“Loved the anecdote about 60 Minutes standing in the ocean. ” (Kirk)

I’m glad. Thanks.

Kirk:
“You’ve sold me. There are tricks and declines and shonky current affairs programs. It must be a scam.” (Kirk)

Others here are going down with the Titanic’s CRU.

You’ve sold me. There are tricks and declines and shonky current affairs programs. It must be a scam.

Tell me how you feel about .. Health Care for example. Aping neo-con web ‘opinion-as-fact’ takes you to very dark places. Directly to Fox and Friends.

Discover the quality of the scientific consensus here:

http://upcoming.current.com/items/370461_climategate-heats-up-global-warming-debate-before-copenhagen-and-related-posts.htm

“Gosh Sean - aren’t you clever. You’ve found the smoking gun no less. ” (Paddle)

Forget worrying about a smoking gun, with the stuff they are finding in the source code, it’s becoming a mushroom cloud.

Paddlefoot:
“Presumably all these scientists - and there seems to be an awful lot of them - engage in the same or similar practices. Do you think they all get together and plan this, or are they controlled by some one else ? That person must be very powerful indeed. Or maybe they just naturally do this - like all Irish are lazy drunks.” (Paddle)

How do you like your crow prepared?

“@Sean, I sympathise. There has been much overegging of puddings, outright stupidity and ignorance in the media, and a disturbingly hostile attitude to openness on the part of some climate scientists (the latter demonstrated in these e-mails). ” (Mark)

Thank you. There was more I meant to add but forgot. Did you see Penny Wong’s take on the e-mails?

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/hot-and-bothered/story-e6frg6z6-1225802504484

She said that the e-mails amounted to, “a free exchange of views on climate change. We on this side are happy to have that debate.”

How flabbergasting is that? Either she is stupid or she is prepared to tell breathtaking porkies. And how about the stunning hypocrisy? Since when has Wong or Labor invited debate on this matter?

Next there is our Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, who like other global warming alarmists, presented the recent hot days as evidence of global warming. Well what about the last eleven years of overall cooling? Well we are told that that’s just a minor fluctuation and doesn’t count.

So does it really matter what the Prime Minister and Penny Wong think? Well, hello passangers, they are pilot and copilot for AWG Airlines; they are unable to decipher the instruments and are flying Australia at full speed to who knows where.

All of this raises another question. You said you sympathise with me over the “overegging of puddings, outright stupidity and ignorance in the media”. Why is it, if these the science is legitimate, the scientists involved aren’t desperately engaged in correcting the supposed misrepresentations that we receive from the media and politicians? One gets the impression that they are happy with the distortions, as long as they are alarming. I am quite sure that a physicist wouldn’t sit back and accept it, but that is real science.

Mark:
“However, none of this logically invalidates the AGW hypothesis.” (Mark)

That is true. All the bad evidence in the world, for X, doesn’t prove that X isn’t so. However, the realisation, that the evidence for X is bad, should erode at one’s previous reasons for believing in X. My question is, if AGW science really has the goods, why are we always having the effluent rammed down our necks?

I know what science is supposed to be. Here is what you said in another post:

(Matt, 25th Nov 7:56)
“But the fact is scientist are open to debate. Scientists debate each other all the time through the scientific literature. Extremely vigorously.” (Matt)

However, I have shown that the ‘science’ of AGW shuts out debate. As well as elsewhere, the blocking is made evident in the hacked e-mails that we are discussing. So how come your indignation hasn’t translated to your being embarrassed by the anti-science behaviour of these scientists? Instead you are a ‘appalled’ that they are being criticised and you would have us see their scientific integrity as snow white.

Matt (24th Nov, 12:29):
“This is an atrocious story. When you read through those emails and their background, as I have spent the last couple of hours doing, it is clear there is nothing untoward there.” (Matt)

Here is the CRU trying to shut out debate, a ‘method’ that you apparently staunchly reject or staunchly defend, depending on what is convenient at the time:

http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=419&filename=1089318616.txt

“Kevin and I will keep them [detractors] out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is ! Cheers Phil [Jones]”

That is the ‘scientific method’ that you indignantly defend in this blog, Matt. Remember, you saw nothing untoward.

