Is this evidence that Global Warming is a Hoax? No. And commentators that are attempting to respond to that point are obviously setting up a straw man for political purposes (hi Nate Silver!). What we have here is blatant evidence of scientists behaving in a closed, secretive, political, and unscientific manner. And that ought to worry people. I am frankly shocked that some are trying to brush this away as "boys being boys". In what universe is this acceptable behavior?
This is not a call to abandon global warming research. This is a call to shine a little sunlight on it, open up data sets and source code to the public, and get politics the hell out of our science. We need to rethink the standards we hold science to in the modern world.
I'm struck that code/data openness is an interesting point in the history of science. On one hand, how can we be in 2009 and still be having this argument? Most fields of science don't require this dissemination. On the other hand, it's amazing the species has progressed to the cusp, where we realize baring your soul to the criticism of all benefits everyone. The transparent society cometh.
A reoccurring them seems to be "I would rather delete this data than let it be publicized due to a [Freedom of Information Act] request."
If I had an abundance of charity in me, I would say he's a pompous git who can't stand the thought of The Enemy winning even a single centimeter against him. The uncharitable explanations all rhyme with fraud.
In the same way that one shouldn't tar the 'skeptics' with the same brush used for Big Oil, one should be cautious about 'recurring themes' based on excerpts. There are some messages where the real scientists distinguish themselves nicely from the scoundrels. Take this one for example: http://www.anelegantchaos.org/cru/emails.php?eid=1010&fi...
I'm sure it's not perfect, but it looks like a good example of scientific progress being made:
Nonetheless, it's unfortunate that I flipped
the Korttajarvi data. We used the density data as the
temperature proxy, as recommended to me by Antii Ojala
(co-author of the original work). It's weakly inversely
related to organic matter content. I should have
used the inverse of density as the temperature proxy. I
probably got confused by the fact that the 20th century
shows very high density values and I inadvertently
equated that directly with temperature.
This is new territory for me, but not acknowledging an
error might come back to bite us. I suggest that we nip
it in the bud and write a brief update showing the
corrected composite(Nick's graph) and post it to
RealClimate. Do you all agree?
Be cautious on generalizing across all the emails as a single corpus. Throw the book at the scoundrels, but don't lose sight of the good science being done in the background. This message would make me tend to trust what Darrell Kaufmann has to say in the future.
If I had a persistent gadfly like Stephen McIntyre who would use every opportunity to twist my data and words to his own political ends -- and the media accordingly -- I might also behave in such an untoward manner regarding the release of data and internal communications.
I find the theft of internal communications abhorrent, the politicalization of the issue uninteresting, and I seriously doubt there's any real science to be gleaned from this entire sophomoric debacle.
Stephen McIntyre who would use every opportunity to twist my data and words to his own political ends
I read McIntyre's site regularly, and find very little evidence of this. His 'political ends'? By design, there's very little political discussion on his site. But one of few times this veil was dropped was after Obama's election, where he allowed it to be known that he was rooting for Obama: http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=4265
"I don't often talk about my political views - though I've sometimes taken pains to point out that I do not share the political views of many readers. In American terms, Canada would be a blue state along the lines of Massachusetts; Toronto would be a liberal city in a blue state; and I live downtown in one of the most liberal constituencies in the city. None of this is unrelated to my political views. I realize that many Climate Audit readers have opposite political views, but we try to get along."
"I think that Obama's election is also very healthy for the U.S. in world terms. The U.S. stands for both good and bad in world terms. While U.S. economic dominance has faded, it is still the leading world nation and leadership from the U.S. is important. Obama is in a position to provide such leadership in a way that would have been impossible for McCain."
You might argue successfully that his pedantic insistence on sources, data, and algorithms gets in the way of 'progress', but to say that this is because of his political views is a gross error. Like most of the 'skeptics' on his site, his goal is to insure that we are basing our decisions (whatever they may be) on sound science rather than on propaganda. Certainly he has some readers who do not share this goal, but I feel very certain that his personal goal is good science.
I read McIntyre's site regularly, and find very little evidence of this. His 'political ends'?
McIntyre spent 30 years in the oil/gas exploration business ("mineral exploration"). You don't think there are some vested politics here?
You might argue successfully that his pedantic insistence on sources, data, and algorithms gets in the way of 'progress', but to say that this is because of his political views is a gross error.
There's plenty of room to distort the facts while reporting them. Fox News consistently claims to present "the facts" in a "fair and balanced" manner.
You don't think there are some vested politics here?
I understand the sense that there could be, but as a regular reader of his site, with strong environmental leanings myself, I don't see any evidence of any such bias. He's a hard core statistician who happened to find his skills in demand by energy companies. I wouldn't presume a nuclear physicist is necessarily biased towards atomic war, and I wouldn't presume that Steve has any particular fondness for drilling in wildlife refuges.
There's plenty of room to distort the facts while reporting them. Fox News...
