LONDON � Britain's climate change secretary urged nations Thursday to be wary of "climate saboteurs" seeking to wreck a global agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
My favorite local chicken little is Bill Good for CKNW. Since he got a few days of flack for his refusal to talk to the other side, he's taken the day off. Cowardly.
ABC didn't cover it. CBS didn't either. And NBC apparently wouldn't go near it.
The network news broadcasts have ignored a growing scandal over evidence of a potential climate cover-up � and now they've even been scooped by the fake news at Comedy Central.
"The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" produced its "reporting" on Climate-gate Tuesday night, when Stewart quipped, �Poor Al Gore. Global warming completely debunked via the very Internet you invented. Oh, oh, the irony!�
God it sounds like he is describing the House of Parliament , but he is right people need to step back and start over to many turned this into a money maker item .
Big deal: Of the hundreds of scientists working independently around the world for countless governments, universities, and research insitutions, TWO OF THEM at ONE university in England exhanged emails that used the words "trick" and "hide" when discussing a particular research project they were working on.
Doesnt mean anything. I admit it looks bad to all the Homer Simpsons and Joe Lunchbuckets out there, but these emails were related to a specific project they were working on, this is not "Global Climate Change HQ" talking about how to falsify the global argument for Global warming.
Does anybody even know what project these guys were working on specifically, or what exactly these guys were talking about? Nope.
Phil Jones in discussing the presentation of temperature reconstructions stated that �I�ve just completed Mike�s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith�s to hide the decline.� The paper in question is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) Nature paper on the original multiproxy temperature reconstruction, and the �trick� is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear. Scientists often use the term �trick� to refer to a �a good way to deal with a problem�, rather than something that is �secret�, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all. As for the �decline�, it is well known that Keith Briffa�s maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the �divergence problem��see e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommend not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while �hiding� is probably a poor choice of words (since it is �hidden� in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens.
Now, this is a bit technical and jargon-y and so theres a high probability that our sloping forehead friends will say "Ug..Me no understand, me ignore this!" so I'll do my best to interpret this into plain english.
The researchers in question are taking historical climate data from different collected sources (ie analysis of tree rings, ice core samples, etc) to try and estimate past temperatures and then charting the historical change in temperature on a line graph. There is a well-known issue in environmental science as a result of research from the "Keith" mentioned above, where tree-ring data is different from all the other data. Tree ring data suggests a temperature decline after 1960 while all other scientific measurements show the opposite. This is the �divergence problem" mentioned above. Scientists are hesitant to include this data when calculating the overall temperature average because they dont understand why this measure alone is so different from all the others. The explanation above suggests that the scientists aren't trying to conceal the well-publicised tree ring data, they are simply trying to factor it out of the numbers they were using in their data project, which is exactly what the scientist who found the tree ring data recommended because its not well understood. The "trick" -by which they mean the process that solves the problem- apparently is to include numbers from actual measured temperatures over the period when trying to calculate the average of calculated temperatures. The "trick" was hardly a secret, but recommended by the Mike mentioned in the email as an ideal way to solve the divergence problem as it had been publicized in the 1998 publication "Nature."
What Im saying is that its not clear what these researchers were actually trying to do and what they were going to do with the info. Maybe it was to see if Michael Mann's data from 1999 can be duplicated. Maybe its just a theoretical project to see how data outputs are affected by different data manipulation techniques. Its not clear what the purpose of this was. Maybe it is lousy science, but in the world of peer-reviewed research, people like the author in the link you provided would be all over it and it would be debunked before it ever made wide circulation.
This is just an email between a couple researchers from the University of East Anglia, not the International Global Warming Manifesto from Al Gore's desk.
We should be careful about what conclusions we draw from little "snippets" of info like this, especially on highly technical matter which none of us are sophisticated enough to understand on our own.
Does anyone else think its a strange coincedence that this info was hacked and stolen right before the big Copenhagen summit? Talk about political!
I guess my issue about all of it is that based on where I live, I'm seeing the exact opposite happening. Living in Southern Ontario summers are generally quite hot and humid, somehwat tropical even. But the last 3 summers have been unseasonably cool with lots of rain. The last 2 winters have seen more snow in many areas than there has been in years. Now I'm not saying that's proof against GW. It's quite common, during warming or cooling trends to have shifts in the opposite direction for short periods, but as far as I'm concerned, the jury is still out on GW and they ain't gonna be coming back anytime soon.
