Not too long ago I blogged on the data that was hacked from the computers of the University of East Anglia’s Hadley Climatic Research Centre. Those emails include:

Admissions that pieces of information were being excluded from public presentation of the science behind climate change, because the information suggests conclusions that the scientists involve do not want people to draw. Mick Kelly is a good example:

Yeah, it wasn’t so much 1998 and all that that I was concerned about, used to dealing with that, but the possibility that we might be going through a longer – 10 year – period of relatively stable temperatures beyond what you might expect from La Nina etc. Speculation, but if I see this as a possibility then others might also. Anyway, I’ll maybe cut the last few points off the filtered curve before I give the talk again as that’s trending down as a result of the end effects and the recent cold-ish years.

Admissions that older data was being used to show the public what is now going on in the climate instead of more up to date information, because the more up to date information does not give the same impression in favour of global warming:

There is a preference in the atmospheric observations chapter of IPCC AR4 to stay with the 1961-1990 normals. This is partly because a change of normals confuses users, e.g. anomalies will seem less positive than before if we change to newer normals, so the impression of global warming will be muted.

Although not in the same category, there was an interesting comment about trends. A number of people sceptical about global warming have said that short term trends (e.g. 10, 15, even 20 years) don’t really support some of the claims of climate change proponents. A standard reply to these observations is that short term observations are not important, and that what matters is trends of at least 30 years. What the stolen data shows is that actually shoter term trends are regarded by the scientists involved as just as valid (thus inadvertently vindicating the shorter term data used by climate change sceptics):

20 years (1981-2000) isn’t 30 years, but the rationale for 30 years isn’t that compelling. The original argument was for 35 years around 1900 because Bruckner found 35 cycles in some west Russian lakes (hence periods like 1881-1915). This went to 30 as it easier to compute.

Personally I don’t want to change the base period till after I retire!

The emails also showed that other information was simply not made available to the public, and – very troublingly from the standpoint of scientific integrity – they indicate that members of CRU were themselves at times in a position peer reviewing studies involving their own work(!!!). What’s more, Phil Jones also revealed, in an email headed “highly confidential” the way he saw it appropriate to deal with the fact that some scientists wanted to publish papers questioning the view on climate change promoted by CRU: “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow–even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”

If you want to search the hacked information for yourself, you can do a keyword search HERE.

OK, so it looks bad. Incredibly bad. No serious observer can deny this. So how has the scientific community responded? Unlike some, whose attitude I regard as absolutely unscientific, I will not be regarding only those who hold certain beliefs about climate change as being part of the “scientific community.”

Let’s start with George Monbiot, who strongly believes that man made global warming is a reality. In a piece published in the Guardian, he wites:

It’s no use pretending that this isn’t a major blow. The emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging. I am now convinced that they are genuine, and I’m dismayed and deeply shaken by them.

Yes, the messages were obtained illegally. Yes, all of us say things in emails that would be excruciating if made public. Yes, some of the comments have been taken out of context. But there are some messages that require no spin to make them look bad. There appears to be evidence here of attempts to prevent scientific data from being released, and even to destroy material that was subject to a freedom of information request.

Worse still, some of the emails suggest efforts to prevent the publication of work by climate sceptics, or to keep it out of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I believe that the head of the unit, Phil Jones, should now resign. Some of the data discussed in the emails should be re-analysed.

Going as far as calling for a resignation as one of the key scientists involved is commendable integrity, given Monbiot’s role here as a hostile witness.

However, Monbiot then goes on to do what many will see as shifting the goalposts. He writes a fictional email, the kind of thing, he says, that would be necessary to discover in order to justify the scepticism of those who doubt man made global warming. The letter is written from one member of a secret order of knights to another, advocating the suppression of information and the formation of a global communist government. This move reminds me of a scene from the movie The Three Musketeers. In this scene, King Louis confronts Cardinal Richelieu (played by the marvellous Tim Curry). The king has learnt of the cardinal’s evil plan to steal the throne. The scene goes like this:

King Louis: Your Eminence, I have heard some troubling rumors about you.
Cardinal Richelieu: There are so many to choose from.
King Louis: Betrayal.
Cardinal Richelieu: Ah, yes. That is usually the first. Let me see if I remember it correctly. While the English attack from without, the wicked Cardinal undermines from within, forging a secret alliance with Buckingham and placing himself on the throne. But really, Your Majesty, why stop there. I have heard much more festive variations. I make oaths with pagan gods, seduce the queen in her own chamber, teach pigs to dance and horses to fly, and keep the moon carefully hidden within the folds of my robe. Have I forgotten anything?
King Louis: …. It does seem rather far fetched.

