Hacked climate Prof stands aside

Professor Phil Jones - the man at the centre of the "climategate" controversy over emails and other sensitive data published by hackers - has agreed to stand aside as director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU). He will not run the University of East Anglia's influential climate change centre until an "independent review" …

[Anonymous Coward]

All eyes

Indeed they will be on the review. And if the review does not de-bunk major part of the AGW myth (along with criminal prosecutions?) then we will know for sure that the "science" isn't "science" at all but a fable.

Perhaps climatology should register as a religion? It appears to be based in as much fact as any other sky-pixie system.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe...

Or maybe it's science and the views of the denial industry - sharing lobbyists as they do with the Creationists and the tobacco industry - will be revealed as unfounded lies, mythmaking and religious thinking that appeals to people who are too afraid of change to apply any kind of critical analysis to the words that other people tell them to spout and just come out with the same tired, meaningless nonsense year after year.

Perhaps the groups campaigning to sow FUD over climate science should register the amount of money they spend every year to buy people's opinions.

[Patrick Ernst]

Or maybe - utter claptrap

So there's a 'denial industry' is there? I take it anyone who entertains a skeptical thought becomes part of the industry? Your analysis/comment is ridiculous extremism. Science and scepticism go hand in hand. A scientist must prove an assertion. Others are sceptics until they can be convinced and/or replicate the science. You seem to want every contrarian view to be one of 'denial despite the facts'.

The IPCC affiliated climate scientists have been shown to manipulate the system. Can their analysis of the facts be trusted? Can their publication of facts itself be trusted since various evidence suggests they have fudged the figures.

Apparently a very large number of scientists are sceptical - are they all having their pockets lined?

See http://folk.uio.no/tomvs/esef/ungensecr07.pdf for a copy of an open letter to the UN Sec General, signed by a very long list of PhDs in fields including climatology.

See http://www.petitionproject.org/index.php for a very long list of scientists (31k plus) who have signed a petition to the US government. All in the pay of the 'denial industry'.

PS: I'm a greenie. I'd like for myself and my kids a green, clean and pollution free environment. Its just not going to happen with bad science like the CRU provided.

[Maverick]

well who would have thunk it?

'To some sceptics, the emails confirm their suspicions that climate change scientists have conspired to manipulate evidence in favour of global warming.'

[Chris Miller]

Dodgy dealings

In the BBC article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/norfolk/8389727.stm

The prof claims: "The word 'trick' was used here colloquially as in a clever thing to do. It is ludicrous to suggest that it refers to anything untoward." Which I think is fair enough, 'tricks of the trade' will be familiar to most of us. What is dubious however is using 'tricks' to "hide the [temperature] decline" in the raw data.

Has the prof been taking spinning lessons from Alastair Campbell?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or not?

> 'tricks' to "hide the [temperature] decline"

As I understand it, this was to remove a set of values, from one source, known to be anomalous for a specific period.

They are "proxy" values, meaning not direct temperature measurements but something else thought to be related to temperature (one source of tree ring data in this case). They are well known to be wrong post-1960 because they disagree with all the other data; that includes other proxies and *actual temperature measurements*. So, sadly, the "decline" you thought they were trying to hide doesn't exist.

But maybe I am wrong about that.

Or maybe I am part of the global marxist conspiracy.

[Si 1]

White wash?

Will the review be conducted by the same people he got to do his peer reviews?

[paulc]

peer reviewed

that's what I'm worried about... the AGW proponents were claiming their "science" was all peer reviewed... well it was, by a selected set of peers in pro AGW publications.

[SirTainleyBarking]

Science? Can we haz it plz?

This has really knocked the reputation of science back. There should be a root and branch routing going on in there.

Science by its very definition depends on critical review of full data, and criticism of the results obtained. The foundation is that even if a theory is pronounced by an authority in the filed it can be challenged by the lowliest lab tech. It appears that what this group has fallen into is believing their own hype and enforcing their view by "Ad Authoritatum" Argument from Authority.

This is a basic logical error that is taught to be avoided in year one!

As a scientifically trained, but layperson when it comes to climate change theory, I'm becoming more unconvinced by the "Science" backing this up.

