Climategate ruling: FOIA requests cover backup servers too

A landmark FOIA ruling last week will have far-reaching consequences for how public servants interpret their Freedom of Information obligations. Specifically, public servants cannot delete local copies of a file on their PC and then use its absence as an excuse not to disclose the file - if a backup copy exists on the …

[JimC]

Hmm, does anyone else

Find the incomplete publication, excuses, refusal to engage with unsypathetic peers and all the rest of it disturbingly reminiscent of Pons and Fleischmann?

[Version 1.0]

Unfortunately yes - and while I agree with the critics that the evidence for human activity causing global warming is weak, I think the evidence does show that global warming is real. Eventually it's likely that research WILL show us the degree to which human activity contributes. In the mean-time there are lots of good reason to limit our carbon emissions - which is why it's such a shame that this particular episode is so stupidly distracting.

I can't see much changing while we continue to place more trust in the blathering of newspaper reporters then we do in critical evaluation of the research data. Yes, Jones et. al. were wrong - but the behavior of their critics has been even worse.

[Ben Tasker]

@Version

By undermining the credibility of any research related to climate change, I'd say Jones et al were far worse. While I accept that in an ideal world everyone would look at it and say "wouldn't harm to change a few things just in case" that's not the world we live in. There are some dramatic and expensive changes (Wind turbines being a good example) being called for and made in the name of climate change. Most people are not going to be happy about this when there's a lack of credible evidence to suggest that it'll make any difference.

That's where the real cock-ups come from, by undermining the credibility that is essential when making a point (especially if you are refusing to release the data!) they've actually been entirely counter productive.

My personal view is that the impact mankind is having on the climate is probably quite small (doesn't mean the climate isn't changing though!), but I'm more than willing to reconsider it when credible evidence is presented. The problem is, given my cynical mind, it'll need to be damn strong evidence now that the games played by Jones et al have come to light.

So whilst the critics aren't entirely blameless, I do think that their reaction is understandable. When you have people who are likely to cry conspiracy anyway, you need to be damn careful to make sure you are being as transparent as possible.

Given that it's not possible to prove that we are not contributing (prove a negative) it's therefore necessary to prove that we are. The lower the credibility of the 'yes' camp (thanks to Jones and others) the harder they have to work to actually prove it without questions being asked about methodology, cherry picking the results etc.

[Mark 65]

Ben: nail hit on the head

I think that by acting like a bunch of lying, deceitful, word twisting pricks Jones et al may possibly have killed off the acceptance of evidence (if strong evidence for it being our fault exists) for a generation. Any scientist knows that for your analysis and conclusion to be accepted you need to provide the data and methodology used and defend it from criticism with sound, well reasoned arguments and not lies and deceit.

[Grease Monkey]

"for your analysis and conclusion to be accepted you need to provide the data and methodology used "

I know I'm being picky, but it's method not methodology.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Yes, Jones et. al. were wrong - but the behavior of their critics has been even worse

How about giving us some examples showing how the critics behaviour has been worse.

[NomNomNom]

Not all of his critics, but a lot of them also engage in spreading conspiracy theories about the science, blowing every little typo into a scandal and misquoting scientists.

For example last year skeptics misquoted Phil Jones himself and claiming he said there had been no global warming since 1995 when he hadn't.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: NomNomNom

You are still not providing any specifics, just generalities.

> blowing every little typo into a scandal and misquoting scientists.

Specific example please of blowing a little typo into a scandal.

> skeptics misquoted Phil Jones himself and claiming he said there had been no global warming since 1995 when he hadn't.

From http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8511670.stm

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

B - Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming

Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level.

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

Paraphrasing this into Phil Jones says there has been no significant warming since 1995 is perfectly legitimate.

Are seriously trying to equate a couple of nut jobs claiming "conspiracy" and legitimately paraphrasing a Q&A as being equivalent to:

1. Pressurising journals to sack editors who publish papers they disagree with.

2. Conspiring to avoid legitimate FOIA requests by removing emails.

3. Lying to avoid giving out data to those who disagree with you.

4. Excising data that doesn't agree with your theory.

5. Pressurising institutions into firing academics who do not agree with you.

All this, and much much more, is revealed in the 2 lots of climategate emails.

[NomNomNom]

"Paraphrasing this into Phil Jones says there has been no significant warming since 1995 is perfectly legitimate."

No. They paraphrased it into "Phil Jones says there has been no warming since 1995" which is wrong.

"Specific example please of blowing a little typo into a scandal."

Among others: GISTEMP had an update error on a monthly update back in October 2008. Irrelevant error but it got turned into a scandal by those who make mountains out of molehills. Also there was a Y2K error in the same record that had the effect of switching two years by 0.02C but was made out to be some critical error that changed everything.

[Anonymous Coward]

Searching google for ""Phil Jones says there has been no warming since 1995" returns 11 matches and 3 of those are videos.

> Among others: GISTEMP had an update error... turned into a scandal...by those who make mountains out of molehills.

Actually it was "those" who spotted the error in the first place. They didn't make a scandal of it, they simply called into the question the quality control procedures of those who complied it.

> Also there was a Y2K error in the same record that had the effect of switching two years by 0.02

The Y2k error affected every year from 1900 onwards. If promoted several years from the 1930s into the US top 10. But don't worry because they have made more adjustments since then and as a result the temperatures of past years have been lowered.

[NomNomNom]

"Actually it was "those" who spotted the error in the first place. They didn't make a scandal of it, they simply called into the question the quality control procedures of those who complied it."

It went beyond that. They used it to claim the science was being done improperly and even to suggest that scientists had deliberately faked the warming.

There was even a lie circulated anyway that NASA had made a press release about October being the warmest on record before the error was caught.

In truth the error was never used in anything important and would have been spotted if it had. It's just that at that point no-one had needed to use the data.

[Anonymous Coward]

> They used it to claim the science was being done improperly and even to suggest that scientists had deliberately faked the warming.

Who did this? Where did they do it? When did they do it? Your assertion that these things happened is not good enough. Please point to a source

> There was even a lie circulated anyway that NASA had made a press release about October being the warmest on record before the error was caught.

