, in fact, there has been a long-term rise in global temperatures during the past century and a half.
Turbo, you need to keep up on what's happening, it's been mentioned repeatedly that the data is NOT available.turbo-1 said:In that article, FOX is distorting and sensationalizing the story. The data is not lost. It is publicly-available at a host of servers all over the world, subject only to the approval of the organizations that compiled the data, and in the case of NASA, NOAA, and other publicly-funded organizations no approval is necessary - just go get it. CRU is using this raw data to model climate - they did not compile the data. This hack is being used as a political football by the right, who are preaching to a crowd that knows little or nothing about how climate science is conducted.
Scientists at the University of East Anglia 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.
The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit CRU was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.
:uhh:In a statement on its website, the CRU said: "We do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenized) data."
For clarity, some of the original raw station data has apparently been lost or destroyed as Evo's link states. The information supposedly derivative of that raw data is what has been made available.Evo said:Turbo, you need to keep up on what's happening, it's been mentioned repeatedly that the data is NOT available.
Evo said:Turbo, you need to keep up on what's happening, it's been mentioned repeatedly that the data is NOT available.
Got to love this:uhh:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,577746,00.html?loomia_ow=t0:s0:a16:g12:r2:c0.560839:b29147990:z10
It was necessary to push Turbo1's well known FOX News-aggravation-button because many of the other major news networks are blacking out this story. With a trillion dollar climate bill passed by the House, a lead author of perhaps the primary section of the UN IPCC report has just stepped down. Penn State has announced an investigation of Dr Michael Mann. What do we see on CNN's front page by way of 'Breaking News'? Tiger Woods on SUV rampages, and 'promo' pieces on Obama's pending Afghanistan announcement.turbo-1 said:In that article, FOX is distorting and sensationalizing the story. ...
I posted a link to an archive of other links showing that the raw data IS still available, and you deleted my link because you said the link was to a biased site.Evo said:Turbo, you need to keep up on what's happening, it's been mentioned repeatedly that the data is NOT available.
I concur. Fudging data? That happens all the time. Heck, even Nobel laureates (*cough* David Baltimore *cough*) have gotten away with it.Andre said:Data is one thing, possible monopolizing and managing peer review is another.
CRU did not generate the data-sets. They used the data-sets generated by others. The collection of links that I posted is very comprehensive and most of the links lead to very large data repositories. I sincerely doubt that the organizations hosting that original raw data have destroyed it, as is alleged of the CRU. There is a great deal of politicization of the CRU hack based on their alleged "destruction" of raw data. That is absolutely wrong. There are copies of the raw data all over the place. Can I prove that every piece of data that they used is available in its totality? Of course not. Somehow, nobody from the anti-AGW side is ever asked to prove that the original data has been destroyed, despite the fact that CRU did NOT compile its own data sets, and used the data collected by others.DanP said:How can you prove that the totality of data is available ?
Turbo, CRU has admitted the data that was requested is "no longer available", did you read it? Are you saying that CRU is lying about that too? I agree that it's pretty much impossible to believe that they wouldn't keep the original data.turbo-1 said:I posted a link to an archive of other links showing that the raw data IS still available, and you deleted my link because you said the link was to a biased site.
I can't re-post the link per forum rules, and prove that the raw data is still available, but it IS still available. There is no pro-AGW propaganda on that page of links, just links to raw data, processed data, and codes.
If you will allow it, I will gladly go to that page, copy the whole page of links, and copy them into a subsequent post with NO link to the hosting site.
Absent the raw station data from CRU, how do you know that nothing new would arise?Sorry! said:Let's imagine for a second that the CRU did have the data and agreed to release it. What then? It's not like anything new would arise from the skeptic position no new papers showing why the CRU method is wrong that haven't already been written. ...
sylas said:Can we try to keep the context clear?
My remarks you have quoted are specifically addressed to the point of the amount of flying time clocked up by Al Gore and Rajendra Pachauri. And I maintain, none of that makes any difference to the science. You have removed the remark from it's context here, and some people might thing it is now a remark about all the policitical brouhaha surround climate science generally. It is not.
We probably both agree that ideally the work of science in discovering answers to scientific questions should proceed without politically driven influence.
We agree, I suspect, that there IS in fact an influence of politics on this work; and that this is a bad thing. We might disagree on the nature and scope of that impact.
Cheers -- sylas
mheslep said:For clarity, some of the original raw station data has apparently been lost or destroyed as Evo's link states. The information supposedly derivative of that raw data is what has been made available.
