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Scientists Cleared of Misusing Global Warming Data
Hugh Pickens writes writes "The NY Times reports that an inquiry by the Commerce Department's inspector general has found no evidence that NOAA scientists manipulated climate data (reg. may be required) to buttress evidence in support of global warming after climate change skeptics contended that e-mail messages between climate scientists that were stolen and circulated on the Internet in late 2009 showed that scientists were manipulating or withholding information to advance the theory that the earth is warming as a result of human activity. 'None of the investigations have found any evidence to question the ethics of our scientists or raise doubts about NOAA's understanding of climate change science,' says Mary Glackin, the agency's deputy undersecretary for operations. The inquiry, requested last May by Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, who has challenged the science underlying human-induced climate change, comes at a critical moment for NOAA, as some newly empowered Republican House members seek to rein in the EPA's plans to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, often contending that the science underpinning global warming is flawed. Inhofe says the report (PDF) was far from a clean bill of health for the agency, and that contrary to its executive summary, showed that the scientists 'engaged in data manipulation.'"
Is there enough statistically significant clear, objective data that is available to be verified that indicates anything with any amount of confidence?
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
Regardless of the validity of the data or their conclusions, I think the price of oil is going to reign in those pesky greenhouse gas emissions for us.
I'm pretty sure you'd die of asphyxia if you tried to read that opening sentence aloud. Holy run-on sentence, copyeditman.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
The discrepancy doesn't appear to pertain to any climate data or research. Kind of seems like grasping at straws if you want to refute the academic credibility of the entire field (or for that matter, even that one researcher).
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
“It also appears that one senior NOAA employee possibly thwarted the release of important federal scientific information for the public to assess and analyze,” he said, referring to an employee’s failure to provide material related to work for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a different body that compiles research, in response to a Freedom of Information request. " Mann's manipulation of data and failure to provide information about his research have been a long standing joke. http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/13830/ It was really no surprise that he wouldn't want to provide the information. What is a giant surprise is that he is still in a position of any responsibility. Well maybe not so much if you want trillions of dollars to be spent on changing the country's energy economy.
Human beings generally get angry when you accuse them of being involved in a massive global conspiracy to defraud with no evidence.
Climate skeptics don't ask honest questions, they use questions to imply wrong doing.
They're not just asking questions though, they're saying things like "global warming is clearly a scam and politically motivated because look at all the snow we've had this year!"
Science doesn't mind (in fact, it thrives on) genuine critical appraisal of the work being done - it's how we learn and understand and develop more accurate theories.
What it doesn't support is the supposed "equal rebuttal" techniques used by the media and those with an agenda - you can say "I don't agree" if you like, but you had better have some supporting reason for that, and the distorted "facts" and data used (often not even any data, just opinion and 'common sense') used by those trying to discredit climate change really doesn't stand up to any scrutiny, and people get tired of being faced with "all your science is wrong because of ($easily_discredited_propaganda_talking_point)"
The trouble is, a lot of the population are easily convinced by ($easily_discredited_propaganda_talking_point), because soundbites and well-funded media talking heads and purchased senators are easier to understand than the often complex science, and the less-than-media-savvy scientists working in the field.
To be clear, the "lie" in question is a discrepancy in one scientist's account of the origin of a piece of legal advice during an FOI request. It has nothing to do with the science itself.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Funny, because a similar report was released in the UK, under a government who is a lot more like the Repubs than the Dems with a "vested interest" (oh yes, and you think the the Republican administration that preceded it didn't have a "vested interest" in the results?)
Everyone has a "vested interest" in climate change because however it turns out, it is going to affect the human race enormously. We're not going to die out as a species because of it, but it has the potential to change the way we live, even if it is only to affect the nature of the seasons - becoming more extreme on both ends, is going to have an economic and social impact on how we live.
How does the president have a vested interest in this climate change issue? He doesn't stand to profit financially. Politically it's a tough issue that draws some people in and pushes others away.
Developers: We can use your help.
If the questions are well-thought and made by an informed, educated person, sure.
The questions posed by the denialist crowd, however, seldom rise above the level of an user shouting "no, I don't want that nerdy, DOS-thingy on my PC, go back to the graphics!" when you open a terminal to debug his internet connection. The only thing it helps you find out is the threshold of your patience.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
It seems like scientists in this one field get angry if you challenge their conclusions. I'm not sure why they've adopted an Imperial "you dare challenge us, mortal?" attitude over this. I always assumed the more people who ask questions, the better chance you have of finding out problems.
