CRU climate scientists did not withold data
news.bbc.co.uk
news.bbc.co.uk
The report claims that the CRU didn't withhold data simply because "any independent researcher can download station data directly from primary sources and undertake their own temperature trend analysis". So basically, the CRU withheld their own data/source code, but they didn't cover up other people's data. Huh?
Even the report admits that "there has been a consistent pattern of failing to display the proper degree of openness". This sounds like an attempt at whitewashing, basically giving reporters a justification for ignoring the whole mess.
"Writing computer code to process the data "took less than two days and produced results similar to other independent analyses. No information from CRU was needed to do this"."
Personally I can understand them not wanting to "fully comply", given the number of FoI requests they would've received and their tone. Have you seen the vitriol over at Climate Audit?
edit: It gets even better a bit further down: "Asked whether it would be reasonable to conclude that anyone claiming instrumental records were unavailable or vital code missing was incompetent, another panel member, Professor Peter Clarke from Edinburgh University, said: "It's very clear that anyone who'd be competent enough to analyse the data would know where to find it. It's also clear that anyone competent could perform their own analysis without let or hindrance.""
If they want to ignore or not "fully comply" with FOI requests - they shouldn't take public funds.
In fact, if you don't want to reveal your top secret source code/data, don't publish in science journals. It's utterly ridiculous that journals still exist which don't require source/data to be released.
If you want to independently verify it, the best way is to write your own code and see if it spits out the same/similar results.
That's a problem isn't it. Maybe the UK should fix that.
The police may be required to protect and serve, but try berating a police officer and see how well he serves you when your house gets robbed. He shouldn't treat you any differently, but he probably will.
It seems to me that we all agree that the number and tone of requests is relevant. I think that everyone here will accept that once the number of requests prevents scientists from doing any research, than we have a serious problem. So the question is not "is the number or tone relevant?" but "what fraction of scientist time should we expect researchers to spend responding to FOI requests before we consider them unduly burdensome?"; given this question, tone seems very relevant. If researchers are responding to questions from professionals who have a good understanding of the fundamentals and are scientifically literate, then we should expect them to be more willing to respond to inquiries. But if they're responding to scientifically illiterate people who don't understand the basics of climate modelling, then I don't think we should expect them spend any time at all.
I mean, the FOI process can be abused. I think it is important that we differentiate between using the FOI process as a way of harassing researchers and serious questions from people who understand enough to actually deal with the data. In that sense, requiring people to write their own code (which is better for finding errors anyway) serves as a way to tax the harassers without unduly burdening real scientists. Real scientists will probably have planned on writing their own code anyway, but people abusing the FOI process for harassment probably don't have the capability to do so.
In my own neighborhood, I've watched crazy citizens groups use demands for data as a way to harass experts. They go to town meetings and yell and scream about data. When experts give them the answers they need (which costs time and money), they start poring through the data looking for inconsistencies. Inevitably they find something that looks suspicious if you're completely ignorant of math and science and then they pounce on it at the next town meeting. "Gotcha!" they say. But they're ignorant people who don't understand basic math and they inevitably turn out to be completely wrong. Most of the time, the truth is exactly opposite what they've claimed. Meanwhile, an expert has to explain in great detail why exactly they're wrong. The whole thing is just a huge waste of time and taxpayer money. It doesn't cost them anything to demand data and when any expert fails to give them everything (including the kitchen sink) because they're worried that these ignorant people will misunderstand things, they only scream all the louder.
Public policy is hard. Even very simple questions like "will this development make traffic on this side street worse" is actually fairly tough to answer. The vast majority of people don't have anything close to the skillset needed to intelligently review an analysis of these questions. But many think they do.
The CRU folks actively avoided going that route. They avoided putting data on a public ftp site because they didn't want people they disliked to download it.
Answering Frequently Asked Questions with little human interaction is actually a solved problem.
Your arguments might carry some weight if they were flooded with an unreasonable number of FOI requests. Or if they were flooded with a large number of unreasonable and not-repeated questions. None of that actually happened. All that happened is that a few critics asked for the data and they conspired to hide it.
[1] Last month a guy from Princeton emailed me asking for help using code he downloaded from my website. Instead of conspiring to hide it, I emailed him a more recent version of the code told him what to tweak. I'm not even a professional scientist anymore.
This is a flat out lie. The data is publicly available.
The conspiracy is proven conclusively by the hacked emails. The email linked here is part of the conspiracy: http://junkscience.com/FOIA/mail/1107454306.txt
Seriously, what more would you want in the way of proof? Videotape of Mann/Jones writing the email? A brain scan showing they weren't joking? I'm beginning to have doubts that you are arguing in good faith.
