Climategate?

djpbarry · 04-03-2010 11:38AM

gizmo555 wrote: »

If they felt that those making the requests were "trolls", well, UK FoI law includes provision for dealing with vexatious requests and as their Information Commissioner puts it in a way which I think is very relevant to this case, "remember that you can also avoid unwanted requests by voluntarily publishing any frequently requested information."

But as I have said already, the vast majority of CRU data has been “voluntarily published”. So what exactly is the nature of these FOI requests (genuine question)? What “data” is being sought?

djpbarry · 04-03-2010 11:38AM

Mozart1986 wrote: »

It seems the only response people can muster here is a question that amounts to repeating a persons assertion with a question mark...

I asked several perfectly valid questions, relevant to the discussion, which you have refused to answer, suggesting that you cannot do so.

As I have already stated on this thread and others, if you’re not prepared to discuss something, then don’t post it.

gizmo555 · 04-03-2010 12:04PM

djpbarry wrote: »

But as I have said already, the vast majority of CRU data has been “voluntarily published”. So what exactly is the nature of these FOI requests (genuine question)? What “data” is being sought?

For what is now the fourth time, what I was responding to was solely BluePlanet's question as to whether Jones and the CRU were under any legal compulsion to disclose information. The answer to that was and is "yes", where they were required to by FoI law.

As for the exact nature of the requests and whether they were all properly complied with, I don't know and I haven't the time or inclination to do your research for you. But, for what it's worth, here's a start from the Guardian of Feb 1 last:

Phil Jones, the beleaguered British climate scientist at the centre of the leaked emails controversy, is facing fresh claims that he sought to hide problems in key temperature data on which some of his work was based.

A Guardian investigation of thousands of emails and documents apparently hacked from the University of East Anglia's climatic research unit has found evidence that a series of measurements from Chinese weather stations were seriously flawed and that documents relating to them could not be produced.

Jones and a collaborator have been accused by a climate change sceptic and researcher of scientific fraud for attempting to suppress data that could cast doubt on a key 1990 study on the effect of cities on warming – a hotly contested issue.

Today the Guardian reveals how Jones withheld the information requested under freedom of information laws. Subsequently a senior colleague told him he feared that Jones's collaborator, Wei- Chyung Wang of the University at Albany, had "screwed up".

The revelations on the inadequacies of the 1990 paper do not undermine the case that humans are causing climate change, and other studies have produced similar findings. But they do call into question the probity of some climate change science.

...

Last week the Information Commissioner's Office – the body that administers the Freedom of Information Act – said the University of East Anglia had flouted the rules in its handling of an FOI request in May 2008.

Days after receiving the request for information from the British climate change sceptic David Holland, Jones asked Prof Mike Mann of Pennsylvania State University in the United States: "Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith [Briffa] re AR4? Keith will do likewise.

"Can you also email Gene [Eugene Wahl, a paleoclimatologist in Boulder, Colorado] and get him to do the same ... We will be getting Caspar [Ammann, also from Boulder] to do the same."

I agree with Mozart1986 that your standard debating tactic seems to be to reply to every point with a raft of questions of at best tangential relevance to the points made. Personally, I'm content to await the outcome of the inquiry to see their opinion on whether information was improperly or illegally withheld.

Turtwig · 04-03-2010 01:01PM

gizmo555 wrote: »

Last week the Information Commissioner's Office – the body that administers the Freedom of Information Act – said the University of East Anglia had flouted the rules in its handling of an FOI request in May 2008.
.

Not true, not even near true.
The ICO themselves say that no decision has been made, it only allegations at this points. The statement was merely about prima facie evidence that, of course, the media made a hash of and thought that construed actual evidence and results. It doesn't; it's only initial first sightedness and very often can be initially misleading and very different from final results.

djpbarry · 04-03-2010 01:33PM

gizmo555 wrote: »

For what is now the fourth time, what I was responding to was solely BluePlanet's question as to whether Jones and the CRU were under any legal compulsion to disclose information. The answer to that was and is "yes", where they were required to by FoI law.
...
As for the exact nature of the requests and whether they were all properly complied with, I don't know and I haven't the time or inclination to do your research for you.

If you are not aware of the nature of the FOI requests (that is, we have no idea whether they were reasonable or legitimate), then how can you affirm that Jones and the CRU were under a legal compulsion to disclose information in response to said requests?

EDIT: Sorry, I misread your post - I see what you're saying.

Today the Guardian reveals how Jones withheld the information requested under freedom of information laws.

