More on those climate emails
Complete with a new name: Climaquiddick.
To get up to speed if you haven’t been following this story closely, here’s my post on it yesterday. Short version: A large batch of data from one of the world’s leading climate science centers was released on the Internet last week; this includes thousands of emails and other documents that reveal scientists at the center — people who have been intimately involved in the reports of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — may have been manipulating their data, and certainly intended to foil Freedom of Information requests and keep contrarian researchers out of peer-review journals if possible.
The focus on the story has turned from the emails the scientists exchanged to the computer code their center was using to produce its data sets, which have been an integral part of the IPCC’s reports. Declan McCullagh at CBS News reports some of the findings so far:
One programmer highlighted the error of relying on computer code that, if it generates an error message, continues as if nothing untoward ever occurred. Another debugged the code by pointing out why the output of a calculation that should always generate a positive number was incorrectly generating a negative one. A third concluded: “I feel for this guy. He’s obviously spent years trying to get data from undocumented and completely messy sources.”
Programmer-written comments inserted into CRU’s Fortran code have drawn fire as well. The file briffa_sep98_d.pro says: “Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!” and “APPLY ARTIFICIAL CORRECTION.” Another, quantify_tsdcal.pro, says: “Low pass filtering at century and longer time scales never gets rid of the trend – so eventually I start to scale down the 120-yr low pass time series to mimic the effect of removing/adding longer time scales!”
At Pajamas Media, which has been producing some of the most in-depth coverage of this story, Charlie Martin examines the code further and concludes:
[P]ut this in the context of what else we know from the CRU data dump:
1. They didn’t want to release their data or code, and they particularly weren’t interested in releasing any intermediate steps that would help someone else
2. They clearly have some history of massaging the data — hell, practically water-boarding the data — to get it to fit their other results. Results they can no longer even replicate on their own systems.
3. They had successfully managed to restrict peer review to what we might call the “RealClimate clique” — the small group of true believers they knew could be trusted to say the right things.
As a result, it looks like they found themselves trapped. They had the big research organizations, the big grants — and when they found themselves challenged, they discovered they’d built their conclusions on fine beach sand.
But the tide was coming in.
Even if the CRU crew are only guilty of promising more than they could deliver, that’s still a hugely important turn of events in the climate-change debate — and reason enough to put the policy debate on pause while this new information is sorted out.
Finally, on a more humorous note, check out this video created for Minnesotans for Global Warming by the folks at JibJab.com:
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119 comments Add your comment
Linda
November 25th, 2009
3:38 pm
Skip@3:26, If you’re not going to use them, let me know. We’ll burn them in the fireplace insert. We like to stay warm & pollute at the same time. If we didn’t cut down trees, we would all live in tree houses built with straw (also one of the 77 essentials in the book Global Warming Survival). Would also be hard to drive around in trees.
Peter
November 25th, 2009
3:40 pm
Linda you make a list of bad words, I don’t invite bad karma into my life.
I believe different than you…….Man effects climate through pollution.
God is man made as well.
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4:08 pm
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Linda
November 25th, 2009
4:10 pm
Peter, What’s wrong with Yucca Mt for nuclear waste? We’ve spent $13.5 B developing it. There’s 60,000 tons of waste being held in pools & above ground concrete containers at 104 commercial power plants. Obama just scrapped the plan & said all this waste can just say where it is. The Dems oppose any energy they can’t cap, trade, tax & make $ on.
Owners of buildings can retrofit them without authority of energy companies. I have received credits from energy companies to make my properties more energy efficient.
Peter
November 25th, 2009
4:35 pm
Linda…this comment…….”The Dems oppose any energy they can’t cap, trade, tax & make $ on.”….I would say all parties think the sames, and so do the energy companies !
Great job on the redoing of your properties. We are redoing a ranch, we have all new windows and doors, lots more insulation, and I know that is going to help allot.
As far as commercial buildings, I imagine slowly that will happen. The nuclear waste is a major issue, I haven’t thought much about the subject.
With the cost of a nuclear plant these days in the billions of dollars, I don’t understand why solar is not viable.
Linda
November 25th, 2009
4:40 pm
Peter, The worst bad words I use can be said in front of children.
I’ve never run across an Indian named Peter.
Climate & pollution are two different things. Man causes one but doesn’t affect the other.
I realize there are people who deny the existence of God, but I’ve never heard anyone say He is man-made. Unlike others, I have been very respective to you. What you said is an insult to God & is personally insulting to me. You intentionally offended me & simultaneously displayed both your lack of knowledge AND intelligence. I feel very sorry for you & will pray for you.
I’m signing off.
Peter Courtenay Stephens
November 25th, 2009
6:40 pm
For you alarmists and Global Worming Thugs, so what if the world temperature rises 50 degrees and mankind goes the way of the Do Do Bird? So what? Do you really think that Humanity or the earth for that matter is so important to the overall universal picture that it deserves saving?
No matter what you do in the 21st century it will be only a minor thought in the 22nd century or the 23rd century. Earth and humanity is a temporary thing. Face it.
jgfox
November 25th, 2009
9:59 pm
We are just at the beginning of this scandal.
Rather than rely on “commentators” about what it is and what it isn’t, I’ve read 30 or 40 of the emails and, also, the comments on the “code”.
It is very damning and we just began to mine the politics behind AGW.
If Hadley Climate Research Unit wants to prevent this from become a formal investigation, just release the data used in the models and the models themselves.