You may have good reasons to reduce CO2 emissions, reliance on oil from nasty despotic countries is a good and valid one, but if you are asking people to pay for this by scaring them with the threat of armageddon, is it a bit much to ask that you are basing your prophesies of doom on the best available, rigorously challenged data.

FAIL!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not all scientists are evil...

> I'm becoming more unconvinced by the "Science" backing this up

This might help:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/science/earth/24deny.html

[Valerion]

Question:

On full pay?

[Jock]

They must be joking...

Independent?

Hmmm. How to achieve this?

Let's ask Al and the Moonbat. Meanwhile, it is pretty chilly up here where the warming is 'supposed' to happen. At night. In the winter.

You, quite literally, couldn't make it up.

[Anonymous Coward]

Jones talked of a "trick" to "hide the decline" in a temperature series

No he didn't. Read the Economist and New Scientist reviews of the leaked data. Or, you know, read it yourself.

I've found the Register's coverage of this whole issue a bit embarrassing, quite frankly. I'm used to the El Reg being the voice of reason, not following the tabloids "ooo, look at those uppity scientists, what do they know" lead.

[Luther Blissett]

'Tricks' with words

Strictly speaking you are correct - the words "trick" and "hide the decline" are not as proximate.as the two distinct sets of quotes implies But figuratively speaking, you are taking up arms against a sea of troubles.

[fifi]

It's not the emails

It's not the emails that are damning of the techniques, but the incredibly shoddy treatment of the data that's been revealed by the analysis of the sourcecode that was also leaked.

Paris: noone can decide if she's hot or cold either.

[Small Wee Jobbie]

Amazed

20 odd years ago I can remember being told that we were heading for another ice age....a few years later the whole in the ozone layer lead to the ban on cfc's in sprays...then global warming...now climate change....is it me or do the goal post keep moving.

[Anonymous Coward]

Err...

That would be how science works, observe something, come up with a hypothosys, try to prove the hypothosis, observe it doesn't work as you expected, research, repeat.

If nothing had changed in the last twenty or thirty years, that would be concerning.

[Swarthy]

titleless

You forgot acid rain... what ever happened to it? It was never announced to be gone, or even diminished, coverage of it just ...stopped.

[Anonymous Coward]

re: titleless

...acid rain became less of a problem after regulations to limit SOx emissions for new and existing large-scale industrial plant were enacted. So the coverage dried up as the problem did. *sigh*

[elderlybloke]

To Small Wee Jobbie

The ozone hole problem actually got me to change my car to run on CNG a couple of decades ago.

The desire of politicians to keep up the good work faded away and supporting the CNG supply line fizzled out.

The service stations that supplied CNG dropped down to One.

Then that station stopped supplying it because the equipment was worn out and not worth fixing.

So much for the Government policy of saving the Planet from UV radiation.

I now don't believe any Government policy that will save the planet.

Getting fed bullshit once is enough for me.

This was in New Zealand , but crap similar to this has almost certainly been fed to you.

[CeeOfGee]

The first of many

I think we'll see more and more 'scientists' exposed by dodgy statistics, models and extravagent claims. Many have simply followed the funding and now daren't question their own research for fear of losing said funding.

There is also a sort of crazy religious zeal with which the MMGW lobby are building their case; the sort of zeal that flatly denies / prevents / obfuscates any logical discussion or argument for MMGW and its causes.

The earth may well be warming....or it may be cooling - but it's a natural cycle and whilst we absolutely should be far, far more efficient in our use of natural resources, the biggest threat this planet faces is over-population; not cars !

[Anonymous Coward]

He was not using "trick" in the perjorative sense

nor was he trying to fiddle the figures. Only your usual run-of-the-mill head-in-the-sand conspiraloon would insist on putting that interpretation on it.

I hope the tossers who unlawfully intercepted the email are caught and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

[Swarthy]

I can accept that ..to a point

I could accept that he meant "trick" in the "tricks of the trade" sense, except for the bit in the source code where the comments said - explicitly - that they kludged the processes to give the results they wanted.

[Mike Bell 2]

When is a trick not a trick

Presumably, should an investigation uncover similar phraseology in emails from an oil company or arms manufacturer, you will accept their protestations of innocence equally unquestioningly? I doubt it...

