I keep meaning to write something substantive about the theft of emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, but my day job does sometime intervene. (Over six hundred postdoc applications in theoretical physics, but not to worry — only about 400 of them are in areas related to my interests.) There are some good discussions at Time and Foreign Policy, and you can’t poke your nose into the science blogosphere without reading someone’s take on the issue.
My own take is: what in the world is the big deal? Indeed, I would go so far as to ask: what could possibly be the big deal? Most of the noise has simply been nonsensical, focusing on misunderstandings of what scientists mean by the word “trick” and similar deep issues. And some people got upset when a dodgy paper was accepted by a journal, and they discussed giving the journal a cold shoulder. Cry me a river.
But I don’t really want to defend the scientists involved, because I’m not informed enough about who they are and what they did. For all I know, they may be very nasty and unethical human beings. (Actually that’s not true; I know Michael Mann, and he’s one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet.) And I see no reason not to do a thorough investigation, and hand out appropriate sanctions if there’s real evidence of wrongdoing.
What baffles me is the idea that this changes the conversation about climate change in any way. This isn’t a case like Jan Hendrik Schon, the rogue physicist who rose to prominence on the basis of falsified data, and was later exposed. The job of monitoring the climate is one that has been taken up by more than just one or two groups of people. There have been thousands of peer-reviewed papers that have provided evidence of global warming. Not to mention common sense; when the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has shot up dramatically over the last century, and the temperature has done the same thing, it takes some willful stubbornness to avoid the obvious conclusion. All of the noise we’re hearing about “Climategate” is based on politics, not on science.
And that’s what really puzzles me. I understand the non-scientific motivations of certain climate denialists; in the abstract, they don’t want to accept that the unfettered actions of capitalism can ever have any deleterious effects, and in the concrete, many of them are paid by oil companies. (See this charming “letter to the American Physical Society,” whose handful of signatories includes “Roger Cohen, former Manager, Strategic Planning, ExxonMobil.”) Those are powerful incentives to ignore the evidence.
But what is the incentive on the other side supposed to be? What exactly is the motivation for the nefarious conspiracy of people who are supposedly plotting to mislead the world about global warming? What do the people counting oysters get out of this?
Are there a lot of people out there who think that scientists as a group (since the vast majority of scientists appreciate the problems of global warming) have knee-jerk reactions against technology and industry? Let me propose another motivation for whatever corners the East Anglia group might have contemplated cutting: they’ve seen the data, they know what’s happening to the planet, and they’re terrified of what the consequences might be. They know that the other side is motivated by non-scientific concerns, and they want to fight back as hard as they can, both for the good of humanity and for the integrity of science. There’s no question that scientists can go overboard, pulling the occasional shenanigans in the pursuit of their less lofty goals. (Like, you know, other human beings.) But nobody wants to believe that we’re facing a looming global ecological catastrophe. They believe it because that’s what the data imply.
Reagan, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Clinton, Bush, Bush, Obama.
Please count them. 20 years under Republicans, 9 under the evil socialist democrats.
But somehow we have a government-science conspiracy to defraud the public, hinder business as usual, advance some liberal left wing agenda – on a GLOBAL scale no less.
It looks like the tin foil hat store just had some amazing sale.
Of course researchers can enhance their grants by suggesting a link between their research and Climate Change. But does that mean we shouldn’t question the motives of the extremely wealthy and powerful corporate interests whose profits are threatened by the scientific facts? Scientists aren’t getting rich on their research. Corporations ARE getting rich on the industrial pollutants that threaten the survival of the planet.
Climate science’ is the new shamanism. Your average old-school Witch Doctor get’s paid to toss some bones, teeth, feathers, and other junk on a table and pretends to divine the future from it.
The ‘climate scientists’ do exactly the same, except they get paid more, and the payment is made by someone other than the believer. The fact that they toss their garbage into a computer does not make their divinations any more scientific than tossing bones and feathers on the table.
Both the new and old practitioners know the results ahead of time. The bones and computers are just for the show.
John (#54):
Corporations are getting rich on government handouts driven by AGW alarmists, as well as industrial pollutants. As Dow did with CFCs and their replacements, they want to have their cake and eat it too–keep selling whatever makes money, using government coercion if at all possible. This is why most giant corporations that produce greenhouse gases have jumped on the bandwagon (as well as the personal desire of their leaders to be lauded). It’s the companies that don’t profit, but have to bear the costs, that are opposed to government action that will increase their costs. Those companies aren’t getting “rich on . . . industrial pollutants.”
BTW, “the planet” will survive fine. It’s the ecosystems that are somewhat in doubt.
“What exactly is the motivation for the nefarious conspiracy of people who are supposedly plotting to mislead the world about global warming? ”
Scientists, especially ecologists and environmentalists often have deep seated political convictions. They may be Marxists, Cultural Marxists, Neo- Marxists they may subscribe to wild notion of deep ecology movements, be members of VHEMT (http://www.vhemt.org/) and work for extinction of human race.
