From the NYT story:

Stephen McIntyre, a blogger who on his Web site, climateaudit.org, has for years been challenging data used to chart climate patterns, and who came in for heated criticism in some e-mail messages, called the revelations "quite breathtaking."

But several scientists whose names appear in the e-mail messages said they merely revealed that scientists were human, and did nothing to undercut the body of research on global warming. "Science doesn't work because we're all nice," said Gavin A. Schmidt, a climatologist at NASA whose e-mail exchanges with colleagues over a variety of climate studies were in the cache. "Newton may have been an ass, but the theory of gravity still works."

Beyond the gossip, what does the data actually mean?

There's no such thing as original sin - Elvis Costello

it was well received by the referees, and so is in the publication pipeline. However, I got the impression that Saiers was trying to keep it from being published.

Proving bad behavior here is very difficult. If you think that Saiers is in the greenhouse skeptics camp, then, if we can find documentary evidence of this, we could go through official AGU channels to get him ousted. Even this would be difficult.

My emphasis. The levels of pettiness on the opposing sides do not appear to be equal. The allegation of an attempt to suppress a peer-reviewed publication is serious. It is ironic that, with claims of suppression of skeptics are not uncommon in the popular press, a private e-mail should suggest attempted suppression in the opposite direction.

It could be that self-censorship by involved scientists out of concern that inconclusive models or inconsistent data would be used against them is retarding the process. It has always been an asymmetrical contest. The scientists have no choice but to employ peer review and to adhere closely to fact based arguments. That process is sufficiently problematic as it is, as Kuhn has shown, and tends to err on the side of conserving current paradigms. And there are skeptics with solid scientific credentials.

The beneficiaries and backers of the skeptics side are existing business interests and their political allies. For them rhetoric and public perception is all, however obtained.  The fear of the influence of the skeptics by the scientists, which, of course, was, in the USA, much more of a concern up until a year ago, as Bush 43's administration was both the ally of incumbent energy interests and had a tendentious view of "science", is much less of a problem just now. If the scientists' private e-mails had to come out, at least the timing is propitious.

It could be that this whole episode will lead to an increase in the rate of progress in climate research by opening up the field, much as when the USA declassified radar technology in the '50s. If key models are made more widely available to younger members of the community, as opposed to being closely held for fear of weaknesses being misused, the weaknesses may be more quickly remedied.

Meanwhile, it would help if someone of prominence did a public service by showing what happens when you put a thermocouple in a glass of ice water under a strong incandescent light and plot temperature vs. time.  If the evidence is that the polar regions are melting, this involves a massive phase transition that is going to absorb heat not just from the sun but also from the atmosphere and, hence, the weather patterns. It makes sense that this could produce local and intermittent cooling in the mid-latitudes until the last of the ice is melted, if we get to that point. Thus the freezing weather for the baseball playoffs in Denver and the mild summers I have been experiencing in the Ozarks.  We need to elevate the popular conception of global processes.

 

If sanity be culturally normative, then by the norms of this culture I claim insanity.

Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog

A very prominent climate scientist, who writes from a .gov address, sends this to my father after my father simply responded to a scientific query from another climate scientist who put the .gov guy (his colleague) on the distro list (along with a bunch of others, including me):

Roger,

Please remove me from your email distribution list. I have no desire to communicate with you. Ever.

XXXXXXXXX

That message comes across a bit like sticking your fingers in your ears and screaming "I'M NOT LISTENING I'M NOT LISTENING". Climate science has a few remarkable human beings in it, that is for sure.

This is becoming increasingly infantile.

I have absolutely no axe to grind in the issue of climate science.

I find it "interesting" that people lower there level of critical reasoning when the source of their information is a "sacred cow". The fundamentalist pattern exhibited by some religious people can be found by some other people wrt the "scientific" process.

Wake up people! Nobody is asking you to become "climate change deniers", just to exercise critical reasoning with everything, and not take what comes from whatever source like the gospel.

There are several SEVERE problems with modern science. It is an environment taken by brutal neo-liberal competition where confidentiality and closeness is king. Job security (the ability to get a tenure, that is) is minimal, places are limited and people have to fight for it and sometimes things get rough. There is a strong sense of hierarchy. Furthermore too much specialization is a plague, many people are totally focused on their tiny topic (for which they will try to get the maximum funding) and no nothing more. I have never met so many people with such low awareness about the world around them like scientists.