[dervheid]

May I be the first to suggest...

"All eyes will now be on UEA's review."

WHITEWASH.

Or should that maybe be GREENWASH.

[breakfast]

No.

It appears you were about the fiftieth.

[Anonymous Coward]

A victim of politics.

Clearly science only is worth anything if it's repeatable and open to scrutiny and criticism. Though politicians of late, seem to have taken science on as merely some other form of marketing, this is because half the sciences, sociology, philosophy, and all the other rubbishy bollocks that's appeared in the last 20 years is little more than marxist dogma, by biased non independent parties, dressed in pseudoscientific language.

We can expect nothing less from the Liberal minded who are biologically incapable of reaching a correct conclusion if it's personally distasteful to them.

I can think of three such occurences whereby blatant lies have been made based on questionable and selective reporting in the numerical world.

First there's this, while I can think of dozen's of reasons why the UK should be oil-independent, not least of which the lack of hold we'd be under by the Guld states, but the government want to tax people, and this is just another way to do it, whether the facts stack up or not, and I'm not commenting on my opinions.

Secondly the whole "We want women to pay their way" industry, so they appoint someone who hates real women, and get her to pretend she's doing something for them, by comparing part time pay for women, and full time pay for men. The misconception that HR exists to help the staff, rather than manipulate them, is nothing compared to the 10 million women who are working because they think the women's minister is to help them, rather than to manipulate them into working.

Thirdly, the whole drugs debacle. The drug industry kills. Nike's alleged abuse of children as shoe makers has absolutely nothing on the suffering caused by the Cocaine production industry.

It's logical that we'd see huge increases in rain due to global warming, and if this has happened I'd like to be able to see the evidence. But since the politicians in our country seem to treat democracy as an excuse to manipulate the public into making large personal fortunes, I applaud this man's departure and would ask he come clean on whether he was making it up for the research grant that was made conditional on him concluding what the patron's wanted to hear, or whether he was leant on by someone after the endowment of the award.

[Anonymous Coward]

Normalisation of data

In case people don't know: When you get raw data from satelites or ships or whatever you get it from, you have to normalise it to make it usefull, you can't use the data in its raw form. There are missing values, drift in the readings as the equipment gets older etc. etc. When combining data from different sources, it is particularly important to get them both normalised. For this reason you need to write code to perform 'tricks' on the data to make it read correctly.

Anyone who seriously thinks that all climate scientists risk their reputation and funding by routinely faking their results should seriously think about a new tinfoil hat.

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

Actually, calibration is needed, not normalization

Calibration to some standard temperature scale is what is needed. What is actually seen in much of the treatment of the data (in the US at least) is "recalibration" of old data "to account for changes in the immediate environment of the station.

Such recalibration is dubious at best. In many cases in which areas have become more built up (the usual trend) old data are "recalibrated" DOWNWARD, not upward, which would make more sense. It is much better to calibrate the data to a standard scale, SHOW the calibrated data, and explain the visible trends (such as an increasing trend which can be explained by local heating of the environment by an increase in the number of buildings in the neighbourhood (and consequently airconditioning vents)

Also, as a speaking as a scientist, the way you calibrate your data should not be held secret (in the same way that several computer science periodicals now require your source code to be made available to fellow researchers. Many climate scientists take data from a limited number of sources in good faith. It is therefore imperative that these data can be trusted. Openness is the only way to achieve this.

[dervheid]

Calibrate the data?

Isn't data just another word for information. How, then, can information be 'calibrated' in any way? Only by the 'Ministry of Truth'. What should be being calibrated is the INSTRUMENTATION being used to make the measurements. That is the only way to ensure the accuracy of the data. I speak as an Instrument Engineer here. Why should climate science be any different to industry in this respect. Proper equipment calibration procedures and records of those are what are reguired to validate measurements. Without those, the collected data is MEANINGLESS.

[Anonymous Coward]

@ Normalisation of data

I am sorry ? but changing values because your equipment is old ?

What a load of total "global warming research" I mean crap (same really)

Statistical tricks to get data to show what you want is an old con

[Anonymous Coward]

Err..