In our Environmental Institute we have one Ph.D. student who preaches VHEMT to us. We have people who celebrated last year’s economic depression with cheers. These people dream about destruction of US and Europe economies because they think it will be good for environment. What motivates these people? What motivated Lenin to make revolution in Russia and get Russian culture wiped out for next 100 years? What did motivate Neo-Marxist Saul Alinsky to do community organizing and write his book “Rules for Radicals?” (That is the manual on how to change the world which become widely known because Obama and Hilary were students of it. )
Saul Alisky has interesting “dialectic of ends and means,” which is extension of Lenins idea that “ends justify the means:” If your political goals are so good you may even lie if it is conductive to your goals. Alinsky has designed tactics of artificially created disaster, which Rahm Emanuel famously understands very wel (“Never get any crisis go waste”).
The whole AGW thing looks like an artificially created crisis in order to enforce on US global Socialist government to redistribute wealth, just as Lord Moncton points it out. Working in an Environmental institution for last 8 years I can easily agree with Lord Moncton, because I know to well the background of my colleagues: about 70% of them are former Communists and/or Cultural Marxists and all are admirers of Scandinavian socialism. Honesty is not the virtue they admire the most. What is the goal and how to achieve it? How to organize collective action? How to get hands on funds? That is the their mode of thinking.
wow. I finally get it. It really was as simply as realizing that all scientists, especially those working on Climate change science, are just marxist/commie pinkos.
Sadly I only now realized I too must have some secret Marxist agenda, as I have somehow fallen under the spell of my commie overlord Masters.
Tom, sure communists are about as dangerous as deers. (As a Russian I know that too well.) Saul Alinsky did not write his book “Rules for Radicals” and Obama and Hilary did not read it. Herbert Marcuse was never an influential professor at American University, he never wrote his Repressive Tolerance:
http://grace.evergreen.edu/~arunc/texts/frankfurt/marcuse/tolerance.pdf
and we have equal distribution between Green, Democrats and Republicans in US University faculty lists. So students normally have equal exposure to all views and are never indoctrinated in class rooms. Any speculations about left and socialist political influence in academia are made up by David Horowitz and Rush Limbaugh. Scientists are cellestial beings riding unicorns and junk science is never agenda driven.
Reality has a marxist bias? lol. This PR campaign gets sillier and sillier.
NASA climate graphs
I am tired of hearing all of this pseudoscience. The complex non-linear dynamic system that it is, long term climate prediction is simply impossible. If there is a problem, which we can’t say, our only hope is climate control.
Climate has many variables (solar activity, volcanic activity, orbital variations of the planet, CO2 atmospheric concentrations etc.). Of these sets of variables the only one we can possibly control is CO2 concentrations. For this there is no consensus on the sensitivity of climate to this variable. Even if it were significantly sensitive, it is the only one we can control.
To put this in simpler terms it would be like trying to drive a car (which has many control variables) when all that you can control is the accelerator (no brakes, no steering wheel). Control also requires accurate short term predictive models (turn the wheel right the car goes right). That we don’t have that is dramatically demonstrated by the deception attempt by climate scientists — the car went right when it should have gone left, and they tried to pretend it was going right even to the point of trying to silence occupants seeing it going left. So they are not really in the drivers seat….
The question is: Should they collect a fare from each passenger, grossly enriching themselves nevertheless?
Woa! Good old fashioned red baiting!
It’s like taking a ride in a DeLorean.
Talk Talk Talk.
Just look at the data. I did (wish I could post the graph here). And am just a chemist.
Go to http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/igra/index.php?name=ascii
Download the Upper Air data (I prefer this, no one can question siteing of the ground thermometers; and less diurnal variance). Choose 12Z time (less issue with solar heating adjustments on the radiosonde data) and 850mbar level. Average, Plot, Draw Trendlines.
For Atlanta a tight annual curve, very linear, is result. For 1958 – 2008 data, increasing at 3.2 °C/100yrs. For 1980 – 2008 data, increasing at 4.9 °C/100yrs. 2008 not appreciably cooler than trend (this is more pronounced elsewhere).
This is repeated, site to site, across US & Canada. The fudging of this much raw data would take a vast conspiracy (likely planned from the ’50s).
This is very enlightening to me, as data is better and clearer at lower latitudes (maybe due to lower temperature variance, less seasonal weather changes?).
Even if CO2 causality was not clear, this is a reason for major concern.
Am tired of people complaining about conspiracies without looking at data.
Am thinking of taking this exercise into the school systems here.
Can see why this affects better judgement (if this is even true) when the ill-informed chorus attacks your work (as evident here, in microcosm).
Will post this data shortly
Al
Quick question…does anyone know what percentage of climate research is funded by private interests (oil companies, etc) as opposed to government grants? I once heard the figure 10% but this wasn’t a reliable source so I don’t actually know the true answer. It seems like this would be pertinent to the question of what motivates climate scientists.
