Common Paradox Tech Blog

eldavojohn writes “The real fallout of climategate may have nothing to do with the credibility of climate change. Daniel Henninger thinks it’s a bigger problem for the scientific community as a whole and he calls out the real problem as seen through the eyes of a lay person in an opinion piece for the WSJ. Henninger muses, ‘I don’t think most scientists appreciate what has hit them,’ and carries on in that vein, saying, ‘This has harsh implications for the credibility of science generally. Hard science, alongside medicine, was one of the few things left accorded automatic stature and respect by most untrained lay persons. But the average person reading accounts of the East Anglia emails will conclude that hard science has become just another faction, as politicized and “messy” as, say, gender studies.’ While nothing interesting was found by most scientific journals, he explains that the attacks against scientists in these leaked e-mails for proposing opposite views will recall the reader to the persecution of Galileo. In doing so, it will make the lay person unsure of the credibility of all sciences without fully seeing proof of it, but assuming that infighting exists in them all. Is this a serious risk? Will people even begin to doubt the most rigorous sciences like Mathematics and Physics?”

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Several readers noted the latest fallout from the Climate Research Unit’s Climategate: the admission by the University of East Anglia that the raw data behind important climate research was discarded in the 1980s, “a time when climate change was seen as a less pressing issue” according to the Times (UK) article. The Telegraph quotes Phil Jones, beleagured head of the CRU: “Our global temperature series tallies with those of other, completely independent, groups of scientists working for NASA and the National Climate Data Centre in the United States, among others. Even if you were to ignore our findings, theirs show the same results. The facts speak for themselves; there is no need for anyone to manipulate them.” Some of the data behind these other results can likely be found in a new resource that jamie located up at the Real Climate site: a compilation of links to a wide variety of raw data about climate. From the former link: “In the aftermath of the CRU email hack, many people have come to believe that scientists are unfairly restricting access to the raw data relating to the global rise in temperature. … We have set up a page of data links to sources of temperature and other climate data, codes to process it, model outputs, model codes, reconstructions, paleo-records, the codes involved in reconstructions etc.”

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The Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia keeps some of the most accurate climate records which are key to many climate change debates. Its email archives were hacked, and now it’s the center of another conspiracy claim.

As soon as the email archives’ contents were made publicly available, arguments broke out. Was there proof of data manipulation that could flip the entire climate debate topsy-turvy? Were scientists at the university working to keep works by climate skeptics out of journals? Answers to either question are unclear. According to New Scientist, there was no evidence of actual data manipulation, but some of the email exchanges could be construed as attempts to suppress some research.

No matter how those questions wind up being resolved, in the end the trouble doesn’t seem to be in the contents of the emails or in the data, but in the fact that the Climate Research Unit restricted access to the climate data to those it deemed “bona fide researchers.” Maybe some of the accusations the unit faced could’ve been avoided had the data been more freely shared in the first place. [New Scientist]

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The Wall Street Journal is reporting that a series of hacked emails and documents that were recently posted on Wikileaks are causing quite a stir in the scientific community. All told, more than 1,000 emails and 2,000 documents were stolen from the Climate Research Unit in East Anglia University in the U.K. “The emails include discussions of apparent efforts to make sure that reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations group that monitors climate science, include their own views and exclude others. In addition, emails show that climate scientists declined to make their data available to scientists whose views they disagreed with. [] Phil Jones, the director of the East Anglia climate center, suggested to climate scientist Michael Mann of Penn State University that skeptics’ research was unwelcome: We ‘will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!’ Neither man could be reached for comment Sunday.”

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huckamania was one of many readers to write with the news that the University of East Anglia’s Hadley Climatic Research Unit was hacked, and internal documents released. Some discussion and analysis of the leaked items can be found at Watts Up With That. The CRU has confirmed that a breach occurred, but not that all 61 MB of released material is genuine. Some of the emails would seem to raise concerns about the science as practiced — or at least beg an explanation. From the Watts Up link: “[The CRU] is widely recognized as one of the world’s leading institutions concerned with the study of natural and anthropogenic climate change. Consisting of a staff of around thirty research scientists and students, the Unit has developed a number of the data sets widely used in climate research, including the global temperature record used to monitor the state of the climate system, as well as statistical software packages and climate models. An unknown person put postings on some climate skeptic websites that advertised an FTP file on a Russian FTP server. Here is the message that was placed on the Air Vent today: ‘We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps. We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents.’ The file was large, about 61 megabytes, containing hundreds of files. It contained data, code, and emails apparently from the CRU. If proved legitimate, these bombshells could spell trouble for the AGW crowd.” Reader brandaman supplied the link to the archive of pilfered data. Reader aretae characterized the emails as revealing “…lots of intrigue, data manipulation, attempting to shut out opposing points of view out of scientific journals. Almost makes you think it’s a religion. Anyone surprised?” And reader bugnuts adds, for context: “These emails are certainly taken out of context, whether they are legitimate or fraudulent, which adds to the confusion.”

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