Maybe "conspired to hide it" is too nuanced.
As for the "number of FoI requests they would've received and their tone", that sounds like something apache can handle:
GET /public_data/hockey_stick.tar.gz HTTP/1.1
Host: www.cru.uea.ac.uk/
Tone: HIGHLY VITRIOLICanthonyb already quoted the relevant section: Writing computer code to process the data "took less than two days and produced results similar to other independent analyses. No information from CRU was needed to do this".
If a qualified researcher can reproduce the results in two days, I'd suggest that anyone who can't is not sufficiently qualified to be evaluating the research's efficacy in the first place.
The main point I'm making here is this: the title of this article (and the report) is just not true. The CRU folks withhold source code and data, and the report even admits this.
Not only did they not respond simply because of the "number" or "tone" of requests, but they actively avoided releasing data. From one of their emails: "And don't leave stuff lying around on ftp sites - you never know who is trawling them [...] 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."
The purpose of the three separate inquiries was to separate fact from out-of-context quotes like the ones you're still trying to leverage.
I think the results are clear. The researchers should have been more open, but they didn't do anything unethical and anyone qualified could have reproduced their results using widely publicly available data.
As for my "out-of-context" quote, here is the context: http://junkscience.com/FOIA/mail/1107454306.txt . Why don't you explain to me how this was not a conspiracy to withhold data?
The data they used is publicly available and the inquiry board noted that the results were easily reproduced by qualified individuals.
The fact that CRU didn't want to deal with "the contrarians" by holding their (unqualified) hands through the process is not a surprise.
What more do you want? The inquiry board said CRU should be more open. They should. But anyone qualified could reproduce their results with the public data. Hardly a damning conclusion.
you lose credibility by interjecting small jabs and opinions (ie, "unqualified") and irrelevant commentary (ie, the relevance of the surprise-factor is...?)
i personally think the whole issue is silly because laymen are not familiar with the typical processes in academia.
but my opinion aside, regardless of its convenience for the scientists involved and regardless of its irrelevance to the validity of the scientific argument, the intention is clear from the above linked emails to hide data from the "contrarians".
case closed.
I'd say this argument is dumb-er.
> you lose credibility by interjecting small jabs and opinions (ie, "unqualified")
Your comment is amusing given your 'dumbest argument ever' intro, but regardless, that wasn't a jab (or even my own opinion):
"Asked whether it would be reasonable to conclude that anyone claiming instrumental records were unavailable or vital code missing was incompetent, another panel member, Professor Peter Clarke from Edinburgh University, said: "It's very clear that anyone who'd be competent enough to analyse the data would know where to find it. It's also clear that anyone competent could perform their own analysis without let or hindrance.""
i don't personally care. think/believe/dream what you want.
(i do get particularly peeved when people use language manipulations like "screaming and shouting" to make their point appear sensible because they are clearly not screaming and shouting.)
http://sluggish.homelinux.net/index.php?title=Tempgraph
The station data and temperature data were already out there in the public domain.
We've gone past the high water mark of human-caused climate change now - perhaps in history the runup to Copenhagen will look like the high point for the cause. Governments the world over are turning their back as an issue. There'll always be a committed band of supporters and promoters but once governments see it as a dead issue then everyone else will move on.
The good news in all this is that as the smoke clears from the FUD surrounding climate change, it will allow alternative energy sources to be evaluated on their eficiency merits, rather than how well they link in to some government-invented paper-swapping scheme. Removing the demonisation of C02 will allow people to concentrate on the real environmental costs of any energy source and decide if the cost is worth it or not.
"It was not our purpose to examine, nor did we seek evidence on, the science produced by CRU. It will be for the Scientific Appraisal Panel to look in detail into all the evidence to determine whether or not the consensus view remains valid."
[1] http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/ph...
The Guardian has an interesting article from this past Sunday about scientists being more open.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/04/climatecha...
I, for one, welcome this openness, and hope that it leads to the removal of fundamentalists from both sides from the debate. No doubt there is a big problem, and we won't solve it when people are merely shouting at each other.
I'm generally fairly hostile towards the fundamentalists on the other side of the debate becaause it's generally presented as if AGW was the lynchpin without which fossil fuels are a great fuel source.
And further, it's generally presented as if the 'global warming' part were somehow scientifically dubious, when all that is dubious is the 'anthropogenic' part.
So I may be a bit of a fundamentalist, but there are a lot of fundamental reasons fossil fuels are not okay. Nuclear, wind, and solar are where it's at.
Any contrarian viewpoints are excluded both explicitly and implicitly, because ideas that resemble what's already been published in journals are those most likely to get funding. The vast majority of scientists aren't gonna jump off the gravy train and potentially sacrifice their tenure.