Ditto

[Anonymous Coward]

@NomNomNom

You seem to be using the examples of a few nut jobs to conclude there's a broad conspiracy against climate science.

If anyone is making mountains out of mole-hills it would appear to be you.

[NomNomNom]

No I am using the example of the behaviour of climate skeptics to conclude their behaviour is unethical

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you are claiming climate skeptics behaviour is unethical without providing any evidence.

Your assertion that these things happened is not good enough. Please point to a source.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you Phil Jones

trying to hide behind a Reg Handle?

[Grease Monkey]

Global warming is real although relatively slight. It might be a good idea to do something about it* however there is a problem is assuming that things like cutting our carbon footprint will help. The most obvious problem being that the evidence that our production of CO2 is causing global warning is weak, as such the assumption that cutting that production will reverse the trend is even weaker. Before we can do something to reverse global warming we need to actually find out what is causing it, rather than blindly blunder ahead trying to prove that we are the cause.

Consider science to be like a police investigation. Old fashioned plod will decide who the culprit is and then go out to find the evidence to prove his case. Of course if he can't find the evidence then he ends up back at square one and with no suspect, but probably still believing his original suspect is the criminal. One would hope that a scientific approach would be to find *all* of the evidence and see where it points. Not to discard the evidence that doesn't fit the theory. It seems however that most climate scientists are like old fashioned coppers. They are just going to keep going on and on at us until we admit we done it, guv.

Remember it's not that long since scientists told us we were heading for a new ice age. They are now telling us that theory was wrong then so I don't propose to blindly trust them now.

* Although these climate scientists are going to feel pretty silly if global warming reverses all on it's own and in thirty years time the world is 2 degrees cooler than it is now.

[Anonymous Coward]

'Remember it's not that long since scientists told us we were heading for a new ice age. They are now telling us that theory was wrong then so I don't propose to blindly trust them now.'

No they weren't - this is a myth.

It was only ever a small minority of climate scientists who thought the Earth was due to enter a period of cooling before the onset of another glacial episode. A short lived period of relative cooling in the 1970s wasn't well understood, but there was a theory that interglacials (such as the one we're going through) lasted about 10k years, and we were about 10k years into the Holocene interglacial - so the only way for temperatures to go was down and this might be the first sign of a new glacial advance. We now know that there is no such thing as a fixed length interglacial - they are much more irregular and tend to be much longer lived - this has now been resolved thanks to deep ice cores. We are now also much more aware how local cooling in the Pacific ocean can bring about cooler weather conditions across the globe over a period of years.

The majority of scientists were already warning that carbon emissions were forcing temperatures higher. There was no year from 1965 onwards where cooling predictions were more common than warming ones and they pretty much all stopped by 1977. The best summary of the research at the time:

Peterson, Thomas C.; William M. Connolley, and John Fleck (2008). "The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus". Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 89 (9): 1325–1337

http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/131047.pdf

[Francis Fish]

When I were a nipper in the 1970's

There was deffo gonna be a new ice age, and too many black people (of course the starving was caused by wars from post-colonial fall out, but who's counting).

This is why I'm cynical - dodgy science and scientists not behaving like scientists not withstanding.

[Tom 13]

You can decry it all you want, and try to paper over it

with pointless academics, but as someone who was there when they were teaching it, you'll never brainwash me on this point. And yes, this was WELL before Sagan and nuclear winter came along.

[Muncher23]

Rewrite History Much?

“many signs pointing to the possibility that the Earth may be headed for another ice age” (The New York Times, August 14, 1975), moving “toward extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciations” (Science, December 10, 1976) and facing “continued rapid cooling of the Earth” (Global Ecology, 1971) and “the approach of a full-blown 10,000-year ice age” (Science, March 1, 1975). [A] new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery” (International Wildlife, July 1975) and that “the world’s climatologists are agree” that we must “prepare for the next ice age” (Science Digest, February 1973). Newsweek reported (April 28, 1975) “ominous signs” that “the Earth’s climate seems to be cooling down” and meteorologists “are almost unanimous” that “the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century.”

[Ben Tasker]

@Grease Monkey

Do I recall reading somewhere that not only is methane potentially a much bigger potential cause, but that it would be comparatively easy to deal with when compared to the current fixation on carbon?

You're right though, plunging ahead and reducing carbon emissions isn't necessarily a good move until we can substantiate what the cause is. Sort of like trying to cure malaria by poisoning mosquitos and then wondering why all the bats are dying off!

@Mark - There's quite a good (but long) article on Seed Magazine about this sort of thing today (Scientists being paid to do research who then compromise their integrity). Was actually trying to find that famous quote (I forget half of it, or who said it) about a scientist without credibility. Worth a read though - http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/the_state_of_the_scientist/

[NomNomNom]

"You're right though, plunging ahead and reducing carbon emissions isn't necessarily a good move until we can substantiate what the cause is."

Here's the inverse: plunging ahead and elevating atmospheric CO2 to highs not seen for 15 million years is not necessarily a good move until we can substantiate what effect that will have.

Now why is your statement so much more prevalent? This isn't a dig I am just wondering why the view I provided is so often overlooked in favor of the one you provided. Even the IPCC is geared up to having to make the case for dangerous change.

Yet do we require not drugs companies to prove a drug is safe before release? We don't say that until society can prove it's dangerous they are free to sell whatever they want.

Part of the reason I suspect is because the significance of our impact on CO2 level is not widely appreciated. People don't realize that CO2 is currently rising faster than any known time in Earth's history.

[Ben Tasker]

@NomNomNom

I entirely see your point, don't get me wrong, but when the changes being asked for/imposed have a real impact on peoples lives (whether financially or otherwise) are you at all surprised that the inertia of the status quo will win out?

I'm no fan of analogies, so I won't use one here! Given the following, what do you think most people will choose

Option a) Spend a fortune on new forms of power (turbines don't come cheap) and it's possible it may save the earth in the future (but we don't know for sure if it'll make the blindest bit of difference)

Option b) Save that money, at least until there is some credible evidence that harm is being done

That's why the likes of Jones have been so damaging. You could be right, CO2 could be absolutely terrible, but because they've completely undermined the credibility of the 'evidence' most people will go with Option b.

