Pretty Good Climategate Summary
From Christopher Booker at the Telegraph via Anthony Watts
There are three threads in particular in the leaked documents which have sent a shock wave through informed observers across the world. Perhaps the most obvious, as lucidly put together by Willis Eschenbach (see McIntyre's blog Climate Audit and Anthony Watt's blog Watts Up With That), is the highly disturbing series of emails which show how Dr Jones and his colleagues have for years been discussing the devious tactics whereby they could avoid releasing their data to outsiders under freedom of information laws.
They have come up with every possible excuse for concealing the background data on which their findings and temperature records were based.
This in itself has become a major scandal, not least Dr Jones's refusal to release the basic data from which the CRU derives its hugely influential temperature record, which culminated last summer in his startling claim that much of the data from all over the world had simply got "lost". Most incriminating of all are the emails in which scientists are advised to delete large chunks of data, which, when this is done after receipt of a freedom of information request, is a criminal offence.
But the question which inevitably arises from this systematic refusal to release their data is "“ what is it that these scientists seem so anxious to hide? The second and most shocking revelation of the leaked documents is how they show the scientists trying to manipulate data through their tortuous computer programmes, always to point in only the one desired direction "“ to lower past temperatures and to "adjust" recent temperatures upwards, in order to convey the impression of an accelerated warming. This comes up so often (not least in the documents relating to computer data in the Harry Read Me file) that it becomes the most disturbing single element of the entire story. This is what Mr McIntyre caught Dr Hansen doing with his GISS temperature record last year (after which Hansen was forced to revise his record), and two further shocking examples have now come to light from Australia and New Zealand.
In each of these countries it has been possible for local scientists to compare the official temperature record with the original data on which it was supposedly based. In each case it is clear that the same trick has been played "“ to turn an essentially flat temperature chart into a graph which shows temperatures steadily rising. And in each case this manipulation was carried out under the influence of the CRU.
What is tragically evident from the Harry Read Me file is the picture it gives of the CRU scientists hopelessly at sea with the complex computer programmes they had devised to contort their data in the approved direction, more than once expressing their own desperation at how difficult it was to get the desired results.
The third shocking revelation of these documents is the ruthless way in which these academics have been determined to silence any expert questioning of the findings they have arrived at by such dubious methods "“ not just by refusing to disclose their basic data but by discrediting and freezing out any scientific journal which dares to publish their critics' work. It seems they are prepared to stop at nothing to stifle scientific debate in this way, not least by ensuring that no dissenting research should find its way into the pages of IPCC reports.
Link:
I found this elsewhere. It looks like an accurate summary of what went on. If so, it spells out a conspiracy among the core group of AGW scientists. If so, Michael Mann and his hockey stick are at the center of this.
Warren may be too kind in attributing Climategate to groupthink -- there may soemhting more sinsiter at the core. What did Al Gore know and when did he know it?
"An easy explanation of what ClimateGate means,
ClimateGate emails and computer programs were taken from a main server at the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia. It is not known if this was a theft or the actions of a whistleblower, disgusted with what the lead scientists at CRU were doing.
ClimateGate exposed the cabal of 20 – 30 scientists (not just at CRU) that peer reviewed each others papers, strong-armed scientific journals to only print their views, and then sat on the IPCC panels as authors judging which published studies go into the IPCC final reports. This is why they always keep shouting “peer reviewed studies, peer reviewed studies, peer reviewed studiesâ€. They owned the peer review process.
ClimateGate exposed that this small group has been adding positive corrections to the raw global temperature data, inflating the amount of published temperature rise over the last 50 years. Both CRU in the UK and NASA-GISS in the US add these biases. At CRU, the programmers did not even know what and why some corrections were added every month. Only since satellite monitoring for comparison have the amounts of biasing leveled off.
ClimateGate exposed the leaders of this cabal instructing each other to delete emails, data files, and data analysis programs ahead of already filed Freedom Of Information Act requests for raw data and computer codes, clearly a crime.
ClimateGate exposed the “trick†about the Hockey stick figure and other studies that performed proxy construction of past temperatures. After all, reconstruction of the last 1,000 years of climate is the first step in predicting the future with super computer programs as explained below:
Everything about all 21 super computer programs used by the IPCC to determine future global warming rely on best-determined past sensitivities to solar and volcanic effects (climate forcings) from the proxy temperature record.