Matt:
“On this issue, you are the paranoid creationist, latching on to anything you can to support your denial.” (Matt)

Does name calling reassure you? Is that also part of your ‘scientific method’? You know, one of the proposals that Creationists have presented, is that the speed of light has slowed dramatically. They want this to account for astronomy being able to see stars millions of light years away, when they, the young-earth Creationists, maintain that God made the earth and universe 6,000 years ago. Setterfield, an Australian undergraduate, took a few data points that have small inconsistencies due to early limitations of accuracy in measurement, then he arbitrarily extrapolated a hockey-stick curve that had light going faster by a factor of 10 to the power of 10, a few thousand years ago.

http://evolution-facts.org/New-material/Speed%20of%20Light.htm

I was reminded of that methodology when I read about the tree-ring evidence for AGW, with its hockey-stick plot:

http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.com/2009/10/global-warming-proven-deliberate-fraud.html

“After 10 years of data being withheld that would allow true scientific replication, and after dozens of requests for that data, Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit finally was given access to the data from Yamal Peninsula, Russia. He discovered that only 12 trees had been used out of a much larger dataset of tree ring data. When the larger data set was plotted, there is no “hockey stick” of temperature, in fact it goes in the opposite direction.”

Here you can see how dramatically the graph changes when the typical data is added to the selected atypical data:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/27/quote-of-the-week-20-ding-dong-the-stick-is-dead/

I think that what Mann et al have done is far more disturbing and dishonest than what Setterfield, the Creationist, did.

Matt:
“That is all I have to say for the foreseeable future, ” (Matt)

Surely you don’t mean that. I was hoping you would tell me what item of evidence you think best supports AGW.

Matt:
“That is all I have to say for the foreseeable future, I have science to objectively assess and oil to find.” (Matt)

I prefer 10/30W but have had trouble finding it. Just remember, oils ain’t oils!

What disgusts me is denialist shallow confirmation-bias propaganda attacks on scientists, whether climatologists, medical researchers, biotechnologists, paleontologists, geochronologists or indeed stratigraphers. The internet is full of this crap and there is now another bucket load of misrepresentations and (effectively) lies being touted by superficial idiots all over the place.

To anyone who has been involved in science, your belief that AGW is a fantastic fraud and a faith is ludicrous. I put it to you that you have failed totally to be objective. I put if to you that your opinion on AGW is based firstly on ideology, and then on massive ignorance of the science. On this issue, you are the paranoid creationist, latching on to anything you can to support your denial.

That is all I have to say for the foreseeable future, I have science to objectively assess and oil to find.

”@ Sean - Equating AGW with faith is a failure of your own comprehension. An entire field of peer reviewed science cannot be invalidated or made untrue by the shenanigans of a few disgruntled scientists from one facility in the UK.” (Jeebus)

I’m not even close to basing my suspicions just on the dubious behaviour exposed in the e-mails; the problem is everywhere I look. For example, a few weeks ago I saw, on 60 Minutes, a report that the Maldives supposedly sinking due to rising oceans. Liz Hayes was standing waist deep in water with a very concerned local representative, saying that the previous time she was there, eight years before, it was dry sand where she was standing! Now even if she had been standing right next to the water the earlier time, that would represent about three feet or close to a metre of rise due to global warming. Because I was suspicious, I went searching for the claimed rate of sea level rise from the scientific bodies promoting sea level rise due to global warming. The biggest I found was in the order of 3 mm per annum. Over eight years that would represent about one inch or 24 mm. Clearly, Liz Hayes standing waist deep in water had either nothing or almost nothing to do with global warming. The program invited viewers to go online and ask the expert questions. My question, challenging the 24 mm/1 metre discrepancy, wouldn’t even appear. I think that after that is when I really became a sceptic.

Very recently our local newspaper had the long time locals of Sussex Inlet, saying that they haven’t seen any change in the water level over fifty years. Sussex Inlet sits about four feet above the water. You can read about it using this URL: hhttp://tiny.cc/yLQS4 .

With regard to the e-mails, I witness the apologetics with which the AGW believers defend them. You, at least, acknowledge that they are shenanigans. The others who engaged me, tried to turn black into snow white. So even today I could see I was being fed BS in impossibly large doses.

Another thing I noticed is the absence of any reporting of the e-mails on TV media. That too makes me suspicious. I have been watching the ABC news and have seen how, instead of reporting on the e-mails, they kept plugging away with “The sky is falling” global warming reports. They kept showing great chunks of ice falling off the Antarctic into the sea as evidence that Antarctica is shrinking. A few seconds thought told me that something was wrong. If ice is continually being deposited on that continent, it has to go somewhere and it can’t go forever upwards. In other words, ice breaking off into the water, is not due to ice deprivation or warming, but due to compensation for ice accumulation!

