Document-dump-a-palooza — plus an Obama/sound science flashback; Update: Official White House position on ClimateGate: So what?
“Document dump” is the operative word of the month, isn’t it?
We had another holiday weekend document dump of visitor logs from the White House, which included these trips:
Former Vice President Al Gore had four White House meetings in April. The records suggest these were not social calls for Gore, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work to curb global warming. Two of the meetings were with John Holdren, Obama’s top science and technology adviser.
Holdren, of course, is the population control freak/global warming zealout/science czar — who, as I noted last week, is smack dab in the middle of the ClimateGate scandal.
Speaking of which, the research institution at the center of ClimateGate admitted its own document dump over the weekend:
SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.
It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.
The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.
The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.
The admission follows the leaking of a thousand private emails sent and received by Professor Phil Jones, the CRU’s director. In them he discusses thwarting climate sceptics seeking access to such data.
In a statement on its website, the CRU said: “We do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenised) data.”
The CRU is the world’s leading centre for reconstructing past climate and temperatures. Climate change sceptics have long been keen to examine exactly how its data were compiled. That is now impossible.
Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at Colorado University, discovered data had been lost when he asked for original records. “The CRU is basically saying, ‘Trust us’. So much for settling questions and resolving debates with science,” he said.
And to round out document-dump-a-palooza, here’s the latest on the massive ACORN docdump.
Viva transparency!
***
More:
*Paul Mirengoff at Power Line: The Obama-Holder Justice Department turns a blind eye to ACORN . More here.
Well now: ACORN and NBC collaborated together on an undercover sting project.
See my “ACORN Watch: A ’sting’-ing indictment of media hypocrisy” for more on NBC hypocrisy and the old media protection racket.
*There is now a searchable ClimateGate database here.
*White House press secretary Robert Gibbs — echoing data destruction expert/energy czar Carol Browner — says ClimateGate has no bearing on Obama’s push for massive global warming taxes/intervention. The science is “settled.”
Yeah, who cares about the global warming scandal of the century?
An Obama science policy flashback from March 2009:
But let’s be clear: Promoting science isn’t just about providing resources — it’s also about protecting free and open inquiry. It’s about letting scientists like those who are here today do their jobs, free from manipulation or coercion, and listening to what they tell us, even when it’s inconvenient — especially when it’s inconvenient. It is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda — and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology.
Words, just words.
***
The Atlantic’s Clive Crook blasts ClimateGate corruption:
In my previous post on Climategate I blithely said that nothing in the climate science email dump surprised me much. Having waded more deeply over the weekend I take that back.
The closed-mindedness of these supposed men of science, their willingness to go to any lengths to defend a preconceived message, is surprising even to me. The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering. And, as Christopher Booker argues, this scandal is not at the margins of the politicised IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] process. It is not tangential to the policy prescriptions emanating from what David Henderson called the environmental policy milieu [subscription required]. It goes to the core of that process.
One theme, in addition to those already mentioned about the suppression of dissent, the suppression of data and methods, and the suppression of the unvarnished truth, comes through especially strongly: plain statistical incompetence. This is something that Henderson’s study raised, and it was also emphasised in the Wegman report on the Hockey Stick, and in other independent studies of the Hockey Stick controversy. Of course it is also an ongoing issue in Steve McIntyre’s campaign to get hold of data and methods. Nonetheless I had given it insufficient weight. Climate scientists lean very heavily on statistical methods, but they are not necessarily statisticians. Some of the correspondents in these emails appear to be out of their depth. This would explain their anxiety about having statisticians, rather than their climate-science buddies, crawl over their work.
I’m also surprised by the IPCC’s response. Amid the self-justification, I had hoped for a word of apology, or even of censure. (George Monbiot called for Phil Jones to resign, for crying out loud.) At any rate I had expected no more than ordinary evasion. The declaration from Rajendra Pachauri that the emails confirm all is as it should be is stunning. Science at its best. Science as it should be. Good lord. This is pure George Orwell. And these guys call the other side “deniers”.