I'm personally of the view that where you aren't sure of the consequences of change, it's often wiser to stick with the status quo (which doesn't hold true for everything). There is a risk in leaving the status quo in place, but what if our efforts to reduce CO2 are in fact causing harm?

Your drugs company analysis is slightly flawed in comparison,The drugs company has not yet released the drug, wherehas we are already releasing CO2.

Consider in your scenario where 'benizac' is found to have some potential complications, but is also currently essential to a lot of people (can't think of a good illness, so let's call it benitoe!). Do you withdraw the drug completely, reduce the availability (knowing this will have a large impact on those who need it) or do you try to make people aware whilst doing in-depth research so that you can adequately explain why it needs to be withdrawn (and as evidence arises you can probably substantiate the need to start reducing levels).

The problem is at the moment we seem to be reducing, leading to wide scale impact - cost of power and fuel being obvious examples - without having any credible science to back up why it needs to happen.

[Tom 13]

NomNomNom never has a point, he just keeps reiterating his mantras

until you submit to them. Nobody knows if the rate of carbon dioxide production is the highest is has been in earth's history because we don't have reliable records for that long. In point of fact, there's rather a good bit of evidence to the contrary. The total combined CO2 output of all industrial and developing countries is a small fraction of what a single volcanic eruption produces. Given that volcanic eruptions are not constant, I rather doubt CO2 is "increasing at the fastest rate in history." And it is the magnitude of some of those past eruptions that most makes me question the mantra of "runaway greenhouse effects" will turn us into a hothouse or Venus, or whatever other nonsense the mantra screamers are vomiting this week.

[Aaron Em]

New drug metaphor is bollocks

Releasing a new pharmaceutical is a change in the status quo; so is reducing CO2 emissions the way we're being told we have to so's not to fry the planet. If anything, you're arguing against yourself, especially since at least in the case of new drugs it's possible to *identify* the status quo -- something which in the case of climate change would, given the short span of uncertain data that's all we have to go on, appear to remain an open question for anyone interested in developing a sure understanding of where things stand.

Of course, if what you'd rather do is bellow tendentiously about how your side is shoulder-to-shoulder with the angels and the other side's funded by Satan incarnate, that's fine too, but don't get mixed up and think you're adding anything to the discussion other than waste heat.

[NomNomNom]

"Releasing a new pharmaceutical is a change in the status quo; so is reducing CO2 emissions the way we're being told we have to so's not to fry the planet."

Raising CO2 levels to highs not seen for millions of years isn't a change in the status quo?

"but don't get mixed up and think you're adding anything to the discussion other than waste heat."

The fact you found it necessary to mount a defence against my point says it all.

[Mad Mike]

@NomNomNom

'to highs not seen for 15 million years'

That period of time in the history of the earth is meaningless. I totally agree that we should attempt to understand what the increases in CO2 are doing, but levels have been substantially higher before and it didn't doom the entire planet. 15 million years is but a second in the timeline of the earth.

[NomNomNom]

"Before we can do something to reverse global warming we need to actually find out what is causing it, rather than blindly blunder ahead trying to prove that we are the cause.

Consider science to be like a police investigation."

I consider that to be the wrong way round. Our CO2 emissions are causing CO2 level in the atmosphere to rise at a rate unknown in Earth's entire history. We've already topped millions of year CO2 records and it's heading higher.

The current situation with our CO2 emissions should be treated like a pharmaceutical company releasing a new drug rather than a police investigation.

The burden of proof should be on proving it safe, not on proving it dangerous. If our science is too uncertain to prove to a sufficient level that the CO2 rise is safe that should be enough to put pressure on cutting emissions.

[Pat 4]

"Our CO2 emissions are causing CO2 level in the atmosphere to rise at a rate unknown in Earth's entire history."

FAIL...

[Grease Monkey]

"In the last few months and in the minds of the general public, the phrase "Climate Change" had become indistinguishable from "Global Warming" which itself was shorthand for "Anthropogenic Global Warming" (which is the IPCC usage). I suspect this is because of the amazing degree of synchronicity of the BBC's use of the phrase and the newspapers' need to abbreviate headlines."

Employees of the BBC suffer from the same problems as most of the public. The first is that they don't realise that there is a difference between weather and climate. The second is that a little knowledge is indeed a dangerous thing. When Joe Public reads a newspaper article on a given subject he assumes that the article is 100% true and the sum of all human knowledge on the subject and that this means he knows everything there is to know about it. When a TV presenter does the same he can mislead millions of people, but the BBC still allow them to do it.

I think it was the Victorians who introduced the concept of "the balance of nature", the popular idea that everything in nature stays the same unless mankind interferes. My point here being that it's fairly easy to convince the public on AGW because of their belief in the balance of nature. Believers in the balance of nature think that if anything changes in nature it must be broken and that it must be the fault of mankind. Of course it may not be so easy to keep them believing. It's not so long since most people were AGW sceptics then we get warm weather for a few years and most people accept AGW. The last couple of winters made a lot of people start to doubt the whole concept of AGW. Which is when the media suddenly switch to using the phrase Climate Change again. You can't tell people we've had weeks of snow because of Global Warming. The result is complete confusion among the public.

[Ben Tasker]

@greasemonkey

"... public on AGW because of their belief in the balance of nature"

Yet tell them that the Greeks used to believe illnesses were caused by humors being out of balance and they'll laugh!

There's no balance, there's cause and effect but quite how anyone can picture nature as a seesaw is beyond me.

[ExpertSkeptic]

What is "Global Warming"

In the last few months and in the minds of the general public, the phrase "Climate Change" had become indistinguishable from "Global Warming" which itself was shorthand for "Anthropogenic Global Warming" (which is the IPCC usage). I suspect this is because of the amazing degree of synchronicity of the BBC's use of the phrase and the newspapers' need to abbreviate headlines.

