The End for the Global Warming Hoaxsters?

[Sigma]

Stephen, question: Where are you reading that these were students?

[Sigma]

This is only of interest for people who would like to see a predetermined outcome.

It seems in this case that the only people interested in a predetermined outcome is the scientists that you claim are just mere students and that its ok for students to manipulate findings and have each of their buddies review their false findings and say that its legit.

These alleged emails â€" supposedly exchanged by some of the most prominent scientists pushing AGW theory â€" suggest:
Conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100017393/climategate-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-of-anthropogenic-global-warming/

While I'm not a scientist by any means, I do have a Master of Science degree and I had to cope with a lot of data to write my thesis.  One thing every student should know is that you do not MANIPULATE data!  Any student knows that.  If they don't, then their major professor is to be held accountable.  But as you know, these were not students.

And yes Stephen, as you are the only completely objective, unbiased skeptic, why are you trying so hard to bury this?  If the true skeptics were thought to be manipulating data, you would leave no stone unturned and your condemnation would be raining down.  

I wish you would return to your totally rational, unbiased self. Just assume that this is the University of Blackwater - maybe you will pay more attention?

[Sigma]

P. S. Have a Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

[Sigma]

Uh, oh â€" raw data in New Zealand tells a different story than the “official” one.
11.25.2009
Reposted from TBR.cc Investigate magazine’s breaking news forum:

New Zealand’s NIWA accused of CRU-style temperature faking

The New Zealand Government’s chief climate advisory unit NIWA is under fire for allegedly massaging raw climate data to show a global warming trend that wasn’t there.

The scandal breaks as fears grow worldwide that corruption of climate science is not confined to just Britain’s CRU climate research centre.

In New Zealand’s case, the figures published on NIWA’s [the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric research] website suggest a strong warming trend in New Zealand over the past century:



The caption to the photo on the NiWA site reads:

From NIWA’s web site â€" Figure 7: Mean annual temperature over New Zealand, from 1853 to 2008 inclusive, based on between 2 (from 1853) and 7 (from 1908) long-term station records. The blue and red bars show annual differences from the 1971 â€" 2000 average, the solid black line is a smoothed time series, and the dotted [straight] line is the linear trend over 1909 to 2008 (0.92°C/100 years).

But analysis of the raw climate data from the same temperature stations has just turned up a very different result:



Gone is the relentless rising temperature trend, and instead there appears to have been a much smaller growth in warming, consistent with the warming up of the planet after the end of the Little Ice Age in 1850.

The revelations are published today in a news alert from The Climate Science Coalition of NZ:

Straight away you can see there’s no slopeâ€"either up or down. The temperatures are remarkably constant way back to the 1850s. Of course, the temperature still varies from year to year, but the trend stays levelâ€"statistically insignificant at 0.06°C per century since 1850.

Putting these two graphs side by side, you can see huge differences. What is going on?

Why does NIWA’s graph show strong warming, but graphing their own raw data looks completely different? Their graph shows warming, but the actual temperature readings show none whatsoever!

Have the readings in the official NIWA graph been adjusted?

It is relatively easy to find out. We compared raw data for each station (from NIWA’s web site) with the adjusted official data, which we obtained from one of Dr Salinger’s colleagues.

Requests for this information from Dr Salinger himself over the years, by different scientists, have long gone unanswered, but now we might discover the truth.

Proof of man-made warming

What did we find? First, the station histories are unremarkable. There are no reasons for any large corrections. But we were astonished to find that strong adjustments have indeed been made.

About half the adjustments actually created a warming trend where none existed; the other half greatly exaggerated existing warming. All the adjustments increased or even created a warming trend, with only one (Dunedin) going the other way and slightly reducing the original trend.

The shocking truth is that the oldest readings have been cranked way down and later readings artificially lifted to give a false impression of warming, as documented below. There is nothing in the station histories to warrant these adjustments and to date Dr Salinger and NIWA have not revealed why they did this.