Once again, this simply does not make any sense – the data in question is freely available on the CRU website.

gizmo555 · 04-03-2010 01:36PM

djpbarry wrote: »

If you are not aware of the nature of the FOI requests (that is, we have no idea whether they were reasonable or legitimate), then how can you affirm that Jones and the CRU were under a legal compulsion to disclose information in response to said requests?

I give up - I'm not going round in circles with you on this any more.

Turtwig · 04-03-2010 01:40PM

gizmo555 wrote: »

I give up - I'm not going round in circles with you on this any more.

It really hard for me not to the get the picture of something like you making an allegation (or just agreeing with one) but not even understanding the nature the allegation or its possibly validity or invalidity. So it's kinda in your interests to help clarify this.

gizmo555 · 04-03-2010 02:09PM

Malty_T wrote: »

It really hard for me not to the get the picture of something like you making an allegation (or just agreeing with one) but not even understanding the nature the allegation or its possibly validity or invalidity. So it's kinda in your interests to help clarify this.

I'm not making any allegations. I made these points:

(1) The University of East Anglia, its Climate Research Unit, and Professor Phil Jones are subject to UK freedom of information law.

(2) As the Institute of Physics put it: "The CRU e-mails as published on the internet provide prima facie evidence of determined and co-ordinated refusals to comply with honourable scientific traditions and freedom of information law."

(3) We have Professor Jones's own word for it in the e-mails that he felt disinclined to provide information requested, in case the requester "found something wrong with it" - in my opinion, that is the antithesis of what one would expect from a scientist.

The "Climategate" inquiry is dealing with the matter and as I said previously, I'm content to wait to see what they conclude. Until they do report, I've nothing else to say on it.

BluePlanet · 04-03-2010 02:11PM

Yeah i'm trying to figure out this myself.
It just has all the air of a media sensationalized story.

Here's what i found from newscientist
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18599-climategate-scientist-questioned-in-parliament.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news

Asked whether other climate scientists reviewing his papers ever required such data, he said, "They've never asked." In response to a specific question about why he had failed to grant freelance researcher Warick Hughes access to data, he said simply, "We had a lot of work and resources tied up in it

Sounds like he didn't have time.

Jones also denied trying to keep papers by his critics out of journals. "I've written some awful emails," he said, but later added, "I don't think there is anything that supports the view I've been trying to pervert the peer-review process."
And he insisted that he and his colleagues at the Climatic Research Unit had responded properly to all freedom of information requests despite a surge in demand from frustrated critics last year.

So there was a SURGE of FOII requests.
Poor guy is probably busy and has lost patience with his personal "free-lance" hack.

Jones conceded that he did not usually publish raw data from weather stations, which was often covered by confidentiality agreements, nor the computer codes he used to analyse the data. "It hasn't been standard practice to do that. Maybe it should, but it's not," he said

Confidentiality agreements.
Plus, did he write the code himself?
Was it OpenSource?
Seems a bit intrustive to demand source code tbh.

Not everyone agreed that Jones had been as free with data and methodology as he should have been. Nigel Lawson, a chancellor of the exchequer in Margaret Thatcher's government and author of a book that is sceptical of human-made climate change, had earlier told the committee: "Scientists with integrity wish to reveal their data and all their methods. They don't need freedom of information requests to force it out of them."

This is what i was talking about. Apparently Nigel Lawson would have scientists spending hours spoon-feeding trolls.

And written evidence submitted to the committee by the Institute of Physics in London claimed the hacked emails had revealed "prima facie evidence of determined and coordinated refusals to comply with honourable scientific traditions" through "manipulation of the publication and peer-review system" and "intolerance to challenge".

This is exactly what Malty_T has just said.

gullon · 04-03-2010 03:32PM

Here is the offical uncorrected transcript of the select committee:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/uc387-i/uc38702.htm

djpbarry · 04-03-2010 03:47PM

gizmo555 wrote: »

(3) We have Professor Jones's own word for it in the e-mails that he felt disinclined to provide information requested, in case the requester "found something wrong with it"...

No, he is alleged to have asked why he should release his work to an individual whose sole intention (he believed) was to find something wrong with it – that’s not quite the same thing.

BluePlanet · 04-03-2010 04:25PM

djpbarry wrote: »

No, he is alleged to have asked why he should release his work to an individual whose sole intention (he believed) was to find something wrong with it – that’s not quite the same thing.

AND confidentiality agreements.
PLUS we don't know the details of whom owns the "source code" being requested. Even IF Jones wrote it himself, it doesn't mean it was his to give.
If he wrote the code while working for x organisation.

Mozart1986 · 04-03-2010 07:40PM

Obfuscation, obfuscation and more obfuscation. Tut-tut!

