Slashdot Mirror
Temperature Data Wants To Be Free
An anonymous reader writes "The UK's Met Office Hadley Centre and University of East Anglia have been refusing access to the data used for their global climate averages and scientific studies. A copy of the data has leaked, and attempts continue to accomplish the release of the data by whoever maintains it. Excuses have included confidentiality agreements which cannot be verified because no records were kept, mention of the source has been removed from the Met Office web site, and IPCC records were destroyed."
... refusing access to the data used for their global climate averages and scientific studies.
I realize governments are really in to wasting money and all, but this is ridiculous. The UK government has spent who knows how much money on a completely worthless study. Studies mean nothing without data.
Obviously the reasons they've given aren't the real reasons why they'd rather have the data suppressed. I suspect that it would wreck their human-caused global warming agenda.
We don't believe in it here at the Met Office.
There are lots of data sources which are perfectly reasonable to use. NOAA's data being probably the best and most comprehensive.
Yes, the UK is turning into a strange parody of itself with its attempts to close the government to the public on the one hand and monitor citizens very closely on the other. But it's not the only game in town. Despite my own country's recent 8 year slump towards the same type of fascist state as Britain, the US scientific community is still one of the best and most open in the world.
So come and get your data from us, ya'll.
Radical deniers have destroyed the evidence of global climate change!!! Will the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy stop at nothing?
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
See, I tried to warn everyone about Gore's new world order , but no one would listen.
It was all oil , bush , climate change and look how you all ended up.
Cruise TT
"My dog ate it" and "It's sooopper secret" for foundational IPCC data is the last refuge of scoundrels and frauds. This nonsense has been going on for 10-20 years depending on how you count the timing of AGW alarmism's full frontal assault. A 1000x bigger scam than Bernie, more dangerous than Adolf and Josef combined.
is that if this data doesn't show proof that the officially released data is wrong, the denialists will have to figure out another problem.
Since they quite happily ignore NOAA data showing the same thing, this will not be a big problem.
But at least it will shut up one ignorant rant.
This may be a very important story, but it references as evidence two websites which are used by conspiracy nuts, one of which appears to be broken - not /.ed, just broken - and no independent confirmation of the claims. Can anybody give any links to any mainstream news or science sites which are reporting this?
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
This is the first time I've seriously begun to question whether or not the global warming studies are in fact legitimate. If they won't allow free access to the data, so others can verify results or run it through alternative (or more refined) climate models, then the very obvious question becomes "why?"
What exactly is it they so keen on hiding that they'll remove all source citations from their publicatons?
NOTE: I am not about to buy into the fossile-fuel-funded arguments that global warming "isn't real"...it's very real, as anyone living in the northern lattitudes can trivially see. Even in London it's obvious that insects and plantlife that never used to thrive this far north now do...but anectdotal evidence, even as widespread and pervasive as this, is no substitute for rigorous scientific study, and I repeat the question: what the hell is it these people are trying to hide? There's no excuse for keeping data that is so fundamental to scientific inquiry, and has such a profound effects on public policy, secret.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Opening Science is the way forward, the path through the darkness, the endarkenment of closed source science.
If's it's paid by the public purse it must be OPEN data that anyone can see and audit.
Science is based upon the notion of being able to validate or invalidate in whole or in part the "claims" made by various "hypotheses" put forward.
When you "BELIEVE" science you're just another religion.
When you can't audit the work of scientists whose work is the basis of public policy then you and the public are being endarkened and kept excluded. But why? For what or whose agenda?
As long as the data, the methods, the algorithms, the statical analysis, the step by step procedures are kept secret the work is suspect to scientific fraud.
Have the guts to open your science to the light of day, it will in the end be better for it once it's vetted by more eyes and brains and math nuts and others poking holes in it.
ANY AND ALL CLAIMS MADE BY PEOPLE WHO KEEP THEIR SCIENCE CLOSED AND SECRET is suspect of FRAUD. What are they hiding? Are they simply embarrassed to admit that they might be wrong? That they've made mistakes? That they are afraid that others might gain an edge in the grant process and shut them out of funding?
Open Source Science is the way forward through the darkness into the light that empower verification and falsification and thus progress EITHER way!!!
This site has some excellent quotes and articles on the topic: http://www.pathstoknowledge.com./
"The meaning of the world is the separation of wish and fact." - KURT GÖDEL
"According to Peirce's doctrine of fallibilism, the conclusions of science are always tentative. The rationality of the scientific method does not depend on the certainty of its conclusions, but on its self-corrective character: by continued application of the method science can detect and correct its own mistakes, and thus eventually lead to the discovery of truth".
A guiding principle for accepting claims of catastrophic global events, miracles, incredible healing, invisible friends, or fill in the blank is:
"extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." - Carl Sagan
"Two important characteristics of maps should be noticed. A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness." - Alfred Korzybski
"Science is a search for basic truths about the Universe, a search which develops statements that appear to describe how the Universe works, but which are subject to correction, revision, adjustment, or even outright rejection, upon the presentation of better or conflicting evidence." - James Randi
"Hypotheses are nets: only he who casts will catch." - Novalis
When you "BELIEVE" science you're just another religion.
In fact, open source science is the BEST and ONLY WAY to avoid science from becoming the new religion as it has, for example, in the climate debates.
The scientific method is the tool for vetting the works of science and if the work of science is closed and secret and kept close to the scientists chests by refusals to share their data, methods, source codes, procedures, etc... then their work can't be verified and might as well be works of fiction just like those of any religious cleric or priest or nutter.