One station, Hokitika, had its early temperatures reduced by a huge 1.3°C, creating strong warming from a mild cooling, yet there’s no apparent reason for it.

We have discovered that the warming in New Zealand over the past 156 years was indeed man-made, but it had nothing to do with emissions of CO2â€"it was created by man-made adjustments of the temperature. It’s a disgrace.

NIWA claim their official graph reveals a rising trend of 0.92ºC per century, which means (they claim) we warmed more than the rest of the globe, for according to the IPCC, global warming over the 20th century was only about 0.6°C.

NIWA’s David Wratt has told Investigate magazine this afternoon his organization denies faking temperature data and he claims NIWA has a good explanation for adjusting the temperature data upward. Wratt says NIWA is drafting a media response for release later this afternoon which will explain why they altered the raw data.

“Do you agree it might look bad in the wake of the CRU scandal?”

“No, no,” replied Wratt before hitting out at the Climate Science Coalition and accusing them of “misleading” people about the temperature adjustments.

Manipulation of raw data is at the heart of recent claims of corrupt scientific practice in climate science, with CRU’s Phil Jones recently claiming old temperature records collected by his organization were “destroyed” or “lost”, meaning researchers can now only access manipulated data.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/25/uh-oh-raw-data-in-new-zealand-tells-a-different-story-than-the-official-one/

[Sigma]

Here is a summary:

Here are some of the highlights of the documents released.

1. The scientists colluded in efforts to thwart Freedom of Information Act requests (across continents no less). They reference deleting data, hiding source code from requests, manipulating data to make it more annoying to use, and attempting to deny requests from people recognized as contributors to specific internet sites. Big brother really is watching you. He’s just not very good at securing his web site.

2. These scientists publicly diminished opposing arguments for lack of being published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. In the background they discussed black-balling journals that did publish opposing views, and preventing opposing views from being published in journals they controlled. They even mention changing the rules midstream in arenas they control to ensure opposing views would not see the light of day. They discuss amongst themselves which scientists can be trusted and who should be excluded from having data because they may not be “predictable”.

3. The scientists expressed concern privately over a lack of increase in global temperatures in the last decade, and the fact that they could not explain this. Publicly they discounted it as simple natural variations. In one instance, data was [apparently] manipulated to hide a decline in temperatures when graphed. Other discussions included ways to discount historic warming trends that inconveniently did not occur during increases in atmospheric CO2.

4. The emails show examples of top scientists working to create public relations messaging with favorable news outlets. It shows them identifying and cataloging, by name and association, people with opposing views. These people are then disparaged in a coordinated fashion via favorable online communities.

What the emails/files don’t do is completely destroy the possibility that global climate change is real. They don’t preclude many studies from being accurate, on either side of the discussion. And they should not be seen as discrediting all science.

Kudos to Anthony for being there, online, and being prepared to handle the traffic this topic generated. I would hope that this event would precipitate a greater openness regarding publicly funded research. It would be nice to see better adherence to scientific method. At the very least it has exposed some well funded, ivory tower thinkers, behaving very poorly.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/25/climategate-men-bahaving-badly-a-short-summary-for-laymen/#more-13209

[jandar]

Shh.....

Who cares if there might be collusion to not let data be researched by another party. AGW is a settled science. Silly people............

[jandar]

As I said.  It doesnt really amount to much except the embarrassment of a few individuals for their shoddy work 10 years ago.

It wasn't just 10 years ago. It was the past few years, refusing to release data, threatening to boycott journals simply because they posted a contrary view.

That is the problem. It was 10 years ago to current, not just 10 years ago.

[NotNow]

StephenDare! surely you can see even in the emails that are posted on this thread that these individuals were colluding to conceal information.  It seems obvious.  This does not disprove the theory of GW, only that these individuals were not acting in the best interests of science.  I don't see how anyone can condone blacklisting, falsifying information, and hiding data.  This does not forward our knowledge and is the opposite of science.