Jeebus said:

“The scientific method involves observation, experimentation, reproducible results, and conclusions based upon evidence. It’s ignorant of you to label AGW science as political correctness because you disagree with its conclusions.” (Jeebus)

Are they the same sort of people who told us the sky falling with SARS and Bird Flu? You have it reverse. I started off believing AGW and warning people about it. I became suspicious about the conclusion after I saw that I was being fed evidence that didn’t add up. I was also noticing how much AGW was in bed with political correctness and the left of politics - at least in Australia (stolen generation, SIEV X etc). The realisation that I was being fed BS is also how I became an atheist.

I know what the ‘scientifc method’ entails. However my observations are that with AGW, politics applies rather than ‘scientific method’. It isn’t just a problem with one small group of renegades; it goes to the very core. The CRU is tasked with keeping the world’s climate records. Now read what happened when John McIntyre requested their data:

By Neil Craig:
“McIntyre has previously found that the Britain’s Climate Research Unit, charged with collating world climate records, whereby official records allegedly show warming this century had “lost” all their original data. This excuse after their chief had said “Why should I make the data available to you when you are going to try to find something wrong with it”. Even if it were true that “the dog ate the homework” that remark alone proves the CRU is a corrupt propaganda organisation not a scientific one.” (Neil Craig) That is from:

http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.com/2009/10/global-warming-proven-deliberate-fraud.html

Here is the reference for that. It has many other examples showing how deeply the rot penetrates:

http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.com/2009/10/global-warming-proven-deliberate-fraud.html

And here is another\, from which I will quote:

“What McKitrick and McIntyre have found in their hockeystick analysis is shattering and profound. It destroys the credibility and integrity of the IPCC, the editors of Nature magazine, and the 2500 hundred or so members of a so-called consensus of climate experts. M&M have once again shown that consensus is not science.” (By Michael R. Fox, Ph.D. )

I read the exchanges with Nature, and was left in no doubt that they had taken residence in their political bunkers, with fingers in ears going “La la la la”. I will try to find the article again.

These clean energy projects have trouble getting off the ground with coal so cheap, and the ETS legislation gave the government a chance to reform the industry to level the playing field, but instead Rudd is directing billions into coal and gas to help them buy carbon credits, in order to maintain the status quo. It seems like a wasted opportunity.

@ Sean - Equating AGW with faith is a failure of your own comprehension. An entire field of peer reviewed science cannot be invalidated or made untrue by the shenanigans of a few disgruntled scientists from one facility in the UK.

The scientific method involves observation, experimentation, reproducible results, and conclusions based upon evidence. It’s ignorant of you to label AGW science as political correctness because you disagree with its conclusions.

“Gosh Sean - aren’t you clever. You’ve found the smoking gun no less.” (Paddlefoot)

You’re too kind. I did have the CRU scripts to recite.

Paddlefoot:
” Do you think they all get together and plan this, or are they controlled by some one else ? That person must be very powerful indeed. Or maybe they just naturally do this - like all Irish are lazy drunks.” (Paddlefoot)

You must have missed where I answered that to Matt:

SQ:
Matt:
“I realise that you want to believe that the vast majority of the worlds climatologists and related scientists are in a conspiracy against your idealogy.”[Matt]

Then your realisations about me are likewise false. I see AGW as a faith, a daughter of political correctness. In similitude, being an atheist doesn’t mean I assign Christianity to a conspiracy. I know that most of them really believe the stuff. I suspect that you believe and love global warming. [Sean to Matt]
EQ:

Political correctness and its predictable (left) positions a a broad range of things, isn’t so much a conspiracy or central plan as it is a cultural virus, a pandemic.

Thanks - I can now relax and not worry, because worry is so unsettling.

SQ:
@Sean - selective and out of context quoting again. You quote me as saying:
“A single email in a conversation of potentially many emails is still out of context.”

Where what I actually said was:
“A single email in a conversation of potentially many emails is still out of context, particularly when the objective, source and product are ambiguous.” [Merlot]
EQ:

Language seems to be a curious obstacle in this discussion. You clearly said that single email, where there are potentially more e-mails, IS out of context. You didn’t say that it ‘could be’; you said that it “is” (IOW, necessarily so). Your continuation with, “particularly when the objective, source and product are ambiguous.” does not temper the first part; it partly reinforces it.

Even if we improve your comment and have it saying that a single e-mail, when there might be others, could be taken out of context, your objection would still disallow as evidence any e-mail, letter or recorded conversation, if there where any possibility of other e-mails, letters, recorded or unrecorded conversations.

The e-mail is not ambiguous and as it happens, there are other e-mails, though niot necessarily contiguous, that show a culture of concealment.

Where what I actually said was:
“A single email in a conversation of potentially many emails is still out of context, particularly when the objective, source and product are ambiguous.”

