A Summary of the Great CRU Data Hack Emails
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This is not a call to abandon global warming research. This is a call to shine a little sunlight on it, open up data sets and source code to the public, and get politics the hell out of our science. We need to rethink the standards we hold science to in the modern world.
If only this could also apply to medical research / health science!
If I had an abundance of charity in me, I would say he's a pompous git who can't stand the thought of The Enemy winning even a single centimeter against him. The uncharitable explanations all rhyme with fraud.
I find the theft of internal communications abhorrent, the politicalization of the issue uninteresting, and I seriously doubt there's any real science to be gleaned from this entire sophomoric debacle.
What proof?
I can't believe people would defend deleting data rather than responding to a FOI request. Well, actually, I can. You just did. Which is sad.
What possible good can come of interacting with someone who -- in addition to being grossly underqualified -- has a consistent history of applying a political agenda without fail to their "science"?
This is the equivalent of Fox News factual reporting. Sometimes they get the facts right, but that doesn't mean they aren't twisting them.
I'm sure there are more than a few gems.
Isn't the scientific ideal all about openness and reproducible analyses?
Yes, but when someone applies such a strong political ideology to twisting those analyses, how do you propose scientists respond?
Climate change has been so politicized by unqualified ideologues that I can hardly blame scientists for wishing to defend themselves from the worst of them.
If anything, these e-mails demonstrate that the data IS shared independently evaluated, but that the community has established political defenses to deal with political -- not scientific -- opponents.
To do otherwise would be naive. Complex topics fall easily to those who would politicize them.
These emails make it look like the new ideal is supporting the "correct" political agenda.
No, they demonstrate a clear interest in defending against the attacks of a very specific set of ideologues.
As someone who has had to defend engineering projects and people from angry corporate politics, I don't envy these climate change scientists in the least, and I certainly don't begrudge them their defensive positions.
If science and data are not interpreted by the right people, how can we be sure that the world is getting the right message?
You know, I suppose you're trying to be sarcastic here, but this is actually a valid point. Analyzing scientific data is not something that most people can do properly without a lot of training and education. When the "wrong people" interpret the data and publicize their "results" it absolutely can and will mislead people, which is kind of counterproductive to the whole purpose of this "science" thing.
To my mind, a responsible scientist has an obligation to promote understanding, not follow some notion of proper behavior. So, yeah, if someone with a fairly large audience, a lack of relevant expertise, and an apparent vested interest in interpreting results in a predetermined way asks for huge volumes of data the correct response is probably somewhere between ignoring them completely and telling them to fuck off.
It sounds like these people were dramatically overreacting (Deleting the data? Really, guys?), but after seeing how well it worked when the biologists tried to engage in a civilized scientific discussion about evolution, I can at least sympathize.
Of course, the core of the climate change premise is also pretty well established (the extreme alarmism and many proposed solutions, not so much), and plenty of evidence is out there, but unfortunately HN continues to disappoint me whenever the subject comes up.
The political groupthink around here is pretty strong and it's starting to sour me on the whole site. I know complaining about HN turning into reddit is cliche but seriously, all the threads about this story (how many have there been by now?) have been worse than reddit.
I read McIntyre's site regularly, and find very little evidence of this. His 'political ends'? By design, there's very little political discussion on his site. But one of few times this veil was dropped was after Obama's election, where he allowed it to be known that he was rooting for Obama: http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=4265
"I don't often talk about my political views - though I've sometimes taken pains to point out that I do not share the political views of many readers. In American terms, Canada would be a blue state along the lines of Massachusetts; Toronto would be a liberal city in a blue state; and I live downtown in one of the most liberal constituencies in the city. None of this is unrelated to my political views. I realize that many Climate Audit readers have opposite political views, but we try to get along."
"I think that Obama's election is also very healthy for the U.S. in world terms. The U.S. stands for both good and bad in world terms. While U.S. economic dominance has faded, it is still the leading world nation and leadership from the U.S. is important. Obama is in a position to provide such leadership in a way that would have been impossible for McCain."
You might argue successfully that his pedantic insistence on sources, data, and algorithms gets in the way of 'progress', but to say that this is because of his political views is a gross error. Like most of the 'skeptics' on his site, his goal is to insure that we are basing our decisions (whatever they may be) on sound science rather than on propaganda. Certainly he has some readers who do not share this goal, but I feel very certain that his personal goal is good science.
McIntyre spent 30 years in the oil/gas exploration business ("mineral exploration"). You don't think there are some vested politics here?
You might argue successfully that his pedantic insistence on sources, data, and algorithms gets in the way of 'progress', but to say that this is because of his political views is a gross error.
There's plenty of room to distort the facts while reporting them. Fox News consistently claims to present "the facts" in a "fair and balanced" manner.
I understand the sense that there could be, but as a regular reader of his site, with strong environmental leanings myself, I don't see any evidence of any such bias. He's a hard core statistician who happened to find his skills in demand by energy companies. I wouldn't presume a nuclear physicist is necessarily biased towards atomic war, and I wouldn't presume that Steve has any particular fondness for drilling in wildlife refuges.
There's plenty of room to distort the facts while reporting them. Fox News...
I agree with you that that Fox News is neither fair nor balanced. The snippets I've seen while sitting in airport terminals make me recoil in horror. It's very similar feeling to the feeling I get reading some of these leaked emails: a nausea induced by demagoguery and propaganda. I do not get this feeling when reading Steve's posts.
I'm sure it's not perfect, but it looks like a good example of scientific progress being made:
Nonetheless, it's unfortunate that I flipped
the Korttajarvi data. We used the density data as the
temperature proxy, as recommended to me by Antii Ojala
(co-author of the original work). It's weakly inversely
related to organic matter content. I should have
used the inverse of density as the temperature proxy. I
probably got confused by the fact that the 20th century
shows very high density values and I inadvertently
equated that directly with temperature.
This is new territory for me, but not acknowledging an
error might come back to bite us. I suggest that we nip
it in the bud and write a brief update showing the
corrected composite(Nick's graph) and post it to
RealClimate. Do you all agree?
For a taste of what they already deal with: http://rationalwiki.com/wiki/Lenski_affair
Thought experiment continued: What if the intelligent design movement is right, and the theory of evolution had subtle flaws that were kept under wraps? Would the hypothetical internal correspondence be different in any way?
All this release does is shine the light on the inevitable politicization of the process; it says nothing about the conclusions. (The sausage-making process doesn't necessarily make them wrong -- or right.)
Note IPCC reports have substantially lowered earlier predictions and findings have more weight. The science is better for the effort to "prove it."
This may or may not be the exact same situation with climate science, but I don't think think many would dispute that at least a significant portion the opposition to global warming is purely political.
At that point, what paths are left besides losing the game or entering the politics/PR arena as well? The science has suffered as a result, not been strengthened; the most damning excerpts are evidence enough of that.
The number of times I been able to talk to a climate scientist is few, but always full of hedging. It's a young science and predictions are always difficult (to say the least.) Scientific certainty is a sham. The best bet is to consider near-term action an insurance policy against potential outcomes.
(Please don't misread this: I do believe that climate science needs and benefits from skeptics, dissent, and alternative theories. I just don't believe that any opposition is good opposition, and in particular I believe that political opposition makes for worse science.)
My point was that politicization alone accounts for the tone and content of the internal correspondence on display, regardless of the soundness of the actual science.
Climate data does not make global warming a lightening-rod issue. What makes it such a controversial issue is that, if true, it would require dramatic changes to the way the First World operates.
The used car salesmen must be pleased that a
lower form of life has been identified.