Jones' is a dead duck and he knows it. I mean, he resigned ffs. And the media that you are accusing of spinning this have been spinning the facts of AGW for years, but that was ok, was it?

djpbarry · 04-03-2010 08:45PM

Mozart1986 wrote: »

And the media that you are accusing of spinning this have been spinning the facts of AGW for years, but that was ok, was it?

The media put spin on everything.

And now, an example of 'spin'...

Mozart1986 wrote: »

Jones' is a dead duck and he knows it.

Turtwig · 04-03-2010 09:20PM

Mozart1986 wrote: »

The media that you are accusing of spinning this have been spinning the facts of AGW for years, but that was ok, was it?

No, it wasn't and rational skepticism entails not to trusting the media on anything even things you intuitively or emotionally agree with. Their standard of reporting is just too low,inaccurate and inconsistent to be trusted on any issue.

Mozart1986 · 05-03-2010 02:07PM

Malty_T wrote: »

No, it wasn't and rational skepticism entails not to trusting the media on anything even things you intuitively or emotionally agree with. Their standard of reporting is just too low,inaccurate and inconsistent to be trusted on any issue.

The fact that you are trying to portray this whole sequence of events as a product of media spin is laughable. Most media outlets in Ireland and Britain have been hugely reluctant to run the story at all, and when they have its been covered, for obvious reasons, by the science editor environmental journalist. They've been completely partial, since environmental journalists got there jobs out of the hysteria global catastrophy, which sells papers and carries legislature. The only reason they've run the story is because blogs and forums have shown a public interest, and so the story will sell papers. But the way in which the story has been reported has been to play down it's relavence, while covering it nonetheless and this partiality has been due to the history of environmental journalism.

I am an extremely green person. Where I live we have a wind-turbine, solar panels, a rain-catcher and and I'm involved in a growing group. I am also a card-carrying member of the green party. I have no emotional investment and nothing to gain from this debacle. That is a fact. But my understanding of human beings and our susceptibility to hysteria and the herd mentality, as well as the intertwined historical machinations of scientific inquiry and political movements, compel me to treat these circumstances as, at best, a serious breach of scientific protocal. I do not believe everything that suits my emotionally charged positions.

djpbarry · 05-03-2010 02:18PM

Mozart1986 wrote: »

Most media outlets in Ireland and Britain have been hugely reluctant to run the story at all, and when they have its been covered, for obvious reasons, by the science editor environmental journalist. They've been completely partial...

Generally speaking, yes, they have (in the UK at least). In particular, James Delingpole (The Telegraph) and Jonathan Leake (The Times).

07-03-2010 12:03AM

Not directly related to "climategate" but very relevant to the "propoganda war" waged by advocates of AGW.

This article has been produced, to help AGW publicists get their message across, similar techniques are used by hard sell salesman as well.

Turtwig · 07-03-2010 01:50AM

Deleted User wrote: »

Not directly related to "climategate" but very relevant to the "propoganda war" waged by advocates of AGW.

This article has been produced, to help AGW publicists get their message across, similar techniques are used by hard sell salesman as well.

Not that bad..actually, bout time scientists starting listening to science on how to communicate science instead of personal intuition..
Just curious, are you familiar the 1991, ICE (Information Council for the Environment).

Here's a brief snippet:
*Note* I've largely paraphrased this content with my own text, however, I have not distorted any the tone, nor the content, nor, to my knowledge, cherry picked it in any way.

1) In 1991,Western Fuels, The National Coal Association and Edison Electric Institute set up a group called the Information Council for the Environment (ICE). The goal of this organisation is outlined as follows:

Reposition Global Warming as a theory (not fact).
Target Print and Radio Media for maximum effectiveness.
Achieve broad participation along the entire electric industry.
Start small, start well and build on early successes.
Get the concepts developed and implemented as soon as possible.
Test market execution in 1991.
Build national involvement as soon as test market results are in hand.
Go national in late autumm of 1991 with media program.
Use a spokeperson from the scientific community.

Strategies used for initial test.

Find a receptive population and pretest various strategies.
Use focus group to test the ICE name and creative concepts.
If successful, go nationwide.
ICE : Information Council for the Environment.
ICE: Information Citizens for the Environment.
ICE: Intelligent Concern for the Environment.
ICE: Informed Choices for the Environment.
Broadcast media will directly attack the global warming by relating "irrefutable evidence" to the contrary, delivered by a believable spokesperson.
The print creative will attack proponents through comparison of global warming to historical or mythical instances of gloom and doom. Each ad will invite the listener/reader to call or write for further information, thus creating a data base
"How much are you willing to pay to solve a problem that does not exist?"
Carbon Tax.
Create Illusion of "Debate".