When your equipment is in *space* and costs millions of pounds/dollars and you can observe the degree by which the readings are changing, yes, you most certainly do allow for it ageing. Particularly if you've got an EU satellite and the equivilant NASA one can be used to check your calibration.

[dervheid]

"the equivilant NASA one can be used to check your calibration."

Only if you have recently calibrated that one.

It's called traceable standards, by the way.

[neil 15]

I do worry sometimes...

Obviously you have never worked with calibrated instrumentation (or large datasets). No matter how careful you are with them, they will loose calibration over time. This has to be corrected for, using detailed and agreed upon methodology, equivalence testing etc.. Normalising also acts to remove 'odd' readings, be they too high or too low, after all we are talking about long term trends (over and above the last 10 years that the climate change deniers only seem to be able to quote) , again data removal has to be detailed and verified.

As a scientist working with air quality data, no-one has ever approached me about this great 'conspiracy' as the science makes perfect sense, but then most people only believe what they want to, or have read by journalists with very little understanding.

[Dan 10]

Trickery...

I don't care how he used the 'trickery' wording, I care about how a supposedly scientific establishment won't share the raw data and piddles about with the stats to make whatever point is required. What good reason can they have for refusing to share the raw data?

[Bassey]

Fundamental Difference

I can't remember who it was who said it but someone, when asked what the fundamental difference was between his beliefs as a scientist and someone of faith, answered "I am always delighted when I am proven wrong".

I think this very sad case shows these "Scientists" seem to have forgotten that, in Science, being able to be wrong is a wonderful thing. As soon as you refuse to entertain the possibility that you may be wrong then you have created a religion.

[breakfast]

A delight

I'm pretty sure that these guys would love to be proven wrong. It would make everyone's lives a lot easier.

But until someone can provide any science that might possibly do that, they're going to have to keep looking at the evidence and trying to improve their analysis of it. Maybe they'll be able to prove themselves wrong.

[Derek Jones]

They should now release all of the source

The leaked files do not include the makefiles needed to build executable programs (I'm assuming that these do exist) and so it is proving difficult to get this right manually (at least for the Fortran code). I think the CRU should come clean and release a complete development snapshot. Of course if they would rather that people not have the ability to actually run their data analysis software they might not want to do this.

[Jellied Eel]

Trick wooden thermometers.

The 'trick' is quite simple. After 1960, dendro studies (tree rings) show a decline in temperature, which does not conform with the instrumental record (give or take adjustments). So graphs blended tree data with instrumental to 'hide the decline' and show steady temperature increases.

Unanswered question is if wooden thermometers are inaccurate post-1960, why are they considered accurate pre-1960?

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

Good point

Ancient temperature is difficult to obtain. A single source (e.g. tree rings) is never reliable. All they measure is how fast the trees were growing. Temperature is just one factor influencing growth. Post 1960 pollution may be a factor.

What bugs me is how climatologists concede the Maunder minimum in sun-spot activity coincided with a mini ice-age (anecdotally confirmed by various Dutch ice-scape paintings of the period), but deny there is any link today, despite a 98% correlation between temperature and sun-spot activity over a period of 150 years. Methinks the sun may have some influence on the climate ;-)

This does not mean we should all buy Hummers: preserving resources and reducing potential harm to the environment makes perfect sense WITHOUT any further urgency.

[Anonymous Coward]

@AC Wednesday 2nd December 2009 12:59 GMT

An extract from an email dated 16 Nov 1999 with the subject "Diagram for WMO Statement", Professor Jones writes:

"I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."

The word "trick" in conjunction with "hide" certainly gives the impression that a statement to the World Meteorological Organization contained information that had been massaged to give a desired result. The people involved are in receipt of public money and are pursuing a political agenda to alter our taxation, industries and economy. If science is to be used as justification, it needs to be science and not bullshit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks bad - everything else is moot.

Unfortunately for the CRU whether they faked/fiddled data or not is now irrelevant. Nobody in their right mind will trust them now. The CRU looks bad, and that will reflect on their research. Time to start over (especially as they've been destroying raw data!) Best to clear out the staff too to avoid a repeat.

