Re: Skeptic Finds He Now Agrees Global Warming Is Real
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Originally Posted by Bodo
The issue is that they did NOT make their data available. In fact they destroyed the original data and fought anyone that wanted to see it. That isn't science 
Believing these scientists just because you WANT to agree in spite of their short comings and dubious conclusions isn't wrong. It's just not rational nor scientific. |
According to Wikipedia (agree it's not always the most accurate but it is convenient and provides sources):
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Most of the emails concerned technical and mundane aspects of climate research, such as data analysis and details of scientific conferences.[29] The Guardian's analysis of the emails suggests that the hacker had filtered them. Four scientists were targeted and a concordance plot shows that the words "data", "climate", "paper", "research", "temperature" and "model" were predominant.[21] The controversy has thus focused on a small number of emails.[29] Skeptic websites picked out particular phrases, including one in which Kevin Trenberth stated, "The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t".[20] This was actually part of a discussion on the need for better monitoring of energy flows involved in short-term climate variability,[30] but was grossly mischaracterised by critics.[31][32]
The material comprised more than 1,000 emails, 2,000 documents, as well as commented source code, pertaining to climate change research covering a period from 1996 until 2009.[28] According to an analysis in The Guardian, the vast majority of the emails related to four climatologists: Phil Jones, the head of the CRU; Keith Briffa, a CRU climatologist specialising in tree ring analysis; Tim Osborn, a climate modeller at CRU; and Mike Hulme, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. The four were either recipients or senders of all but 66 of the 1,073 emails, with most of the remainder of the emails being sent from mailing lists. A few other emails were sent by, or to, other staff at the CRU. Jones, Briffa, Osborn and Hulme had written high-profile scientific papers on climate change that had been cited in reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.[21]
Most of the emails concerned technical and mundane aspects of climate research, such as data analysis and details of scientific conferences.[29] The Guardian's analysis of the emails suggests that the hacker had filtered them. Four scientists were targeted and a concordance plot shows that the words "data", "climate", "paper", "research", "temperature" and "model" were predominant.[21] The controversy has thus focused on a small number of emails.[29] Skeptic websites picked out particular phrases, including one in which Kevin Trenberth stated, "The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t".[20] This was actually part of a discussion on the need for better monitoring of energy flows involved in short-term climate variability,[30] but was grossly mischaracterised by critics.[31][32]
Many commentators quoted one email referring to "Mike's Nature trick" which Jones used in a 1999 graph for the World Meteorological Organization, to deal with the well-discussed tree ring divergence problem "to hide the decline" that a particular proxy showed for modern temperatures after 1950, when measured temperatures were rising. These two phrases from the emails were also taken out of context by climate change sceptics including US Senator Jim Inhofe and former Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin as though they referred to a decline in measured global temperatures, even though they were written when temperatures were at a record high.[32] John Tierney, writing in the New York Times in November 2009, said that the claims by sceptics of "hoax" or "fraud" were incorrect, but the graph on the cover of a report for policy makers and journalists did not show these non-experts where proxy measurements changed to measured temperatures.[33] The final analyses from various subsequent inquiries concluded that in this context 'trick' was normal scientific or mathematical jargon for a neat way of handling data, in this case a statistical method used to bring two or more different kinds of data sets together in a legitimate fashion.[34][35] The EPA notes that in fact, the evidence shows that the research community was fully aware of these issues and was not hiding or concealing them.[36]
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It also states, further on:
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An editorial in Nature stated that "A fair reading of the e-mails reveals nothing to support the denialists' conspiracy theories." It said that emails showed harassment of researchers, often using Freedom of Information Act requests, but release of information had been hampered by national government restrictions on releasing the meteorological data researchers had been using. Nature considered that e-mails had not shown anything that undermined the scientific case on human caused global warming, or raised any substantive reasons for concern about the researchers' own papers.[45] The Telegraph reported that academics and climate change researchers dismissed the allegations, saying that nothing in the emails proved wrongdoing.[46] Independent reviews by FactCheck and the Associated Press said that the emails did not affect evidence that man made global warming is a real threat, and said that emails were being misrepresented to support unfounded claims of scientific misconduct. The AP said that the "[e]-mails stolen from climate scientists show they stonewalled sceptics and discussed hiding data."[47][48] In this context, John Tierney of the New York Times wrote: "these researchers, some of the most prominent climate experts in Britain and America, seem so focused on winning the public-relations war that they exaggerate their certitude — and ultimately undermine their own cause."[33]
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Lastly - on the subject of making data available:
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The committee criticised a "culture of non-disclosure at CRU" and a general lack of transparency in climate science where scientific papers had usually not included all the data and code used in reconstructions. It said that "even if the data that CRU used were not publicly available—which they mostly are—or the methods not published—which they have been—its published results would still be credible: the results from CRU agree with those drawn from other international data sets; in other words, the analyses have been repeated and the conclusions have been verified." The report added that "scientists could have saved themselves a lot of trouble by aggressively publishing all their data instead of worrying about how to stonewall their critics." The committee criticised the university for the way that freedom of information requests were handled, and for failing to give adequate support to the scientists to deal with such requests.[89]
The committee chairman Phil Willis said that the "standard practice" in climate science generally of not routinely releasing all raw data and computer codes "needs to change and it needs to change quickly". Jones had admitted sending "awful emails"; Willis commented that "[Jones] probably wishes that emails were never invented," but "apart from that we do believe that Prof. Jones has in many ways been scapegoated as a result of what really was a frustration on his part that people were asking for information purely to undermine his research."[34] In Willis' view this did not excuse any failure to deal properly with FOI Act requests, but the committee accepted that Jones had released all the data that he could.[34] It stated: "There is no reason why Professor Jones should not resume his post. He was certainly not co-operative with those seeking to get data, but that was true of all the climate scientists".[90]
The committee was careful to point out that its report had been written after a single day of oral testimony and would not be as in-depth as other inquiries.[88]
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Further on, they talk about an independent review and state:
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First announced in December 2009, a British investigation commissioned by the UEA and chaired by Sir Muir Russell, published its final report in July 2010.[103] The commission cleared the scientists and dismissed allegations that they manipulated their data. The "rigour and honesty" of the scientists at the Climatic Research Unit were found not to be in doubt.[104] The panel found that they did not subvert the peer review process to censor criticism as alleged, and that the key data needed to reproduce their findings was freely available to any "competent" researcher.[105]
The panel did rebuke the CRU for their reluctance to release computer files, and found that a graph produced in 1999 was "misleading," though not deliberately so as necessary caveats had been included in the accompanying text.[106] It found evidence that emails might have been deleted in order to make them unavailable should a subsequent request be made for them, though the panel did not ask anyone at CRU whether they had actually done this.[107]
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There were 6 different reviews and inquiries into the matter, all coming to pretty much the same conclusions. So, it appears that there were certainly issues regarding the handling of information requests and transparency that could have been handled better by UA but there is no evidence to indicate that the science behind their studies is faulty. It also does not support your claim that the original data was "destroyed".
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11-02-2011, 06:44 AM
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