Even if the terms are used inclusively, without pre-judging whether the change, whichever direction it is in, is influenced by humans, there is little agreement on whether the Earth is (a) cooling (b) warming (c) can't tell. Much of this argument stems from the choice of starting points and the averaging periods and would be present even if the data fraud were not to have been perpetrated. It's quite easy to construct dummy test data consisting of the summation of a small underlying trend (either up or down) plus a much larger random fluctuation. If you give that data, or part of it, to an Excel-phreak with a serious mission in life, or just for a bet or fun, they can easily generate curve-fits, smoothing, or data selection and truncation, that can illustrate warming/cooling/stasis at will, unconnected with the original source, even though the dummy data was created with a known up/down/zero trend. But if you can do that easily with dummy data with *known* properties, how can one have any confidence in any result that claims to find a "trend" in the real data. ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone actually look?

Does critical evaluation include looking at the raw temperature readings. Recently released readings include temperature of over 135 degrees celcius in the last ten years.

[Grease Monkey]

"Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?"

And this man has the nerve to call himself a scientist? If you're not willing to share your data and methods Mr Jones then you are not a scientist by any measure that matters.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah...

I do kind of sympatise with him - he was getting ten or twenty FOI requests each week from the same people who didn't really know what they were asking for, and certainly didn't understand the amount of work in producing the data. There is no funding to fulfill FOI requests, so it had to be taken out of the time he had for real work - I'd flip out after a while if that happened to me.

As it happens, pretty much all of the raw data are available on the Internet, NASA, ECMRWF and the Met Office amongst others (look up the individual satellite's web sites), list the raw data. The problem is that you then need to make the raw data usable. It's the process of claibrating, normalising and generally mashing the data around which is time consuming and extremely complex.

[NomNomNom]

I think the "Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?" came years before the FOI requests. He didn't like the researcher asking for the data he should have given it anyway.

[Sean Baggaley 1]

"...he was getting ten or twenty FOI requests each week..."

So that'd be just 2-4 emails per day, then? Big whoop.

Also: he only had to dig out the information once! He could then trivially send the same ZIP file to each request, along with a standard form reply—a process that would have taken mere moments!

The whole point of science is that hypotheses and theories can be falsified! You are REQUIRED to show your working, including the raw data and the results of your processing. It's not optional. And, no, you don't get to pick and choose who does that. Not liking the cut of someone's jib is insufficient reason to deny them access to your data.

There really is no excuse for the UEA's behaviour in this affair. None. It's the very definition of "unscientific".

*

For what it's worth, I do agree that we should be reducing pollution in general, but I've always felt that way. And so do most good business owners: pollution = inefficiency = wasted money.

However, CO2 is not produced exclusively by humans. It is also emitted by any number of other processes. There must, therefore, be a "baseline" level we should be aiming for. What is it? And will we need to cull the burgeoning global population of humans to achieve it? (That's a question almost everyone seems to avoid, but it's a crucial one: there are 7 billion of us now. How many humans is "too many"?)

Ditto for methane and, of course, the #1 Most Wanted "Greenhouse Gas": "dihydrogen oxide vapour". (Yes: the gaseous form of that stuff covering 75% or so of our entire planet.)

Right now, nobody seems to know what the base levels of each gas' emissions should be, so how will we know when we've done enough to cancel out our own species' input into the various complex systems we're talking about?

[John Smith 19]

AC@13:18

"The problem is that you then need to make the raw data usable. It's the process of claibrating, normalising and generally mashing the data around which is time consuming and extremely complex."

You missed out apparently undocumented as well. In terms of data file structures, software command options, what options were used and what the processing chain was.

Which is quite important when the conclusion is roughly "The level of CO2 is far too high and we must spend *billions* of dollars to lower it, starting now."

The ability to *reproduce* results by following the same *complete* recipe is quite a big part of science.

[fishman]

Billions?

Spend billions to lower the CO2? Try trillions of dollars.

[Grease Monkey]

"For what it's worth, I do agree that we should be reducing pollution in general, but I've always felt that way. And so do most good business owners: pollution = inefficiency = wasted money."

But since the whole hoo ha over CO2 began governments and businesses have neatly managed to sideline all sorts of pollution issues. If somebody spoke of "harmful emissions" from an industrial process they meant all of the emissions. These days of course they will be understood to be referring to CO2 and perhaps other greenhouse gases.

I'm not blaming the climate scientits for this - it is mainly the fault of spin doctors - however the climate scientits are naive if they do not realise they are contributing to this problem.

[Grease Monkey]

Sounds reasonable to me. After all the public sector are supposed to back up everything so backups should exist. Even quite old backup technology allows for the sort of searching required, but it might be a bit slow if you don't know the filename and the backups are on tape.

However when it comes to science backups are even more significant. If you can't find any data that has any bearing on your research then your research is invalid.

[Peter Galbavy]

I don't doubt that we have global climate instability and I don't doubt that the actions of humans since the industrial revolution has contributed to that instability to some degree or another; What I have a problem with is the vast and overarching conspiracy that seeks and gathers money and power as a consequence of this. There is an entire academic, industrial and financial layer over us now whose sole purpose is to move said money and power away from "ordinary" people and into their control all in the name of another version of "Oh no! Won't somebody think of the children!"

The Emperor may not have any clothes but in this case it's the guy selling the fake binoculars at the parade that's making the money.

[g e]

Too bloody true.

I don't believe any eco-mentalist stuff because you never know these days who is behind it and with what financial motive. Things seem to be getting warmer but given that we're only 93M miles from a gigantic unshielded fusion reactor the man-made argument is weak enough without all the money-grabbing spin-meister shilling going on increasing our cost of living almost daily, essentially because they can.

The lights are on but the curtains are drawn...

[Grease Monkey]

The climate lobby seem to have adopted the policies of Tony Blair:

1. If you're not with me then you're against me - Damned right I am, I'm against you until you start behaving like real scientists. Or in Blair's case it was always that I was against him until he started behaving like a real human being.

2. If you don't agree with us then you don't care about the planet - I *do* care about the planet, but that doesn't mean I have to believe what you and your bunch self confessed data fiddlers have to say. In Blair's case it was "If you criticize the war you are against our brave boys in uniform" or "If your criticize the NHS you are criticizing all those lovely nurses." TO which the answer was No Tony I'm against your reasons for going to war and the way *you* run the NHS.

This sort of spin is practiced more and more in todays world and the depressing thing is that most people seem to fall for it.