[paulc]

kludgy up and downvoting interface

upvoting and down voting... so kludgy, fix it... shouldn't require a new page at all... do it like Youtube does!!!

and if it does, you should either be automatically taken back to the comments you were viewing or else have a return button...

[Fred 1]

Deny this then if you can

Sure the world is not warming up much.

Most of the increase in trapped solar energy seems to be going into polar and glacial melting.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18218-seas-could-rise-14m-warns-antarctic-climate-review.html

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427355.900-melting-arctic-forget-polar-bears-worry-about-humans.html

[Patrick Ernst]

Okay, I'll bite

Dr Nils-Axel Morner is a formost expert in this area. Here's an interview he gave. Basically he says sea levels are not rising in any alarming manner. Normal fluctuations only.

http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202007/MornerInterview.pdf

[John Smith 19]

Read Harry_Read_Me

As others have pointed out comments about the use of the word "trick" as used by scientists are like the word "hack" as used by developers with othe developers.

The real story are the comments in the read me file. 3 years as this poor SOB tries *desperately* to patch the numerous (and frequently identically named) dataset files (which regularly turn out to have different formats, none of which are documented) together. Gasp as he realises large chunks of the original database no longer *exist*. Share his seething resentment at bespoke software which does not even have a list of its command line flags and parameters. Marvel that he' hasn't gone postal and torched the whole f$%king lot of them.

I know little of detailed climate modelling but I do know a bit about monumental IT cockups. What I know about climate and weather modelling is both use *huge* datasets. A lot of the work seems to have been done in FORTRAN (and some in IDL) for this reason.

This unit (not 1 lone researcher as you might think from the state of the project) was *specifically* set up to investigate climate change.

It has *no* Data Manager.

With no one charged with setting doc standards, documenting data formats, archiving datasets or even setting reasonable directory names (WTF starts a directory or *file* name with "+"?)

In the file are repeated references to "Tim," This appears to be a Dr Tim Osborne or a Dr Tim Mitchell.

Whichever one it is seems to have astonishingly bad development skills (or the unlucky and unnamed grad students they dumped the actual development work on)

I'll play devils advocate with an anacdote. Long ago I knew a reseacher at xxxx called Kay. Kay was analysing a sim of the electric activity on the surface of the heart. Like flying over the 3d landscape and reading the potential at differnt points. It (IIRC) was also written in FORTRAN and he was trying to re-structure it into something more modular and supportable.

His comment was that it was like an archeological excavation. As you went deeper into more primitve, earlier written modules the structure got worse. You could study the writers progress as a developer.

However this unit is *not* 1 lone researcher. It is team effort with significant government funding over AFAIK 9 years. Its research results have influenced policy on a *global* scale. It beggers belief that *no* senior researcher realised that keeping track of that much data *might* need someone assigned to the task.

Despite what people have said I don't believe the *real* source data is unrecoverable. It needs an act of will to bite the bullet, admit this collosal f*&Ckup and contact the original sources.

And hire an experienced data manger.

This is a (the?) major policy issue of our time. If it's real lets see how real. If it's BS, lets kill it stone dead. To do otherwise would be to p^&s all over the scientific method. Right now I can't either way.

Fail because from an IT perspective that is exactly what this.

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA results

Any news on how NASA using different datasets comes up with pretty much the same results as CRU? Are they in on the conspiracy too?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: NASA results

Perhaps it has something to do with the part where they substituted someone else's data for their own.

[Count Ludwig]

Steel yourself for some irony

It's ironic that Prof Phil Jones thought he could use undehand methods to further a good cause. As usual word of these methods got out and the good cause was set back.

[and BTW I too hate that hockey stick graph of relative changes when the raw data tell just as compelling a story.]

But it is also ironic, given the large number of AGW skeptic scientists, senators and congressmen who have turned out to receive money from oil companies, that people accuse AGW believing scientists of being motivated by research grant money (which comes in piddling amounts I can tell you),

Dip in tempaeratures since 1960? 98% correlation with sunspots? Where did you hear that? Look up the figures yourself, chart them using Excel, and read the research from **both sides** with an honestly open mind. Watch out for your own prejudices, dismiss the straw men and the ad hominems and ad authoritatems and make up your own minds!