People are forced to "prop up" their claims. Don't you find strange that, eg, in disease fields there is so much predicative science promising to eliminate or eradicate a disease in 4 years (Confidence interval +- 1, 3 months and 10 days)? Do you really believe a paper that states that disease X will be eliminated from a place in very precise time frame is the proposals written there are enacted? Papers stating this are easy to be found is respected and influential scientific journals, just go ahead and search.

I eagerly await the name bashing and ad-hominem comments from this simple proposal to use your critical reasoning...

FYI, I am a PhD student with more quite a few scientific pubs and a reasonable number of citations.

I know I am not being very rich in concrete examples, but I find it not a good idea to write them in a public forum. But if we ever meet face-to-face just ask me for examples and pointers. I would be delighted to back my claims with evidence. Just not in writing.

"Nullius in Verba"

What about if all software that models climate prediction would be made available in a source fashion?

I don't even mean like open or free software. Just available so that all people could read it and inspect it (its ok that people could not resell or repackage it)?

I think that many of this software has been, at least partially, publicly funded. So asking for it to be made available to the public for general inspection would be more than fair.

Would it be that bad to make the code that does all these predictions open for everybody to inspect and criticize?

What about it YOU could have a peek on the inner workings of the models?

Completely open, transparent science.

"Nullius in Verba"

1) there are somewhere in the region of 4500 files in the download, about 1000 of which are mail, and 3500 data files. From the contents of one of these data files there are suggestions that one of the climate models has 11,000 data files, so at best this is probably a subset of data.

2)It has been reported that the email has been confirmed as genuine. However the genuineness of the data files should have its status reserved until it has been thoroughly checked. And for it to be considered real, that is going to take some time. Firstly it has to be established when the server was first improperly accessed, and secondly it has to be checked against backup copies to asess the integrity of the datasets . If someone has had access, then we know that they have removed files, they may have also changed files without  the knowledge of reseasrchers.

3)From looking at the corespondence, Climate scientists appear no more or less riven with factions, infighting, feelings of sleights, and outright lunacy than any other group of academics. If anyone thinks  that this faction of climate examiners is particularly bad is asked to think wether every single email of their own would pass scrutiny.

4)I am somewhat suspicious of the date of release of this information. 2 weeks before the Copenhagen climate change conference, almost guarantees that Climate change scientists will be far busier discussing the leak rather than preparing for the conference. A cynic or conspiracy theorist could almost come to the conclusion that it was planned to cause the most disruption.

Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without hell. Frank Borman

In my opinion, there are two broader issues raised by these emails that are impeding the public credibility of climate research: lack of transparency in climate data, and "tribalism" in some segments of the climate research community that is impeding peer review and the assessment process.

1. Transparency. Climate data needs to be publicly available and well documented. This includes metadata that explains how the data were treated and manipulated, what assumptions were made in assembling the data sets, and what data was omitted and why. This would seem to be an obvious and simple requirement, but the need for such transparency has only been voiced recently as the policy relevance of climate data has increased. The HADCRU surface climate dataset and the paleoclimate dataset that has gone into the various "hockeystick" analyses stand out as lacking such transparency. Much of the paleoclimate data and metadata has become available only because of continued public pressure from Steve McIntyre. Datasets that were processed and developed decades ago and that are now regarded as essential elements of the climate data record often contain elements whose raw data or metadata were not preserved (this appears to be the case with HADCRUT). The HADCRU surface climate dataset needs public documentation that details the time period and location of individual station measurements used in the data set, statistical adjustments to the data, how the data were analyzed to produce the climatology, and what measurements were omitted and why.

<snip>

2. Climate tribalism. Tribalism is defined here as a strong identity that separates one's group from members of another group, characterized by strong in-group loyalty and regarding other groups differing from the tribe's defining characteristics as inferior. In the context of scientific research, tribes differ from groups of colleagues that collaborate and otherwise associate with each other professionally.

I think Public Choice theory might help us a little in understanding how these researchers behave. Or in the words of Upton Sinclair: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.