[jaxnative]

The Day Science Died

Posted By Phillip Ellis Jackson On November 25, 2009 @ 5:59 am In Environment, Animal Rights, Health Issues, & Drugs | 20 Comments

Who are you going to believe?  Scientists, or your lying eyes?

The revelations in recent days that prominent members of the scientific community have been deliberately falsifying data to support the political conclusion that man is primarily responsible for "Global Warming" (now commonly referred to as "Global Climate Change," since the planet is actually not getting warmer), has raised a troubling question.

Unlike the social sciences, where agendas and opinions often substitute for "facts," the hard sciences are supposedly pure, objective and rational. Here numbers don't lie, statistically demonstrable trends aren't self-serving conjecture, and the only agenda behind these scientific inquiries is a pure, unfettered, search for the truth. If tree rings and dying polar bears tell us the planet is getting warmer, and an increase in C02 levels tell us man and man alone is responsible for the warming, then by God (or by Gore for those who can't quite fathom the notion that there is a Supreme Being and Creator of the Universe), the science is "settled." Anyone who thinks differently is just a religious fanatic trying to impose his version of God on the rest of humanity, or equally despicable, an anti-intellectual moron who's missing several of his teeth as well as major neural synapses.

And yet, there's this nagging, troubling problem that surfaced a few days ago where these same Keepers of the Truth on Anthropogenic Global Cooling/Warming/Climate Change have been shown to be, well, a bunch of hypocrites and liars. Contravening data is ignored, suppressed or destroyed; supporting data is cherry-picked or manufactured out of whole cloth, and overlapping all of this is a political agenda tied to utopian social change and economic redistribution. Other than that, the evidence is pretty clear and convincing that man is the primary agent of global climate change going back hundreds, if not thousands of years.

Now, to those of us imbued with a modicum of common sense, this "Joe vs. the Volcano" scenario where Joe supposedly affects the climate more than nature does seemed a little, well, stupid to borrow a favorite phrase of mine. No one denies that man can affect portions of the planet by setting off a nuclear bomb here, building a dam there, or paving over a field and building a city or highway system. But to claim that all this is more of a reason for presumed global climate change than erupting volcanoes or the presence or absence of sunspots is, well, there's that word again: stupid.

I first posed this question back in 2006 [1], for which I was roundly criticized as a "wingnut" and anti-science flat-earther.

Al Gore tells us that the world is getting hotter, and that man is responsible for making it that way. Unless we take drastic steps now to correct this problem the ice caps will melt, our cities will flood, farmland will dry up and the rainforests will die. Before we get caught up in the same hysteria that thirty years earlier predicted the arrival of a new Ice Age, we might pause for a moment and ask: is any of this true? And if it is, what role did man really play in altering the climate, and if it is getting hotter, what (if anything) can he actually do about it?

. . .


In other words, if there's a big ball of vibrating, pulsating, fiery gas up in the sky that routinely heats the Earth, shouldn't we eliminate it first as the cause of this warming before making me trade in my Escalade for a Mini-Cooper?

When I wrote that piece, I was making an observation that we need to apply some common sense to our understanding of the world in which we live, rather than automatically accept the agenda-driven conclusions of others who use science to further their own venal interests.

If the scientist interpreting the data gets his funding from a government agency, and that agency won't fund the solving of a problem that is nature-made, then what other conclusion can the scientist draw than the problem â€" and solution â€" is man-made?  Why spend $10 million to fund a research project on sunspot or volcano-driven global warming when we don't have the ability to stop a volcano from erupting, or do anything to affect the sun making its spots? But if man is the culprit, then there's plenty of reason to keep seeking, and receiving, taxpayer support. And if man â€" not nature â€" is the ultimate villain in this modern day morality play, then think of all the social engineering, global reparation payments, or just plain nanny-state fun you can have changing society around to promote a "solution" that can't be proven or disproven for decades to come.