Which is the whole point. The single email presented here does not explicitly state that Phil Jones was attempting to do purposefully decieve and fabricate results. There is no visibility of the lead up to this email. There is no visibililty of the follow up to this email. It is out of context.

And it is pretty clear to me that it means ‘trick’ in the primary sense, as evidenced by the stated purpose, “to hide the decline”. Swapping data type midstream, in a series, when the first won’t cooperate with the agenda, hardly constitutes scientific ‘method’ (brilliant or otherwise).

Matt:
“I realise that you want to believe that the vast majority of the worlds climatologists and related scientists are in a conspiracy against your idealogy.”

Then your realisations about me are likewise false. I see AGW as a faith, a daughter of political correctness. In similitude, being an atheist doesn’t mean I assign Christianity to a conspiracy. I know that most of them really believe the stuff. I suspect that you believe and love global warming.

Matt:
“I’ve encountered enough Fox-Republican Creationists to recognise the technique of … ” (Matt)

That’s nice. I have done far more than just ‘encounter’ Creationists.

Matt:
“shutting your eyes to bigger picture and trying to play paranoid confirmation-bias semantic games over a highly selected quote-mine.” (Matt)

Then go ahead and deny that the text says that the purpose of the ‘trick’ is to “hide the decline”. It is YOU who uses semantic flim-flam. As for your charge of quote mining, that is made even sillier by the highly exaggerated, “highly selective”. I quoted the whole e-mail! I must assume that you support Merlot’s position that one can’t use a single e-mail as evidence because there might be others. I will say to you what I said to him. That is plain ridiculous!

Matt:
“But I’m not here to educate you against your will.” (Matt)

That’s good. I don’t want to be educated in PC.

“A single email in a conversation of potentially many emails is still out of context, particularly when the objective, source and product are ambiguous. From this email, can you tell me what Phil Jones was going to do with the data. What were Ray’s comments? What do Mike’s series show?” (Merlot)

The concerted effort in trying to make a silk purse from a sow’s ear is simply amazing. It seems I have wandered into the congregation of the True Believers. Let’s start with this item:

Merlot said:
“A single email in a conversation of potentially many emails is still out of context”.

Now that’s a fallacial argument, an argument by generalisation. It suggests that we
can never know the meaning of a single e-mail because there could potentially be others. That’s just ridiculous!

What was Phil Jones going to do with the data? That’s essentially asking from whom was the CRU trying to ‘hide the decline’. I submit that it is sufficient to realise that it wouldn’t be simply from themselves. In any case, there is enough information there to indicate that he used Mike’s ‘trick’ and that Mike’s submission was to Nature.

Tell me, if the ‘trick’ to ‘hide the decline’ can be be made pretty, why hasn’t it been? Why is it left for you to offer defense by way of vacuous conjecture. You (plural) are essentially submitting to me, “What if [blank, blank, blank]”?

Am I to assume that the same curious methodology of defense goes for all the other e-mails and that contrary to what they clearly say, they weren’t trying to block dissenting submissions from peer review and were not trying to delete stuff that they knew they weren’t supposed to (more concealment!)?

Its your job to go and read the context of the emails before making up your mind.

See my prediction of Tuesday, 24 November 2009 at 12:29 pm above.

STARTQUOTE
The charge of my supposed quote mining (or quoting out of context) can be avoided by my simply quoting the whole thing. Here is the complete e-mail:

” Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,
Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or first thing tomorrow. I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998. Thanks for the comments, Ray. ” (Phil Jones)
ENDQUOTE

A single email in a conversation of potentially many emails is still out of context, particularly when the objective, source and product are ambiguous. From this email, can you tell me what Phil Jones was going to do with the data. What were Ray’s comments? What do Mike’s series show?

“The use of the term ‘hiding the decline’ was in an email written in haste. CRU has not sought to hide the decline. ” (Phil Jones)

An attempt at verbal burial. It boils down to his saying that that he didn’t mean what he said. He offers no explantion at all for what he might have really meant by, “hide the decline”. He also seems unable to undo the word, “trick”. That term has mutual reinforcement with “hide the decline”, and is semantically submitted as the purpose for the “trick”. There is no ambiguity and the terms are also consistent with a coherent motive, to disguise an an unwanted decline that would be apparrent with using the same data throughout.

Also, aside from being premature, the citation of the Nature article doesn’t deliver you the clever coup de grace that you seem to assume. The agenda of that article is quite different. In the first, the agenda is to exhibit a consistent trend using conflicting data. In the second, the agenda is to try to use the decline and unreliability with tree-ring evidence, as a reason to allow for even greater steeper projections for global warming. In any case, there is no contradiction in motive in trying to disguise something in one place and rationalise it in another. Creationists do it all the time.

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