Well, a couple of reasons.
Firstly, there aren't many areas of Science where so many people make so many objections. There are relatively few Geocentrics around nowadays, for example. One area that does have this is Evolution, and I can think of a few people *cough*dawkins*cough* who get unreasonably put out by critics. Granted, creationists can be annoying; but a very small subset of their arguments can be at least thought provoking (like "why is this not true?").
Secondly : politics. I'm sure you know what I mean.
Third is possibly that the scientists involved think that it is quite important to get it right. I know there are those that don't believe this, but I'm fairly certain that most climate scientists want to get the correct answer - whatever that is - not the answer they would prefer (see : politics). Questions that lead to a more accurate answer are always welcome; questions based on politics, fear, or anger generally are not so welcome
Actually, the Commerce Inspector General was appointed by President Bush. They are independent of the agency they cover, and serve for terms that overlap administrations.
regarding point #2: the scientists that generate the data (ie: PhD and MSc students) are typically flat broke.
Are you actually claiming that if his administration were to uncover fraud in climate science that he'd lose the vote of unions, trial lawyers, gay rights supporters, and civil libertarians? He'd lose the vote of just the few people for whom climate change is the biggest issue.
And if his agenda were based on fraud that his administration uncovered, he'd simply change his agenda. It's not an embarrassment if his assessments were based on a fraud that he himself uncovered.
I can not find any conflict of interest here. I think you're looking too hard for one.
Developers: We can use your help.
Yes, I ignore statements by Rush Limbaugh. Having people from GE on an advisory panel does not profit Obama personally.
Developers: We can use your help.
Wow, that's quite a misrepresentation of Anthony Watts website. Pretty much the opposite of his conclusions, in fact.
Articles on his blog (which sometimes reads more like a scientific journal) show that rural stations often show no warming at all - at least, until they have been appropriately "adjusted" (using methods that are generally not released). Meanwhile, the increasing temperatures of urban stations are not adjusted to eliminate the Urban Heat Island effect. Large parts of the arctic and antarctic are presumed to be warming, even though there are no weather stations within hundreds or thousands of miles.
Is the climate warming? He would agree with you that the climate warmed through (plus or minus) the year 2000 so, but possibly has now entered a cooling phase. Articles on his blog also show that (a) over decades, there is a warming/cooling cycle that very closely follows solar cycles, (b) that the overall warming trend of the past 200 years predates any significant human contribution to CO2 in the atmosphere, (c) the planet has in the past been warmer than today - in that sense, the recent warming is not "unprecedented", and finally (d) millions of years ago CO2 levels were much, much higher than today, so a higher CO2 level is also not unprecedented.
In short: the earth warms and cools. We do not understand all of the factors that influence these climate cycles, but CO2 is almost certainly not a precursor of increased temperatures. In any case, a warmer earth is in many ways preferable to a cooling earth. The entire panic about CO2 is politically driven, and many scientists have hooked their wagons to it, in order to get research funding.
My take is that Anthony Watts wants to present the objective truth - whatever that may be - and to discredit bad science and politically driven science.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
But who were they cleared by? Scientists! I think I smell some collaboration!
All that greenhouse gas emission means nothing in the midst of an ecology that thrives on it
All the greenhouse gas emissions? rotfl, unless by ecology, you mean planet earth.
Yes, indeed, earth is a very small ecology.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
If you have actually followed the debate that arose over the infamous "hockey stick" graph that erased the medieval warm period and little ice age (McIntyre and McKittrick) and sundry additional papers since, you know that while they may or may not have done anything to the data per se, they've abused the hell out of statistical analysis, for example experimenting with untested and unstudied methodologies until they get one that shows warming, then publishing results obtained using it without giving any hint of the fact that what they are doing is most sketchy. I've been following this with great interest for just under a decade now, and IMO there is absolutely no question that this has been repeatedly done in the past (by MBH and nearly all the papers on which any of them have collaborated) and continues to be done today. And I won't even go into the bristlecone pine problem and the general problem of using tree-ring proxies for temperature when tree ring thickness is not a monotonic function of temperature only.