Results from Initial Test.

Audiences trusted “technical sources” most, activists and government officials in middle, and industry least.
Scientists are the most credible spokespersons.
“Information Council on Environment” was best name, because ICE is postioned as technical source.
Target Audiences Identified.
- Older, less educated males.
  - Receptive to messages describing the motivations and vested interests of people currently making pronouncements on global warming. For example, the statement that some members of the media scare the public about global warming to increase their audience and their influence.
- Younger, lower-income women.
  - Are more receptive to factual information concerning the evidence for global warming. They are likely to be “green” consumers, believe the earth is warming, and to think the problem is serious. However, they are also likely to soften their support for federal legislation after hearing new information.
- Members of the public feel more confident expressing opinions on others motivations and tactics than they do expressing opinions of scientific issues.

The end result was this video.

Perhaps beginning the rubbish pseudo skeptic arguments.

07-03-2010 02:38AM

Malty_T wrote: »

Just curious, are you familiar the 1991, ICE (Information Council for the Environment).

Yes, I have come across that type of (mis)information - I didn't remenber precisley where though.

It just goes to prove that all the vested interests in this debate will go to any lengths to sway the voting public.

The truth (something that no one really knows for sure) lies between the two camps, as a sceptic, I prefer to have a more open mind and decide for myself father than be spoon fed the guff by either side.

Turtwig · 07-03-2010 04:26AM

Deleted User wrote: »

The truth (something that no one really knows for sure) lies between the two camps, as a sceptic, I prefer to have a more open mind and decide for myself father than be spoon fed the guff by either side.

That statement is far too general. There are whackos with everything in life why anyone even reads their stuff is beyond me. Do you accept that the scientific consensus was not reached by environmentalists? Or for that matter ideologically driven whackos? Also, if you don't mind me asking what do you think of Watts and Mcintyre? Would you accept that they seem to have an anti science agenda?

It just goes to prove that all the vested interests in this debate will go to any lengths to sway the voting public.

I hope you are also familiar with claim about the US Government (Bush Admin) preventing gov scientists from speaking about Climate Change. The skeptics were given free reign, but the scientists in the US were barely allowed to respond. I mean you have to look at both conspiracies.

Mozart1986 · 07-03-2010 02:25PM

How about this for conspiracy:)

Some quotes from a recent book by Michael Hulme, the head of The Tyndall Centre for Climate Studies at the University of East Anglia:

"The idea of climate change should be seen as an intellectual resource around which our collective and personal identities and projects can form and take shape. We need to ask not what we can do for climate change, but what climate change can do for us."

"Because the idea of climate change is so plastic. It can be deployed across many of our human projects and can serve many of our psychological, ethical and spiritual needs."

"We will continue to create and tell new stories about climate change and mobalize them in support of our projects."

"These myths transcend the scientific categories of 'true' and 'false'"

These aren't quotes from some progress report of a libertarian think-tank or the Green Manifesto of some obscure Neo-Marxist organisation operating out of a basement 2 miles from Cambridge. This is written by someone that is directly connected to the science of climatology.

Does that not give even a proponent of AGW pause for thought? I mean, doesnt it sound very Neitzschean to you? After all, "what is the value of truth?"

gullon · 07-03-2010 03:43PM

Mozart1986 wrote: »

How about this for conspiracy:)

Some quotes from a recent book by Michael Hulme, the head of The Tyndall Centre for Climate Studies at the University of East Anglia:

These aren't quotes from some progress report of a libertarian think-tank or the Green Manifesto of some obscure Neo-Marxist organisation operating out of a basement 2 miles from Cambridge. This is written by someone that is directly connected to the science of climatology.

Does that not give even a proponent of AGW pause for thought? I mean, doesnt it sound very Neitzschean to you? After all, "what is the value of truth?"

The same guy Mike Hulme: The prophet of Post Normal Science

Self-evidently dangerous climate change will not emerge from a normal scientific process of truth seeking, although science will gain some insights into the question if it recognises the socially contingent dimensions of a post-normal science. But to proffer such insights, scientists - and politicians - must trade (normal) truth for influence. If scientists want to remain listened to, to bear influence on policy, they must recognise the social limits of their truth seeking and reveal fully the values and beliefs they bring to their scientific activity.

