Nov 23 2009
Climategate
First: Watergate was named “gate” for a reason. Every other “gate” is just a silly name.
Second: The only emails I’ve read, I’ve read involuntarily as they’ve been posted to Wikipedia. I don’t think it’s right reading the email of others.
Third: I assume the ‘worst’ emails are the ones they’re trying to push.
Fourth: From what I’ve read, this seems much ado about nothing.
I haven’t kept up with the climate blogs/news recently, so maybe my assessment is wrong. But it seems like the email conversations you’d expect scientists to have.
My two cents.
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...Related Posts:
23 Responses to “Climategate”
To reduce spam, comments are automatically closed 30 days after the last comment. If you would like to comment on any closed thread, please use the contact form at the top of this page.
http://steinunn.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/osrich.jpg
[...] Atmoz.org: First: Watergate was named “gate” for a reason. Every other “gate” is just a silly name. [...]
Since when has conspiracy to break the law “much ado about nothing” Maybe if you are talking about politicians but these people are supposed to be scientists, held to a higher standard of pursuit of truth.
Call it CRUhack.
For there was the crime, purloining e-mail messages.
“The only emails I’ve read, I’ve read involuntarily as they’ve been posted to Wikipedia.”
“From what I’ve read, this seems much ado about nothing.”
Because you haven’t read the emails of individuals funded with public money. Considering the massive economic and political implications involved here, and the amount of market subversion that can potentially occur, which will result in increased opportunities for “rent seeking” and bidding on PUBLIC assets by wealth seeking agents, climate scientists should be held to a different standard.
Well, you’d better start reading - though the e-mails are pretty damning, I’d concentrate on the data files - and they are far, far worse than the e-mails. The data is already being examined, and it is clear they rigged more than anyone ever dreamed - they flat out lied.
I also find it funny that the cover seems to be “oh, they STOLE them” - though it appears this is not exactly the case. Everyone is saying Russian because an ANONYMOUS relay was used to plant the posts & the original file was placed on a Russian FTP site - not too hard to do from anywhere in the world (that’s why we call it the WORLD WIDE web…).
This is not religion - it is supposed to be science. Scientific theories get disproven and tossed out all the time. The problem is they sold it to all of us as something to believe in instead of allowing it to simply be science.
Ah, the principled head-in-the-sand routine ..
@ oneuniverse
“Ah, the principled head-in-the-sand routine ..”
this ordinance can be deployed in both directions.
First it was : ‘The emails are damning and expose the greatest scientific scandal in history’.
When that didn’t turn out to be the case (to say the least), it is now : ‘It’s the data, man. It’s shocking. Um, lots of clever people are looking into it and, um, it’s shocking.’
I wonder how long before those desperate for the ’smoking gun’ will admit there isn’t one ?
I also wonder how long we’ll be getting repeats of the words ‘trick’, ‘hide’ and ‘Harry’ ?
Let us not forget that what was stolen was actually the subject of a court approved (litigated) FOI request that was being ignored.
There’s very little wiggle room at law for ignoring what amounts to a subpoena for information.
There will likely be no prosecution for the stolen property, except possibly for the “scientists” who perpetrated this fraud.
Second; it’s not the emails that really damn them. Sure, there are some really egregeous goings on, but the fraud occurs in the data. There’s no doubt of manipulation now. The emails only establish collusion on that point. Oh, and tax evasion, possible misuse of funds, if not outright embezzlement, academic coercion that may rise to the level of extortion, academic fraud.
But the data itself, the code, contains a lot of commentary as to the what and why of adjustments. That information is unequivical damnation of the “science” being discussed. Expect many more discredited hockey sticks in the near future.
But don’t be bothered to read this stuff, at all cost.
Plausible deniability and so forth.
My two cents: let them scream and shout now. Time will tell whether a few e-mails really were relevant in the big scope of things. (Oh yeah, here’s my favorite little glacier: http://www.accc.gv.at/wurtenkees.htm. If you’ve seen 9 or 10 of those kinds of image series, or hiked around these kinds of glaciers, you stop getting distracted by politics.)
[Reply: Thanks for the link! -A]]
Anna, nice pics. What do they have to do with anthropogenic global warming? Yes, ice melts when it gets warmer. Yes, we can regret the loss of some spectacular glaciers. Doesn’t prove anything one way or the other, except that we are in the modern warm period.
