AGW Revealed as a Hoax?

Great Debates
61

Yes, perhaps we can call these rare bodies “funding councils”, or something like that. Perhaps we can even think up catchy names for them, such as EPSRC or NERC.

Well, that’s potentially a problem in my field, too. Perhaps you write some code, release it under an open license, and somebody gets interested enough to do some experiments, modify it, whatever. The correct response is to approach the original author of the code, to at least make him aware you’re doing the work, and to see if he wishes to collaborate (and of course, to make sure he’s not already working on what you want to do). It’s not a law, but it’s pretty widely kept.

62

If you do it through them, it’s still an additional level of bureaucratic or political supervision, not that any of our past president’s science appointments were actually Soviet style ideology commissars.
One more hoop to jump through, one less chance to actually get some decent science done.

If you act like a reasonable person in science, most people will be reasonable right back at you. How would you like that part of your culture written into law, so that you must to say yes even to known assholes and unethical competitors?

63

Scientists are not some order of philosopher monks, who spend all day meditating on the correct ethical approach to everything that isn’t involved in their grand political conspiracies.

They are a group of actual people who comprise just as many idiots, incompetents, and crooks as just about any other profession.

When I worked in an academic lab I met plenty of great people, I also met people who I could honestly believe would falsify data to get ahead of their peers, as well as plenty of people who were so god-damned incompetent that they might as well have been.

If anything I’m absolutely astonished that you could nab over tens years of emails and come up with the weak stuff that they did. I guarantee you that far worse stuff happened at that institution over that time period and has escaped notice primarily because people don’t generally tell other people that they are falsifying results, especially in emails :slight_smile:

Now is some of the stuff from those emails evidence of shaky ethical practice, yes it is. Is it in any way unusual, no it is not.

In particular, drawing figures in such a way as to present data in the best possible light is endemic in academia. I personally got mildly criticised in my thesis defence for not expressing data in what the examiner believed to be the best possible way, and which I believed to be slightly misleading. However, as long as all of the relevant data is still present in the figure in question this should be a minor issue, any competent scientist or scientific journalist should be capable of spotting the “trick” and noting the attempt to obfuscate.

So no, scientists are not perfect, but neither are lawyers, or journalists, or teachers, or politicians, or the police.

I’m not going to weigh in on the side of AGW because I know pretty much nothing about the facts surrounding the issue, but I would note that the people who do know what they are talking about seem to have formed a pretty solid consensus and the notion that these e-mails undermine that or suggest any kind of organised conspiracy is completely laughable, especially considering the self interested nature of many of the organisations funding the anti-AGW campaign.

At the end of the day, pretty much all these emails tell us, is that a decade ago a researcher wanted to pretty up one of his graphs, and if you think that constitutes a smoking gun I have some stunning landmarks you might be interested in buying.

64

I don’t think any rational person is suggesting a grand illumnati-style conspiracy. Some key players of the pro-AGW crowd (Mann, Jones, etc) are engaging in deliberate obfuscation, however, and arguably worse. The emails make plainly clear that they have an agenda, and they are willing to throw ethics and everything else to the wind to achieve that agenda.

These people seek to suppress opposing views and to operate in secrecy to avoid having their conclusions undermined. It is quite possible that mankind is causing significant harm to the climate–but why should the public be asked to stomach the large costs of CO2 reduction without transparency?

It is extremely important to be transparent in a field like climate science, as there are no laboratories in which to repeat experiments. “Because I said so” is not science. “Because me and my friends said so,” i.e., releasing data to only self-selected “real” scientists, and not the unwashed hoi polloi who might discredit your results, is not good science.

If your methodology is sound you shouldn’t need to stonewall (or blackball) people who want to see it. What we have here is less than a “smoking gun,” but far more than simply “prettying up some graphs.” When I see real transparency*, I’ll believe that these people aren’t simply politicians, hiding behind the veneer of science, claiming we should trust them because the letters Ph.D are appended to their names. Whether or not Exxon or Chevron or Dick Cheney opposes their work has nothing to do, by the way, with the validity of their work. Hiding their work does.

*I am unclear as to whether Mann et al have changed their ways since the time of these emails (some of which are fairly recent), but my impression is no.

65

I don’t either, but there seem to be a hell of a lot of irrational people trying to do just that right now.

Scientific consensus is based around individual scientists doing their own work and then trying to convince the other scientists in that field that their view is correct, those other scientists should be capable of noticing (for example) that one of the axes on the figure is labelled as % control instead of in units :). There is a lot if weak data floating around the academic world at any given point in time, and by and large this is recognised as such and weighed accordingly as that consensus is reached.