[g e]

Cos most people

Watch Keremy Kyle, X-Factor, think microwaving a plastic tub of goo is 'cooking' and "read" The Sun or (worse) The Daily Fail.

It's called the lowest common denominator and there's a reason virtually all media and politicians pander to it when there's not more advantageous sectors for achieving their specific goal. It's also the demographic that is least able to think for itself, hence why they're happy for media/politics to instruct them on how to live their lives.

Harsh? But likely fair...

[Thought About IT]

The results still stand

This concentration on emails is designed to deflect attention from the fact that the disputed data has long been available for anyone to analyse, and nobody has found any flaws in the CRA's conclusions.

[Grease Monkey]

Oh boy. It's people like you that demonstrate that climate change has become the new religion. Basically you are saying that anybody who argues with the conclusions must be wrong because they are arguing with the conclusions in which you believe.

The way the data was collected is every bit as important as the data itself and the conclusions drawn from it. When you experiment you have to carefully and accurately document the experimental method otherwise the data you gather is meaningless and so are the conclusions you draw. Science at its simplest is about postulating and proving that postulate through controlled experiment. Of course in this case we can't carry out controlled experiments such as pumping out exaclty 5% extra CO2 per year for 100 years and see what happens to the climate. As such scientists find themselves in a position where they have to deal with a lot of historic data. Adjusting historical temperature records simply isn't on. Either you rely on the historical data or you don't, if you start adjusting it you may as well make it up. And discarding inconvenient data or being selective which data you choose is even worse. Look at the data collected from trees. A handful of trees out of hundreds from one location and no data from other locations. Any reasonable person would be forgiven for assuming that the data had been carefully selected to fit the theory.

The conclusions from the data used may be reasonable, but the whole point about climategate is that there are reasonable suspicions that inconvenient data was discarded or adjusted - NASA for one were very open about adjusting "inaccurate" data. The fact that they didn't seem to see the problem with adjusting historical data is worrying.

[NomNomNom]

"Adjusting historical temperature records simply isn't on. Either you rely on the historical data or you don't, if you start adjusting it you may as well make it up. And discarding inconvenient data or being selective which data you choose is even worse."

So if a 100 year temperature record contains a sudden jump in 1950 that is clearly an error, according to you we do what?

If we could fix the error somehow you would say "Adjusting historical temperature records simply isn't on".

If we decide to remove the erroneous year you would say "discarding inconvenient data or being selective which data you choose is even worse"

Presumably we can't even chuck out the entire record because that also falls under "discarding inconvenient data".

So what would you have us do? Use the data we know is wrong anyway?

Wow well that's GREAT science. Hey guys in 1950 the temperature reached 90 degrees C in winter.

[JimC]

"Clearly an error" data

The trouble is your "clearly wrong" data is telling you some very important things. Until you do a lot of work its unclear what.

It might, for instance, tell you that your whole method of estimating or calculating historic temperature readings is flawed, which actually means that *none* of the data is reliable and you need to throw the whole lot out.

It might tell you that your sampling technique is unreliable, which again may throw doubt on other data.

You've got to consider that other data you have, which may not be "clearly" an error may be equally erroneous. Just because a random value happens to fall on the line on your graph doesn't mean it belongs there.

And it may be that the temperature really did do something weird like that, and just because it doesn't fit in with your preconceived notions doesn't mean it didn't happen.

[NomNomNom]

"The trouble is your "clearly wrong" data is telling you some very important things"

I am not saying it isn't. But Grease Monkey's proclamations on science don't give us any recourse to doing anything about it.

[Tom 13]

I'm not necessarily agaisnt adjusting the data.

If say, you discover that after 53 years, somebody put an exhaust vent such that your thermometer is now reading 2 degrees high and it is consistently 2 degrees high compared to several sites around the thermometer which are unaffected by the vent, that may be a reasonable adjustment to make. What I am against is not disclosing WHY and HOW you are adjusting the data, and proving the adjusted data are now consistent with the historical data before the advent of the vent. And having adjusted the data, you still need to keep the original, just in case somebody else discovers a new adjustment that needs to be made based on the original data. Granted I'd still rather remove the event and throw out the outliers, but I actually AM a reasonable person when it comes to these things.

That CRU bolloxed that is what ought to worry any rational person.

[Gideon 1]

Making adjustments based on assumptions invalidates the raw data. You need to find better raw data. The whole climate 'science' thing is a huge load of assumptions constructed into a computer model which can then be tweaked by more assumptions into producing whatever result you want, which is then presented as fact. The CRU are in deep trouble, not just because of their behaviour towards others interested in the topic, but with their sloppy methods and record keeping. The suspicion is that their scientific rigour was so poor not even they could replicate their results.

[NomNomNom]

shhhhhhhh

[hplasm]

Re:shhhhhhhh - omnomnom

That hissing noise is your O2 tank leaking- you probably need more CO2 in your room as you are certainly showing signs of hyperoxygenating,..

[Anonymous Coward]

and I've got some data that says you're a buffoon

Just cos you challenge it doesn't mean it doesn't still stand. Rightly or wrongly.

[Sean Inglis]

There is far more at issue than the data series made available / not made available by the CRU.

Certain versions of the *processed* data were made available, but it is the *unprocessed* data, and the methods used to process that data that has generally been a point of contention. Even a shallow examination of the ClmateGate 1 tranche of email shows that the record keeping that accompanies different versions of various series was something of a shamble, and the source control for various processing methods is practically non-existent.

[JeffyPooh]

Global Warming's Low-hanging Fruit

Soot, methane, and ozone.

The CBC 'Quirks and Quarks' podcast on the subject mentioned that these contribute nearly as much to AGW as does CO2. But reducing their emission would actually pay for itself in the direct health benefits of clean air. So curing about 40% of Global Warming gas emissions would actually pay for itself, and yet we do nothing to deal with these 'low-hanging fruit".

The Environmentals decry commerical aircraft, and yet remain inexplicably silent on commercial ships that, through their burning of dirty Bunker-C, contribute for more to the problem.

The Environmentals, with their inability to prioritize in a rational manner, are a major part of the problem.