Far fetched indeed! But notice what the cardinal did. He shifted the goalposts. The accusation was not that he was doing all those fantastical things, only that he was planning to steal the throne – which in fact he was. But in order to make the accusation look unbelievable, he added to it, making it absurd.

This is what Monbiot does (and I am only elaborating like this because he is not the only one to do it). He starts by conceding what people are genuinely concerned about, but then – in effect – rejects the ludicrous claim that the people at CRU are involved in a conspiracy to (basically) take over the world. I will refer to this in future as the cardinal fallacy.

It’s a shame that he does this, actually. Monbiot is capable of much better. You can see glimmers of it in the fictional email itself. He alludes to other lines of evidence that people use for man made global warming, but instead of making smart use of them, he ruins any possible value by placing them all in a silly context of “oh, and I suppose you think we faked all this stuff too, huh?” No. Nobody claims that this scandal proves that other types of evidence were faked. This scandal was never about every single possible line of evidence for man made global warming. It only ever promised to undermine some specific lines of evidence and some specific scientists.

Unfortunately, this line of comment is becoming increasingly common from defenders of the scientists at CRU who apparently want to exchange silly rhetorical ploys like this for sensible discussions of fact. An author over at RealClimate is/was apparently unwilling to even believe that the emails were genuine, saying, “Nonetheless, these emails (a presumably careful selection of (possibly edited?) correspondence dating back to 1996 and as recently as Nov 12) are being widely circulated…” That’s right. Even though there’s absolutely no evidence of doctoring, just put the accusation out there anyway. Is this really a responsible scientist’s comment? This comes next, from RealClimate:

More interesting is what is not contained in the emails. There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to ‘get rid of the MWP’, no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders’ from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords. The truly paranoid will put this down to the hackers also being in on the plot though.

That’s right – it’s the cardinal fallacy again. To those who were hoping for solid, credible scientific analysis of what this means, this is genuinely surprising. Replies like this are simply childish nonsense.

Other than that, the author of that piece at realclimate throws in the unfounded accusation of doctoring: “these emails (a presumably careful selection of (possibly edited?) correspondence dating back to 1996 and as recently as Nov 12) are being widely circulated, and therefore require some comment.” This initial straw grasping is no longer tenable. The emails are now a matter of public record, and anyone can search them.

The discovery of the practices of the CRU obviously raises a question in the minds of those who are sceptical of man made global warming. Until this data was stolen, nobody knew what was going on, and nobody ever would have found out. Most organisations leading the charge for man made global warming concern have obviously not had their computer systems hacked. Could it be people may wonder, that this is not an isolated case? How widespread are the practices we now know were going on in East Anglia?

Apparently inspired by the principle of “strike while the iron is hot,” NASA and the Goddard institute are now being sued for failing to disclose information under the Freedom of Information Act – information on, among other thing’s, NASA’s silence over its use of incorrect temperature data. With the CRU being caught out and NASA being very coy, suspicions have been elevated to an all time high.

The right word is suspicion, not paranoia. Paranoia is groundless. Suspicion, in this case, is grounded in some very real concern. An organisation like NASA, one would think, welcomes the opportunity to educate the public. Why are they remaining tight lipped? And as for CRU, recall George Monbiot’s concern and his claim that some of the original data now needs to be re-analysed. There’s just one problem. In a further revelation, we now know that the data used in East Anglia, data that goes back 150 years, has been destroyed. They had the data, made models, graphs, predictions based on it, then destroyed the data, meaning that now that their research has been brought into disrepute, nobody can check their data and methods. It’s gone. This is a face-palm moment for anyone wanting to defend the CRU scientists. Again, the word is suspicion, or concern, and apparently justified concern – not paranoia. This serious concern is justified regardless of the facts about man made global warming. The practice of dishonesty and hiding information on the part of the community with the responsibility of educating the public – especially where public funding is involved – is a real blow to science. It lowers the standing of science as a trustworthy endeavour. It makes science into something that’s less about science than about political manoeuvring.