Two interesting blogs on post normal science and climate science
http://enthusiasmscepticismscience.wordpress.com/2010/02/28/post-normal-science-and-the-corruption-of-climate-science/

http://buythetruth.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/climate-change-and-the-death-of-science/

Mozart1986 · 07-03-2010 04:14PM

Its funny, I can actually see the underlying logic of Hulmes position. I mean, in part, I agree with him. After all, climate and our environment, the Great Other, or Nature, is not static or reliable and can throw great surprises at us, like giant wave in the mid-ocean that can only be described by Mathematical Physics, or tsunamis, or many many things we haven't had the slightest experience of yet, Rumsfeld's unknown unknowns. Modern society has, ingrained in its nature of production and consumption, lost touch with this reality, and has become an insulated pathology. Great catastrophy isn't the only thing modern society has insulated itself from, but as far as what people can be aware of or can understand, its the best and most efficient example that can bring about change. It has always been that way, since the boogy-man that was Hannibal and his Carthaginian hord, and the prophesies of Armegedon.

I'll not try to discuss the coomplexities of post-normal science. I just want to point out that this is the crux of the problem. Climate change is the popular manifestation of a problem at the heart of modern society, and it is more important that it be a dominant influence on the public than it be 'true'. Hulme uses this word in a cynical fashion. He is using it the same way any powerful culture has used it. He is saying that its not a 'lie' in the common sense of the word. It 'transcends' the categories of truth/falsehood. Its not a lie because it is in your best interests to believe it, because of what believing it entails. Like God and religion, as an easy example. For a functioning society we need people to live by certain normal standards and codes. "Don't kill! Don't steal! Don't work on Sundays! Don't have sex unless you're willing to put your life into raising the child you create and marry the woman so that we are certain that you are! Why? Because they are sins and you'l go to Hell!". "Recycle! You don't need a reason, because the reason is too complex and technical for your pleb mind! Do it because if you don't you'll push the world's climate over the edge of a tipping point that will cause positive reinforcers to accelerate the rate of change as we career towards disaster!" Thats a dubious, if not completely false, statement that is bandied about in the media and is propagated by the IPCC and others, as the real tipping points occur in the opposite direction, i.e. in Global Cooling, which is extremely plausible because we are already in a moderately warm phase in the Earth's temperature cycle. But really, it doesn't matter whether we are talking about wraming or cooling as long as we remember that things don't stay the same, and thus the institutions of power/influence/control must have the flexibility to absorb and of the environmental changes (i.e. finite limits of resources) that effect it. To get any of this in democratic countries, then people need to be scared ****less.

So my position is, fair play to him, but I refuse to be 'influenced' and to be treated as less than an equal member in the public discourse. I don't need his 'transcendant' truth. I'll live by what I consider a coherent and consistent philosophy. Has anyone here read Isaiah Berlin's Four Essays on Freedom? I suggest that proponents of AGW consider it. A free society is a flexible society, but it is also an unpredictable society. To create a flexible, predictable society, people need to be 'influenced'.

07-03-2010 06:00PM

Malty_T wrote: »

The end result was this video.

Perhaps beginning the rubbish pseudo skeptic arguments.
[/I]

The video is based around the FACT that CO2 is beneficial for plant growth, its back by published research which is far from a "rubbish pseudo argument"

Mozart1986 · 07-03-2010 08:08PM

Deleted User wrote: »

The video is based around the FACT that CO2 is beneficial for plant growth, its back by published research which is far from a "rubbish pseudo argument"

The only problem with this video is that it doesn't give any kind of backgrounds/positions held by the people voicing their opinions, although some of the scientists can be found on wikipedia.

Basically, its a very narrow part of the issue, but there is nothing really incorrect or inaccurate in it. Hardly conspuracy now is it?

Macha · 07-03-2010 09:07PM

Deleted User wrote: »

The video is based around the FACT that CO2 is beneficial for plant growth, its back by published research which is far from a "rubbish pseudo argument"

Is there a CO2 shortage currently inhibiting plant growth that I'm not aware of?

07-03-2010 10:15PM

taconnol wrote: »

Is there a CO2 shortage currently inhibiting plant growth that I'm not aware of?

LOL

Of course not, It's classic supply verses consumption.
just the same as the availability of food in the western world causes some people to get fat.

Macha · 08-03-2010 12:14PM

Deleted User wrote: »

LOL

Of course not, It's classic supply verses consumption.
just the same as the availability of food in the western world causes some people to get fat.

Are you saying our plants are in danger of over-consuming co2?

Mozart1986 · 08-03-2010 05:46PM

taconnol wrote: »

Are you saying our plants are in danger of over-consuming co2?

What are you talking about? He means that with more CO2 in the atmosophere plants do better, and there are larger crop yields. Its really simple but you're trying to obfuscate the issue. People pump CO2 into greenhouses and polytunnels and plants do better if you talk to them (breathing out CO2). I've even heard it said that trees planted beside roads do better, but that one is a little dubious to me. DUH!

Climategate?

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