No, they fought releasing information and in one email pledged to destroy it before it became public.
Those on the fence and those with open minds … go to Wattsupwiththat.com website … or any website with the emails and make up your own mind.
Don’t depend on surrogates and commentators.
Read and decide.
I remember when Senator Sam Erwin in the Watergate scandal was challenged “how could you know that?”, he responded:
“Because I can understand the English language. It’s my mother’s tongue.”
The emails are in English … you decide … if you’re posting here, you have enough interest to read the emails and the “cooked code”.
If you are reading this you understand English whether it is your “Mother tongue” or not.
Read them yourselves and decide.
Laura
November 26th, 2009
2:37 am
Peter: China and India are the world’s two biggest polluting countries and they are EXEMPT from Cap and Trade. You better START liking Communism, because that is the purpose of climate change, which you defend. They changed the name from global warming to climate change, because the earth is getting cooler, not warmer. Research New World Order & wake up.
wyoming dan
November 26th, 2009
3:47 pm
enjoyed everyone’s comments, even peter’s, who appears to be diametrically opposed to my viewpoints on every issue raised! As a former orange county, ca. republican, now a wyoming libertarian, I wanted to share a couple of points. #1, Nuclear power was shot down by the left 35 years ago, the so-called environmental movement is directly responsible for the prevalence of “King-Coal” in energy use today. Forget Carbon footprint junk science, Coal has some byproduct, including radiation, that is downright nasty! Lose coal via Nuclear or other alternate energy abd you’ll make everyone happy except the coal producing states and lobbies. #2, I live off grid, using two windmills and some solar, suplemented by a large and expensive propane generator. I don’t bo this because I give a $#%$ about Al Gores agenda, but because—–ready—– IT COSTS ME LESS!
The argument for alternative fuel use must be economic, people don’t change unless it hits their pocketbook. Wihch brings me to my third point, #3 WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF OIL. If the so-called greens and the Rational Anarchists like myself could simply couch our discussions in these terms you would be amazed what this country could dig itself out of. Soo ends the sermon….
mikey
November 27th, 2009
2:44 am
Nice breakdown Kyle, keep up the good work.
The Global Warming Hoax is going down, the REAL environmentalists will have their cause back, enfettered by the very corporations they seek to rein in.
The Truth rises to the top. Eventually.
Kevin Bodenhammer
November 27th, 2009
3:41 am
What would be wrong in the first place if the Earth did get warmer? For one thing, people would be burning less fuel to keep warm in the winter time. When I was actually working in a greenhouse, I bought some CO2 tanks to enrich the greenhouse environment. The plants grew twice as tall, and produced more fruit. I cannot believe people, especially scientist, are so stupid.
Peter
November 27th, 2009
9:38 am
Linda, I appreciate you thinking differently than I, but you on the other hand, are insulted by someone thinking different than you.
Please pray for yourself. Maybe you can be enlightened to the fact there are many many religions, beliefs, and theories on Religious beliefs.
Some folks believe as Taoists, or Buddhists……these folks don’t pray to a god. They believe all life is intertwined.
You mention you never heard God was a man made idea, if he is not then how was he originated ?
You also have a big issue with China, and think they are not aware of the ecological problems with the earth, and their region, and seemingly don’t care.
I suppose you are unaware of China’s 5-Year $454 Billion Environmental Initiative.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Profiting-From-Chinas-5Year-indie-1632552639.html?x=0&.v=1
Everyone writes and opinion here, perhaps you should be more open minded.
JackPoynter
November 27th, 2009
11:33 am
Testing, delete this if you like, my computer is acting very overburdened this morning.
JackPoynter
November 27th, 2009
11:54 am
Short version of longer post which seems to have vanished into the ether:
The IPCC has responded to climaquiddick, which Kyle seems to call this issue. (Did someone die and I missed it?)
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/26/pachauri-discusses-the-climate-files/
The interesting part is that there was a response to the IPCC’s response from one of the delegates to the IPCC. Both pieces are in the above URL.
As a person who has been in information systems since 1966, the comments are in the code are:
1. Not surprising, since they come from an amateur programmer, and
2. Utterly damning with regard to whoever was administrating those projects, from a data integrity, data recoverability, programming version control standpoint, forget what they have to say about AGW.
The net is that, given the amount of money and exposure we have on this subject, the administration of climate science appears to be too important to be left to climate scientists.
JP
Danny
November 27th, 2009
2:03 pm
Just the name Al Gore is reason enough not to believe any of this horse squeeze. You’d have to be a maroon to fall for these lies.
Steve
November 29th, 2009
9:17 am
Hey all,
So even if Global Warming either is not occurring, or is not being caused by human activity, all of you worrying about how much it will cost you if climate change legislation is enacted should instead consider the investment opportunities that will exist in the many companies that will find ways to profit from cap and trade and CO2 sequestration technologies. In the end many who are crying now about the cost will be the ones that are making it hand over fist. It’s always the way.
Steve
November 29th, 2009
9:29 am
“They changed the name from global warming to climate change, because the earth is getting cooler, not warmer.”
No, they call it climate change because it is more encompassing, Since the earth will not warm in a uniform manner (poles will warm up more), the increased temperature gradient will cause more severe weather, tropical cyclones in some areas, increased drought in others, flooding in still others. The name Global Warming does not capture this, hence “Climate Change”. Quite simple really.
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