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Categories: ACORN Watch, Al Gore, Barack Obama, John Holdren, cap and trade, global warming
Doug Ross @ Journal
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Translation:
The data we faked because the real data proved us wrong.
Student aides and scanners.
Anything else I can help you with?
Translation: We have to be better about covering our actions. It makes it more difficult to achieve our agenda of destroying the economies of developed countries if the public finds out the truth.
i wonder if i can use that bs with the irs. gee, i didn’t have room to keep the data, but you have my filing. trust me! baby, would i lie?
These guys don’t know document dumping from shinola.
But compare with ENRON – those guys knew how to dump documents!
(slap!) Get your hand off my leg! These so called scientists need their
slide-rules revoked!
If only Gibbs had been wearing a white lab coat when he made this statement, I’d have believe him.
Alas, clad only in a nondescript jacket and tie, he holds no credibility for me.
But Rogue, finish the rest of the quote, its soooo goood! “So much for settling questions and resolving debates with science,” said Roger Pielke, professor of envirnoemental studies at Colorado University, as cited in the London Times online 11/29/09. Pielke discovered the data had been “lost” when he asked for original records. Way to go Roger.
There has to be ample evidence of criminality on so many levels by these people. Why can’t we get grand juries convened? This is like a freaking jailbreak! Dang!
This should be like shooting fish in a barrel.
No, no! The data isn’t LOST! It’s stored with Kennedy’s brain.
I remember that Obama speech, and how angry he sounded when he said it.
OK, Mr. Based-on-facts, give your regards to Copenhagen and stay home and gather some facts before you proceed any further with the destruction of this country.
One of these bozo’s, I can’t remember who, said that it doesn’t matter if the data was “fixed” because the rest of the worlds data matched thiers.
Thats right, the IPCC peer reviewed data matched the data that the people faked.
Settled science my left $%^#
It is hard to have settled science when the original data no longer exists. Perhaps it should read “Science, we don’t need no stinkin science!”
“Bbbbbuuuttt…, if we all just switch to Al Gore’s pigtail light bulbs, we can save the planet! ” (burble, choke, whimper; wrist-going-limp).
=======================================
Sigh. If only Earth were a “living entity”, then it could deride these Marxist, control-freak, guilt-mongering loons for the delusional idiots they are.
Whew!! Imagine if I tried to tell that to the IRS…
Taking a cue from Missouri Embrionic Stem-cell zealots, I see. An amendment to the MO constitution a few years ago bans human cloning. However, ‘cloning’ is defined in the amendment as Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (cloning!) for the purpose of reproduction. If it’s for the purpose of killing the embryo for research, it’s not cloning!
What should occur is a public announcement that any conclusions based on the previous data is suspect and therefor invalid. They should announce a new study that is completely transparent and open to any and all scrutiny. And they should announce that NO policies will be made on AGW until it can be proven to be more than an elaborate hoax. That is what should happen. Any bets?
I just looked outside, it’s cloudy, wet and cold. The science is settled! There is nothing to debate! Now where the h e double hockey sticks is my Nobel POS prize?!
Too much is vested in this con for them to turn back now. It’s like a quarterback determined to throw a 60 yard pass into triple coverage when his coach called for a screen. The problem is, this is not a kids game.
I deny being a denier. The theory was never proven in the first place.
We need a clear distinction between real and junk science, and perhaps a new definition of the term “Political Science”. GW dogma has more to do with politics than science.
I would now like to declare that AGW is settled science. It is settled that as science-malpractice, AGW is a massive fraud. It is not science.
Clive Cooks article in the Atlantic is one of the most telling written by a “true believer”. Once he had a chance to read the released information, he changed his mind. This is the greatest scientific scam of the century and the American state run media has ignored it. Can the American public ever believe them again?
Let them pontificate all they want.
No legislation, no bucks. Forget team Obama and the idiots in England. Your elected representatives need to know in NO UNCERTAIN TERMS the consequence to them for failing to ignore the facts in this scandal.