For example, a recent paper was published in Science (Steig) that claimed that the Antarctic is warming at an alarming rate. I've read over the paper and the counterchallenge to the statistical methodology used (which basically coarse grained thermal sensors on the thin peninsula that sticks out into the ocean from continental Antarctica until their generally warming trend overwhelmed the generally and clearly trend of the mainland). This all involved infilling data on continental thermal sensors on the basis of temperatures basically on the other side of the continent, an effect clearly visible if one computes the (infilled) sensor-sensor correlation as a function of sensor separation. The actual real (not infilled) sensor-sensor correlation falls off with distance fairly rapidly, as one might expect (Chicago weather isn't like LA's weather). The infilled correlation function shows substantial station correlation out at two or three thousand kilometers. If one simply includes one more principle component in the PCA, this effect disappears, and so does most of the warming; cooling for the last 30 years appears instead.
Is this lying with or manipulating data or simple lack of competence with statistics? You decide.
A reliable statistical estimate of warming of the sort that somebody with no horse in the race might do (and the sort that is done in computing the actual global average temperature from satellite data) shows moderate warming from 1957 to 1980, and cooling from 1980 to 2010. The latter, of course, confounds the predictions that as CO_2 goes steadily up, everything gets warmer; the fact that the fifty year warming is completely negligible is anathema to the scientists who make a living from the AGW hysteria.
Of course, anyone in the world who wants to can go read the climategate emails (or the comments in the actual hockey stick code), where it is made perfectly clear that the "hockey team" set out to erase the MWP and LIA and does anything and anything necessary to defend the AGW conclusion, right up to having journal editors fired if they dare to print a paper that concludes otherwise. Perhaps science is broad enough that they did all of this in good faith, although if they pulled these sorts of shenanigans in medical research e.g. verifying drug safety there would be immediate, permanent, negative sequellae. But it doesn't make it good science.
Anybody who actually understands statistics and things like R^2 and principle component analysis can read over things and judge for themselves, of course. If I point out that R^2 for the infamous hockey stick graph in the extrapolated region was basically 0, you will understand exactly what that means...
AGW may or may not be true, but so far it has been a poster child for confirmation bias, incredibly poor statistical analysis, cherrypicking of data (of course it has happened and continues
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
This is another meaningless assertion made by a political organ absolutely unqualified to make any statement on the matter. Note the sentence "The report was not a review of the climate data itself." The Commerce Department can't clear someone of misusing scientific data, this is as stupid a congress declaring there was no data manipulation a day after the "climategate" leaks hit the news.
The entire panic about CO2 is politically driven, and many scientists have hooked their wagons to it, in order to get research funding.
Yeah, I'm sure you're an atmospheric physicist. No? Well, I have news for you. As a scientist who has worked in multiple fields I can tell you that scientists do not take positions just to get research funding. Yes, there may be an occasional bad apple who does, but they are very few. The large number of scientists who have looked at the data and run computer simulations (not you), and have reached a common conclusion is insurmountable.
Your statement is deluded and insulting.
Look at the link I provided. NASA is saying the Antarctic ice is melting. Watts is looking at the area of ice, not the volume or mass. NASA is measuing the mass of ice.
If you put a compacted snowball in a tub of water, and as it starts melting and covers the surface of the tub, do you conclude that the ice is increasing because the area of ice is increasing? Or do you need to measure the volume or mass of the ice to determine if it's melting? If you ask me, the area has increased because it's melting and breaking up.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Had the emails been from any other discipline, the accusations would not have been made.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
EVERYONE learns this in Freshman - I'm talking HIGH SCHOOL FRESHMAN - Science class. The Scientific method is a process. You write your hypothesis. You design your experiment. You collect your data. You eliminate outliers and match the data to a model that helps predict - according to your hypothesis and formula(e). Will the predicted FUTURE data have outliers that don't come out of your formula(e)? Of course. But if the gathered data fit the curve, that's a pretty good indicator that your hypothesis was a good guess. This is like, the most basic concept in Science that there is. It's not fraud in any sense of the word.
Everyone learns this. Everyone is required to take at least this minimal level of Science education; at least to get the High School diploma.
Compare this . . . to the blatant skullduggery that goes on in the pseudoscience of Economics. . . the counterargument that limiting Carbon via Economic Policy - is going to "harm our economic growth". (as if deregulation and tax cuts from 2000-2008 have not CLEARLY and demonstrably done so!). Go on, Doctor Economics. Take your payoff from the Heritage Foundation for your "consultation" - and don't bother to cite your affiliation on your "scientific paper". We believe you. And your Invisible Hand.
Hell. Let's call this a basic reasoning FAIL - on the part of an entire nation. An entire civilization. An entire species. WTF?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.