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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.
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.
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."
Hard to see how anybody could have mapped Antarctica 6000 years ago.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
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.
"Denialists"
What a great word. What a lovely set of implications it has. Are the climate change "denialists" related to Holocaust deniers by any chance?
Seems to me, if climate change science were based on solid and irrefutable scientific evidence, then there would be no need to use verbal trickery to influence opinion. If you're so sure of yourself, then why the propaganda?
The tao of democracy: the government you can vote for is not the real government.
I agree that this data should be shared with all. But keep in mind that not sharing the data does not in any way imply that the data supports the global warming deniers' stance.
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.
What you describe as real is climate change on a short timescale - such fluctuations aren't extraordinary and the claims of "climate change" are for the most part suggesting a mostly permanent change in climate, brought about by man-made influence.
Even the changes you describe are hard to judge and have varied greatly just year to year - here in Ireland this year everything (plants/animals) was more a stereotypical Spring/Summer - albeit extra plant growth, insects and birds because the sun/rain in Spring were in just the right order for optimal conditions (one particular week of heavy rain, one particular week of strong sunshine, and a lot of other "nice" conditions besides).
I'm a skeptic in the true sense - I'm skeptical about the climate change hysteria, but not convinced either that there is no merit in the "man-made permanent climate change" argument, and certainly I think it's a good idea to cut back on pollution (although the exclusive focus on carbon/CO2 may need more justification). I don't think we have enough to go on either way and some policies seem very knee jerk and may be counter productive. Plus most policies that are happening as opposed to mere proposals are often due to other interests (ways to make money from it, keep certain section of voters happy, skew competition, raise tax, etc.)
Here in Ireland there is as much talk as anywhere else about carbon taxes etc. yet there is still next to no enforcement of building standards for example to ensure new houses are properly insulated, pathetic planning that nevermind about transport emissions - makes equal (or even poor) delivery of services across the country very expensive. Too sparse population in rural areas for all kinds of services never mind private car use problems - too unplanned and fast-increasing population in the capital for services needed for such an amount of people - traffic problems and not enough money for public transport due to cost of supporting rural area. Our poor planning also means developers are allowed to put up crummy buildings that last as little as 10 years before being redeveloped - regardless of climate change or CO2 or anything else it's obvious that such things are grossly wasteful.
All in all, I'd like to see common-sense policies while we continue to research the "big picture" rather than random ideologically-driven hypotheses being put into action where politically convenient.
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No, basically nothing in your post is "true" in any scientific version of that word :) We do not have excellent data (gas diffusion in ice cores is a bitch!) and current models lack incredible amounts of algorithmic data which is instead made up as we see politically fit at the moment :) (for example, the influence of clouds)
We do not have an unusual trend of global warming at all. On the contrary, there might not be a trend to speak of when removing measurement uncertainties. (http://surfacestations.org should scare anyone who believes the tempereature data we're soon basing our whole economy on)
The best fit for the temperature changes over the last century is not with CO2 levels but with ocean cycles btw.
On gas diffusion: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/igsoc/jog/2008/00000054/00000187/art00012
On ocean cycles: http://atmoz.org/blog/2008/05/14/timescale-of-the-pdo-nao-and-amo/
Why are you not interested in doing actual science? We simply don't have data to support Hansen's and Gore's wild accusations.
it's in my head
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.
I'll quote Feynman, since he put it really well:
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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.
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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."
The "bunch of scientists" you should be paying attention to aren't the half-dozen public figures engaging the quacks, but the ten thousand quietly publishing the research which led to the concensus in the first place. The handful of public scientists who can't whip out smoking-gun data like characters in a Roland Emmerich movie aren't the people who hold the actual science.
The "economic stabilization" nuts have turned to "climate stabilization" nuts.
Apparently there's already too much respected literature completely thrashing the first, so the latter seems a more suitable excuse for the obtaining of political power. :-)
Send your spendthrift head of state this
On ocean cycles: You realize that global temperature controls ocean cycles, right? So you're agreeing with me?
Or so you assume. That is a case where you may be confusing cause and effect:
Global Warming as a Natural Response to Cloud Changes Associated with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO)
So you don't believe that the HadSST2 data set is reliable? It is, after all, primarily the work of one Dr. Phil Jones. That he could make sense of 150 years worth of very diverse raw measurement data seems to me utterly implausible.
