h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The Dude can't help but noticing the hoo-de-ha about possibly fraudulent climate data being uncovered at an English University. The Dude wonders if this damages the man-made global warming-type conversation? What say the cool and froody netizens of H2G2?

Long term, about the only thing it will damage is the University. Falsified (or modified) results from a single source is just that - from a single source. There are a great many sources for information about the climate, and what's happening to it.

I haven't read the details of this case, but it's an endemic problem throughout the scientific world. Scientists are encouraged to falsify or at least be a little economical with the truth of the results of their research, as the journals will be more likely to publish it if the conclusion is clear.

As I understand it, nothing I've read shows any falsification of data. There's a lot of noise coming from blogs and so forth, but it seems to be based on misunderstanding.

As far as I can make out....
The storey kind of goes...
leaked E-mails.
Snippets taken out of context from these E-mails can demonstrate that which the people taking the snippets whants them to demonstrate
The real problem is the over-politicalisation of science... You're not going to get Research council funding for politically unpopular subjects however scientifically worthwhile they might be, unless they fit the political climate of the day
There is sufficient interpuritation availible in climate change science to allow it to be interprited how you want anyhow, without a need to faulsify data/results so I'm guessing from what little bits of information on the matter is fed to us via the media, that this is just a blown out of proportion inaccurate reporting, and biased view of these leaked E-mails no change there then.

This is part of what the University involved has said about it:

(...)
"Our global temperature series tallies with those of other, completely independent, groups of scientists working for NASA and the National Climate Data Center in the United States, among others. Even if you were to ignore our findings, theirs show the same results. The facts speak for themselves; there is no need for anyone to manipulate them. "
(...)
"A selection of these emails have been taken out of context and misinterpreted as evidence that CRU has manipulated climate data to present an unrealistic picture of global warming."
(...)
This is an article on the Guardian about it:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/20/climate-sceptics-hackers-leaked-emails

This is a book whose title explains a lot about that issue:
http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521727327

For what denialists say you can have a look at h2 PR, read an entry named The science of climate change. And the most important: the comments on it.

the link of that university:
http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/2009/nov/homepagenews/CRUupdate

Oh dear. They just had an item about it on Newsnight involving a brief discussion between a prof from UEA, who strangely looked the spit of Richard Dawkins...but that's by the by, and some rather agressive and load mouthed American bloke, a climate change sceptic. Yes he was pretty obnoxious as he made a great song and dance about these emails, but the poor old prof just got going into all sorts of complex arguments that the average viewer probably wouldn't understand, and then he blew it by telling the American bloke to 'shut up'...but worse was to come. Right as the interview ended the prof said 'What an as*hole'. Yes he was, but it really didn't help the argument or the average viewer's opinion of UEA. Poor Martha Carney back in the studio, had to apologise in case anyone was offended by the prof's language.

Seriously it really is important to win the argument in the mind of the average person. Naivity on tv is just not acceptable.

As far as I can see, this all stems from one phrase in one of the emails:

>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.

Bearing in mind there are *over a thousand* emails involved:
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?page=1&pp=10

and 'trick' appears to mean 'neat shortcut' rather than 'deliberate deception', and the 'decline' in question applies only to one specific set of measurements (from a specific type of tree ring) - and that the difference between that set and all the other sets was a problem openly discussed in the literature months *before* this email was sent...

...and it's hard to see what the issue is. Could it be that climate conspiracy theorists / skeptics are so convinced there *must* be a conspiracy that when they got hold of leaked emails, they simply can't believe that they *don't* have evidence of that conspiracy?

Gif

The only question I have about this whole kerfuffle is:


who's funding the hackers?


I mean, all this really is is a bunch of shadowy figures saying: 'we've hacked into their computer and they say in their emails "climate change is a hoax". QED.'

There. Now someone could hack into Hootoo and announce to the world that anhaga has posted a statement saying, in part 'climate change is a hoax'.


Mark my words: if to the bottom of this we ever get, the hackers will turn out not to be a bunch of spotty-faced teenagers with too much time on their hands; they will be people with government and/or industry and/or Fox News backing.

Aha, a thread about the politics of climate change.

anhaga and I have already had a discussion elsewhere about this bit of agitation propaganda:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/s...cannibalism-churchill-manitoba.html

I bring it to this thread because I fear the image will become viral and the wrongful conclusion it draws will be used by environmentalists as a emotional club to blackmail reason into submission.

* In the same way that forty year old footage of drunken Newfoundlanders clubbing baby seals has been used to destroy the Canadian 'sealing industry' and an aboriginal way of life that depends on it, one of the last truly native cultures in the whirled. *

The point is that the picture and story at the link above are wrong. Cannibalism among Polar Bears is not a product of climate change. End of.

Adult male polar bears, like most large male bears and most adult male cats (of all varieties) are inclined to eat their young. This has nothing to do with 'starvation' due to climate change. It is a successful survival technique from somewhere far back along the evolutionary chain gang. And while it may no longer be a perfect technique, and has perhaps even been rendered redundant in some mammalian species, it does go back to a time before bears and cats went up separate branches of the evolutionary tree. So it is safe to assume that the behavior has seen and outlived its share of ice-ages and hot spells. The behavior can be found in several 'more primitive' species such as fish, lizards, reptiles and birds.

