Climate Change Researchers Hacked

by Mike Novack Wed Nov 25, 2009 13:29

If you imagine that "academic infighting" is all nice and goody goody you don't understand the normal social behavior of your own species.

This "revelation" has nothing to do with where the preponderance of evidence lies (and has lain for the last couple decades). Expecting MORE unanimity in the science community than exists means you just don't understand what science is all about as a social institution. Don't understand its "game" aspects.

Don't confuse disagreement about some of the fine points and details to mean disagreement about the overall picture. The point I am making is that from the viewpoint of INDIVIDUAL careers, publishing about a shortcoming in the research or minor conclusion of a dominant theory can be just as good an item in one's list of publications (publish or perish) as one written for the dominant side. With less competition, can be easier to get prominent publication slot. That mitigates strongly against there ever being unanimity (and that serves the long term interest of sience keeping questions "never finally closed" as in the long run may turn out that the minority opinion was correct -- SOMETIMES turns out that way, OFTEN if what you mean is just "the WHY of the majority opinion isn't correct")

by pat c Mon Nov 23, 2009 18:23

Here are a few more articles regarding the reality of Climate Change. The source is countercurrents, a reliablr Anti-Imperialist site. Full texts at the links.

Antarctic Ice Loss Vaster, Faster Than Thought
By The Independent
http://www.countercurrents.org/ind231109.htm
The East Antarctic icesheet, once seen as largely unaffected by global warming, has lost billions of tonnes of ice since 2006 and could boost sea levels in the future, according to a new study

Climate Sceptics 'Put World At Risk'
By David Adam
http://www.countercurrents.org/adam231109.htm
Climate change sceptics and fossil fuel companies that have lobbied against action on greenhouse gas emissions have squandered the world's chance to avoid dangerous global warming

Bread And Circuses
By Guy R. McPherson
http://www.countercurrents.org/mcpherson231109.htm
The big news on the climate-change front this week, for those of you living in caves, involves a big dose of denial. A large number of emails from the University of East Anglia webmail server were hacked, thus igniting a controversy about whether global climate change is “real.” In a word, yes. Lethally so

Global Warming To Have Heavy Impact On Arab States
By Michael von Bülow
http://www.countercurrents.org/bulow231109.htm
Global warming will have a severe impact on Arab states where water is already scarce, a regional report warned ahead of next month's Copenhagen environment summit. Some of the most feared effects include depletion of agricultural land, spread of disease and endangerment of many plant and animal species, the 2009 Report of the Arab Forum for Environment and Development said

by Terence Mon Nov 23, 2009 11:21

I read through the Telegraph blog article on this and also looked over some of the emails in the archive. The "evidence" presented in the Telegraph article amounts to a hill of beans. There is nothing that that would shatter anything and overturn the evidence.

What I did find though is that in the private communicate the scientists were clearly aware and voicing their concerns of the well funded corporate campaigns and attacks to undermine them and their work and I got the distinct impression it was taking up a lot of their time. And whilst science and scientists should be impartial, it also shows they are just like anyone else and are affected by all these attacks and are annoyed because of the outright disingenious ways the public have been misled and lied using the machinery of PR rather than peer reviewed science. It is quite clear scientists are not PR people and in their frustration have become quite defensive.

The main "evidence" seems to be based on the fact that they selected the time range for certain periods to make their case look better and. There was also a claim that they were selective in the timing of release of data. But this is not unusual, because scientist tend to more rigorously test their data rather than rush to publish. However, the corporate funded climate denying industry has continuously lied, has used selective data all the time and has presented data in such a way to confuse the public. They have consistenly resorted to non-scientific methods to get their message across and have been very sucessful in this.

But getting back to the issue of climate and the evidence, there are a vast number of sub-fields and different areas of research covering time-series of data for various places and times using a huge number of techniques. This work is complex, time consuming and takes years and requires a large overhead to develop the techniques and knowledge. These are still developing and have led to important understandings. Examples are recovery of temperture series through isotope analysis. Other methods look at plant species types through pollen analysis, while yet others look at sediments and so on. Each one has it advantages and disadvantages and allow a certain amount to be inferred but are most powerful when cross checked with the other techniques.

So given the climate and physical environment is so complex, it is not surprising that the record does not do what the models suggest they should do and when the scientists are under severe pressure as is the case now, where they are saying we must do something about this and now, and yet they are being forced by the climate denying industry to come out with answers now because these guys are not interested in waiting for the research to be then, since of course they are not really interested. Then in this case, I can see that some scientist may have felt compelled to be selective.

When you look at this logically though, we are asked, no shouted at, by the climate deniers to dismiss the truly vast amount of climate and environmental research and years of analysis and on the basis that someone might have selected different time windows using a 2k (2000 year) window instead of 1k (as cited). Yet even with this "big" claim, as usual we see that the corporate funded climate deniers were selective again turning a non-story into a bogus story.