I'm no HadSST2 expert, but googling for it and checking the first result (http://badc.nerc.ac.uk/data/hadsst2/), I find a paper about HadSST2, published in Journal of Climate, and written by 8 different researchers. The paper also lists six pages of references of other peoples' work that they've used in theirs. Phil Jones is not an author of that paper, and I checked Jones's list of publications (http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/pubs/byauthor/jones_pd.htm) which doesn't mention HadSST2. I'm left wondering where you got your information from. (To add, the HadSST2 paper does refer to papers authored or co-authored by P.D.Jones as well as dozens of other people.)
"Just use the end result, the HadSST2 data set." In other words, trust me?
You have that same problem with the raw data as well. You'll just have to trust the people and devices taking the original measurements. Or time-travel 150 years back yourself to make the measurements. There you go. You need to trust someone, because you're not omnipotent yourself. In the end, all the scientific papers are out there for you to read, if you want to check other peoples' work before trusting it. Please do so if you want. Jones's list of publications could be a fine starting point.
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).
Got me there. Mr Gore of the 20 bedroom mansion, SUV entourages and private jetting about the country was obviously not using the "Global Warming" issue to prop up his political aspirations. (sarcasm) I'm sure it was really all about the planet (/sarcasm).
http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/is_it_true_that_al_gores_mansion.html
So far what they have received is scorn, ridicule and extreme criticism.
On this we can agree. As I mentioned in my post, there is far too much geopolitical fog around this issue which is preventing us from having this debate. I would love to know what the real truth is, but I find myself being put off by the shrill proclamations (which I've heard many times before ... heck in the 70s it was global cooling) and the calls to extreme action to "prevent" climate change. What if we completely destroy our economy, go back to living in caves and subsisting on berries we find lying about, only to have "global warming" happen anyhow?. We will be ill-equipped to deal with it at that point. IMHO, we should admit that climate change happens, some of it may be due to human activity, and some (most?) of it is natural (see earth's history). With that realization out of the way, I think we should be spending the bulk of our effort and resources figuring out how to deal with a warmer climate, and less trying (vainly?) to stop it. But instead there are many who view this as an opportunity to shift the balance of power on the planet; it's a chance to take the developed countries "down a peg", or to slow them down so the others can catch up.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
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.
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
So you're saying the theory is carefully constructed so as to be non-disprovable, except by data that only the theory's proponents have... and will not release.
How convenient.
It's interesting that you seem to believe the "science has been settled". It's not true though. We still do not know the influence the sun can have on earth's climate besides TSI - which is what your link refers to. As soon as you mix in the clouds all bets are currently off - we lack both the data and the algorithms at the moment.
There's interesting correlation between the ocean cycles and the climate cycles, on the order of decades, however. Let's see how that plays out.
it's in my head
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!
No, basically nothing in your post is "true" in any scientific version of that word :) We do not have excellent data (gas diffusion in ice cores is a bitch!) and current models lack incredible amounts of algorithmic data which is instead made up as we see politically fit at the moment :) (for example, the influence of clouds). We do not have an unusual trend of global warming at all. On the contrary, there might not be a trend to speak of when removing measurement uncertainties. (http://surfacestations.org should scare anyone who believes the tempereature data we're soon basing our whole economy on)
And in a nutshell, that uncertainty is the argument for taking drastic action to curb carbon emissions.
Basically, if we could predict with certainty that our emissions would lead to no, or a tolerable increase in temperatures, then I would be on your side in this argument. We could take sensible, economically appropriate action to protect ourselves (relocating populations if necessary, building seawalls). Beyond that it would be business as usual. The problem is that we can't make any such statement. We know that we're increasing our atmospheric CO2 by a pretty significant amount, and we know that there are physical mechanisms that should lead to warming (we've also ruled out most possible compensatory mechanisms, like the ocean being an unlimited CO2 sink). From there we have a series of well-studied models that show a possibility of mild warming, and a non-zero chance of catastrophic warming. Despite your calming assertions, we can't even come close to ruling out the extreme possibilities.
Worse, it's highly unlikely that we'll be able to rule out the catastrophic cases any time soon. They're well supported by our best understanding, and nobody's brought anything forth to make them less likely. In fact, scientists have begun to lean more towards them as modeling has become more sophisticated and accurate.
That's why I laugh whenever someone uses the lack of scientific certainty as an argument against doing something about emissions. It's a great argument --- if you're trying to build a case for an aggressive plan to reduce emissions. The only viable argument against taking action is to show conclusively that we can be certain about the effects of our carbon emissions, and that they're entirely manageable. And to be able to defend that result against all challengers. Not some handwaving about how imperfect our information is.
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!