All of which leads to the contemporary notions of "consensus science" and "settled science," which is shorthand for "would you shut up and stop asking these kinds of embarrassing questions because we already have the conclusions we want." It's the day real science was replaced with the notion that the consensus of non-scientists and scientists, who gather together in quasi-political organizations, was all that was needed to shut down debate. It is, in effect, the day science died.  

I no longer trust "science" to be objective. As practiced today, it's just a different form of the base, venal, agenda-driven bilge we see in the mainstream media, whose purpose is not to educate and inform, but to protect and advance a private agenda. I wrote the following passage several months ago [2], and these words remain as true today as they were then.

Thirty years ago, if a major study said that the Earth was warming, or that red meat caused cancer, or that Candidate X was 30 points ahead in the polls, I may not automatically believe everything it says, but I wouldn't immediately dismiss it out of hand. Depending upon the degree of institutional credibility the study had (that is, The American Cancer Society vs. some organization I never heard of), I may start with the assumption that it's more right than wrong and proceed from there. If I had any questions, I'd look to see how and why the report arrived at its conclusions, and on this basis form a preliminary judgment about those issues.

Now the problem here is that unless you happen to have a degree in statistics, understand survey and polling methodology, or have an expertise in the scientific area of investigation under study, most people (myself included) can't really do this. So, we look instead for certain obvious clues. Is the study of 100 people, or 100,000? Does it say "will happen," or "might happen," or contain other qualifiers? Is the study peer reviewed, or put out by some organization with a vested interest in the matter?

These were the types of clues an intelligent observer would look to in forming an initial judgment. That opinion would be supplemented or diminished over the coming weeks and months as opposing experts in the field â€" who actually understood the technical stuff I didn't â€" would debate the matter. I'd learn about this debate from the press, which would summarize and report their findings in sufficient detail for me to see both sides of the issue.

But today there is no "press." There are newspapers and TV companies that have chosen a side and become advocates, not reporters. We've always had opinion-guided journalism in this country, so this in itself is nothing new. But again we're dealing with a sufficiently different degree of bias that has caused even Hillary (the "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy") Clinton to condemn the press for its favoritism and prejudice.

This bias doesn't limit itself to swaying elections. Do you remember the last time you saw a debate on ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, or read about it in The New York Times, etc. that explored the reality of man-made global warming? Don't bother to look it up. There hasn't been.

Despite the fact that sea levels aren't rising, that winters are getting colder, that virtually none of Al Gore's predictions have come true and an increasing number of mainstream scientists are challenging the methodology that produced these conclusions, the matter is "settled" in the eyes of the press. This is because there's a lot more riding on this belief than whether we all need an extra pair of summer shorts to add to our wardrobe. An entire economic and political agenda of the Left is built around the premise that man is producing "global climate change" (the new term of choice since the Earth clearly isn't warming like it was supposed to). Challenge the premise, or at the very least allow for reasonable people to disagree, and suddenly the momentum is gone for acting now! Or, acting at all.

If the only consequence was that we could no longer believe our lying eyes (and ears) about what's being said about Republican politicians and global CO2 emissions, it would be bad enough. But the problem today extends much further than this. Because so much of what's being portrayed as "totally, completely, unmitigatedly true" in fact isn't, and adding insult to injury, the so-called truth of the matter may be the exact opposite of what is stated, the only reasonable course of action is to doubt everything.

And yet, not everything deserves to be automatically doubted. Some studies which show that X causes cancer, Y prolongs life, or Z is harmful or hurtful to man or the environment are undoubtedly legitimate. But damned if I can tell which ones are honestly conducted. Given how politics (with a small "p") has been injected into everything from eating beef to exhaling Co2, and that most studies rely on government funds (which means government biases) or private finds (which means private agendas), only a fool would automatically believe everything he's told. And momma Jackson didn't raise her little boy Phillip to be no fool, much like other people in this country who actually think.