So if you see this picture or the polar-bear-cannibalism story being used anywhere to drum up sympathy for our climate change catastrophe please inform whoever is spreading this lie that their facts are wrong. Climate change is real, it doesn't need this sort of thing or fudged statistics to be proved. On behalf of drowning and starving polar bears everywhere I thank you and remain,

~jwf~

And lest any conclude that the discussion that ~jwf~ and I (and a few others) had left him on one side and me on the other, I am in complete agreement with him on the subject of polar bear cannibalism. This subject is too important for cheap propoganda -- which, by the way, pretty much everything about 'Climategate' is, most particularly the stupid name that has been attached to the incident.

As an aside, perhaps it should be mentioned that Watergate was a scandal which began with the discovery of a burglary and ended with the person behind the burglary being disgraced. Who are the burglars in the present case? Who is behind the burglary? Find the people pulling the strings of the burglars and you'll find the modern-day crook, and I'll guarantee it won't be a professor in East Anglia.

I'd be interested to know who first started using the term 'climategate' given the irony of that (probably a USian then ).

I feel sorry for the university scientists who are now subject to all this crappy attention. Obviously scientists need to be accountable for their work, but I can't see how massive media and internet speculation on selectively quoted information about them achieves that. Just another example of how far the media now are from serving us well.


~jwf~ that link is broken.

In the long-term, it'll make little difference. As has been pointed out, there's nothing in the emails that reveals a global conspiracy between climatologists or that the scientific consensus on climate change has been faked. All it has shown is that the data from one source is flawed. The deniers/sceptics themselves, in the main, aren't willing to believe the science anyway and their confirmation bias means they'll ignore that the emails don't prove anything at all beyond a small amount of climate change data probably being unreliable.

George Monbiot wrote an excellent article in response to this arguing against the tendency amongst climate change proponents to dismiss the email. Instead he argued that it proved that some of the scientists involved had been doing things that are completely unacceptable - regardless of how "small" they are and regardless of their reasons - and that whatever the intent behind the hacking of the emails they had essentially done us all a favour because it's vital that the science be uncorrupted. Unfortunately, much of the response to his article missed the point spectacularly and accused him of giving ammunition to the deniers.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/nov/25/monbiot-climate-leak-crisis-response

>I feel sorry for the university scientists who are now subject to all this crappy attention.

Don't. As George Monbiot argued, they brought this down entirely on themselves and as scientists they have standards to uphold.

>> ~jwf~ that link is broken. <<

Strange. For moment I thought maybe they had decided it
was wrong to continue promoting such a daft idea. But no,
it must be because I copied it from a previous h2g2 post
and not from the original source.

Which is:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/2009/12/03/mb-polar-bear-cannibalism-churchill-manitoba.html

Thanks kea! Sorry for the gore.
~jwf~

One factor of climate change no one seems to have taken into account
is the cooling effect that melting ice caps and glaciers have. It's kinda
like sitting in a hot kitchen with the frig door open.


All that cool moist air will bring down temperatures temporarily. Much like
an air conditioner, there will be cooler drafty areas in the midst of a generally
warmer space. Temperature readings will vary widely in different corners of
the room.


And of course all that extra moisture evaporating into the air has to come down
somewhere, especially when it meets warmer air currents, and this results in
record rainfalls.


~jwf~

Yes I agree Zagreb because I think things like this are inevitable in a voracious 24/7 media age. And that can be good as I'm sure in another era we'd have never have found out about the MPs' expenses thing. The media searches into every nook and cranny now. The age of deference is over. Scientists can't expect that Joe Public will forever bow to their authority. So they need to wake up and deal with it. Be scrupulous. And be seen to be uncorrupted. The media will always feed on the way things 'look', and scientists need to face up to the reality of the way the media now is. It's not the first time in recent years that things have come to public attention because of intercepted emails.

The thing is, ultimately it's the politics of the thing that counts. The politicians will make the important decisions, and they need to feel that the electorate is with them, because facing down big business interests is bloody difficult. The ordinary voter is already confused so scientists need to make sure that at all times they are seen to be completely above board. Complex arguments about context are all very well on threads like this, but many people will simply not get that.

>You're not going to get Research council funding for politically unpopular subjects however scientifically worthwhile they might be, unless they fit the political climate of the day

Funny you say that, 2legs. The thing with climate change is that it *was* politically unpopular and went completely against the political climate. That's why it's been such a slog for the climatologists to get their point across to governments and that's why their research and evidence has had to be so convincing. Climate change benefits no one other than the more extreme luddites, there's nothing positive about it, its existence creates problems at almost every point on the political spectrum. For the conservative and free-market right it buggers up a lot of their ideology by introducing which has consequences for the marketplace and which Adam Smith and Milton Friedman couldn't predict, for the liberals it buggers-up personal freedom by introducing a whole new level of responsibilites, for the internationalist left it buggers-up the potential for developement in the third world by removing the serious possibility of the third-world catching-up with the first economically under current technological conditions.

"by introducing something" as it should have read.