The UK papers are up in arms over revelations that the CRU in East Anglia destroyed the original data upon which its claims of anthropogenic global warming were based in favor of “value added” data, leaving only the question of whether that value was meant to stimulate scientific knowledge or stimulate government grants:
The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.
The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.
The whole underlying theory of AGW is now essentially unfalsifiable, it has become what scientists – real scientists – label “a religion.”
UK Telegraph‘s Christopher Booker calls it the “scientific scandal of our generation,” adding that it seems something of a trend:
Given star billing by the IPCC, not least for the way it appeared to eliminate the long-accepted Mediaeval Warm Period when temperatures were higher they are today, the graph became the central icon of the entire man-made global warming movement.
Since 2003, however, when the statistical methods used to create the “hockey stick” were first exposed as fundamentally flawed by an expert Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre, an increasingly heated battle has been raging between Mann’s supporters, calling themselves “the Hockey Team”, and McIntyre and his own allies, as they have ever more devastatingly called into question the entire statistical basis on which the IPCC and CRU construct their case.
It’s practically impossible to prove a negative, so such ham handedness on the part of those entrusted to Actual Science does not conclusively demonstrate that there is no human element to the current warming cycle – now apparently on hold. But even being generous to the alarmists who claim that they hadn’t the time or effort to rebut each and every skeptic’s claim (although if the science was truly as proven as they claimed it to be, one wonders what was left for them to do) they have seriously damaged their own reputations, and whipped the clothes off innumerable emperors seeking world-wide redistribution of resources everywhere.
Faced with this – and the enormous potential costs economically or ecologically either way the story breaks – it’s only natural for investigative journalists to step in and try to sort this out: Poor science, or poor scientists?
But here at home, the New York Times instead dedicates its resources to raking the coals of John Kerry’s private feud:
(The) Senate Foreign Relations Committee has completed a detailed look back at a crucial failure early in the battle against Al Qaeda: the escape of Osama bin Laden from American forces in the Afghan mountains of Tora Bora in December 2001…
The committee report, prepared at the request of Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the committee’s Democratic chairman, concludes unequivocally that in mid-December 2001, Mr. bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, were at the cave complex, where Mr. bin Laden had operated previously during the fight against Soviet forces…
The report represents unfinished political business on the part of Mr. Kerry. Before and during his unsuccessful 2004 presidential campaign, he hammered on the failure to catch Mr. bin Laden.
So here we are, with the ship of state navigating into the shoal waters around Copenhagen, faced with the choice between a fundamental restructuring of the energy system underlying the world economy and the potential to wreck the world’s climate, and the paper of record steers by the wake.
What a farce.
If they had done real science, they wouldn’t have to do much rebuttal. They also need to realize that defense of a theory is part of establishing a theory. The boffins simply refused to defend, except by doing the very things they have decried in the past.
Frankly, their names are now mud and few will believe them again, especially since they destroyed the raw data, a serious no-no in real science. Claiming they have no room to store the raw data is farcical. You simply buy more mag tape. It doesn’t cost that much.
Schadenfreude would be in order if this thing didn’t still have legs among the left and Copenhagen weren’t just ahead.
Having not read the article or the senate report, I would bet though that it does not address the number of troops that would have been needed to go into Tora Bora area to “get” bin Laden. They make sound easy.
Some have written that one consequence of this now exposed travesty is the harm it’s done to the credibility of the scientific community. Those who have long suspected that the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming was a hoax might defer- the ‘peer-review’ and ‘consensus gathering’ processes of the scientific community has been faulty for some time. Consensus counts for nothing, in fact it does terrible things, when it’s wrong.
There are many famous examples of this dynamic, and I think often of this man:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
Consensus can easily lead to abuse and cruelty, when those in its embrace forget to be humble or sincere. We are always responsible to examine ourselves and consider carefully the plight of others.
You shall do no unrighteousness in judgment;
you shall not respect the person of the poor,
nor honor the person of the mighty;
but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor.
Leviticus 19:15.
Best regards, Peter Warner.