So in the Telegraph blog article above, they gave this quote as one of the biggies for proving everything is a hoax. Here it is:

……Phil and I have recently submitted a paper using about a dozen NH records that fit this category, and many of which are available nearly 2K back–I think that trying to adopt a timeframe of 2K, rather than the usual 1K, addresses a good earlier point that Peck made w/ regard to the memo, that it would be nice to try to “contain” the putative “MWP”, even if we don’t yet have a hemispheric mean reconstruction available that far back….


But if you trawl through the email archive that was hacked and available in the 3rd URL above, this is the full qote. The main thing we notice is that they do have the data to prove their case, but the work is not fully finished and is still in review. Peer review that is. Something that the climate deniers rarely do.

Thanks Phil, and Thanks Tom W and Keith for your willingness to help/sign on. This
certainly gives us a "quorum" pending even a few possible additional signatories I'm
waiting to hear back from.
In response to the queries, I will work on a draft today w/ references and two suggested
figures, and will try to send on by this evening (east coast USA). Tom W indicated that he
wouldn't be able look at a draft until Thursday anyway, so why doesn't everyone just take
a day then to digest what I've provided and then get back to me with comments/changes
(using word "track changes" if you like).
I'd like to tentatively propose to pass this along to Phil as the "official keeper" of the
draft to finalize and submit IF it isn't in satisfactory shape by the time I have to leave
(July 11--If I hadn't mentioned, I'm getting married, and then honeymoon, prior to IUGG in
Sapporo--gone for about 1 month total). Phil, does that sound ok to you?
Re Figures, what I had in mind were the following two figures:
1) A plot of various of the most reliable (in terms of strength of temperature signal and
reliability of millennial-scale variability) regional proxy temperature reconstructions
around the Northern Hemisphere that are available over the past 1-2 thousand years to
convey the important point that warm and cold periods where highly regionally variable.
Phil and Ray are probably in the best position to prepare this (?). Phil and I have
recently submitted a paper using about a dozen NH records that fit this category, and many
of which are available nearly 2K back--I think that trying to adopt a timeframe of 2K,
rather than the usual 1K, addresses a good earlier point that Peck made w/ regard to the
memo, that it would be nice to try to "contain" the putative "MWP", even if we don't yet
have a hemispheric mean reconstruction available that far back [Phil and I have one in
review--not sure it is kosher to show that yet though--I've put in an inquiry to Judy
Jacobs at AGU about this]. If we wanted to be fancy, we could do this the way certain plots
were presented in one of the past IPCC reports (was it 1990?) in which a spatial map was
provided in the center (this would show the locations of the proxies), with "rays"
radiating out to the top, sides, and bottom attached to rectanges showing the different
timeseries. Its a bit of work, but would be a great way to convey both the spatial and
temporal information at the same time.
2) A version of the now-familiar "spaghetti plot" showing the various reconstructions as
well as model simulations for the NH over the past 1 (or maybe 2K). To give you an idea of
what I have in mind, I'm attaching a Science piece I wrote last year that contains the same
sort of plot.
However, what I'd like to do different here is:
In addition to the "multiproxy" reconstructions, I'd like to Add Keith's maximum latewood
density-based series, since it is entirely independent of the multiproxy series, but
conveys the same basic message. I would also like to try to extend the scope of the plot
back to nearly 2K. This would be either w/ the Mann and Jones extension (in review in GRL)
or, if that is deemed not kosher, the Briffa et al Eurasian tree-ring composite that
extends back about 2K, and, based on Phil and my results, appears alone to give a
reasonably accurate picture of the full hemispheric trend.
Thoughts, comments on any of this?
thanks all for the help,


What we should also not forget is that in the past 150 years, the population has grown exponentially, global forest cover has been greatly reduced, land usage has changed worldwide, massive amounts of coal, oil and gas have been burnt and released and clearly measureable and large increases of carbon dioxide have taken place. In essence the surface of the Earth has dramatically changed and in the past 2-3 years, the level of the annual summer melt of the Arctic Ocean has increased dramatically to melt back levels that have probably not occured for at least a million years or more. Another point to remember, is that we know CFCs which increased dramatically but at still much smaller levels than CO-2, caused widespread Ozone damage in the Antarctic and later in the Arctic. They affected our biosphere, were banned and ozone levels are recovering somewhat but slowly. Yet despite all these major changes, the climate deniers want us to believe all these manmade affects have caused no change. Which way do these guys want it? We should also recognise the fact that these people are ultimately representatives of the very industries that have released all this CO-2 and want to keep things going as they are. And did they make their case using peer reviewed science? No of course not. Indeed their entire campaign has been dishonest from beginning to end.

by daerre Sun Nov 22, 2009 20:04

From the New York Times article linked:

"The evidence pointing to a growing human contribution to global warming is so widely accepted that the hacked material is unlikely to erode the overall argument."