If you can't take others vetting your scientific work then maybe you don't belong in science?
Open Source Science raises the bar and will in the long run improve the quality of the science that is done. Some progress is being made, much more needs to be done.
Let's see, we're supposed to spend literally trillions of dollars to fix global warming, yet we can't see the raw data the hysteria is based on?
WTF!?!?!
Along the same lines, when is the source code used for the climate models going to be published and thoroughly reviewed?
If AGW is in fact true, it can withstand the scrutiny.
The important question which I've never seen the math for is how much CO2 is output by random natural events during a certain time period versus how much we output currently.
We are taking a few hundred million years worth of biomass and burning it up in a about a hundred and fifty. Perhaps this has no effect on the environment, but I think it's prudent to make sure that we don't send the climate into a self-feedback loop that destroys our way of life. It's not as if riding around in traffic or having an iPod is worth giving up food and water.
Gathering accurate, consistent temperature data is costly. Governments and private enterprises spend **real** money to gather climate data. Often, governments enter into contracts to gain access to that data under condition that it won't be publicly released.
This is happening today in Alaska for North Slope climate data. Any systems that come up are required to limit access to the data based on whether they have a paid contract to view it or not.
No current contract? No viewy. Just like a newspaper charging for access to news.
What's missing here are some additional context facts; recognizing that the data are not UK data per se. Data from many countries has been collected and collated at the CRU (Univ. of East Anglia) and which feeds into some of the UK Met Office work. Some of this data were collected under the arrangement that the source data were not to be made public because of commercial or other interests. Outside of the USA this is quite common -- that national meteorological services (tasked with maintaining a national observing system and archive) treat their data as a commercial product -- and so they will not release it to just anyone. The fact that I and others think this is wrong and inhibits science is not the issue, the reality is that many countries are not willing to freely release their data. So the CRU and Met Office are between the rock and a hard place; publicize the data and risk ruining their relationships with the data sources, or hold onto the data so that they can keep the data stream flowing and be able to produce the valuable derivative products.
A more in depth version of the post above: Open Source Science is the path through the dark into the new enlightenment. Yes, you feel certain that you are right about your science but lets see the actual data and the methods used by that science to prove that your certainty is justified.
It is that submitter, or Slashdot itself, linked to it through nyud.net. Apparently the site doesn't allow that. Just take that out of the URL, it works fine. The site in question is run by Steve McIntyre. While certianly not a disinterested party (then again people who are involved in something are rarely disinterested) he does have some credibility. He was one of two people who worked on the whole "hockey stick controversy" in terms of showing that the model used to generate the graph was flawed (the model generated a similar shape graph with random inputs).
It is always a real red flag when data is withheld. The core of science is that "ideas are tested by experiment." Ok well that means that, for science to work, others have to be able to check your work. You have an idea and say "Here's my idea and here's my support." Ok well your support needs to include ALL your data, your methods and so on. Why? So that others can check your work. Only then, after they've repeated and independently verified your results, can we start to feel confident your idea might be correct. To me, hiding data says one of three things is going on:
1) You are dealing with something commercial, that is being held secret so you can market it. Ok well that shouldn't be the case here.
2) The data in fact does NOT support your conclusion, however you don't want to admit you are wrong and thus are trying to suppress it. Perhaps you are worried you'll lose grants.
3) You suck at the science. You think that science is a process where you, the scientist make a claim and the rest of the world just has to listen to you.
4) You are a charlatan, a con man, and you are trying to convince people of something that isn't real, you are trying to sell them snake oil as it were.
I just can't see any legit reason in a pure scientific study why all the data wouldn't be made available for all to see. That it isn't really sets off warning bells in my head. I've read papers like this in the behavioral sciences and always what I see happening is that their experiment was basically a bust, it falsified their hypothesis, or simply produced inconsistent results. However they don't want to admit it, so they find a way to tweak the numbers and then refuse to release full methodology and results.
So this worries me. If climate change is truly a threat to humans, then it should be in the interests of everyone that all the data is made available, unedited, unhindered, so that the theories can be checked and rechecked. Science should be allowed to proceed with as little barriers as possible so that it can proceed as rapidly as possible because the matter is of such importance.
My conclusion so far: it's very unlikely not to be co2 responsible for most of the warming we've observed since the 70s, it's likely to get much worse, and there don't seem to be any viable alternative explanations.
What's wrong with that?
There is still a cost to collect it and a risk that this data will be abused. So since they are US not UK, let the US government deal with their request.
Denalists? So basically when you don't like someone's opinion, you make up a new, derogatory term to try and marginalize them? That isn't science, that is marketing. In particular, it is the kind of marketing con men do. When people question their products/methods, they shout down the critics, they deride them, they call them names. They basically try to make it look like you must be retarded if you don't agree with them.
You are also pulling another con man trick: The appeal to authority. That a site is run by "climate scientists" or is not, doesn't matter. Science isn't about who has the authority in a certain area, it is a process for finding out about the world. So trying to say "Well this site is run by climate scientists, this one isn't," doesn't strengthen your argument. That is along the same likes of "4 out of 5 dentists agree!" Ok well so what? Maybe 4 out of 5 dentists are mediocre, and the excellent 20% realize that it doesn't matter?
There is also the matter of what is a climate scientist? This isn't a degree listed at most universities, and didn't exist at all until recently. If you look at the people who run realclimate you find their PhDs are Applied Mathematics, Geology, Oceanography, and such. None of them have a degree in "climate science." So what a climate scientist is, is simply someone who studies the climate. Ok, fair enough, however that does mean it isn't an exclusive club that only certain people can be members of. For that matter, Watts is a meteorologist, which is also on the topic of climate studies.