The floodgates have been thrown open, and sceptics of man made global warming have pounced on the opportunity, not just by suggesting that the problem is more widespread than East Anglia, but also by presenting to a (now more interested) public their reasons for being so critical of the theory of man made global warming in general. Christopher Monckton, a former advisor to Margaret Thatcher offers a damning analysis in the Sunday Telegraph.

He shows, for example, how – based on what Phil Jones of East Anglia admits is absolutely no data at all but only gut feeling – the proponents of man made global warming have literally fabricated the now notorious “hockey stick” graph. The graph, shown below, changes the entire shape of historical temperature to make any recent rise appear like a new phenomenon, whereas the graph below that one takes into account the medieval warming period, showing that there is no hockey stick – no brand new, recent upward surge in global temperatures.

(hat tip to Wintery Knight for reproducing the image).

Basic, big, obvious facts like this have rhetorical power. I mean, just look – the impact is immediate. It’s like Al Gore’s line graph showing a correlation between C02 and temperature from ice core samples. It looked very persuasive, until the tables were turned and it was revealed that the correlation was the reverse of what Gore claimed: temperature and C02 rise and fall together, but temperature rises first, followed by C02 levels, thus:

(click the image for a larger version)

Major screw ups like this from Gore, or like the recent one from the CRU, provide opportunities. Naturally, sceptics strike when the world has been given a reason to doubt that which the sceptics doubt.

In an apparent attempt at distracting from the disaster that is CRU (and possibly NASA, the world will need to wait and see), New Zealand voices have played they “well you guys do it too!) card. I’ve noted this recently, but because it’s relevant: The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition (NZCSC) noted that data had been adjusted at some temperature measuring stations in New Zealand, and adjustment which, they say, made the temperature look cooler than they would otherwise look. They approached NIWA multiple times and sought an explanation of these adjustments, but no reply was received. This obviously looks bad because it gives the appearance that data was being manipulated for no reason. They therefore put out a press release, noting that data had been adjusted without an explanation given for that adjustment.
NIWA replied in a press release, explaining that there was a reason, namely that temperature recording stations had been moved to different locations, so an adjustment had been required. A tiny scale feeding frenzy then erupted, with some bloggers claiming that NZCSC had been dishonest. Here is what the NZCSC actually said for itself:

The Coalition says [NIWA spokesperson] Dr Wratt’s release mentioned specifically that NIWA climate scientists had previously explained to members of the Coalition why such corrections are made. Mr Dunleavy comments: “We disagree. We have no record of receiving an explanation. NIWA has in fact refused numerous requests over the years to disclose the corrections. The most recent one was a written request to Dr James Renwick – over a month ago – still unanswered.”

NZCSC were actually able to point specifically to their most recent request for information and to name the specific NIWA scientist that the request was made to. Dr Renwick has not denied receiving the request.

So the attempt at “ha = gotcha, you guys lie just as much as our guys” simply has not succeeded.

People who hold sceptical views have, of course, always been there. But now they have a much wider audience. Prior to this all flaring up recently, I would have said, and honestly so, that I didn’t really have a horse in the race. I had no strong beliefs one way or the other. You’ll see in my tone that I no longer feel this way. Recent events really handed the scientific community a microphone. It was theirs for the taking – the golden opportunity to step up, correct the misunderstandings (assuming that’s what they were) that the whole CRU scandal created, and launch a wonderful education campaign for man made global warming. Instead, the hysteria switch was flicked on, and it was a case of “don’t look, just shoot!” Rather than good willed attempts at education or explanation, it immediately became a game of shoot the sceptic – they’re liars, they’re paranoid fundies, they believe it’s all about the one world government, you can’t trust them (oh and by the way, ignore what we’re now doing, because another reason you should ignore these whacks is that they’re really into personal attacks!).

By contrast, the sceptical community has capitalised as hard as possible, and by all accounts it is paying off. At a governmental level? That’s hard to say, but it certainly may be the case in Australia. That capitalisation has had its impact on me, and for no other reason than the holes in the case for man made global warming and the apparent and relatively accessible (i.e. simple and understandable) evidence to the contrary. You may consider me a sceptic.

Unless something big happens, this is the last blog on the subject for a while.

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