1. The elimination of the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age (the handle of the hockey stick) was necessary so that past solar effects could be minimized, thereby allowing almost all of the warming in the last 75 years to be blamed on Greenhouse Gasses. Raw data (like tree-ring thickness, radioisotope of mud layers in a lake bottom, ice core analyses, etc.) are used as a proxy for reconstruction of the temperature record for 1000 AD to 1960 AD. To ensure desired results, statistical manipulation of the raw data and selecting only supporting data, cherry-picking, was suspected and later proved.
2. The slope of long-term 10-year running average global temperature using thermometers from 1900 to present (the blade of the hockey stick) was maximized with the sloppy gridding code, Urban Heat Island effects, hiding the declines, and even fabricating data (documented in the leaked source code comments revealed with ClimateGate). This ensured that the Greenhouse Gas effect coefficient in all 21 of the super computers was maximized, and that maximizes the temperature result at year 2100 based on Greenhouse Gas increases. This thermometer data was used to replace the tree ring-divergence after 1960 and plot this over the climate history data of (1) above giving the false impression that the reconstructed 1000 AD to 1960 AD results are more accurate than they are.
3. Because tuning of the super computer programs uses back casting, the computer outputs could always replicate the 20th Century (by design); therefore it was assumed that the models had almost everything in them. Because of (1) and (2) above, nearly all climate change predicted by the models was due to CO2 and positive feedbacks and hardly any of the climate change was for other reasons like solar, understood or not.
4. Over the years, when better numbers for volcanic effects, black carbon, aerosols, land use, ocean and atmospheric multi-decadal cycles, etc. became available, it appears that CRU made revisions to refit the back cast, but could hardly understand what the code was doing due to previous correction factor fudging and outright fabricating, as documented in the released code as part of ClimateGate.
5. After the IPCC averages the 21 super computer outputs of future projected warming (anywhere from 2-degrees to 7-degrees, not very precise), that output is used to predict all manner of catastrophes. (Fires, floods, droughts, blizzards, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, insects, extinctions, diseases, civil wars, cats & dogs sleeping together, etc.)"
November 29, 2009, 10:38 amMichael:
You need to add in that these people work for government and that government is throwing billions at them each year to get the curve government wants. There basically being bought off.
November 29, 2009, 11:12 amLink:
"Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?" -- Richard Pryor
Carol Browner is Obama's Climate Czar. She has a BA in English and JD, both from the University of Florida. Earlier in her career, she was a legislative assistant to Al Gore. Clinton made her head of the EPA in 1992. Later, she was a consultant with various firms where she helped multinationals comply with environmental regulations. She made as much as $5 million in 2008.
Here's what she said at last Friday's White House press gaggle:
Q What's your reaction to the British e-mails that have come out recently?
MS. BROWNER: I've read them. I don't know that I have a reaction.
A few questions later:
Q I hate to back you up on this, but those e-mails -- I know they're controversial, but they're actually feeding the run-up to Copenhagen. You might have read them, but you know basically the gist of them, which is being used by opponents of this deal to say that the whole thing is made up. But you have to have more than just "I don't have any reaction."
MS. BROWNER: Well, first of all, we've all seen bits and pieces, we haven't seen the full e-mails. But I think more importantly there has been for a very long time a very small group of people who continue to say this isn't a real problem, that we don't need to do anything. On the other hand, we have 2,500 of the world's foremost scientists who are in absolute agreement that this is a real problem and that we need to do something and we need to do something as soon as possible.
What am I going to do, side with the couple of naysayers out there, or the 2,500 scientists? I'm sticking with the 2,500 scientists. I mean, these people have been studying this issue for a very, very long time, and agree that the problem is real.
November 29, 2009, 11:25 amMar:
**Updated Nov 29**
Suppressed Medical Records (File 5100-13465/001)
With copies of letters from Privacy Commissioner of Canada
and an audio.
St. Catharines, Ontario
- Privacy Commissioner of Canada (Sect. 25,26,28)
- C.M.H.A / C.A.M.H. - Brock University
Further details Google:
Medicine Gone Bad
or
http://medicine-gone-bad.blogspot.com/
November 29, 2009, 4:53 pmbushworlda:
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November 30, 2009, 12:27 amNoumenon:
I'd have been very interested in seeing a link to this:
two further shocking examples have now come to light from Australia and New Zealand.
In each of these countries it has been possible for local scientists to compare the official temperature record with the original data on which it was supposedly based. In each case it is clear that the same trick has been played – to turn an essentially flat temperature chart into a graph which shows temperatures steadily rising. And in each case this manipulation was carried out under the influence of the CRU.
December 2, 2009, 7:15 am