None of that means a given person is right or wrong, but it is incorrect to appeal to authority and try and claim that "Oh realclimate is run by climate scientists so they are the only place you can trust." No, that's not the case. Science doesn't work like that.
When you pull shit like this, it really doesn't help your case. If you disagree with the theory someone is putting forth, or their criticisms of a theory, deal with that. Don't play salesman/con man tricks. To me, it makes it look as though you've something to hide.
See
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Anthony_Watts
"Watts was a speaker at the International Conference on Climate Change (2009) organized by the Heartland Institute think tank. Watts is also listed as a speaker for the Heartland Institute's June 2009 Third International Conference on Climate Change."
Nice gigs. Wonder whether he was given a nice hotel for that...
Or Lindzen:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Richard_S._Lindzen
"He is one of the leading global warming skeptics and is a member of the Science, Health, and Economic Advisory Council, of the Annapolis Center, a Maryland-based think tank which has been funded by corporations including ExxonMobil."
Ah, the joys of being in a quango!
Roy Spencer?
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Roy_Spencer
"Since February 2004 he has been a columnist for TCS Daily writing over forty columns, almost entirely on the the topic of global warming. Until 2006, TCS Daily was run by DCI Group, a lobbying firm that works for ExxonMobil."
Plimer?
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Ian_Plimer
"He is a global warming sceptic and a non-executive director of three mining companies: Ivanhoe Australia, a subsidiary of Bob Friedland's Ivanhoe Mines, as well as CBH Resources and Kefi Minerals."
How about McIntyre:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Stephen_McIntyre
"Stephen McIntyre has worked in mineral exploration for 30 years, much of that time as an officer or director of several public mineral exploration companies. McIntyre is also a headliner at the International Conference on Climate Change (2009), a gathering of climate change skeptics in New York from March 8th-10th. "
(remember that ICCC is funded by the Heartland Institute).
McKitrick:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Ross_McKitrick
"Ross McKitrick is an Associate Professor in the Economics Department at the University of Guelph, Ontario, and, since October 2002, has been a Senior Fellow at the Fraser Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Vancouver, British Columbia"
"For example in late 1999 defended the Fraser Institute when it criticised proposals for an Endangered Species Act in Canada. "
All on the oil-based gravy train!
The thing I cannot understand is this. We have a bunch of scientists, lots of them. Starting with Michael Mann in front of Wegman, but including Jones, Thompson, lots of really well known and respected people. They have all done work which supposedly proves that the human race on Earth is facing catastrophe. They supposedly have decisive evidence for this, in the form of data and code.
We then have a lot of sceptics who allege that the data does not exist, is not as described, and the code used to process it does not do what it is said to do, and that there is no such threat as described, or at leas that there is no evidence for one.
You would expect the scientists to immediately produce their evidence and their code and to silence debate once and for all. It would be so simple, it would just be end of story, and now lets focus on what to do about it all. But they do not. Instead they refuse to reveal anything. Jones, for instance, refused to even reveal the names of the stations in China on which his study was based. Mann would not reveal the algorithm which generated the hockey stick to a Congressional Committee. Thompson is silent. Yet supposedly this secret evidence proves decisively, contrary to the claims of sceptics, that the future of the human race is under severe and imminent threat?
It makes absolutely no sense. They never give any reasons for refusing that make any sense either. Sometimes it is commercial considerations. What commercial considerations can there be that outweigh the possible extinction of humanity? Sometimes it is, as Jones once is reported to have said, that they do not want people trying to poke holes in it. WTF??? Sometimes, as with Thompson's ice core data, there is just silence.
It is very hard to believe that this wonderful evidence really exists, and really is as represented. Or maybe it is, and they really do not want to convince everyone of the threat? I don't know, but the story as told makes absolutely no sense. Something is not right here.
I'll quote Feynman, since he put it really well:
-----
It's a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty--a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid--not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked--to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.
Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can--if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong--to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition.
-----
Remember: In science, we don't prove things true, we show them to be not false. Same thing? Not hardly. For a complete discussion on the topic, read the Logic of Scientific Discovery by Karl Popper. However what it comes down to is you do not do a test, and then prove a theory true. That can't be done. What you do is come up with a way to falsify your theory, that is to say you come up with a test that says "If things don't come out this way, we know this theory is wrong." You run the test, things come out that way. You have failed to falsify the theory, and we are now more certain it is true. The more than is done, the more certain we are a theory is correct. Each time we attempt to falsify the theory and fail, we are more sure it must be the truth.
If we do then falsify it, the theory has to be redone. That doesn't mean you toss the whole thing out, it may just mean some refinement is needed. For example you have a theory that predicts when X happens Y will results. In 400 tests, this is the case, however 3 new tests show it isn't. What you discover is that in all those tests, A was also present. You the refine your theory: Y will result from X, except in cases where A is present. Your theory is now a little more narrow in application, and fits with the evidence. Perhaps later you find out what A does, and incorporate that in to a more general theory.
The point of all this is that real science is all about trying to prove your theory wrong. You do everything you can to prove it wrong, then have other people do what they can to prove it wrong. When all of you fail at doing that, when the theory has been refined such that it fits all the evidence and you can't figure out how else to test it, then it is most likely the truth. THAT is what scientific rigor is about. It isn't about coming up with a theory, ignoring data you don't like, showing it to a few people who agree with you, and saying "Ok, we proved this true and nobody else can look at it."