[Rattus Rattus]

I found this comment with no upvotes and one down

I thought that was interesting. Apparently someone reading the comments doesn't like the idea of people taking the data and analysing it themselves in order to make up their own minds. Perhaps this unknown person would prefer people just shut up and believe what they're told (whichever side of the debate that happens to come from)?

[chacal]

Greenhouse effect, what greenhouse effect?

Read this, even just the abstract, of a paper written by real scientists

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf

and weep

[Anonymous Coward]

Groan...

Not that old nonsense again. They may be real scientists, but they don't know what they are talking about. This particular argument was settled over 100 years ago (whether you accept AGW or not). This about as bogus as most Creationist arguments.

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm - its a bit long but it explains most of the misconceptions in the paper.

[Patrick Ernst]

and a moan ...

Nice history lesson but it hardly was a rebuttal for the physics paper previously mentioned. The physics in that would have to be shown to be wrong trhough a review process! Hopefully by people outside the nasty pysics cabal :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Heretics of science

there are many people who have announced fantastical ideas and proofs over the history of science.

They were all debunked with peer review.

No matter the rights and wrongs of this argument and the release of this hacked data,the fact this organisation refused to allow external groups a clear run at peer review holds them in a some what less favourable light.

Just because I say it is so has never been regarded as good science across all disciplines, medical journals, chemistry, physics etc. etc. This organisation must now publish its raw data and methods and allow open scrutiny in order to resetablish credibility, or centre for excellence it is not.

Hearken ye back to your PhD studies and the scrutiny you were asked to go through to gain your result. Basic question and answer, probe, prove and debunk are at the heart of science. The wrong answer and the unexpected result are of equal validity to the expected and right result.

Science should hold neutral and let the evidence speak. Otherwise it is just another 'animal politique'.

[Stevie]

Bah!

Yah. I'm all for a review of this contentious data and the methods used to get it, but I'm reminded of the time my boss told a trainee programmer to take an idea away and "play with it". She complained to *his* boss that she wasn't a child and didn't "play" with things any more.

Context. We all use loaded phrases in everyday interactions with others that are meant to be fed through a number of experiential filters. "I'd kill for a coffee". Is this, in fact, a sign of an unstable mentality on the verge of a "Columbine" moment, or just an ironic overloading of emphasis? "You'd have to be mad to go out in this weather". Is the speaker claiming expertise in the meteorological and psychiatric sciences, or simply emphasising that the need for a coffee would have to be *very* strong in light of the weather conditions prevailing.

I'm not going to crucify anyone over a few loaded phrases dug out of hacked e-mails by people with their own heavily loaded agenda. It would be nice if something useful to the climate change debate were arrived at in the review process, though, and not just the replacement of one groups politics with another's. Perhaps a scientific insight as to why the wheat belts are moving north (as they undisputedly are) and will they ever move back in a meaningful timescale?

I'd kill for that.

[Anonymous Coward]

I know some of these people

And I can promise you there is no conspiracy. There is no pre-destined "liberal" agenda. They are people, normal people like you and me, doing the best they can from day to day. I bet I could take comments by any single one of you out of context and make you look bad.

Not a single person I know who works in climate science (and bear in mind that includes some nobel laureates) - both at UEA and elsewhere - would not absolutely love to be able to prove that the plant ISN'T warming up. Because that would be fantastic news. If there is a bias, it's a bias towards things being less awful than they actually are.

All of you saying things like "but what about X" and "they haven't accounted for Y", you're like your users when they say to you "why don't you just make the server do Z?", as if you didn't know how to do your own job. Spend a few years studying this stuff, read the actual literature - get your knowledge and understanding up to somewhere near that of the people who do this stuff for a living, and you'll see that they've already thought of all that. You don't get papers published in Nature and the like by not doing your job properly. How many of you have gone through the peer-review process and got published? I'm betting it's none. It's really bloody hard.

UEA's IT is historically awful. But then we're talking about ecologists and atmospheric scientists and so on writing software. You get the mess you might expect - they're not trained in computer science, they're trained in their own fields. Yes, they are funded with public money, but they're not well paid - not by the standards of business. These people are not working for the money. Their research projects simply cannot afford a full-time software/data manager - and if they did, even more people would just whinge about how public money was being wasted on IT (although the IT people would understand why it's important - the general public wouldn't). You can buy three or four good scientists for the price of a single data manager.