Not one penny should be spent on this country for Climate Change. Instant political death should befall anyone supporting this myth going forward.
In the last 3 months, the average daytime temperature has declined by nearly 30 degF. That’s 10 degF per month! By my calculations, if this trend continues, in about 4 years the planet will be at Absolute Zero (-459.67 degF), all life will die and even molecular motion drops to minimal! The data cannot be denied!
We’re doooooooomed!!!
*Best thing to happen would be for the truly conservative wing of the GOP to get out front and hammer this thing home as the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on mankind; It has finally been exposed as the biggest scam towards redistribution of wealth ever; Let P-BO and the Dems hang themselves with it; Let them own it; It is the story of the century and could indeed be their Waterloo if conservatives would just be brave enough to follow Rush and trumpet the news that man has ZERO impact on global warming or cooling; It’s the sun, stupid!
The longer obambi et al deny the better for our side hence am loathe to enlighten them. It is one more creepy example of the emp has no clothes.
keep eyes peeled on what regulations they try to sneak through post the date of the CRU email dump these people will get manic and no go away with grace.
Lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Geez, have someone check their math?! We can’t have that! They would ask embarassing questions, like “What’s this ‘Gore Constant’ that is multiplied in each of the equations, and why does it seem to vary depending on the data?”
Or never existed in the first place. Why bother with data when you’ve already reached your conclusion?
There you go… I thought only climate scientists were qualified to critique climate science (at least according to some dweeb named Bagley or Begley or something, who appeared on Fox News recently). Who ever would have thought that climate science would depend on other disciplines?
Since they can’t reproduce anything they’ve alleged, how does it get to be called science at all? In all of my science classes, experiments and/or observations had to be repeatable by uninterested third parties. Are they really saying they can’t go back and reproduce the original data, before it was massaged and tweaked? Then they got zip, nada, zero. And that’s the settled part of the science.
And one more observation — since the tree ring data had to be “smoothed” to show the direction CRU pre-determined, and since the most recently measured temperatures do NOT agree with the sagely wise tree rings, maybe the whole business of relying on the trees is, oh, I don’t know…SUSPECT?
a very catchy tune in case some missed it over holiday:
http://minnesotansforglobalwarming.com/m4gw/2009/11/hide-the-decline.html
Everything about this administration is “Shuck & Jive” !!!
You poor poor naive child. There is no truly conservative wing of the GOP.
Better to cut the climate scientists in half and count their rings!
Question: Why did Al Gore receive a Peace Prize for this instead of a Nobel prize in one of the sciences?
Answer: Because what he’s doing has nothing to do with science.
Fixed:
(quality controlled, pastuerized, and homogenised) data.
Just add heat.
Any organization that received U.S. taxpayer dollars needs to be excluded from any list where that data is rechecked. How about we ask for our money back as well. It was taken under false/fraudulant pretenses, knowing the evidence was already destroyed.
Anyone that continues to tout this fantasy is going to look like a total idiot. I’m so hoping not everything has been released. Shades of ACORN: a little here a little there every few days.
Because it’s all BS.
They aren’t interested in the search for truth, only grants.
And when was science ever “settled”? It’s the story of discovering how much you believe is just rubbish.
Anyone remember the State Run Media’s anger and disgust with the tobacco “scientists” and their data “smoothing and manipulation” to show that there was no relationship between smoking and all kinds of killer diseases?
How come they aren’t are over this scandal that affects every living thing on the whole earth, not just the smokers? Where is their objectivity? No wonder they have to change the standard for subscribers to include anyone who pays a least 1 cent for news content and DOUBLE COUNT everyone who gets the same information online and in print. Without that tactic their circulation figures would be going down even faster that they are.
Weren’t the fact that trillions of dollars and millions of jobs and the fidelity of science and the proper application technology and the neutrality of education in schools were at stake and that “science” shows on TV staunchly fixed on this data and the eco-philosophy that green instantly means good and humane and that saving polar bears and owls and whales at all costs justify faking facts and slandering nuclear energy for windmills at the expense of our livelihoods and lifestyles, this affair could almost be funny.