Lack of free climate data was in itself evidence that there was something wrong with the global warming theories.
Lack of records, source, and IPCC records are of course also evidence of something deceitful.
And for those of you that do not believe that absence of evidence is evidence of absence:
it has been proven mathematically to be true:
http://kim.oyhus.no/AbsenceOfEvidence.html
Kim0
The problem appears to be that the data itself was collected and supplied by various combinations of public and private entities throughout the world, and collectively released under a non-free license under which researchers aren't able to publically redistribute the data set. The British government also must respect the contract under which it obtained the data set. Now, you can argue that the data should be free in the first place, or that there should be no copyright law for data, or that there is a public interest in violating copyright law and the contractual obligations if you believe that this is a national security issue, etc.
Unfortunately the conspiracy theorists see this lack of public data as further evidence of the big conspiracy. Yes, it would be better if the complete data set were public domain. No, the data set being distributed under a less permissive license does not mean that global warming is not happening.
It should be noted that this is not a unique case - there are many instances where researchers at universities are given access to commercial or otherwise non-public-domain data sets which they use in their research and are unable to legally reproduce. Does this mean their research isn't following the scientific method? Not really - as long as other researchers are able to access the data set and reproduce the research, then it is science. The scientific method doesn't require that everyone in the world is able to reproduce your experiments, although it certainly does help.
And he's done so before: his hatchet job on MBH required he drop 40 of 50 datasets before he could show that there was no signal.
Well, duh.
If you remove 80% of your data, your noise won't reduce much but your signal will.
Maybe the folks at Wikileaks will see to it that all the data is published for all to see and scrutinize....nahh... what am I thinking?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
WAIT before you leap to conclusion. This article cites only blogs which are known to misrepresent science and actions pertaining to them
My question is, why not a public download of the data. UAH and RSS both have their satellite temperature data publicly available and to everyone. Why can't Hadley cough it up? What's so secret about the temperature? What's so secret about their methods?
Just because you don't like the people trying to get it, doesn't make a wrong a right. If the "denier" is as wrong as you think, then publicly available data would only show that more, not less.
This is my sig.
The data was retrieved from some private companies. Some from governments in other countries (where the UK resident doesn't pay tax so has no right to the data). And since McIntryre is Canadian, he's not owed UK data either.
When you "BELIEVE" science you're just another religion.
Tell that to the string theorist. Their field is untestable and makes no predictions.
More than 90% of those "ten thousand" scientists who publicly support global warming did nothing at all to prove or disprove the theory - they're researchers in related (and often unrelated) fields who took government money, wrote a paper, tacked "and was caused by Global Warming" onto whatever they were working on before, and got published. Tens of billions of dollars in government money over the last couple of decades have made sure that many scientists have a distinct financial advantage if they support global warming.
When that doesn't work, there's even private money available, like the several hundred thousand dollars in "awards" given to James Hansen of NASA for coming up with the "right" numbers that seem to support AGW - for example, temperatures which (over the last decade) disagree with pretty much all of the other temperature observations reported by other organizations. Apparently, NASA took their raw data, "corrected" it, and then released it to the world in heavily edited form. Another win for "private" science.
The actual, no-kidding, original "research" (simulations that are still pretty well obscured and/or disproven) leading to the theory of anthropogenic global warming was done by a very small number of scientists. Some of them were working in fields that gave them no practical expertise in the science involved, and much of the initial (and still obscured) results were created in simulations that have since been shown to be completely false, such as the "Hockey Stick" that STILL shows up in many "serious" AGW papers. A big problem is that much of the statistical work was done by people with a very weak background in actual statistics (or just enough of a background to know how to cherry-pick numbers and formulas to get the results they wanted).
Your note indicates you understand research has to be replicated to be science. This is very good step in the right direction. Do you also understand that you cannot just turn the data over to those who agree with you? People who disagree with your conclusions have to have access to the data, otherwise it is just pseudoscience.
From his blog: "For all of our UK readers, now is the time for all good citizens to come to the aid of their country (and science). The Met Office refuses to release data and methodology for their HadCRUT global temperature dataset after being asked repeatedly. Without the data and procedures there is no possibility of replication, and without replication the Hadley climate data is not scientifically valid. This isnâ(TM)t just a skeptic issue, mind you, others have just a keen an interest in proving the data. What is so bizarre is this. The FOI request by Steve McIntyre to the Met Office was for a copy of the data sent to Peter Webster. If the restrictions on the data hold for Steve McIntyre, why did they not prevent release of the data to Webster? When asked by Warwick Hughes for this data, Dr. Jones famously replied: Even if WMO agrees, I will still not pass on the data. We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it."
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
There's no need to be condescending, Ron.
Do you understand that copyright law covers data sets, and that you can't just issue a Freedom of Information Act requesting that the government violate copyright law?
Here's a common situation: a pharmaceutical corporation sponsors graduate research on some drug, and as part of this they provide data sets from their own experiments and other research that they have sponsored, bought, or licensed. Now I discover that a government researcher has used this data and I disagree with their conclusions, so I put in a Freedom of Information Act request for the original data set. Do you really believe that at this point the government should just relicense the data set as public domain and hand it over to me? It would fundamentally alter the concept of copyright. Now, getting rid of copyright might not necessarily be a bad thing, but it is something that needs to be decided by society in a larger context, not in the context of one single FOI request for one data set.
Copyright is a complex issue, only a few hours ago Slashdot was discussing the Copyright Status of Thermodynamic Properties
I have called for this before.
