Climategate: Why it matters

[notesdev]

Reading the Climategate archive is a bit like discovering that Professional Wrestling is rigged. You mean, it is? Really?

The archive - a carefully curated 160MB collection of source code, emails and other documents from the internal network of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia - provides grim confirmation for critics of climate science. But it also raises far more troubling questions.

Perhaps the real scandal is the dependence of media and politicians on their academics' work - an ask-no-questions approach that saw them surrender much of their power, and ultimately authority. This doesn't absolve the CRU crew of the charges, but might put it into a better context.

After a week of scrutiny of the emails, attention is now turning to the programming source code. Three quarters of the material released is the work of the academics, much of which they had jealously guarded. This includes a version of the world's most cited and respected temperature record - HADCRUT - and a number of surveys which featured prominently in the reports of the UN's climate change panel, the IPCC. The actors here shaped the UN reports, and ultimately - because no politician dare contradict the 'science' - shaped global policy.

The allegations over the past week are fourfold: that climate scientists controlled the publishing process to discredit opposing views and further their own theory; they manipulated data to make recent temperature trends look anomalous; they withheld and destroyed data they should have released as good scientific practice, and they were generally beastly about people who criticised their work. (You’ll note that one of these is far less serious than the others.)

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/30/crugate_analysis/

[blogslut]

1. How very pink of you

Watch out for the Stark Fist of...

[Birthmark]

2. "Climategate" is largely imagination.

You must thank your lucky stars that out of context quotes were invented!

I find it interesting that you continue to push this nonsense when you have been so thoroughly refuted. But I guess every person you deceive or confuse, every moment of delay in acting, is just a feather in your putrid cap.

To point out your putrid anti-reality, try to answer the following questions:

1. What publications offering other alternatives were rejected by climatologists a priori without scientific reason?

2. What data specifically was manipulated to "make recent temperature trends look anomalous?" (And why do other data sets gathered by other organizations show the same anomolies?)

3. From whom was data withheld? Specific examples would be helpful. What data was destroyed? What was the medium? What were the circumstances?

4. Who cares if they treated denialists "beastly?" Is accusing people of fraud, incomeptence, and dishonesty (the stock in trade of the denialist) any less beastly?

You may begin your hand-waving...wait for it!!...NOW!

You know, this whole thing is backfiring on you, right? ;)