Fragony doesn't believe humans cause climate change:

Shocked_ on 5/1/2010 at 01:16

Quote Posted by Muzman

I couldn't watch more than a couple of minutes as the only thing they got right was the appearance of the emails etc. Then the usual balderdash; Medieval warm period, hockeystick, MacIntyre. OMG he said they only want to find things wrong with it! Dats 'e hole idea uv siense!

Does it get better?

I'm sorry, maybe I'm just tired but what do you mean by this? I mean it was the CRU leader Phil jones that said "We (CRU) don't want to give the data to you (sceptics / other scientists / whatever) because you just try to debunk it and we don't wanna play!!1!" So the sceptics/other scientists/whatever were the "good guys" wanting to study the data and then agree of disagree with it... right?

I saw this document what it first was on here in Finland (a couple of other before that too) and have made me think and rethink all of this. I mean I'm a sceptic but same time am worried about local pollution and smog in big cities in eg China but same time am still a bit fuzzy about the whole global scale of things.

I'm no scientist nor trying to provocate with my bad English but I mean come on. Someone is getting rich beause of all this hysteria!

I tend to trust the programming of YLE beacuse they aren't the FOX of Finland. Now that was provocation ;)

Chade on 5/1/2010 at 01:27

(http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/)

There's a lot of publicly available data. Skeptics have no interest in genuinely engaging with it, they just want as many PR opportunities as possible. Some scientists value transparency over realpolitik, others don't.

heywood on 5/1/2010 at 02:57

Quote Posted by ceebs

spot the real conspiracy

It's actually surprising to me how many scientists are in the skeptic camp. Yeah, they're in the minority for sure. But before this shitstorm, I didn't realize there was any real dissent. Either that or people are just coming out of the woodwork now because they can finally talk without being ostracized by their peers.

Quote Posted by Chade

Some scientists value transparency over realpolitik, others don't.

Where would you put Phil Jones?

At the moment, transparency is a convenient and possibly disingenuous argument for skeptics. And I'm sure they would love to poke holes at the CRU results if they had the source data. But that's not a good excuse for expunging and withholding data. Good science depends on independent review and reasonable skepticism is healthy. So when a scientist withholds the information necessary for others to reproduce or corroborate their results, they deserve the abuse. What really bothers me is that from now on, it will get even harder to separate the scientific arguments from the political ones.

Muzman on 5/1/2010 at 03:52

Quote Posted by Shocked_

The quote is a popular 'gotcha!' with deniers who are deliberately interpreting it in a narrow way and using it to exemplify/smear Jones' character, saying it's not scientific behaviour. It has nothing to do with whether or not things are being done correctly or in good faith at CRU and everything to do with people who are bombarded on a regular basis by demands from deniers who just want to dispute findings rather than test conclusions.
His reaction is similar to biologist (http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2008/06/24/of-bacteria-and-throw-pillows/) Richard Lenski refusing to provide Conservapaedia with all of his raw data, samples etc. They just want to quibble and find things "wrong" with it.

The area of Jones' apparent behaviour toward freedom of information requests is a tricky one. He seems a little overzealous in some accounts. How much trouble he gets into remains to be seen. But it's not clear what, if anything, he actually did let alone if it was wrong. It's a case of trying to hang a man by his phrasing.

The problem is a lot of people are jumping up and down about how this or that "is not how science is done!", by people who have no idea how science is done in the first place. Most normal science practice would probably fail at these idealistic standards. There's a case to be made that normal scientific standards probably won't do for climate change research (and I kinda agree; we should throw all the money at it necessary to have the staff and equipment to create gigantic, utterly transparent research institutions that can weather (ar ar) and combat all deniers quibbles and provide the world with clear and concise information where possible. Global institutions the likes of which the planet has never seen before. I can imagine what the hippy haters will say about that though).
For the time being it's worth remembering that none of this stuff has managed to show that CRU were a) wrong or b) concealing it.

The quote is cheap inquisitional journalism, just like pointing out that CRU refused to be interviewed (well duh, they're under administrative investigation) and their conspiratorial sports team graphics and so on.

Chade on 5/1/2010 at 05:07

Quote Posted by heywood

that's not a good excuse for expunging and withholding data.