Something similar to the open source movement, but science instead of software.
The two methodologies: Open Science and Peer Reviewed Publishing can coexist. If anything, this sort of thing might actualy make the peer reviewers do something.. like actualy review the work they are signing off on.
"His name was James Damore."
So um - what does this data actually say ??? Anything controversial? I can only find arguments about whether it's ethical to keep it secret.
I think he would argue that the government should ignore a pharmaceutical company that refuses to release its data into the public domain. The FDA can require such a step during the approval process for a new drug.
That doesn't help with the compounds that the company tests and decides are crap, but it helps with compounds that they want people to use as medicines.
So the point isn't that the government should using its power to crush copyright, but that scientists should be ostracizing people and institutions who insist on keeping the basis of their results private.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I discover that a government researcher has used this data and I disagree with their conclusions, so I put in a Freedom of Information Act request for the original data set. Do you really believe that at this point the government should just relicense the data set as public domain and hand it over to me?
Yes.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The scientific method doesn't require that everyone in the world is able to reproduce your experiments, although it certainly does help.
You do need to include a description of methodology and procedures to re-create any experiments or analysis, it does not require you provide access to raw materials, equipment, the data, or actively assist in others reproducing the results. In practice most non-commercial researchers will provide whatever assistance they can to other bona-fide (non-commercial) researchers, unless there are intellectual property (IP) issues involved.
As you suggest, it is strongly recommended that access to any data-sets used as a basis for the published results are made available, and preferably at modest (i.e. cost-recovery basis, not for profit) or no cost to bona-fide researchers (i.e. have suitable credentials as to be expected to accurately and responsibly interpret the data).
The cost of global warming, in my estimate, is past the quintillion dollar mark because it will adversely affect the entire economy of the planet for hundreds - to thousands (perhaps) of years to come. The cost of just acting without knowing what is real and what is just wish thinking on the part of people who want to enforce thier will on all under the guise of altruism can be staggering without any real benefit. The real motives usually resolve down to personal bank account totals. Not knowing quite enough science got us into this mess, and it should be sound science that gets us out.
That being said, Obama's plan for global warming research dollars is 400 million in 2009 http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YjcyODIyZGM2MGU1ZDdkNDgxZDc3OTNjYjM4ZDY1ODI= whereas the womens shoe market in 1996 is 37 billion dollars: http://www.packagedfacts.com/sitemap/product.asp?productid=130270
From more than just the above, as far as I have been able to tell, we have spent less money than the womens shoe market in one year on the all time effort of solving a human life ending enviornment problem - does that make sense to anyone???
I think anyone who objectively steps back, realizing that the data so far suggests we need to act now, will realize we need to have that understanding now. I can only conclude that the bulk of the world either dosen't believe its true, dosent care (afterall you will be most likely be dead before it ruins the planet), or are just insane.
I have it on good authority that temperature data, as well as information, wants to be left the fsck alone.
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
Science is not a religion; although, to some science types it seems to be. Science is not perfect or immune from humanity (if it was perfect, humans would prevent that from happening.)
Lawyers are not the only people who can twist something beyond recognition while being reasonable or at least appearing reasonable. Statistics probably has its fair share... Even honest work can be soundly and honestly criticized to the point it looks bad to the untrained or ignorant.
Politics 101: you won and will not do anything to undermine your position even if it does not appear to pose any threat-- in politics a small insignificant nothing can turn into a huge threat (ask Bill Clinton.) Politicians understand this quite well already just by being lawyers and self-advertisers.
Science will always clash with politics; only Religion or the Truth cause more conflict.
The best time is BEFORE the conflict has occurred; afterward there is plenty of FUD and vested interests involved. Be GLAD when the anti-science side resorts to logic and science (bad or otherwise) instead of emotion, religion, culture, hate, fear, etc. At least you know that that demographic of people have made it far enough that it takes some thinking to convince them. It is like a metric for the intelligence of a group-- Sara Palin for example uses emotion and religion with hardly any reasoning (and when she does it is poor. I'm excluding emotional or religious "reasoning.")
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Specially when you consider that this data is central to testing hypothesis that are of uttermost public interest.
People talk all the time about the interest of traditional energy companies. Know what? they are very well positioned in market and capital terms to use alternative energy forms. They have the customers, the distribution channels, years of expertise selling energy. It wouldn't be too implausible to think on Exxon thriving on an hidrogen or biofuels economy, or german's E-on generating most of their power from winds. They are not that attached to oil, they are rather interested in profits, come where they come from.
On the other side, you have derivative traders, eager to leverage yet another commodity (carbon credits) on their portfolios, you know, they would trade options on a nuclear war happening if they could. Short of that, carbon credits is just another huge opportunity to trade.
I am not telling that climate change is incorrect. I am just remembering that a theory is only correct while it's not rebutted or superseded by another theory that explains facts better. Not showing the data that support the models only serves to feed doubt in a theory that appears to be correct.
Your ad could be here!
Peter Sinclair (aka greenman3610 over at youtube.com) produced a video that did a nice job of dismantling some of Anthony Watts surfacestations claims. How did Watts reply? He filed a bogus DMCA complaint and as a result, youtube pulled Sinclair's latest video. Google up the phrase "Watts up with Watts" and follow an appropriate link to see for yourself.
Now what's all this about information wanting to be free????
I can't imagine a good reason for why the authorities would want to keep this data secret. The only reasons I can conceive of are all nefarious.