Not saying we are not in an exceptional period. Just saying that waving your arms about glaciers doesn’t show it, nor does it show what caused it if it is exceptional. We need to get very focused and very rational about this, and stop waving our arms.
Atmoz: Get a new job. Im sure your ability to massage data will be appreciated it the real estate industry
[Reply: Hate to break it to you, but I don't get paid for this.]
VITAL POLICY MAKER INFORMATION
Copenhagen Temperature 1881-2007
http://i46.tinypic.com/25zt4di.jpg
What it all means is the skeptics have been proved right in several areas:
1. Skeptics were suspicious of ‘data massaging’ and the error of torturing data to fit conclusions - and the emails and data released shows things even WORSE than we might have thought: outright fudging of temperature series, skewing of data, using ‘tricks’ to make misleading presentations of data, mistakes in how proxies are used are admitted in emails but not shared with others, so bad data is reused, and now CRU claims the underlying raw data doesnt even exist! They have a ‘dog ate my homework’ excuse.
2. Skeptics claimed the IPCC was shutting out dissenters - the emails prove it now; attempts to get Journal editors who didnt toe the line canned, attempts to keep dissent out of IPCC reports, refusal to public review notes, and a complete paranoid approach to any questioning of their ’science’
3. Skeptics were claiming that the ‘Hockey Stick Team’ scientists were denying access to data to replicate results - we now have emails where Jones and Mann talking about how to subvert FOI requests and how to stop the skeptics from figuring out their ‘tricks’.
Note to self:
I should learn how to shut off comments.
“I assume the ‘worst’ emails are the ones they’re trying to push.”
Hmmm, seems to me that “assumptions” are preciously what has gotten us to where we presently are. Perhaps you should read the information BEFORE you write story about it.
Just saying… (DA!)
“Note to self:
I should learn how to shut off comments.”
I suggest you threaten the publisher until she fires the editors and reviewers you don’t like. Worked for Jones and Mann!
Deep Thought,
you may want to read the story from the POV of the first editor who resigned and then reconsider your description.
http://coast.gkss.de/staff/storch/
Wm. Safire both described the spurious -gate tactic, and either initiated it or was the first mass-scale exploiter of it. His initial goal was probably to trivialize Watergate.
J Smith,
No smoking gun indeed…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/08/the-smoking-gun-at-darwin-zero/
You say that you will not read stolen emails.
What if the emails had come from Exxon or Consolidated Coal, or Duke Power, or American Electric Power, or one of the large tobacco companies? Would you have read those emails?
First: Agreed. But advertisement requires catchy. Catchy is where the results are. Commercial jingles > Beethoven
Second:
The research and coordination of research between researchers whom assist in the creation of public policy by advising politicians and consume public resource to do research thereof should be transparent to the public. If you think you’re doing a bad thing by reading emails that scientists were paid to write with public money, well.. Don’t read their private emails. Having read quite a few, I can say there’s not a lot of honey-do lists and sex secrets in these emails.
But this is an age old argument, isn’t it? Which is worse, to spy on your neighbor and infringe his privacy, or to let his next murder victim die?
Third:
Yes, I believe you are right. We don’t highlight the average value.
Fourth:
I don’t read much, but the one’s I’ve read, it’s no big deal.
Let’s say that again:
I’ve chosen to be ignorant about a subject upon which I am now commenting, but really nothing has stood out to me.
Overall, I’d say the assesment I got out of the emails was: There appeared to be a willigness to erase emails. The subject matter discussed to be erased didn’t seem to appear in the emails overall. There is some suggestion that the peer-review process could be affected by individual high-profile scientists, and that specific reviewing editors (IE dissentors) could be removed. All scientists on the copy list for the erase email, and all scientists on the copy list for the peer-review modification emails should have all of their work seized and subjected to external verification ( by two different groups, no less.. Fact checking in science is part of science.)
Science that is not directly creating commercial value under private investment should be transparent. Don’t get me wrong, please. I’m not saying all that because doing science behind closed doors is wrong in some sort of evil way. I’m saying doing science behind closed doors is not science. If your data, methods, experiments and models are not available to be reproduced and tested by persons other than yourself(ves,) then you are not participating in science, what you are doing is (sorcery magic voodoo rituals) whatever you want to call it, but it certainly isn’t science.
I’ve written at least eight cents to your two cents, my apologies for the verbosity.