Rightly or not, it is also quite natural for people to fall into an us against them mentality, especially when the “other team” can quite justifiably (IMO) be viewed as being motivated by factors quite apart from a genuine intellectual interest in finding the truth. It’s certainly an understandable reaction for people to react against a journal whose editorial standards they (rightly or wrongly) believe to have been compromised. Is it the response that would be mandated if the issue was set as a scientific ethics 101 case study, probably not. Is it the kind of response that you expect from actual human beings, of course it is.

And to be honest this is exactly the kind of crap which validates researchers reluctance to release data. Can we seriously be surprised if researcher appear to be reluctant to release their data to the kind of people who are willing to hack into a university and comb ten years of emails and data and then present the entirely mundane and predictable results as some kind of grandiose conspiratorial rebuttal to global warming. To release their data to organisations that are transparently funded by parties that have an enormous economic motivation to see this work discredited.

I mean imagine if your own work place was subjected to that kind of scrutiny, can you really say that someone going through ten years worth of your records wouldn’t find something to criticise? Now imagine that these people have an a massive vested interest in discrediting you, a willingness to misrepresent the facts, and a huge international audience ready to pass judgement, can you honestly say that this wouldn’t concern you?

I really don’t want to be an apologist for academia. I finished my PhD with a burning desire never to work there again and could fill the entire pit in complaining about some of the crap I saw during that time. But I really can’t see how any of the emails published so far can be taking seriously as any kind of rebuttal against the AGW hypothesis.

66

The problem is that they cannot do the actual science because the CRU which, by the way, is Britain’s leading climate research center, won’t release the data or the code to anyone who doesn’t already agree with them.

That ain’t science. Science doesn’t work that way.

67

Well fair enough, that’s a subject for debate, and I happen to agree with you that it’s not ideal. I think it’s understandable given the circumstances as I’ve explained above, but I don’t think it’s ideal.

I even think that there are legitimate debates to be had about whether the academic system of research is well equipped to handle contentious issues like this.

But this particular thread happens to be discussing whether these leaked emails have anything useful at all to speak of in regards of the AGW debate, and all I can say is that they really don’t. All they show is the same general normal background stupidity evident in any single work place in the entire world, and unless you seriously want to argue that no research is valid unless it is carried about solely by perfect Übermensch miraculously channelling the divine scientific wisdom of Archimedes, Einstein, Feynmen, and Reed bloody Richards they tell us absolutely nothing about this issue.

If you believe that this is not being spun wildly out of proportion I invite you to look no further than the title and OP of this thread and the articles linked therein that are now doubt being read by hundreds of thousands of people around the world, who through no fault of their own lack the skills and experience to put the plain facts into context.

While my own work has mostly remained mercifully controversy free, I have seen friends in the past deal with the frustration of dealing with hot button topics. Do researchers often come to see the other side of the issue as the “enemy”, unfortunately yes. Have I ever seen any evidence that this has affected their dedication to reaching the actual facts, personally no, although I’m sure it happens. Does this some times lead to people missing facts and opportunities that would be available if they engaged more with the other side, regrettably yes, but the sad fact of the matter is that particular well is usually hopelessly poisoned anyway by the dishonesty, blind partisanship, vested interests, and outright batshit insanity that any contentious issue seem to attract these days.

Those of you who are still arguing the case on this, could you please honestly say that you would be unconcerned if some hypothetical individual or group went through over ten years of your personal work correspondence and documents with the sole intent of discrediting you. Furthermore that they would be presenting their finding in a public arena in which the vast majority of participants actually understand little to nothing about what you actually do, a forum in which rhetoric is at least as important as the actual facts, and a forum in which you are not equipped or experienced to operate in. Can you honestly say that you would be completely unconcerned by this? And can you honestly say that you would be particularly enthusiastic about freely offering up your records to those same individuals even if, objectively, it was the right thing to do?

68

Michael Mann Responds to CRU Hack

Quite longish. Too dense to meaningfully cut/paste the “highlights”, so I offer only the permalink.

(Note: found on Daily Kos, but permalink should limit contamination. Poster accepts no responsibility unless I absolutely have to.)

69

enigmatic: Well, sure, we expect that kind of behavior from people. But not scientists.

70

I lack relevant scientific expertise on global warming, so I don’t have anything useful to say about the scientific issues involved. The question I want to address is what impact these revelations should have on our views of the global warming issue. If, unlike me, you have enough expertise in climate science to assess the scientific literature for yourself, I don’t think “Climategate” should have any impact on your views at all. You can read the mainstream literature, as well as the skeptics’ writings (which certainly exist in print, even if the Climategate culprits have kept some of them out of peer-reviewed journals) and make an informed decision for yourself.