About 10 years ago many big-brained ecologists were saying that if we dont radically change our emissions policies and practices immediately, the balance would go over the top and into irreversable ecological death spiral. Since Bush and others made sure nothing significant could actually get done during exactly that period, is it possible that the world is already in a terminally screwed up state and the governments don't want us to know?
Sure -- there are licence problems. If you have data you aren't allowed to share legally, you cannot share it legally.
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But then your findings should be viewed as having no more weight than your opinion, based off of undisclosed sources.
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Non-junk science requires verifiable claims for those claims to be considered strong. In this case, they are attempting to predict the future -- so we either wait until their predictions do or do not pan out (which is too late), or we need access to the data and all details of the algorithms they used on the data.
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It is really really easy to make data say anything in particular through selective filtering and algorithmic choice. Science's virtue is that after you do all of that massaging of data to get the result you want, you expose yourself to ridicule and let others check that your claims are beyond reproach. Without that ability to check -- without that opening up to scrutiny, scientific opinion is junk.
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Now, publishing such half-assed science is sometimes a good idea; it gives you ideas about what to look into more deeply. A study that shows that when you have freedom, out of thousands, to pick which variables you are going to talk about, doesn't generate all much evidence at the 95% or 99% confidence level -- probably most of the results it proves as statistically significant are just flukes and not really there. But such a study is valuable because it provides a collection of possible correlations to explore further.
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However, when you have a scientific report on which you want to engage in multi-trillion dollar coercive economic reshaping, that kind of standard of certainty is not sufficient. It isn't that hard to convince millions of people to follow a belief system based off of "reasonable" arguments -- it has happened dozens of times this century. To avoid that kind of madness, ask that the science be strong, the methods be public, and the data be available to anyone with an Internet connection.
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And if this is refused, then oppose those who want to reshape the world based on rhetoric. Because once the data and methods are hidden, all that is left is reputation and rhetoric -- which may be strong enough to convince the world, but it isn't strong evidence of truth and honesty.
There's no need to be condescending, Ron.Do you understand that copyright law covers data sets, and that you can't just issue a Freedom of Information Act requesting that the government violate copyright law?
Bullspittle. Do you understand that scientific journals such as those published by AGU have a policy of requiring authors to archive their datasets, methods and code? See the references cited at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_data_archiving
Research is not science until it can be replicated.
The example of pharmaceutical research is different because it involves patient's privacy rights and the fact the company is attempting to protect certain trade secrets. These do not apply in climate science.
In every journal I have published in, providing *all* the data is a requirement for publication. Copyrights are not an excuse. You simply can't publish the results/findings/paper if you don't include the data.
Methods on what was done with the data are worthless without the data to check. The idea that you must be "qualified" to interpret data before you are allowed to look at it, does have a precedent. Organized Religion.
Scientist are not priests.
In God we trust. As for the rest of you *show* me the data.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
Of course the research can be replicated - if you were a researcher working at a British university in the field of geoscience you would almost certainly be able to access the data set for your own experiments. But since it is a copyrighted data set, you still wouldn't be able to reproduce it unless you had a license. Yes, a minority of journals require data sets to be published along with the paper, but that isn't really relevant since this work isn't being published by them, and even if you had access to the data set, you would have no legal right to submit it to one of those journals.
You appear to think that the data set is public domain - in the United States it probably would be since US government works are AFAIK public domain by default. Elsewhere in the world this is not the case, and different parts of the data set will be owned by their respective parties which license them on a commercial basis.
If you need a citation, how about looking at: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/ [...]
The site and its owners may have it's own axes to grind (don't we all) but let's stop with the "oil-company" conspiracy theory. It's just another distraction tactic by those with something to hide. Publish your data and models please.
The Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI) is a global warming skeptics group which appears to primarily be the work of Robert Ferguson, its President.
Prior to founding SPPI in approximately mid-2007, Ferguson was the Executive Director of the Center for Science and Public Policy (CSPP), a project of the corporate-funded group, the Frontiers of Freedom Institute.
Frontiers of Freedom receives money of tobacco and oil companies, including Philip Morris Cos, ExxonMobil and RJ Reynolds Tobacco.
According to a 2003 New York Times report, "Frontiers of Freedom, which has about a $700,000 annual budget, received $230,000 from Exxon in 2002, up from $40,000 in 2001, according to Exxon documents. George Landrith, President of FoF told the New York Times "They've determined that we are effective at what we do" and that Exxon essentially took the attitude, "We like to make it possible to do more of that".
You can't take the sky from me...
Journals that require you to freely license all data to reproduce an experiment are in the minority in the computing industry. Intel, Microsoft, etc. publish hundreds of papers every year without releasing their simulators or data. Their position is that you could reproduce their research by writing your own simulators, designing your own CPU, and collecting your own data etc. Of course, this is prohibitive for most people, and hence unlikely to be done. It's not a great situation since the exact results can't be reproduced, but on the other hand, corporations with valuable "intellectual property" are unlikely to publish in journals that require any of that property to be released publically.
Personally, I'd love to see ALL corporate lobbying and donations to political figures banned outright, if just for the fact that corporations don't vote. Why should their interests be represented over ours?
{Yes, I KNOW it's not likely, but it's a pleasant thought, no?}
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
Or was. Now he's a paid consultant for same.
Not a mathematician.
Just ask.
You don't even have to say anything.
Just ask to be a reviewer when the draft comes out and bingo! you're an IPCC reviewer.
I have no problem with restricted access to certain scientific data that the government sponsors, with restriction to the principle investigators for a limited time, say 1 year.
This is frequently done with things like Hubble photos and whatnot, to allow the PI who came up with the idea first dibs on publishing any novel discoveries.