[NomNomNom]

"The Environmentals decry commerical aircraft, and yet remain inexplicably silent on commercial ships"

On what logic does that explain why we are doing nothing on both?

[g e]

That's cos they like to FLY to summits/conferences

</nuff>

[NomNomNom]

oh yes that makes sense they want to tax the aircraft so they can take ships to conferences

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet 'The Environmentals' don't seem to be able to push governments into putting tax on aircraft fuel which leaves us poor suckers who heat their homes, drive their (already low emission) cars to pick up the tax burden that's designed to stop us using fuel that could better be used to make profit for multinationals.

Never forget, the environmentalists and governments will always aim for the *lowest* of the hanging fruit, the man in the street instead of those who can exercise their influence.

[Grease Monkey]

Of course there are other arguments that many climate scientists don't like. For example the much postulated idea that cleaning the filth out of our emissions has helped global warming along. If you've never heard it it goes that in the mid twentieth century governments started to insist that emissions were cleaned of many of the bits that make up smog. Various clean air acts were passed. Most cities of the world don't suffer choking smogs anymore, urban buildings don't turn black anymore and cities don't sit under a permanent pall of smoke.

The argument goes that this permanent cloud was, while reflecting heat back at the planet also blocking heat from reaching the planet. Which would obviate the greenhouse effect. Were this true then it still wouldn't argue that we should start pumping out loads of smoke again. It does however make a very clear point that we can do things that seem to be for the good of the planet and the population and instead do something that causes unforeseen problems.

[John Smith 19]

@Grease Monkey

"It does however make a very clear point that we can do things that seem to be for the good of the planet and the population and instead do something that causes unforeseen problems."

It's usually called the "law of unforeseen consequences."

[Grease Monkey]

"It's usually called the "law of unforeseen consequences.""

Indeed and it tells us that we shouldn't just blindly forge ahead with a plan without thinking it through. However that is exactly what a certain bunch of climate scientists want us to do.

[Tom 13]

Actually, the AGW mongers

have reclassified soot as a cooling agent.

[John Sager]

Previous government were panicked

CO2 levels are rising, and that will have some effect on climate. However the long-term effects can only be estimated by climate models. They are currently not very accurate and new climatic processes that change the models are regularly discovered. Unfortunately the IPCC produced predictions that panicked the previous government into committing the UK to drastic reductions in CO2 production, at vast expense. These will be lost in the noise of CO2 increases from developing economies so at best the legislation was a quixotic gesture intended to make some kind of 'we're greener than you - get with the programme!' statement to the world. At worst it drags us down inexorably as the money wasted is not available for more useful contributions to the economy. Our best plan as a country would be to devote resources to coping with climate change rather than trying to stop it, and based on the best models available, not necessarily just blindly following the IPCC.

[Ben Tasker]

Sorry slightly OT, but something that keeps popping into my head (you triggered it by mentioning vast expense);

Think about your power supplier, most will now claim "15% from renewables" or similar. I'd love to at least have the option of a supplier who said "0% from renewables, with reduction in price as a result". OK it's not eco-friendly, but the reality is there are families who just can't afford to pay the high prices that go with taking your high horse when it comes to power generation.

Of course, things like the Kyoto agreement knock this idea on it's ass because we'd all end up paying the price through our taxes when the deadlines are missed. Still, it'd be nice to think there was some aspect of competition open.

Nuke cos I live near one and have yet to have cause for alarm.

</tangent>

[NomNomNom]

maybe we can find an even cheaper power supplier who can generate electricity from the blood of our grandchildren

[futahorse]

My parent's generation already screwed mine over so they might as well take my blood, too.

Still don't see why thorium power is the devil to the greens.....

[Tom 13]

The obviously you haven't watched the scientifically accurate documentary

staring Jane Fonda called "The China Syndrome" often enough citizen...

Now where's that sarc tag?

[Armando 123]

@NomNomNom

The blood of unborn grandchildren is too viscous.

[Ben Tasker]

Damn you!

This set me wondering about how the energy density of blood actually stacks up against other things. Couldn't find a reliable source so have relied on a forum (I won't link to it as it's potentially NSFW).

Unit of blood if 450 mL, typical glucose level is 100 mg/dL, so a unit would contain around 450mg.

Energy densite of carbs is 4 kcal/gram so that gives 1.8 calories per unit

Normal hemoglobin concentration would be 15 g/dL or 67.5g in a unit. At 4kcal/g a unit would have 270 calories from hemoglobin.

Plasma is approx 55%, with Total serum protein at 60-80g per litre (of plasma) so that's 17.325g ir 69.3 calories.

Fat levels are under 150mb/dL, so 371.25mg of fat per unit. Energy density is 9kcal/gram, contributing 3.34 calories

So that's around 344.44 calories per unit of blood (others quote 600 calories)

Average Adult contains 10-12 units of blood. Reckon Nuclear might be the better way, before ethics are even considered

[Grease Monkey]

I'm getting royally pissed off with successive governments over energy prices. Ministers continually bang on about the way power companies are ripping us off and yet it is these same ministers who support ridiculous feed in tariffs and try to force engergy companies to use more "renewables" all of which adds to the cost of our energy. And I'm not just talking about the current lot, Labour were just as bad and twice as sanctimonious.

Yes, sure the energy companies are trying to make more profit than they should (look at the way retail prices go up immediately when wholesale prices go up, but take months to fall when wholesale prices fall) but ministers must take part of the blame.

If a company did come along touting "100% nuclear and lower prices" the government would be down on them like a ton of bricks for not supporting renewables. This would be the same government that wants more nuclear power. Why? Because the government were signed up to stupid targets to meet on renewables and therefore have to be seen to be trying to achieve these targets. How to do this? Make the customer pay through the nose. All the while quietly admitting that nuclear is the best option.

[Ian Stephenson]

0% from renewables, with reduction in price as a result

I'd settle for a 100% nuclear tariff.

(Living in the prefect place to site a new reactor - 70m above sea level with no fault lines).

[Ben Tasker]

All Nuclear

That'd suit me well!

As for blood of grandchildren, probably not going to work and is almost definitely a little too extreme. Of course, if the country goes bust as a result of building windfarms that don't generate enough power then we may well be paying with the lives of our grandchildren who'll get to live in abject poverty.