It amuses me, now in academic employ, to see the outside world “shocked, shocked that gambling is going on…” What? Do they think scientists have a higher and purer human nature than mere mortals? Privately, we in the “hard sciences” are aware of this sort of thing all the time – fellow researchers failing to get their work published because it violates conventional wisdom, peer-review a form of peer-pressure, source funding biasing research results, the need to do current science by “teamwork”… And thus it has ever been to some extent (See Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Scandal? Or fact of life?
Science is the process of rejecting a hypothesis. Their own models reject their own hypothesis … isn’t that called being foisted by your own petard? They had no choice but to destroy the data to protect their profitable scam.
“Foisted by your own petard? I like that!
Saaayyy….that gives me an idea! A new “technically” non-obscene phrase: “HUCK OFF!!”
I’d agree and join in the festivities, but such things as “Huck it” sounds too much like you are trying to invoke Huckabee, and I want no part of that.
Re: AGW
Oh, you just have to trust us! Our massaged numbers are just as good as, if not better than, the raw data. Really.
My, my, how convenient for them. No micro film or fiche. Just ‘correct’ the data and get rid of the originals so no one, including yourself, can go back and double check. I wonder what Inconvenient Truths the data held? And I love that term: “Value added dta.”
Re: OBL
Yeah, isn’t 20/10 hindsight great? And look at the chair of the committee – John Kerry. Yeah, he doesn’t have an axe to grind. Nope, totally impartial.
Which it would have, both abroad and among the Dems in the Hallowed Halls, since there was no UN mandate or approval for he US to go into Afghanistan. The slim GOP majority would not have been able to block the Dem grandstanding.
If you are going to point fingers at missed chances, point back to slick willie, who turned down having OBL handed over all gift wrapped after the WTC attack.
If I had one wish to improve true knowledge, it would be to destroy mens’ views of scientists as pure and unbiased. We are all mere men.
Here’s another bit of evidence, which I hope most of you have seen by now. Why Most Published Research Findings Are False
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, / But in ourselves, that we are underlings”
It sure seems that the mainstream media has been fully purged of anyone who would dare question the reality of AGW. The silence on ClimateGate has been stark — imagine if funding for a group devoted to questioning AGW had been discovered to come from Exxon. The front pages and talk shows would be beating that drum without stop!
Isn’t this quaint? The climate gurus of the AGW world are using the old “the dog ate my homework” routine to cover up their fiddling with scientific data, and then destroying the original information.
Hey guys. That won’t work with us grown-ups.
Marianne
My oldest daughter used that excuse one time. In that case, however, our over-energetic, and, at the time, rather bored, Queensland Blue Heeler did tear it up just as she was getting ready for school that morning. It did cause some amusment at school, but she had the evidence of the doggies dastardly deed.
IN the AGW case, they simply had no desire, or intention, of actually doing science. We see exactly the same thing with evolution and Richard Dawkins. Most of these twits think since they have a PhD, we should genuflect in their direction and pay them the proper homage of seeing their writings as excathedra, and therefore absolute fact. After all, they said it was, so it must be.
Marianne, QM/
This same thing has happened with gun-control research. Remember that PhD who claimed that his research showed that pvt ownership of guns during the formative years of the nation at the time of the Revolution weren’t nearly as wide-spread as previously thought, and that such guns as WERE in pvt hands were tightly regulated? And when others tried to check out his sources they either could not find the confirming records he claimed existed or found tons of contrary records he omitted which showed wide-spread gun ownership–with the result he was challenged to present his data/sources. But he pleaded inability, claiming he had left it sitting on the kitchen table near an open window on a night it rained heavily and it got wet and the ink ran and blurred out everything!! It just doesn’t get any better than that!
I remember now, the guys name was Michael Bellissles. Another descendant, like the types at UEA, of Stalin’s comrade professor Lysenko.
Most leftist ‘science’ is simple Lysenkoism. If the left had the ability to do so, dissent from the consensus would merit an extended vacation in gulag.
Good riddance. We’ve important issues to deal with. Real issues.
Of course, I think they’ll brush this off and move on as if it didn’t happen. Too bad.
They’re going to try, but it’s already beating them about the head and shoulders. It’s going to be awfully hard to go on as if nothing happened.
Of some good news as a sidebar. Today, in Australia, there was a shift in one of the major political parties and it resulted in shooting down the carbon tax nonsense. For now anyway.