Hack and get some climate researchers’ emails. Then point to some pretty reasonable stuff as evidence of a conspiracy if taken out of context.
It seems there are a few cases certain people latch onto.
There was a certain lousy paper pushed for publication in the journal called Climate Research. It was crap – the claims in the paper conclusions could not be justified by the data or methods presented in it. It was also written by known fossil industry funded frauds. It went through anyway because of a bad reviewer and editor, and actually was pushed as support for policy. Like pushing creation science somewhere in a weak journal so you can cite it as “peer reviewed”. Many other editors for the journal quit as a result. Read the story here, where “Clare Goodess explains the circumstances behind the resignation of half of the editorial board of the journal Climate Research”.
I do hope for more openness on the data and algorithms front. Of course if you’re a climate researcher and get your data only with personal agreements (from the data collecting scientists and institutions who might work under lots of constraints – these might not be the same people who make models or the temperature reconstructions from the data).
I don’t know about the FOIA (government information) requests… It seems bad that things have been withheld. On the other hand if you get so much FOIA requests just for posturing’s sake from certain people that you’re swamped by them, that’s unreasonable as well.
Then there’s the alleged “trick” to hide some cooling. AFAIK, this is just a known proxy issue where they are in error at some point and thus when you make some plots you don’t use that period but “hide” it.
Quite weird arguments. The FOI one is the most serious looking to me, and others seem just fake.
It’s not science if it’s not readily reproducible including by critics and since for example data has been hidden and destroyed (there’s more) it’s simply not science. No need for me to go into detail, pick up an introductory textbook on Philosophy of Science if you don’t have one or read it again if you do have one.
What is worse this is absolutely nothing new as many like me have been pointing out for years, anyone keeping an eye on the debate (which AGW proponents claim has been non-existent… repeatedly…) would have noticed this many years ago. The hacked emails just confirm and prove it.
If you’re not a scientist or not schooled in the scientific method and don’t quite grasp the above then read the following, maybe you should read it anyway since you seem to still be uninformed:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/6679082/Climate-change-this-is-the-worst-scientific-scandal-of-our-generation.html
If you are a scientist or otherwise should have known better then this should be a soul-searching opportunity for you; why did you abandon the scientific method?
“Anthropogenic Global Warming/anthropogenic climate change” is an anti-science and anti-humanity fraud, it really is that simple and now also proven.
Heads should roll.
Well, unfortunately there are various levels of reproducibility you can give. Pick a random paper in some journal, and the data they use might not be publicly available, the code might not etc etc… That’s the way the world is, not everything is like how you want it to be. Or how even most would want.
Sure, the reconstructions are not perfect. And they might contain mistakes, sometimes even crucial. I for one hope for more funding so all the datasets can be bought and released openly, the code released, checked and cleaned up and entered into a version control system and many other things.
Certain anti-science people have been calling fraud and latching onto the most outlandish ideas (“Mauna Loa is a volcano that releases CO2, hence the numbers go up” etc etc) that they’ve lost all credibility in my eyes. There is no coherent stance anywhere. People deny warming, some people say there is warming but it’s not human caused, some argue for human caused yes but low sensititivity, and a million other things. And some jump between all of these positions just to create confusion.
First of all I want to apologize if I came across as too crass or personal, it’s simply that exasperation sometimes gets the better of me and can get misdirected particularly on such a topic which is of fundamental importance. The example of climatology is just the tip of the iceberg on a topic that has been growing much worse during the last two decades within most science (mathematics is exempt as usual due to its nature but the use of mathematics within other fields of science certainly isn’t; for example when it concerns climatology it has been proven by highly respected –not that that should matter– mathematicians that they misapply statistics by not understanding the mathematics of it).
I fully agree that the current state of matters in scientific publication is horrible –even among the most prestigious journals– because all data, all methods, all tools, and all relevant reasoning without fail has to be publicly available for it to be real science and those tough demands are being ignored to the detriment of science (as far as I know this ugliness started in the medical sciences some decades back and has damaged those fields tremendously). If a return to the core principles doesn’t happen then “science” will become less and less important as people no longer have any reasonable degree of trust in it nor any reason for having such trust (this is pretty much the case already within pharmacology where published papers and journals and any other outside/2ndhand work is outright ignored as useless by many). If this continues it will be the death of the scientific revolution and nothing good can come of it.
The IPCC datasets have never conformed to the requirements for being part of good valid science yet “scientists” disregard the fact and many of them still do so right now when this fact should be more clear than ever. If those who ought to know the importance of the scientific method better than most will not live up to and stand to defend that method then how can anyone expect anyone else to give their “science” (and unfortunately by inclusion all science) any credence? It does not matter what opinions or conjectures those people hold: science will have been (and has been) damaged by those who claim to be scientific but aren’t.
This is also why it does not matter if the critic is from a different field of science as long as they fully understand and appreciate the scientific method. Anyone at all who understands the scientific method is right to criticize obvious basic flaws such as those within climate “science” no matter what opinion they might or might not hold.
And why should such things as volcano eruptions or wide ranging coal fires or forest fires or tree growth be ignored or “adjusted” in the data set? Any such is reason enough on its own to call their work into question but as long as they do not release their data nor their methodology and so on then that –actual scientific scrutiny– is impossible.
Sorry if I sound like a broken record but really I do not understand how so many can keep pretending that the science is good when the science is not released to anyone and everyone including critics (who else than critics would one expect to be thorough? That’s pretty much the core idea of science itself right there).
And to use such a travesty as the basis for policy? Haven’t “we” done this error enough times already during the last century?
Apologies for the long post, I hope that at least it gives an understanding for why some people like me do not “believe in AGW”. I was open to the idea that there might be a general warming trend but I won’t be able to defend that until I can find trustworthy data that isn’t mostly anecdotal or “explained away” by reference to flawed science.
I typed a really long response but it got destroyed by a hanging fiery fox, so I’ll be terse.
Basically, you’re operating on a logical fallacy of demanding perfection, and when a flaw or failure of disclosure is spotted, assuming the whole premise is a fraud.
Yes, more openness and disclosure is better. That means more money and transforming from research style to applications style. Professsional software people instead of students etc etc..
But IIRC, CRU had over 50 FOI requests done. It’s like a denial of service attack.
And I’ve documented a couple of the specific claims here, quotes that were interpreted as being evidence of something malicious being not so upon closer examination. Yet they are making rounds in the media.
This means scientists suck at PR too. And that’s not their job either.
Maybe you were being too terse although I doubt verbosity would help your argument; how is it a demand for perfection to require access to the data and methods used when the very same should have been provided for any kind of valid peer review?
Without such the claim that the material has been peer reviewed is void.
50 FOI request is not a DoS attack unless one doesn’t have the data available. If they don’t have the data available then how was the “science” based on the data peer reviewed? How can they not have the data readily available in an electronic format when the data has allegedly been used as input for computer models? Those 50 FOI requests should amount to 50 e-mails or 50 downloads from a public folder at their university.
Maybe I should warn you that I have a background in Philosophy of Science and that I’m very much aware of what the requirements of proper science are? Hiding data is definitely not one of them ^_^
CRU is dead, NiWA is dead, let’s see if NASA survives their FOIA request (doubtful).