However, having said that, if the government is using this particular data to drive climate change debates for the purpose of altering or passing laws, then indeed it should immediately be made fully public.
And if the data is private, then it should either be bought out by the government, voluntarily (by the private individuals) or the government should duplicate it, first, then release it and use it in a public debate for laws.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I can attest to this seeing as I have (freely) had access to and worked with this data while doing my PhD at a British University. In fact I think I still have a copy of it on a DVD somewhere.....
Yes, they get oil money. $230,000 in 2002. Vast amounts of oil money. Clearly $230,000.00 against AGW, as compared to $79,000,000,000.00 in favour will clearly sway all of us and win the day. Yes I am comparing a year of Exxon to almost 20 years of government funding. So divide $79B by 20 and the pro-AGW funding is still roughly 16,000 times greater for a single year. Congratulations for pointing out that Exxon is actually a small voice in the wilderness on this one.
The way I see it, if it was paid for using government funds (which belong to the people and are raised from the people), and it is being used to influence policy, then it should all be publicly availible regardless of any copyright or any confidentiality agreements. If they pose a problem, invalidate them by law which is also what allows them- laws. It doesn't need to get complicated.
All you need to do is ask to have a draft. You don't even need to read it.
THAT is his source of authority???
Well, I'm in charge of the Catholic Church then because I've read the bible.
Bits of it anyway.
Wiki leaks is your friend.
If there ever was a purpose for Wiki leaks, then data and information being used to influence political actions around the globe not being availible to anyone who wants to verify it is the reason.
And you tools still believe in your psuedo religion of human induced climate change? Natural Climate Change has been happening since earth was formed only to now have more prominent Useful Idiots use this psuedo enviro emergency to set the stage for Human Induced Global Warming which of course can be "Offset" by what else, "Buying Carbon Credits", exchange of currency, specifically the flow of yours into their coffers.
Of course, if you cant return to living like our pre-history ancestors, to reduce your "carbon footprint", your money should do quite nicely.
You fucking idiots, and your falling for this! Prince Charless says we have 96months. Yes we do, have 96 months before his trust runs out, he needs to sell you carbon credits and fast.
Human Induced Global Warming is as real as that hot date you have lined up tonight!
1) its the coldest summer of my 47 years so far and i dont live in canada, the good news
my energy bill is 1/3rd less than last summer
2) there is plenty of real science being conducted and what is it finding, ISS, its the Sun
Stupid and that is just the tip of the so called melting iceberg, there is more
3) Monetary collections systems/schemes are now poised to reap the currency whirlwind as the
masses of Useful Idiots sheepishly go along and are prepared to surrender the booty in various forms-
-govt programs = taxpayer dollars funneled to interests to perpetuate the hoax while claiming
green tech is the way, funny, have you ever considered what goes into the
manufacture of green tech, IT REQUIRES ENERGY, CHEMICALS AKA CARBON CREATION
-personal consumption taxes
-goods and services taxes
-the scam of selling "carbon credits"
Oh and /nad moderation will call this post a TROLL which is code for, WE NEED TO SUPPRESS YOUR OPPOSSING VOICE, you fucking tools
The blogger at climateAudit is a guy with statistical skills that went back through the infamous Mann "hockey stick" and saw problems. After a protracted struggle where the authors would not provide info on their data processing methods or data sources, he stumbled on some data in an undocumented folder called "censored' on an FTP site. It had enough of the data that he could replicate the study.
He then showed that the data processing method would create a hockey stick even when presented noisy fake data that did NOT have a hockey stick trend in it.
He published peer-reviewed articles on this in climate journals.
IPCC doesn't use the hockey stick anymore and virtually all climate scientists agree that it was bogus.
The "mean global temperature" is not an easy thing to calculate. There are lots of assumptions and many "adjustments' of the raw temperature data. He is trying to replicate and AUDIT the process being used by the Climate Research Center to generate what the IPCC (an more recently, the US EPA) accept as the true global mean.
Peer reviewed means nothing when the original data is not available.
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadat/full_audit.html shows that the Met can be open.
Those guys need to walk down the hall and teach the global mean temperature (HADCRU3) guys how to do an audit.
Or the Met office can just send the raw data to Steve McIntyre/Climate Audit and they'll do it for free.
"Where does that leave the hobbyist researchers then?"
You have to get out of the basement, go outside and talk to people. Same as all the professional researchers ...
Shove that where the sun don't shine.
If the data is being used as an input to the making of public policy that includes coercive programs applied to the general population, it's the business of the general population and they are entitled to free access to it.
Why should a person interested in using the data solely to check whether the politicians are lying to him be required to act as slave labor for an academic in the advancement of HIS career, or clear ANY other hurdle, merely to get access?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
What you propose sounds like a good idea hypothetically, but realistically, the various governments of the world fund the vast majority of post-graduate R&D. If the results of that R&D are released under the public domain, then there will be less value in taking that work further commercially. Example: Google - if Sergey Brin and Larry Page had been forced to release the search engine source code they developed as research students it would've most likely been picked up and integrated into Altavista (the most popular search engine at the time) and there would be no Google.
Having said that, I can also see a lot of benefits of forcing all research to be public domain. The ability to easily reproduce others work and "stand on the shoulders of giants" might create a very competitive free market of ideas.
Getting back to the subject at hand - it is possible that some of the temperature data was gathered by private companies rather than being funded through taxation. It is also possible that some countries may use the British model of for-profit companies partly funded through taxation (like Ordnance Survey), in which case the issue is more complex.