Too me the most damning point exposed by all this wasn't the hide the decline trick. Most people already knew those hockey stickish graphs were bogus.
What was more damning, as a single point, wasn't even in the actual emails, or the accompanying code, but it's something where people are just now starting to grasp the full significance. It was the fact that the original temperature data influencing the IPCC report was destroyed. That is of staggering importance. It was known before the emails, but because of the emails, now everybody knows. Even Rex Murphy of the CBC mentioned it.
Like this really helps to defeat the anti-AGW point that AGW believers are a bunch of alarmists.
Babysteps, babysteps. Before the end of the year we'll have them actually telling people what's in them. Mark my words.
Hey have you seen these ones yet?
Cowardly.
The network news broadcasts have ignored a growing scandal over evidence of a potential climate cover-up � and now they've even been scooped by the fake news at Comedy Central.
"The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" produced its "reporting" on Climate-gate Tuesday night, when Stewart quipped, �Poor Al Gore. Global warming completely debunked via the very Internet you invented. Oh, oh, the irony!�
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,578990,00.html
Doesnt mean anything. I admit it looks bad to all the Homer Simpsons and Joe Lunchbuckets out there, but these emails were related to a specific project they were working on, this is not "Global Climate Change HQ" talking about how to falsify the global argument for Global warming.
Does anybody even know what project these guys were working on specifically, or what exactly these guys were talking about? Nope.
Now, this is a bit technical and jargon-y and so theres a high probability that our sloping forehead friends will say "Ug..Me no understand, me ignore this!" so I'll do my best to interpret this into plain english.
The researchers in question are taking historical climate data from different collected sources (ie analysis of tree rings, ice core samples, etc) to try and estimate past temperatures and then charting the historical change in temperature on a line graph. There is a well-known issue in environmental science as a result of research from the "Keith" mentioned above, where tree-ring data is different from all the other data. Tree ring data suggests a temperature decline after 1960 while all other scientific measurements show the opposite. This is the �divergence problem" mentioned above. Scientists are hesitant to include this data when calculating the overall temperature average because they dont understand why this measure alone is so different from all the others. The explanation above suggests that the scientists aren't trying to conceal the well-publicised tree ring data, they are simply trying to factor it out of the numbers they were using in their data project, which is exactly what the scientist who found the tree ring data recommended because its not well understood. The "trick" -by which they mean the process that solves the problem- apparently is to include numbers from actual measured temperatures over the period when trying to calculate the average of calculated temperatures. The "trick" was hardly a secret, but recommended by the Mike mentioned in the email as an ideal way to solve the divergence problem as it had been publicized in the 1998 publication "Nature."
Big upside whack to the head of the CBC for this one.
Here's what one programmer is saying about the code...
http://cubeantics.com/2009/12/the-proof ... l-them-to/
The code is fudged to produce the results the church of global warming wants....
This is just an email between a couple researchers from the University of East Anglia, not the International Global Warming Manifesto from Al Gore's desk.
We should be careful about what conclusions we draw from little "snippets" of info like this, especially on highly technical matter which none of us are sophisticated enough to understand on our own.
Does anyone else think its a strange coincedence that this info was hacked and stolen right before the big Copenhagen summit? Talk about political!
Now I'm not saying that's proof against GW. It's quite common, during warming or cooling trends to have shifts in the opposite direction for short periods, but as far as I'm concerned, the jury is still out on GW and they ain't gonna be coming back anytime soon.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/28/h ... ulled-off/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/26/m ... e-decline/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/30/p ... the-trees/
Too me the most damning point exposed by all this wasn't the hide the decline trick. Most people already knew those hockey stickish graphs were bogus.
What was more damning, as a single point, wasn't even in the actual emails, or the accompanying code, but it's something where people are just now starting to grasp the full significance. It was the fact that the original temperature data influencing the IPCC report was destroyed. That is of staggering importance. It was known before the emails, but because of the emails, now everybody knows. Even Rex Murphy of the CBC mentioned it.