See think of the children works both ways!

[Josh 15]

"...at best the legislation was a quixotic gesture intended to make some kind of 'we're greener than you - get with the programme!' statement to the world..."

It's much more serious and depressing than that. Governments across the Western world have used the complete fiction of AGW to enact huge swathes of legislation, to divert vast sums of public money and to raise wholly indefensible taxes in the name of being 'green'. Itt's the Big Lie, the ultimate global deception and it will be exposed even as it begins to fall apart. Tyranny always fails, always ends badly, and the AGW scam will be no exception.

[Desk Jockey]

Twerps!

Correct me if I am wrong, but are a bunch of scientists trying to play at being publicly accountable information managers? If so, they are well out of their depth and should give the job to someone else who is actually qualified for this work! They can go back to their fixing their dodgy models too...

This ruling is not landmark, it is actually quite straightforward and easily recognised by experienced FOI practicioners. ALL information held in recorded form can be judged as within the scope of the request if that is what the requestor is asking for. Whether in backup, CD, memory stick or email is irrelevant, if it exists it must be considered. The ruling simply emphasises this well known rule.

Information is exempt if: commercial sensitive (Section 43 exemption) and you need to have a audit trail to prove this is the case (document signed with X saying information is commercially sensitive) plus an email from the originator confirming it remains the case. Information is also exempt if it costs too much to retrieve (Section 12). In this case you have to prove that it would take one person more than 3.5 days of effort to retrieve the data because they have to search X cabinets of paper archives, for example. It being stored on a memory stick shoots down that argument pretty quickly!

Just to clarify for people as well - "We no longer hold this information" is a legitimate response where it can be shown that it is likely that the information has been destroyed. For central government, it is not a conspiracy to hide stuff, just that they have a standard policy that all archived information not judged to be relevant/important gets destroyed after 10 years. It is a simple matter of housekeeping. Deleting information which you know is subject to an FOI request is against the law though...

I think some professors are due some serious FOI training...

[Anonymous Coward]

Err...

They had to play at being the information officers, because there is no-one else to do that work. There is also no funding to cover their work for FOI requests and certainly no training on how to deal with it.

[Keep Refrigerated]

Umm...

They wouldn't have had to play at being information officers if they had behaved like scientists in the first place and released the data to back up their conclusions - allowing it to be put through the scientific method. This IS their work and supposedly their training.

[Ben Tasker]

Even then

some of the stuff they got wrong failed the common sense test.

Don't want to give out data that could lead to criticism? I'll delete it or move it to a separate media and claim it's unavailable!

[John Smith 19]

@Desk Jockey

"In this case you have to prove that it would take one person more than 3.5 days of effort to retrieve the data "

Thanks DJ. I've always wondered what the *definition* of that particular item was. it always looked like the all purpose bureaucratic get out of work card. The actual definitino sounds quite generous *provided* you're dealing with computerized searchable data and not paper based.

[Desk Jockey]

@John Smith 19

No probs, happy to help. Be warned that the 3.5 days figure is for central government and based on a generic working calculation. The accurate figure is £600 for central government and £400 for local. I have to confess to not knowing which one the universities fall under, I suspect local.

Sadly, government departments don't exactly use an equivalent to Google as a central search engine! Even if the data is stored electronically, it can still take ages to find. Imagine I want to find a document titled "climate data" because someone wants data for climate change in India. Now imagine I enter Climate data query into a database (can do more than that because it is crap!) and get 500 returns. I might have to scan every single one of those records to find if one relates to India. According to FOI guidance, I can calculate that I should estimate 2 minutes to examine each record. That is 1000 minutes of effort or 16.6 hours of man effort. Let's say two days of work for one person. Now imagine I have to do that for two more databases and suddenly you are way over the limit. That is how that works which is why phrasing an FOI request properly is very important. For example, "I want documents showing climate change data for India produced in the last two months" may yield a result rather than something more open ended.

For anyone that says these professors did not have the training or resources to handle FOI requests, you have just made my point for me. Complying with FOI is a legal requirement for all public bodies covered by it. It is not optional. Don't like it? Blame Labour for bringing it in, blame the coalition for not getting rid of it or reforming it! Blame those unreasonable requestors if you want! Some things have to be put up with if you want 'open government'.

[John Smith 19]

@Desk Jockey

"I can calculate that I should estimate 2 minutes to examine each record. That is 1000 minutes of effort or 16.6 hours of man effort. Let's say two days of work for one person. Now imagine I have to do that for two more databases and suddenly you are way over the limit. That is how that works which is why phrasing an FOI request properly is very important."

Very handy to know and *possibly* the difference between getting some useful information back and nothing at all. I've always preferred the well bracketed search to the general fishing expedition.

I suspect you're right that Universities will come under the local government rate. It also suggests *any* publicly funded body generating (or managing) large (or complex) data sets should factor in FOI compliance from day 1.

It's not as if this law just came into effect either.

[Uberseehandel]

This isn't a climate issue, its a morality issue.

Once upon a time, the better universities used to teach a course for those intending to make a career out of academia that covered such issues as ethical use of data, is this now optional?

The vice chancellor's famous and often misquoted ancestor, Lord Acton finished his observation on the influence of power with "........There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it."

Are we to assume that the vice chancellor was misinformed as to the existence, or otherwise, of the "missing" emails or that he was not sufficiently aware of the technology involved?

[futahorse]

I was taught the ethical use of data in two of my chemistry classes, physical chemistry being one of them, oddly enough. It is equally disturbing when a scientist breaks their guiding principals as compared to doctors violating the Hippocratic Oath.

[nsld]

can some tell me

How someone can deliberately conspire to undermine a law in this country and firstly, still have a job, and secondly not be in prison?

As someone else said, any scientish who refuses to share data with people who may criticise it is a fraud and not a scientist.

This smacks of the same rubbish that the Jill Dando institute for made up research did on the infamous DNA paper. It seems if your flavour

[nsld]

bloody phone

It seems if your flavour is acceptable to the government then you can get away with this kind of behaviour with impunity.