Most of us, however, lack expertise on climate issues. And our knowledge of complex issues we don’t have personal expertise on is largely based on social validation. For example, I think that Einsteinian physics is generally more correct than Newtonian physics, even though I know very little about either. Why? Because that’s the overwhelming consensus of professional physicists, and I have no reason to believe that their conclusions should be discounted as biased or otherwise driven by considerations other than truth-seeking. My views of climate science were (and are) based on similar considerations. I thought that global warming was probably a genuine and serious problem because that is what the overwhelming majority of relevant scientists seem to believe, and I generally didn’t doubt their objectivity.

At the very least, the Climategate revelations should weaken our confidence in the above conclusion. At least some of the prominent scholars in the field seem driven at least in part by ideology, and willing to use intimidation to keep contrarian views from being published, even if the articles in question meet normal peer review standards. Absent such tactics, it’s likely that more contrarian research would have been published in professional journals and the consensus in the field would be less firm. To be completely clear, I don’t think that either ideological motivation or even intimidation tactics prove that these scientists’ views are wrong. Their research should be assessed on its own merits, irrespective of their motivations for conducting it. However, these things should affect the degree to which we defer to their conclusions merely based on their authority as disinterested experts.

The basic problem here is one of sovereignty. Namely: Mike Mann, Phil Jones, and their friends exercise - or have been exercising - a little local slice of sovereignty over climate science for about the last ten years or so. If you were in the club and/or toed the line, you got to be a climate scientist. If not, you didn’t.

We can tell that Mann and Jones were sovereign, because they were not responsible to anyone. There was no party in the world authorized to check their work. There still is no party in the world authorized to check their work. (Perhaps there is some way to get the issue to the Supreme Court. If so, it is not obvious.) Had this security breach not occurred, this situation might have persisted indefinitely - and, indeed, it may still persist indefinitely. The Soviet Union outlived Stalin. Climate science will outlive Mann and Jones, even if they do get the boot personally. I am not at all sure they will.

71

Is this the same illogic where we expect that doctors don’t make mistakes? People need to stop treating any profession as infallible

As for my opinion on the topic: It’s unfortunate that this will be used against the science and not just against the people, but, really, attempting to discredit your opponents by fiat rather than by facts is stupid. And as they found out, it will catch up with you someday.

You may not want somebody to be able to see all your work and try to discredit it. But that’s what science does. The only way to verify a theory is to repeat it, and test its apparent flaws.

These particular AGW scientists made a mistake. The sooner they admit it (something the other side never does), the sooner we can put this behind us.

72

Ten years of emails, and not even one juicy tidbit about someone boffing one of their grad students or secretaries?
I am SHOCKED at the decency of these particular scientists.

73

BigT and Athelas is there any chance that you could actually address this last point (assuming you aren’t asleep right now :)) I mean, ideally the AGW researchers should be sharing their data as much as possible. But it’s not hard to see why they might feel legitimately motivated in dragging their feet about doing so right now.

74

This is the best friggin’ thing anyone has written so far about it,
F**k, “sovereign”, that is THE word to express the idea. Not wrong or evil, simply unaccountable.
I’d like a lifetime subscription to your newsletter…

75

:rolleyes:

Saying bits like “There was no party in the world authorized to check their work. There still is no party in the world authorized to check their work. (Perhaps there is some way to get the issue to the Supreme Court. If so, it is not obvious.)” Shows how out of base he was. They were checked, and they are not sovereign. Research is not controlled or limited to them or by them.

76

“All bow to the mighty greenman3610 and his youtube webpage, for he is beyond reproach”.
I post NASA graphs and you give me a youtube page, dude, that’s lame.

77

:rolleyes:

And you missed that he quotes the valid sources, yeah, your shooting the messenger move may work for some but not all dopers. The reality is that the National academy of science did investigate the early research (The one most referenced in the stolen selected emails) and Mann was not debunked.

78

Sorry I didn’t want to watch 20 minutes’ worth of videos.
Shooting the messenger is you thing, man, wuith your “he’s a denier” stuff. I am ,at best, a humble apprentice, master.
I have a link to a nicer video, but he’s a…denier.

Here’s a nice link about the stick, with two graphs.

79

Nope, the fact remains that the Greenman does consult the evidence and peer reviewed reports. Deniers are not skeptics, they have already made their conclusions and no evidence is changing their say so’s.

And anyone can see that you choose to ignore that New Scientist report that mentions why the video I posted is correct.

Mann and others were investigated. It is a myth to conclude that reconstructions have no value. That was the point, what you are trying to do is just distracting to that simple statement.

We should not forget that the subject of this thread was to show that AGW was a hoax, from there we are moving to researchers being sovereign and not investigated ever. A baseless accusation also.

80

Well, it’s not like you actually comment on my links, either… save for crying “denier”