Now, instead of accepting what "objective" sources tell me is true, my first reaction is to make them prove it. I don't care if their conclusions or remedy seem outwardly reasonable or not, or the scientific panel seemed wholly legitimate. I don't accept anything on face value anymore, regardless of its source. I rely entirely on my common sense, which is okay for those things I happen to have some direct experience in or knowledge about. But there's a lot more I don't know than I do know, and therein lies the problem. In the absence of legitimate, objective, trustworthy outside sources, I still need to rely on my own common sense to figure things out. Better to trust my gut on an issue I know nothing about, than put my trust in some political hack whose only purpose is to advance an agenda. I may not make the right choice, but at least I'm not a mindless lemming begging to be deceived.

Therefore, if 100 "independent" experts tell me that eating red meat causes cancer, I'll think about it between bites as I put some more Worchester sauce on my steak. If they tell me that more people are likely to die in car accidents if they're driving 75 instead of 55 mph while talking on their cell phones, I'll set the cruise control on 80 while I dial up my brother and ask him what he thinks. I may end up following the experts' advice, or I may not. They're no longer an intrinsic source of information, but rather simply a source of information â€" to be sifted through with as accepting and questioning an eye as I have for any other report or assessment, from any other source.

When there's no one you can really trust to give you the truth, you trust no one. Or, you make that source earn your trust with every new report they issue, rather than accepting what they say at face value.

Verify, then trust. And in the absence of either, ignore what they say and make your own judgment, as ignorant or informed as it may be.

This is the legacy that modern day "science" has bestowed upon the world. We intuitively understood that politicians were liars. We came to understand that the press covered up and distorted the facts as well to serve their own interests. But we always thought we could rely on science for an unbiased, objective, view of reality.

And now we find out that "scientists" may, in fact, be the worst offenders of all.

No wonder some scientists are atheists. Many of them don't believe in any Truth at all.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Article printed from Intellectual Conservative Politics and Philosophy: http://www.intellectualconservative.com

URL to article: http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2009/11/25/the-day-science-died/

[Sigma]

Here is a good article for you Stephen. I thought this put a very calm perspective on all of this.

Pretending the climate email leak isn't a crisis won't make it go away
Climate sceptics have lied, obscured and cheated for years. That's why we climate rationalists must uphold the highest standards of science

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/nov/25/monbiot-climate-leak-crisis-response

But the deniers' campaign of lies, grotesque as it is, does not justify secrecy and suppression on the part of climate scientists. Far from it: it means that they must distinguish themselves from their opponents in every way. No one has been as badly let down by the revelations in these emails as those of us who have championed the science. We should be the first to demand that it is unimpeachable, not the last.

[Sigma]

What are your comments regarding the New Zealand temp manipulations that has also come to light?

[jandar]

Concerning the hide the decline:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/26/ipcc-reviewer-dont-cover-up-the-divergence/
An independent IPCC reviewer was calling out Hadley CRU for specifically hiding the decline.

Show the Briffa et al reconstruction through to its end; don’t stop in 1960. Then comment and deal with the “divergence problem” if you need to. Don’t cover up the divergence by truncating this graphic. This was done in IPCC TAR; this was misleading (comment ID #: 309-18)

Its not the "skeptics" calling this one, its one who believes in AGW.

Science should be unbiased, when on the major AGW proponents gets caught manipulating data, shunning open data, etc, it needs to be called out.

[jandar]

When the data not included in the hide the decline graphs is included, you get this graph:



Compare that to the graph with that data set deleted (or hiding)


the results speak for themselves.

[jandar]

What are your comments regarding the New Zealand temp manipulations that has also come to light?

You mean this Sigma?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/25/uh-oh-raw-data-in-new-zealand-tells-a-different-story-than-the-official-one/

They somehow made the past temps cooler making it look like a warming trend, whereas the real data, once someone else charted it, shows a normal swing of up and down temps.

[jandar]

But, this might just shock StephenDare and others. I believe we should exclude everyone who is not a degreed climate scientist, just like Ed Bagley Jr stated to FoxNews.

This would keep those not attuned to this issue from polluting the issue.
Of course, Gore, Hansen, and most of the staff of the IPCC from researching this!