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Second Inquiry Exonerates Climatic Research Unit
mvdwege writes "After being cleared of charges of misconduct by a parliamentary committee, now the CRU has the results of the inquiry (PDF) by a panel of scientists into their scientific methods. Here is the CRU press release. Criticisms: The statistical methods used, though arriving at correct results, are not optimal, and it is recommended future studies involve professional statisticians if possible; and the CRU scientists are lacking somewhat in organization. A very far cry from the widespread allegations of fraud. It seems 'Climategate' is ending with a whimper."
The issue was that emails from insiders showed that the CRU was sufficiently politicized that the credibility of the institution was destroyed, and that put the research of the CRU in question. Instead of releasing the data, methods and code for their analysis, we are being asked to believe experts, paid by the institution, that the CRU's work is beyond reproach.
All we are given is a press release and a report that contains little to no real data, but does ironically suggests in conclusion 2 that the CRU should release more data and work with professional statisticians. This is the PR equivalent to the Jedi Mind Trick (tm), and will only result in even more scrutiny, and will result in climate change being questioned by even more people. This is why personal integrity and decorum is important in science: this research could be important to humanity's survival but the public now does not believe the research because the researcher's motives and communications seem questionable. Not because the research was bad, but because the way the CRU carried itself.
-- $G
They have come up with a falsifiable theory. The problem is it is presented differently to scientists and to the general public.
To scientists, the theory is this: adding CO2 to the atmosphere will somewhat warm the atmosphere. This may cause some minor changes in the earth's climate system. This hypothesis is fairly well accepted by every scientist, even the anti-AGW ones.
To the public, the hypothesis is presented as: DISASTER!!!!!!!!!!!! Polar bears dying, glaciers melting, millions dying, wars, catastrophe!!
This disconnect between the science world and the general public world reminds me of Y2K, which was treated in journals with studies about how much fixing it would cost, and boring things like that. Whereas in mainstream press it was represented as literally the end of the world. I had someone ask me at the time if all the power plants were going to explode. That wasn't even in the realm of reasonability in the scientific press.
Qxe4
And of course Slashdot posts this when I am still asleep.
Not surprisingly, I see a lot of posts from people who didn't bother to read the report and just parrot the standard talking points.
And surprisingly, given the amount of flak he gets, kdawson cleaned up my typos, formatted my URLs a bit better and found a catchier title.
Mart
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
It actually took four full posts for this thread to degrade into name calling. That's longer than I expected for this subject.
It is unwise to ascribe motive
The statistical methods used, though arriving at correct results
You call "arriving at correct results" "Shoddy and careless"? Watch out - your seething blind climate skepticism is hanging out where everyone can see it!
If I take a general average, and it gets the same results as you doing some sort of fancy running mean, with a weighted, binned average method to back up your results, it doesn't make a lick of difference.
Like everyone else in the world, climate scientists have budgets. Data storage, computer time, and the manpower to analyze and interpret results all cost money.
Why you would be screaming about results that were correct is beyond me....
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Scientists rely on grants to do science, usually detailed with a breakdown of expenses. Have climate scientists not been asking for money for statisticians, or have granting agencies been denying that part of the money, or some combination thereof? It isn't usual to hire professional statisticians for studies (and, yes, an unfortunate number of scientific papers have bad statistics). Science seems to work anyway.
However, the conclusion was that the statistical methods used get the necessary job done, and the results were deemed correct. That means that they didn't actually need professional statisticians, only that they were desirable.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Why the hell did you capitalize "truth"?
The OP didn't have any deep ontic insights into the true working of the universe. HE just posted a snarky comment. Hardly worthy of the capital "T".
I'm guessing your using the modern definition of the term "truth", meaning "something that conforms to my beliefs", which is more akin to the term "faith" than the classical meaning of any definition of "truth".
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Wow. That's the exact opposite of what happened. Rather's methods and papers were reviewed by a panel and found to contain deliberate fraud. That's why he was fired from CBS.
Actually, Big Oil does employ scientists. And guess what, these scientists who were working for Big Oiled concluded that AGW was real. Big Oil tried to hide those findings from the public.
Clever signature text goes here.