The Obama administration is apparently firmly in the camp of "the science is settled ......we don't need no stinkin data" An exchange at the WH press briefing yesterday:
Quote:
Q Are you aware of a list, the published list of 31,000 scientists who oppose this idea of global warming?
MR. GIBBS: I don't doubt that there --
Q And 6,000 of them are PhDs.
MR. GIBBS: I don't doubt that there's such a list, Lester. I think there's no real scientific basis for the dispute of this.
Like 6,000 PhDs and 25,000 other scientists that disagree and can't review the data because it's been dumped?
It's spreading, too. SUNY Albany is part of the scam according to Douglas Keenan:
Quote:
Some of the emails leaked in Climategate discuss my work. Following is a comment on that, and on something more important.
In 2007, I published a peer-reviewed paper alleging that some important research relied upon by the IPCC (for the treatment of urbanization effects) was fraudulent. The emails show that Tom Wigley — one of the most oft-cited climatologists and an extreme warming advocate — thought my paper was valid. They also show that Phil Jones, the head of the Climatic Research Unit, tried to convince the journal editor not to publish my paper.
After my paper was published, the State University of New York — where the research discussed in my paper was conducted — carried out an investigation. During the investigation, I was not interviewed — contrary to the university's policies, federal regulations, and natural justice. I was allowed to comment on the report of the investigation, before the report's release.
But I was not allowed to see the report. Truly Kafkaesque.
As is Queens University Belfast:
Quote:
Suppose that during the Medieval Warm Period, Earth was 1°C warmer than today. That would imply that the tipping point is more than 1°C higher than today's temperature. For Earth's temperature to increase 1°C might take roughly a century (at the rate of increase believed to be currently underway). So we would not have to be concerned about an imminent disruption of the climate system.
Finding out how warm the Medieval Warm Period is thus of enormous importance for the study of global warming.
It turns out that global (or at least hemispheric) temperatures are reflected by the climate in western Ireland (for a short explanation of that, see my site). Trees grow in western Ireland, of course, and each year those trees grow a ring. Thick rings indicate climate conditions that were good for the trees; thin rings indicate the opposite. If many trees in western Ireland had thick rings in some particular years, then climatic conditions in those years were presumably good. Tree rings have been used in this way to learn about the climate centuries ago.
Queen's University Belfast has data on tree rings that goes back millennia — and in particular, to the Medieval Warm Period. QUB researchers have not analyzed the data, because they lack the expertise to do so.
They also refuse to release the data. The story is scandalous.
I have been trying to obtain the data via the UK Freedom of Information Act since April 2007.
Even The Atlantic surprisingly has some harsh words over Climategate:
Quote:
In my previous post on Climategate I blithely said that nothing in the climate science email dump surprised me much. Having waded more deeply over the weekend I take that back.
The closed-mindedness of these supposed men of science, their willingness to go to any lengths to defend a preconceived message, is surprising even to me. The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering. And, as Christopher Booker argues, this scandal is not at the margins of the politicised IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] process. It is not tangential to the policy prescriptions emanating from what David Henderson called the environmental policy milieu. It goes to the core of that process.
One theme, in addition to those already mentioned about the suppression of dissent, the suppression of data and methods, and the suppression of the unvarnished truth, comes through especially strongly: plain statistical incompetence. This is something that Henderson's study raised, and it was also emphasised in the Wegman report on the Hockey Stick, and in other independent studies of the Hockey Stick controversy. Of course it is also an ongoing issue in Steve McIntyre's campaign to get hold of data and methods. Nonetheless I had given it insufficient weight. Climate scientists lean very heavily on statistical methods, but they are not necessarily statisticians. Some of the correspondents in these emails appear to be out of their depth. This would explain their anxiety about having statisticians, rather than their climate-science buddies, crawl over their work.
I'm also surprised by the IPCC's response. Amid the self-justification, I had hoped for a word of apology, or even of censure. (George Monbiot called for Phil Jones to resign, for crying out loud.) At any rate I had expected no more than ordinary evasion. The declaration from Rajendra Pachauri that the emails confirm all is as it should be is stunning. Science at its best. Science as it should be. Good lord. This is pure George Orwell. And these guys call the other side "deniers".
What's that, the sound of crickets still chirping?
P.S. Some interesting insight on the players involved can be found here.
Update: The Goracle is of course only doing his part for the climate out of the goodness of his heart. That's why for just 5,999 Krones, or about $1,213, you can shake his hand in Copenhagen.