... we're supposed to spend literally trillions of dollars to fix global warming, yet we can't see the raw data ... [also] when is the source code used for the climate models going to be published ...?
This reminds me of the Club of Rome's "limits to growth" predictions back in the late early '70s. The work was based on a computer model's predictions and would have had us choking to death on industrial pollution and starving for lack of food and overpopulation by the mid '80s.
Not only didn't it happen, but the computer model used (which required a lot of expensive computer time back then) is trivial for any home computer these days. It was analyzed and deconstructed by some computer types and was found to be hotwired to produce the "doom unless government takes over everything and drives us back to the stone age" result.
(Examples: Increased technology and increased industrial production was assumed to always mean increased pollution, rather than, for instance, reducing pollution while improving fuel and resource efficiency in order to produce cost reductions. Technological developments were date-controlled switches on parameters, all of which had expired by the time of the original publication.)
Jerry Pournelle did a fine article on the flaws of that model. And though the CofR is still around you don't hear much about them any more.
At the time publishing the data and models wasn't a serious risk to the study's credibility. You'd need major funding just to run the model once, let alone the many times you need to reverse-engineer it and most of the major fund sources, as with "global warming", were either governmental and just fine with a study that said they should have more power, or industrial / energy resource suppliers, easily discredited as having an axe to grind. With "global warming" you have the same situation except that the models and data are trivially run by anyone with access to them. So withholding them is necessary if they're faulty - and doubly suspicious as a result.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
While I don't disagree with what you have said, I think it strays from my concept a little. I don't agree with current copyright terms but I agree the need for them to be there. I think something like 50-70 years with mandatory licensing after 15-20 years might be more palatable for most of us.
However, back to the topic, I really wasn't arguing that all research be put into the public domain, just the research that is being used to effect policy. You see, Sergey Brin and Larry Page could keep thier search engine code private all they wanted until they said "our search engine code discovered this and you should change your laws or policies because of it". At that point in time, they would be effecting public policy and the lives of ordinary people and I believe we have not only a right know the accuracy of the claims being made but our leaders have an obligation to show their reasoning to us in all their decisions if asked. They don't have to do exactly what we want, but we should have access to as much information as possible with the exception of a few national security secrets that could endanger American's lives.
Now it is possible that some companies want to keep their data private, all they would have to do is just that, keep it private and not subject it to the realm of political discourse. In other words, if the data was privately collected, then it either can't be used by government studies or would be off limits when attempting to influence the governments or when that does happen, there needs to be a provision to allow free and open access to it. It's not a problem to anonymize information to protect the identity of people either, the data will be just as valid in 99.9 percent or more of the time.
But if the governments of the world are going to say because of X, we need to do Y and Z, Then X should be as transparent and open as humanly possible despite any claims to ownership of it. I mean we wouldn't stand for a country wide national speed limit of 35 MPH because some private study indicated it would be the best speed limit without seeing the data. We are talking about worse here, we are talking about taxing the people directly and indirectly, potentially causing jobs to be lost, and greatly harming the poorest people who can least afford to guard against those actions. The people of other countries might be gleefully accepting the information on blind faith, but it presents a problem for a lot of people who have a lot to lose in this country and we want to know it is absolutely necessary by allowing people to double check the information. We have a right to know and there is an obligation to present the data.
Global warming is happening. It is in part caused be things we do.
There are those who would love to have an excuse to micro-manage the entire population of earth, and they are quite happy with this state of affairs. The climate changes give them an excuse they think they can use to get everyone to let them micromanage.
Money is nothing. Power is everything.
And the funny thing is that micro-management is one of the things that has cause global warming. The most recent excuse was market competition, and look at the excesses that has lead us to.
Anyway, global warming goes way beyond an excuse to micro-manage just a corporation.
I don't know why, though. I have a hard enough time with self-control.
You can't replicate historical data. Unless your name is Dr Who. (And he doesn't seem terribly interested in such things).
"Cats like plain crisps"
So what's the obsession with the Hadley data? All of the data the guys at the GISS use is publicly available, and their numbers are effectively the same.
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It's time we turn our backs on government by:
1. Refusing to fund it
2. Refusing to obey it
3. Refusing to remember it
4. Resisting false arrest with deadly force
(Supreme court case: Bad Elk vs US 1900 )
5. Being vocal against government
6. Holding government employees liable for government's corrupt actions
7. Reporting publicly the locations where government employees live.
8. driving without license plates - and destroying the plates of others
9. preparing ambushes for government paramilitary troops
10. Carrying weapons at ALL times
11. Brainstorm often and keep adding to the list.
let no one dominate you!
Joseph William Baker
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For those of you of a more recent vintage, an interesting old doco to watch is "After the Warming" by James Burke: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6514270139930450081
The whole climate change issue has been around since the 70's, which is very interesting... so much data, so little time. Do we really need any more data to begin taking it seriously? Even if it turns out to be a false alarm, the behaviour of our so-called leaders has been atrocious, no matter where in the world you happen to live. A couple of EU countries seem to be sincerely interested in the issue.
It's sad that, even in a Democracy, it practically takes civil unrest to make a government do the right thing by their people or, in terms of our collective future, even themsevles.
They said that the Mann paper was correct.
MkIntyre's paper has had several papers debunking it in peer reviewed journals.
Yet you STILL treat it as Gospel Truth...
or at least he cared where the funds came from that pay the climate scientists who say that AGW is real.
If that wasn't you, I don't give a shit about whether you care or not. I wasn't answering you.
If that was you, then why the double-standard?