DaveH,
Reality does not have bias but James Hansen who made the graphs certanly has. I do not think he is a Marxists, but Hansen is a perfect example of a political activist I was talking about. He not only collects data but he believes that he have to save the world, as many environmentalists do. He does politics more than he does science. He participates in demonstrations, he was even arrested at one point for minor disorderly behavior. What is his motivation for spending his free time in picketing coal mine operations? The same sort of motivation may lead people to fudging the data to save the world.
Goddard Institute which he leads has been irresponsive to FOIA and has been hiding their data for 3 years. Now Christopher Horner informed NASA of his “Intent to File Suit notices on behalf of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, where he is a senior fellow, prepared in response to NASA’s stonewalling for nearly three years on releasing documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act.” ref:
http://newsrealblog.com/2009/12/04/climategate-jumps-the-pond-nasa-continues-to-stonewall-on-foia-requests/
What Jemes Hansen is hiding there? I bet he is hiding the decline 🙂
Surferosad ,
During the time when you were driving DeLorean I was in Soviet Union and I did not have any car, so I could not relate to your experience, unfortunately. I wish I could. Now, if I mention to you that my own father is still a Marxist and we still debate Marxism on telephone will it be red baiting too? If not then why simply stating the fact which I witnesed or can verify is red baiting?
Out of the mouth of babes?
I was very impressed by the research done by this sixth grader and his dad. I cannot detect anything wrong with it…. What am I missing? This would explain a large part of why the temp is increasing, and is bogus! Why do they put the temp gauges in the metro areas?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/09/picking-out-the-uhi-in-global-temperature-records-so-easy-a-6th-grader-can-do-it/
“All of the noise we’re hearing about “Climategate” is based on politics, not on science.” This statement is false. Climate science has(sadly)been politicized but there are hundreds of empirically based peer reviewed studies that clearly show the flaws of AGW models. http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html The pattern of minimizing or ignoring data that doesn’t support the hypothesis is present in every assumption supporting AGW. The theory looks sound if you are unaware of these sins of omission. Anyone who has studied some of the hundreds of peer reviewed studies critical of the theory has seen this pattern over and over. I’ve read 3 studies that used different methodology to show that the IPCC overstates Co2’s warming potential by 500%. People still claiming the science is sound could not have looked at the immense body of empirical science that clearly refutes it.
Evolution survived Piltdown Man. Global warming will survive CRU.
So, an admission that James Hansen isn’t a marxist is the evidence of the marxist conspiracy? Okaaay…
Many of the “peer reviewed” papers linked to in @68 are published in trade journals such as Energy and Environment, which publishes skeptical papers.
From wikipedia:
The journal takes a skeptical view towards climate change. Skeptics on the journal’s editorial staff include Boehmer-Christiansen herself and anthropologist Benny Peiser. Contributors considered as climate skeptics or contrarians, have included Sallie Baliunas, Robert M. Carter, Ian Castles, Bjorn Lomborg, Patrick Michaels, Ross McKitrick, Stephen McIntyre, Garth Paltridge, Roger Pielke Jr., Fred Singer, and Willie Soon.
When asked about the publication of these papers Boehmer-Christiansen replied, “I’m following my political agenda — a bit, anyway. But isn’t that the right of the editor?”
Not too many citations of those papers.
Sergey,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-baiting
And the DeLorean reference comes from a science-fiction movie called Back To The Future, where the main characters time travel to 1955 in a modified DeLorean.
Essentially, I was jokingly calling you a relic of the cold war.
Please curtail the anti-communist crap: it isn’t relevant to the discussion.
Earth is warming up at an alarming rate but the ice mass at south pole is increasing. It’s not clear to me how this is possible.
Could anyone explain to a math student how exactly is it possible to model a huge chaotic nonlinear system such as the earth accurately enough to draw long term predictions from? I would like to learn more of this method.
I am a scientist and am very afraid of this because science itself is under attack and this will fuel the fires of those who think religion, faith, mystics, taro cards, homeopathy etc know better. Sad days ahead for honest scientists.
Janne, The earth is not warming up at an alarming rate. It was warmer during the medievel warm period 1000+ years ago. The drum beat of alarmist propaganda is so pervasive it’s hard to see the truth. The limitations of computer modeling of the infinately variable dynamic climate are well documented. Meta analysis of the margins of errors imbedded in the many assumptions built into those models render their conclusions almost meaningless. The global warming that peaked in 1998 was mostly a northern hemiphere event. The arctic snowpack has recovered somewhat from the 2007 lows also.
People keep putting forth money as motivation for scientists to lie. How much do you think the average scientist gets paid? And do you think they make money off their research? Many people working in this area have a sufficient math and physics background to go into, say, finance. So if they’re in it for the money, they’re clearly idiots.
The Earth was not warmer than today during the so called “medieval warm period”.
This one’s for Pete Weaver:
Climate Denial Crock of the Week – “The Medieval Warming Crock”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrKfz8NjEzU
Let me Google that for you.
Incidentally, the solar system is a huge, chaotic system. How far out can we predict its behavior?