Don't even get me started on how much time highly qualified climatologists waste, dealing with laypeople who bury them under countless FOI requests for data they won't even know how to interpret.

[SirTainleyBarking]

I really don't know where to start....

You have got to be a troll, or biting for a response, but really have you honestly READ what you just typed before hitting send.

You certainly to me, have not conveyed a picture of your colleagues that is scientifically flattering.

So far I have seen:

Pleas for sympathy "They are people, normal people like you and me, doing the best they can from day to day. I bet I could take comments by any single one of you out of context and make you look bad."

Ad Authoritatum AGAIN: "read the actual literature - get your knowledge and understanding up to somewhere near that of the people who do this stuff for a living, and you'll see that they've already thought of all that. You don't get papers published in Nature and the like by not doing your job properly. How many of you have gone through the peer-review process and got published? I'm betting it's none. It's really bloody hard."

And plain incomprehension of accountability: "Don't even get me started on how much time highly qualified climatologists waste, dealing with laypeople who bury them under countless FOI requests for data they won't even know how to interpret."

OK. Here is my response from a Chemist who had to publish his results in technical papers (peer reviewed), and who now works in an industry where I have to account for my actions, and pull in full justifications if things go tits and hurt someone.

TOUGH!

I have to keep a full data trail of any work I do, which can be reviewed critically at any time. I am not IT trained either, but follow good, solid ethical practice. If I make an error, nobody gives a crap if I had a bad day, or I was trying my best. Peer review by second checking is routine.

I have had papers published, by peer review. It really isn't that difficult. Full disclosure of data, plus additional confirmation on points raised. At worst a couple of extra checks and a little rewriting.

As for the final point about FOI requests? Have you ever had to work in an industry where the press would love a good story about cancer, and you have loons of every shade wanting to make a point at your expense? Welcome to my world. I take it on the chin and defend myself and my company as best as I can.

Oh and I'm paid peanuts as well.

I suggest if your buddies can't hack scientific rigor along with dealing with uneducated members of the public (because lets be fair what you are doing is causing ripples), they should go into marketing instead

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you missed the point.

>"You have got to be a troll, or biting for a response, but really have you honestly READ what you just typed before hitting send.

>You certainly to me, have not conveyed a picture of your colleagues that is scientifically flattering."

I don't think OP was defending their lousy practices, just pointing out that this does not make for evidence of any kind of global conspiracy, as it has been alleged to. OP probably should have cut short the post after the first paragraph though, because most of the rest was kind of irrelevant to that point.

[elderlybloke]

SirTainleyBarking

Sir,

You are dead right. and well presented.

[Igor Mozolevsky]

Conspiracy?

From my old school days of science classes I remember the teachers beating into us (yes, this is a loaded phrase!) method, raw data, method used to manipulate the data, method of analysis and only *then* the result...

So these guys have nuked raw data, don't tell you what this "trick" is and only want you to look at pretty pictures they automagically produced... Conspiracy, most likely not; amazingly bad science, oh yes!

Also, as to the use of the word "trick", I would not disagree that using "tricks" is useful in a lot of cases, *but* using some random non-standard statistics fiddling trick to achieve the results that *you* want is rather amazing! Does anyone know what this trick actually is?..

Paris, because she probably knows to keep the original files!

[Joe User]

What a name....

Professor Peter Liss - from the eunuch department?

[Jellied Eel]

Therein lies the problem

Re: AC @ 16:53

UEA's IT is historically awful. But then we're talking about ecologists and atmospheric scientists and so on writing software. You get the mess you might expect - they're not trained in computer science, they're trained in their own fields.

--

There's the problem. We're supposed to be changing our lifestyles, paying more in taxes and utilities and spending trillions based on code hacked together by enthusiastic amateurs working outside their areas of expertise.

Those are excuses, not justification. There's been billions poured into climate research. CRU was supposedly a 'world leader'. Yet it didn't even have a data manager. Jones et al flew off to all sorts of exotic locations to help set the agenda, but couldn't find the cash to help out poor Harry. But poor Harry doesn't appear to have been a PhD, so in the academic pecking order, his views could be safely ignored no doubt.