Hey, that's cool ... my only point is that you can't infer some global conspiracy from this ... that (as you put it) "transparency is a convenient and ~~possibly~~ disingenuous argument for skeptics".

Starrfall on 5/1/2010 at 05:08

Quote Posted by heywood

Either that or people are just coming out of the woodwork now because they can finally talk without being ostracized by their peers.

Look I don't know what kind of crazyville y'all are living in but around here in reality this shit has been debated to hellfuck and back for years and our very own last president was certain that there was uncertainty regarding the issue and there was a supreme court case about it and everything.

heywood on 5/1/2010 at 05:20

Quote Posted by Muzman

The problem is a lot of people are jumping up and down about how this or that "is not how science is done!", by people who have no idea how science is done in the first place. Most normal science practice would probably fail at these idealistic standards. There's a case to be made that normal scientific standards probably won't do for climate change research

I used to work on automated weather forecasting systems. Here is an (http://www.ral.ucar.edu/projects/dicast/) example. Where I worked, we always archived all the inputs and outputs of our systems, and often intermediate results as well. And our intent wasn't even to publish. So I really don't understand why the CRU would discard their source data, especially when they are working on something so important and visible.

Before that, I had published some journal & conference papers in a different field, and I still dig into research now and again, so I have at least some idea how science is done. In my view, it's standard practice for researchers who publish works based on analysis of existing data sets to document their analysis methods and data sets. That doesn't mean they give away all their data for free, but it's expected that their work is documented well enough to permit independent analysis and verification. Otherwise, it doesn't have any real scientific value.

It would be one thing if the CRU had discarded their source data, but documented the procedures they followed when analyzing it. Then, at least somebody could theoretically reproduce their results. It would still require access to the source data sets from their original providers, but presumably these data are available with the requisite subscriptions/fees. The bigger issue, as I understand it, is that the CRU applied corrections & adjustments to the source data before rolling it all up. Which might be OK except the rationale or rules they followed in making those corrections is not publicly documented. So, at this point, without knowing where they started from or how they corrected the data, it's hard to accept their results as conclusive.

If the CRU did make that information available, the skeptics would probably cherry pick away at it like they did the GHCN data set from the US National Climactic Data Center. For an example of the cherry picking:

(http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/08/the-smoking-gun-at-darwin-zero/) http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/08/the-smoking-gun-at-darwin-zero/

But I'd argue that this kind of informed criticism is not a bad thing. Questioning methodologies leads to better methodologies and thus more scientific consensus. Transparency also helps keep people honest. Not just the researchers, but the critics too. If the overall methodology is open and sound, then when critics cherry pick outlier cases they can be appropriately dismissed as such. When the methodology is kept secret, then the outlier cases look incriminating.

----------------------------------------------

EDIT: As I already mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I think the ground station record is a mess. I speak from experience having worked with a lot of it. It's subject to station dropouts & malfunctions, equipment changes, urbanization and other local land use changes, station relocation, etc. So arguments about whether the ground station data was adjusted, corrected, or homogenized "correctly" (as if that's possible) are unavoidable. I think the IPCC would be much better off concentrating their resources on remote sensing of the atmosphere, oceans, and ice caps. It's very difficult to deny the fact that the ice caps are shrinking and the oceans are rising.

Muzman on 5/1/2010 at 06:31

I wasn't talking about you with that comment, just so you know. That was a post timing collison.

I'm inclined to give the benefit of the doubt on the data chucking thing because it is, as you say, so odd. I've seen it said they did it because other people/places have the data so it was no big deal, but I haven't come across anything definitive on that at a glance. They did keep the adjusted data but not the raw, that's true.
I'm also not aware of anything that says their methods are unavailable or lost, I'll have to dig around a bit. It does seem that there's certain spots where the chain is broken and doing a full audit is going to be less than straightforward (which is probably what's needed to restore credibility).

You're right though, whether no genuine ill was done or not, it's a big ol mess that probably could have been avoided and now it makes it that much harder to sort out useful information from attack/defense politics. No argument on transparency either. I just wish a certain section of the population would concentrate on the other research that supports it all rather than treat CRU as the be all and end all of the theory (granted they are are a big hub).

zombe on 5/1/2010 at 06:33

Quote Posted by heywood

This has been (http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1937472#post1937472) addressed already.

Muzman on 5/1/2010 at 06:39

Forgot to look under my nose again.