James Greenidge
Queens NY
The raw data is meaningless. It is only after we manipulate it can we get the information from the data. If the data says 70 degrees, I need to add 2 degrees because the data was collected in 72 degree weather. Now when I add it all up, it shows we are warming.
This is how Minnesota counts senate votes. A district with 1,000 voters can have 1,100 votes counted so when they add it all up, a democrat wins. Genius, sheer genius. Man, those guys are sharp.
Hey the science is settled !!!!
It is because they said so!!!!
Wise up, Herr Gibbs has spoken.
Herr Gibbs has spoken.
Herr Gibbs has spoken.
Herr Gibbs has spoken.
I don’t think that because there is/was a real temperature record ~somewhere~. However, the idea that they EVER actually had that record or actually used it at all if they did have it are certainly two valid doubts.
Without the orginal data there is no means to verify their ‘massaged’ data so there is no choice other than to take all of their maassaged data plus everything else that was generated from it and – CHUCK IT. How else can they expect people to react after reading their snide email remarks? We should now trust them?
It’s settled, except for the location of the data that settled it.
Speaking of Minnesotans…
Maybe Jugears wanted some protocol lessons on how to accept HIS Nobel Prize so he went right to the horses azz.
Seems pretty clear he needs lessons on protocol.
As for Climategate, I wonder if private citizens began submitting complaints to various federal agencies Inspectors General, with copies of the damning computer code attached, if they would get serious about investigating this massive fraud.
One can hope that is what Inhofe did in his letters to various federal agencies.
Oh, who CARES about all that! They have consensus remember?
/sarc
Can two or three people be a “wing”?
According to the TimesOnline, the data were dumped in the 1980s. But that doesn’t jive with what Phil Jones wrote in an email in 2005:
If he was threatening to delete the data in 2005 he must have still had it in his possession. How do we know that Jones didn’t delete the raw data this year to prevent an FOIA release? That would be a criminal act. I don’t see how they are going to keep their timeline straight.
If Pons and Fleischmann had been able to act like Mann, Jones, and other CRU scientists, they may still be doing research on cold fusion using grants from the taxpayer. It was their sharing of data with other scientists that did them in because no one could reproduce their results. If they could have hidden their data and controlled the peer review process like these climate scientists, they might have milked their fake research on “green” cold fusion for years.
The warm-mongers are in need of a science lesson from Sherlock Holmes:
This does not make sense to me because who did they get the data from originally? I thought it was NOAA who was the main organization for recording this temperature data and if the UEA tossed it then they should be able to go to NOAA and get the original data to check the numbers.
While I agree with the whole climategate hoax and what they have done, this is one point being discussed I disagree with.
Oh and forgot to mention, one of the whole problems and issues has been the UEA, UN and Al Gore have refused to release the exact “models” on how they got their numbers and I hope this finally gets released now. You would be able to get the actual numbers if you had the formulas they used to get their.
As far as I have been able to reconstruct what happened, it appears that there was data from other nations and organizations, not only the US, that had been added to their data base over a decade or two, some of it apparently differing or overlapping versions which included similar, but not necessrily material.
Since the original data was still available from the original sources, (although it would take some effort to collect it all again) it appears that they thought there was no need to keep unnecessary duplicates.
The difficulty is that various mergers and who-knows-what kinds of adjustments and corrections were applied to this data to arrive at the “Homogenized, value added” data they now have. The HARRY_READ_ME.txt file indicates that their temperature database was an ungodly mess, at what looks like some point after mergers had been performed.
From the correspondence about FOIA requests that various people have posted, CRU refused to release a list of exactly which original data had been used to compile the homogenized version. There is a suspicion that they never kept one to begin with: Better to stonewall the FOIA requests than to give their critics fodder. (The e-mails have more than one instance of that attitude). The whole data handling process seems to have been incredibly sloppy, haphazard, and above all, undocumented.
I meant, “similar but not necessarily identical information” in the first paragraph.