These 'world leading' scientists, including Nobel Laureates (like big Al?) might be expected to remember the basics, like keeping log books, keeping data, ensuring experiments are reproduceable. But no, it's much more exciting being a jet setting conference attender, called on by politicians, business and the media to give informed opinions on stuff that was also outside their area of expertise.

After all, how many of them actually have qualifications in 'climatology'? Or even statistics, or filtering methods, or oceanography, or atmospheric chemistry, or botany, or even programming? And as for wasting time on FOI requests, well, if they'd been more open, they wouldn't have had to now, would they? Nothing to hide, nothing to fear and all that.

Unfortunately now the University of Easy Access has lived up to it's nickname, these poor climatologists are now having to waste even more of their time (and our money) trying to defend their reputations.

[Goat Jam]

I'm waiting patiently . . .

. . . . for the mainstream media to figure out what is going on and start reporting it so that all the legions of morons out there can start to understand that they've been conned by people with vested interests in applying the "fixes" required to sort out the "problem"

I can't even convince my frickin' girlfriend that it is all a con. She's just thinks I'm some sort of conspiracy nut. "and besides, it has to be a good thing for the environment anyway . . . " she says.

grrrrr

Oh, and thanks to Chris for allowing us to comment. I'm sick and tired of reading Orlowski's articles on this subject on which for some reason he refuses to enable comments. I have no idea what his problem is in that regard.

[Steve Roper]

@ CeeOfGee

Yes, overpopulation is the major problem this world is facing, but you will never see this issue addressed. The reason is that the wealthy corporates and politicians who run this planet a) don't care is the working classes have to live like battery chickens, b) overpopulation means more crime, less food, thus justifications for stricter laws and less freedom, and c) more people means cheaper labour due to increased competition for jobs. This means they get to pay less for more work.

Where "climate change" comes into it is the other side of this ugly coin - it enables corporates and governments to restrict access to large parts of the countryside under the guise of "protecting the environment". What this amounts to is keeping the overpopulated minimum-wage-slaves from being able to enter the wilderness reserves, keeping it nice, quiet and peaceful for the elites who of course will have unfettered access to the reserves for their getaway holidays.

This is the future we all face. You gotta love human greed.

[Pat 4]

Wah!

Who cares about the EMAILS!? The emails are a non issue, a red herring, the emails are meaningless. So the CRU scientists can act like twats... big deal!

The issues are in the source code and the programmers comments!!!

I REALLY don't care who Phil Jones likes or dislikes. But I REALLY do have issues with ONLY using PARTS of the Data because the other parts, for a reason unknown to me, don't reflect reality.

There's a word for that. It's called BAD DATA, and should NEVER be used in a scientific study...period! If the Yamal tree ring series diverges inexplicably from all other methods after 1960... you CANNOT assume they the did not also diverge from 1760 to 1820! Therefore you CANNOT, in all honesty give them ANY credibility.

But for some reason.. those guys not only CHOSE to use that data... but the also CHOSE to HIDE the discrepancies from all other scientists. That's called FRAUD

[John Smith 19]

AC@16:53

"Don't even get me started on how much time highly qualified climatologists waste, dealing with laypeople who bury them under countless FOI requests for data they won't even know how to interpret"

And which it appears your collegues no longer even have.

From what I know of real science the ability to show *all* original data, or to cite places where it can be found, is the cornerstone of the scientific method. You explain the results 1 way, your critics explain them another.

At some point someone comes up with a critical prediction (real scienctific theories have to produce a prediction or two as well. Something you can look for that will prove or disprove your idea). If yours is right it's the better theory. If theirs is right it has more validity.

You may have heard (but ignored) the expression "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary (strong) evidence."

Without that your team may well be right. But they may be wrong. Without the relevant *original * data no one can properly argue the case. That includes the CRU.

In case you miss the point about why people are at least a little miffed on this. Its the 100s of *billions* of dollars it is expected will need to be spent to deal with it. Fingind out you started an avalache with a pea (of knowledge) is likely to do that to people.