Oh come ON. This CRU hack story is the biggest beat-up I’ve heard in a long time. Of the 4000 documents and emails they hackers got their hands on, the best dirt people can find is a request to delete some non-specified emails and some discussion about how to present the data in the best way to make it easy for non-scientists to understand the trend? That’s a pretty lame smoking gun, especially when the other side have been caught red-handed literally making shit up.
From the excerpts I’ve read, it just sounds like a bunch of scientists trying to win an infowar against a much more powerful and fully-financed opposition. We might wish they could hold to a higher standard of ethics and transparency, but these folks are in the bunker. Their credibility and intelligence is being challenged on a daily basis. They are fighting for the survival of their species. It’s only natural for them to be a little cautious about what how the data gets presented and to fight against the people who are trying to manipulate the data for nefarious purposes.
But there’s *nothing* I’ve seen that even suggests these scientists fudged data or even manipulated the data to prove a dodgy theory. If you’ve seen something like that in the evidence, point me to it.
This whole beat-up reminds me of when Michael Moore’s critics try to attack his films on the basis that he edits the footage with an agenda. No kidding.
Apart from the emails, which are pretty damaging (hoding results, deleting emails, refusing to coorperate with FOI, influencing journals) there are also the comments of the data analyst. These show large scale manipulation of the data. No, this will not go away. It seemed that they fiddled so much with the data that they could not even reproduce their own results.
In the end, it is about the science. Is there evidence for man-made global warming or not. It seems that is it far from clear.
“large scale manipulation of the data”?? Care to point me to that email??
Cameron, the following links are some of them. People start now to analyze the actual data files and the programmer’s comments (e.g. the famous harry_read_me files).
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/22/cru-emails-may-be-open-to-interpretation-but-commented-code-by-the-programmer-tells-the-real-story/
http://www.tickerforum.org/cgi-ticker/akcs-www?post=118625&page=13
On Google’s blog search I also saw that people start to reanalyze the data files.
Albert, I read through the comments on these threads and it’s pretty hard for a non-programmer to follow. There are some on the thread who claim the comments are a big deal, other who say they aren’t. You’d have to be both knowledgeable about programming AND about tree ring data to make any sense of this. But it hardly seems like a smoking gun. To claim that the case for AGW is fraudulent, they are going to need MUCH more than this. The case against the CRU team still seems pretty flimsy to me.
So, you don’t know enough about tree-ring data or programming to make a comment, but you want to conclude that there’s not enough evidence to show that there’s anythig significant here? The tree-ring data and the programming ARE the evidence, aren’t they?
@nobody – if you read through the “climategate” emails that are being used to try to discredit CRU, you’ll see that NONE of them suggest even slightly that the scientists were fiddling with the data. So I don’t need to understand how the science works to understand from reading the emails that there doesn’t appear to be anything suspicious going on.
Hi Cameron. The files are pretty damaging for the CRU. IT will mean that the data has to be reanalyzed, this time openly. I suspect based on the data analysis comments that a lot of correction will actually have to be discarded, leaving graphs that are not so clear-cut and with a low level of accurateness. A lot of the assumptions that are now in the open will be questioned. I guess it will turn into a real scientific debate where perhaps global warming, but in any case man-made global warming is less sure. We also have the question whether CO2 is the main culprit.
For the CRU, I guess the sloppy science, the refusals of FOI requests, the abuse of power, the non-scientific influencing of the debate will also be a problem.
But, I agree there is a lot of extra data from other labs, so we cannot say that AGW is fraudulent. Cheers Albert