Loads of Station Data

January 1, 2010 by Policy Lass 39 Comments

I’m going to be spending a lot of time examining Climate Audit over the next while. The reasons is that it is seen as the voice of skepticism among many of McIntyre’s followers and as Denialist Central by many AGW Supporters.  I am not sure where to properly put McIntyre or how much credit to give his work, and so I will be reviewing his posts and trying to form a more educated opinion on his project and what it is.

To that end, McIntyre has a new post out titled “Sent Loads of Station Data to Scott” based on the email exchange in 2005 between Jones and Mann in which Jones indicates he sent “loads of station data” to Scott Rutherford.  Based on that quote, McIntyre opines that not only are Jones et al. “Masters of the Universe” in that they get to decide who gets what data, but they apparently betrayed the confidentiality agreements they hid behind when denying McIntyre’s requests for data.

Here is the relevant quote:

Just sent loads of station data to Scott. Make sure he documents everything better this time ! And don’t leave stuff lying around on ftp sites – you never know who is trawling them. The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone. Does your similar act in the US force you to respond to enquiries within 20 days? – our does ! The UK works on precedents, so the first request will test it. We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind. Tom Wigley has sent me a worried email when he heard about it – thought people could ask him for his model code. He has retired officially from UEA so he can hide behind that. IPR should be relevant here, but I can see me getting into an argument with someone at UEA who’ll say we must adhere to it !

My first thought after reading this post was that McIntyre’s request was for the entire data set, and if so, it would be impossible to do comply, since some of the data was covered by confidentiality agreements. If you only wanted part of the data, and that data wasn’t covered, then there would appear to be no restriction. Continue reading →…

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Climatologists Under Pressure – Nature Editorial

December 30, 2009 by Policy Lass 21 Comments

I want to spend some time today reviewing the Nature article, “Climatologists Under Pressure” since it has been the subject of several posts now at Climate Audit and other skeptic blogs.

Note about terminology:

There are several to get straight so people know where I stand.

AGW Supporter – I consider AGW to be the main scientific paradigm on climate change at this time. This does not mean it is entirely correct, but thus far, it is the best thing going and is supported by basic science. In other words, it is not all spurious correlation. AGW Supporter is reserved for people who come out and state plainly that they agree with the main scientific paradigm claim that the earth is warming and that it is largely due to human release of greenhouse gasses, among other human effects, and that climate sensitivity suggests that if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated, non-negligible negative effects on the climate and human societies will likely result.

Skeptic – a skeptic is someone who argues that the evidence they have seen is not convincing and thus they do not feel capable of supporting the existing paradigm, but neither do they reject it. They feel that it is not well-enough supported to be a basis for the development of public policy. Continue reading →…

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In the penalty box…

December 29, 2009 by Policy Lass 24 Comments

Over at Climate Audit, I’m in the penalty box.

Steve McIntyre has written a post titled “FOI Myth 1 – USA” in which he responds to the Nature editorial “Climatologists Under Pressure”, which among other issues, discusses the CRU Hacked/Leaked emails.

Here are a few relevant quotes from the editorial:

The e-mail archives stolen last month from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (UEA), UK, have been greeted by the climate-change-denialist fringe as a propaganda windfall (see page 551). To these denialists, the scientists’ scathing remarks about certain controversial palaeoclimate reconstructions qualify as the proverbial ‘smoking gun’: proof that mainstream climate researchers have systematically conspired to suppress evidence contradicting their doctrine that humans are warming the globe.

This paranoid interpretation would be laughable were it not for the fact that obstructionist politicians in the US Senate will probably use it next year as an excuse to stiffen their opposition to the country’s much needed climate bill. Nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real — or that human activities are almost certainly the cause. That case is supported by multiple, robust lines of evidence, including several that are completely independent of the climate reconstructions debated in the e-mails. [my emphasis]

I’ve highlighted the more inflammatory words.

Continue reading →…

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