Last time. There is only similar data from GISS, etc... out of all of that data, the specific data that the CRU scientists picked out then changed is what is missing. Are you and sorry trying to troll? :tongue:turbo-1 said:No longer available from THEM. That is very different. I don't think that any reasonable person thinks that CRU has the ability to destroy raw data held by NASA, NOAA, or any of the other international sources of their data-sets. CRU may no longer have THEIR copies of the huge data-sets that they obtained from other organizations, but that doesn't mean that the organizations that compiled those data-sets have destroyed them.
Let me post the collection of links that you deleted before (with NO link to the hosting organization) and everyone here will see that in fact the raw data, processed data, and processing code actually exists. The "destruction" of data is the biggest red herring ever in this particular subject. PF gets spidered and trawled over and over again every day, and subject to the storage capacity of the search engines, NOTHING is truly "lost" or deleted so that it cannot be recovered. I have made extensive used of NASA's NED web-site, CalTech's web resources, HyperLEDA, SDSS, and many other astronomical resources in the course of research. If I have limited space (I do) and deleted source data from my drives after populating spreadsheets, databases, etc, (I did), that in no way implies that the source data is "destroyed" or no longer available. I can't destroy that raw data, nor could CRU destroy the raw data that they relied on.
Sorry! said:I guess, it just gets annoying when people on here are complaining about how political AGW supporters are yet their only information comes from media sources. (Which is very clearly twisting the situation)
DanP said:Why is that "twisting" the situation ? This is all political to the bone, I expect everyone involved will twist and use any leverage possible.
Besides, a lot of controversial info seem to come from CRU itself, through the e-mail hack. That is not "media".
They have admitted it. How would a statement they made be peer reviewed? And we don't require peer review anyway.turbo-1 said:Now you are charging CRU scientists with cherry-picking data? Let me play PF-rule advocate here and suggest that you come up with some unbiased peer-reviewed references for that charge. That's not nice.
Proton Soup said:i don't think it's out of context at all. you imply that regardless of all the shenanigans displayed by Gore, Pachauri, et al. that the "science" they are triumphing is untainted.
Sorry! said:Not really. Most controversy from the e-mails occurred due to understanding the language being used.
Sorry! said:As well if you do not think that the released e-mails over the internet is a media source than I do not know what else to say to you.
sylas said:And that is precisely correct.
The shenanigans or otherwise of people who are publicizing science has nothing whatever to do with the quality of the science itself. The IPCC does not do research; it is a report on the state of science done by others.
I don't actually think the shenanigans are anything of the kind, but leave that aside. Certainly I think Gore in particular could do more to reduce his personal carbon footprint, but I don't think that is "shenanigans". It is a personal inconsistency. But this is all so clearly ad hominem for a comment on the science itself that we can presume they are baby eaters, if you like.
Gore has no input at all into the science, none. He is exclusively a popularizer.
Pachauri has almost no input into the science; when he became chair of IPCC he replaced a climate scientist as the previous chair, which some people consider to be a cause for concern. He himself is not a climate scientist, and was widely perceived as being more "industry friendly". His own PhD is in "Industrial Engineering and Economics", and he has a long history of direct industry involvement. Unlike the previous chair he has done no research at all into the science of climate, and has no mention or citations or references whatsoever in the WG1 report.
His alleged personal failings is a classic ad hominem fallacy.
Cheers -- sylas
Uh, where?Sorry! said:Because the data has always been available.
I didn't ask how or comment on how it should be used, I asked specifically for the raw temperature data.The station list has been posted for CRU I believe they use currently over 3000 stations and the list supplied gives all the stations used. (I think its something like 4000 stations). The CRU didn't 'get' their own information, they used other raw information and adjusted it (properly I might add). If you look at the first Station Jan Mayen you can look up the history of the station. It was moved I believe 4 times. So should all the raw data collected from this station be equally used? Of course not.
You seem to be implying the temperature data since its founding in 1921 is somehow archived on this artic island? You know this how?You can also get the data from Jay Mayen. Knock yourself out?
From CRU's websiteSorry! said:Evo the raw data is not CRUs data. So what this means (what turbo is saying to you) is that even if they DID delete ALL their raw data it's not gone. You can still go and get it for yourself.
IT'S THE SAME DATA.
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.
mheslep said:You seem to be implying the temperature data since its founding in 1921 is somehow archived on this artic island? You know this how?