Did New Zealand's NIWA also manipulate climate data?
blogs.telegraph.co.uk
blogs.telegraph.co.uk
Any conclusions reached - even in part - from data that has not been full released should be ignored.
That said, is there any evidence of global warming?
I really do want to know - is there any evidence based on data that has been fully released?
I fail to understand how not releasing data was ever tolerated. Isn't that the hallmark of science? That someone else can reproduce your work? And if they can't you are just a crank?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming
and clicking on the images. The first two images have a large amount of detail (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Satellite_Temperatures.png , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Instrumental_Temperature_R...)
Global warming is real.
That's not to say that they might not be correct, but it would be nice to see a link to the graph, the raw data, and a detailed explanation of every step in the chain between measurement and graph.
A publication generally has a page limit. Authors generally have a lot to say, so they leave everything out that would be "common knowledge" amongst experts in their field. After all, that's the target audience they're writing for. If someone with an honest intention asks about the methods or the data, I have no doubt it will be explained or given.
The problem is, the debate has been heavily politicised. Scientists aren't politicians. If somebody with pre-conceived notions comes along, they will do what any non-media-conscious person would do: tell them to get lost. Nobody wants to be the target of a show-trial. Unfortunately, because of the heavy politicisation, a strong "us against them" feeling has evolved, which makes people regard honest criticism as suspect.
It's not right. However, since these are humans, it is understandable.
The best thing we—people interested in an honest scientific debate—can do is to back out of the political discussion and let scientists handle it. Let sceptical scientists do their job. Let the debate be held in scientific journals, not in newspapers and blogs.
As far as my experience goes, papers just get submitted and then go into the peer-review process. If a paper comes down to the level of discourse we're seeing in these blogs, it won't get published, but if it contains some valid science, I see no reason why it wouldn't get published. If you have proof otherwise, please share it.
> What we have today is 90% politics 10% science.
Yes. This is both unfortunate and as it should be. It's unfortunate for the scientific debate. The level of discourse has dropped dramatically because of the politicisation.
On the other hand, scientists have been researching this for many years. The scientific debate has been ongoing for at least that long. Their conclusions do have a strong effect on policy. Political decisions have to be made about how to handle the issue.[1] Such policy-making has already started years ago and lead to the Kyoto Accord in 1997. So we're more in the political phase than we are in the scientific phase. 90% politics is probably as it should be right now.
[1] You can read this as "how to handle the issue if at there is an issue" if you want. It doesn't change what I'm saying.
Apparently you should have had some doubt. As the hacked emails reveal, the people at CRU conspired to prevent people from accessing their data in spite of a legal obligation (under Britain's Freedom of Information Act) to provide it.
I'm sorry, but this statement doesn't make any sense in the digital era. I can download closing prices for nearly every traded US stock over its entire existence in spreadsheet format from Yahoo for free. I downloaded binaries for an entire operating system to run the computer that I'm typing this reply on for free. "Page limit" is not a reasonable excuse for a scientist whose work is funded by the public. I have no doubt that a researcher who was willing to make data available in a digital format that is compatible with commonly used tools such as R would be able to find an outlet willing to host this data for public consumption. In fact, I would almost see this step as a requirement in today's technological environment. How many extra pages would be needed to cite a URL from which further details could be retrieved?
If someone with an honest intention asks about the methods or the data
This statement makes even less sense than the last one. The scientific soundness of data or method is unrelated to the intention of the analyzer. Publishing full details of the analysis can only strengthen confidence in the conclusion that has been reached. Only someone with reservations about the conclusion would seek to obscure the steps in the process by which it was reached.
There are very few peer reviewed online journals. So everything posted online is without the benefit of peer review. Writing exclusively online therefore will not work; hence you're already page limited for one part of your publication. You could write two papers, but a) the effort required is a lot more and b) the longer one (for online publication) will still not be peer reviewed.
And really, if any competent climatologist can understand and infer some steps in your processing, why mention or explain them?
As for data, I don't think it will be very hard. It would probably require one or two days of collecting though. However, I doubt the demand is very high, among competent climatologists anyway. If it was, I would assume this would be common practice.
> This statement makes even less sense than the last one. The scientific soundness of data or method is unrelated to the intention of the analyzer. Publishing full details of the analysis can only strengthen confidence in the conclusion that has been reached. Only someone with reservations about the conclusion would seek to obscure the steps in the process by which it was reached.
If the requests for more information come from competent climatologists, I would have no argument with you. But that's not the case; at least in those cases we're hearing about. The requests are made by economists, politicians and people who have stated—without data to back them up—in the past they don't "believe" in climate change. Some even going so far as to call it a conspiracy—it never was clear to me what the climatologists were conspiring to do, though.
If the requests comes from competent scientists, you can rely on their personal integrity. If it comes from people with no scientific background, you can't. They have little to no understanding of the subject or the methods involved. You can be quite sure that that won't stop them from trying to interpret the data. Their conclusions are certain to be wrong, and—due to their preconceived notions—are certain to call into question: the integrity of the data, the integrity of the scientist, the integrity of his institute and the integrity of all climatologists. Most of the time explicitly too!
Since those guys are opinion leaders, the only effect would be another news article stating climate change doesn't exist and that it's all a big lie by climatologists. An article based on the pre-conceived opinion of an incompetent "user" of scientific data.
That doesn't strengthen confidence in the conclusion being reached; it weakens it. People should listen to the climatologist in such a situation, but they don't. They listen to the one who preaches the opinion they already had.
So refusing the data to those with ill intentions isn't based on reservations about the conclusion—it's based on the reservations about the intentions of the requester.
And all that is because people aren't playing "science" any longer, they are playing "politics". It's a different game and it has different rules.