[Aaron Em]

Not a scientist, a scientish!

Best typo all week. Thumbs up.

[nsld]

Its been one of those days....

But it means if I get an FOI request for stuff about scientists I can deny it exists....

Either that or I am turning Dutch, yesch that must be it.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the one time that that old canard is actually true....

If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear.

You Professor Dr Evil er Jones are a ultimately paid by the public ie us taxpayers.

Therefore you have ZERO right to withold such data from your employers ie us.

So publish everything...good or bad and let the chips fall where they may.

Or forever shut up about MMGW.

[Vic]

> Lord Acton, The University of East Anglia's Vice Chancellor, testified

> that no emails had been deleted.

If he really did testify that, then he lied. He should be punished appropriately.

A move from one storage device to another involves a copy-and-delete.

That's the trouble with playing silly games, you see - such ruses are rarely consistent even within their own frame of definitions...

Vic.

[Anonymous Coward]

"If he really did testify that, then he lied. "

More importantly, why should we accept anything this liar has to offer and that includes his so called research and conclusions.

[Tom 13]

Re: ...involves a copy-and-delete

Only in versions up to DOS 5.0, after that MS finally introduced the MOVE command for handling data.

Sorry, had to bring it back to an IT angle.

[Vic]

> that MS finally introduced the MOVE command for handling data.

It doesn't matter who introduced what - if you move data between two physically separate mass storage devices, you necessarily delete it from the first.

Vic.

[paulc]

moving constitutes deletion...

from the original hard disk... the file is marked as having been deleted...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mayhaps Jones et al need something called ethical behaviour

Or not, well, that's if they want to remain bitter, paranoid and vindictive little men (and who knows, maybe there's a woman or few too).

Ah well, it's not as though they have the moral fibre to acknowledge their bad acts and stand accountable to them. I await the shedding of a few graduate students who will be offered the chance to take the fall.

[Ian Johnston]

from the Faculty of Missing the Point

"Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?"

Last time I checked the way science works was by A making a claim, publishing it with support data and then B, C, D ... trying to find something wrong with it. If the CRU isn't willing to play the game nicely they shouldn't claim to be scientists.

[Maty]

Agreed. The correct answer to the question

"Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?"

is "For precisely that reason."

Until data has been given a hostile scrutiny which is unable to find anything wrong with it, it might not be data at all. It could be wishful thinking.

[Tom 7]

The data has already been published

and been found OK

This is about e-mails that might be about the data but are not the data. These e-mails will not suddenly make global-warming go away. This might prove Jones to be a liar and a charlatan in some ways but will not provide any DATA against AGW.

[Ben Tasker]

IIRC the data may be 'ok' but the methods used to process the raw data remain undocumented. Therefore CRU have reached no empirical conclusion because an essential aspect of scientific methodology has been missed - repeatability.

So no it won't provide any data against AGW, but it also doesn't actually provide any data for AGW either.

If no-one is able to sit down and repeat the methods they used to generate their final data, their results cannot be relied on. Not just because they appear to be lying bastards, but because even honest scientists make mistakes. That's part of the reason repeatability is so crucial, to check for mistakes, extraneous variables - anything that could have influenced your results.

[Alan Brown]

Hopefully all costs will be recovered

From the employer of the parties who went out of their way to avoid giving out data they were legally required to.

What the employer does at that point is entirely down to contractual law - but you can bet they'll be far more careful in future.

Many sucessful scientists have an ego the size of Jupiter and are more than willing to cover things up - they're human after all. (Newton was a ruthless bastard and Einstein never really fully proved E=mc2 until the 1950s, etc) They're also used to fighting tooth and nail for funding, so brawling comes naturally.

There's little doubt about anthropogenic warming. The real quibble is how much there is and how badly things may be affected. It's not going to stop a lot of coastal cities getting wet feet, but the inhabitants all have plenty of time to move if they have any sense.

BTW, FOI requests are best worded to include backup media in the first place. It gives the pricks less time to "lose things" if you specify wanting the backups for a few days before the request was filed.

[Grease Monkey]

"Einstein never really fully proved E=mc2"

Where to start?

It still hasn't been fully proved. The thing about the way science works is that the scientific community work with the best available theory continually proving (in the correct and original sense of the word prove) the theory until it breaks. At which point they postulate a new and better theory. So far Einstein's theory has stood up to any amount of testing, but it may still break. As such Einstein never fully "proved" that E=mc2.

The whole thing about the "faster than light" neutrinos neatly demonstrates that some scientists have forgotten how science is supposed to work. Many of them immediately claimed the data to be wrong even without seeing all of the data. And why was it wrong? Well because it disagreed with the current best theory. In other words they are putting all their trust in theory rather than the universe. If those neutrinos ( or something else that comes along) demonstrate that E does not always equal mc2 will these people continue to cling to Einstein and declare the universe to be broken?

Not of course that there's anything new about that sort of behaviour. There are still those who claim Darwin to be wrong because they cling to a "theory" called religion. Over the last few hundred years there have been scientists who were argued down by their peers until they eventually managed to demonstrate that they were right. Secience is supposed to work a certain way, but there will always be scientists who want it to work differently. The scientific community needs, if it is to continue to be taken seriously, to expose these people not to give in to them.

[Physics Grad]

What a collection of crooks at UEA

They all belong in prison.

[Anonymous Coward]

Take the global warming argument and shove it where the sun don't shine

Too much emphasis is being placed on this one issue, by the "for" and "against" sides.

We should really consider, will not last forever? I think the answer is NO.

We need to consider other means of energy production from more sustainable sources, where our kids will not be sent of to secure oils continued supply in another country, where we will not see a 30% plus jump in energy costs in one year on our businesses.

Some people really need to see the bigger picture.

[Desertphile]

Of course there was no such thing as "climategate:" it was a hoax.

National Science Foundation: Scientists cleared

The British House of Commons: Scientists cleared

Pennsylvania State University: Scientists cleared

The InterAcademy Council: Scientists cleared

The National Research Council: Scientists cleared

The US Commerce Department inspector General: Scientists cleared

US Environmental Protection Agency: Scientists cleared

Persecuting scientists because the scientists explained reality is just.... evil.