I agree with you that that Fox News is neither fair nor balanced. The snippets I've seen while sitting in airport terminals make me recoil in horror. It's very similar feeling to the feeling I get reading some of these leaked emails: a nausea induced by demagoguery and propaganda. I do not get this feeling when reading Steve's posts.
How dare he ask for data series and attempt to reproduce analyses on his blog! How dare he uncover faults and discrepancies which are subsequently acknowledged in published research! If science and data are not interpreted by the right people, how can we be sure that the world is getting the right message?
I can't believe people would defend deleting data rather than responding to a FOI request. Well, actually, I can. You just did. Which is sad.
He has a clear political agenda. He's not an independent scientist (he's not even a scientist).
What possible good can come of interacting with someone who -- in addition to being grossly underqualified -- has a consistent history of applying a political agenda without fail to their "science"?
This is the equivalent of Fox News factual reporting. Sometimes they get the facts right, but that doesn't mean they aren't twisting them.
So who does have a right to look at the data, assuming we first disqualify anyone that antonovka thinks has the wrong political opinions? Isn't the scientific ideal all about openness and reproducible analyses? These emails make it look like the new ideal is supporting the "correct" political agenda.
If Stephen McIntyre is all about openness and taking advantage of the abhorrent disclosure of internal communications, why doesn't he follow suite by posting all of his personal e-mail correspondence, unedited for external review?
I'm sure there are more than a few gems.
Isn't the scientific ideal all about openness and reproducible analyses?
Yes, but when someone applies such a strong political ideology to twisting those analyses, how do you propose scientists respond?
Climate change has been so politicized by unqualified ideologues that I can hardly blame scientists for wishing to defend themselves from the worst of them.
If anything, these e-mails demonstrate that the data IS shared independently evaluated, but that the community has established political defenses to deal with political -- not scientific -- opponents.
To do otherwise would be naive. Complex topics fall easily to those who would politicize them.
These emails make it look like the new ideal is supporting the "correct" political agenda.
No, they demonstrate a clear interest in defending against the attacks of a very specific set of ideologues.
As someone who has had to defend engineering projects and people from angry corporate politics, I don't envy these climate change scientists in the least, and I certainly don't begrudge them their defensive positions.
I can too. Once you have people acting in bad faith (see, climate change denial community), combined with the subtleties of statistics, I totally understand not wanting to release your data.
Okay, the whole "I'd rather delete data" thing sounds really sketchy, but...
If science and data are not interpreted by the right people, how can we be sure that the world is getting the right message?
You know, I suppose you're trying to be sarcastic here, but this is actually a valid point. Analyzing scientific data is not something that most people can do properly without a lot of training and education. When the "wrong people" interpret the data and publicize their "results" it absolutely can and will mislead people, which is kind of counterproductive to the whole purpose of this "science" thing.
To my mind, a responsible scientist has an obligation to promote understanding, not follow some notion of proper behavior. So, yeah, if someone with a fairly large audience, a lack of relevant expertise, and an apparent vested interest in interpreting results in a predetermined way asks for huge volumes of data the correct response is probably somewhere between ignoring them completely and telling them to fuck off.
It sounds like these people were dramatically overreacting (Deleting the data? Really, guys?), but after seeing how well it worked when the biologists tried to engage in a civilized scientific discussion about evolution, I can at least sympathize.
Biologists have NCBI, which is completely open. It would be a colossal fail to try to hide data, because even the most basic multiple sequence alignment shows that evolution is real.
And yet rejection of evolution remains widespread, around 30%-60% of the population in most first-world nations, and evidence that demonstrates evolution's reality is still twisted and misused by those with ideological objections to it.
Of course, the core of the climate change premise is also pretty well established (the extreme alarmism and many proposed solutions, not so much), and plenty of evidence is out there, but unfortunately HN continues to disappoint me whenever the subject comes up.
The political groupthink around here is pretty strong and it's starting to sour me on the whole site. I know complaining about HN turning into reddit is cliche but seriously, all the threads about this story (how many have there been by now?) have been worse than reddit.
Thought experiment: What would internal correspondence look like in evolutionary biology circles if the intelligent design movement had the resources of those who seek to refute the man-made climate change hypothesis?
Thought experiment continued: What if the intelligent design movement is right, and the theory of evolution had subtle flaws that were kept under wraps? Would the hypothetical internal correspondence be different in any way?
All this release does is shine the light on the inevitable politicization of the process; it says nothing about the conclusions. (The sausage-making process doesn't necessarily make them wrong -- or right.)
The issue would be that the intelligent design people are playing the game of politics while evolutionary biologists are playing the game of science. (This should be mostly uncontroversial, I hope ...)
This may or may not be the exact same situation with climate science, but I don't think think many would dispute that at least a significant portion the opposition to global warming is purely political.
At that point, what paths are left besides losing the game or entering the politics/PR arena as well? The science has suffered as a result, not been strengthened; the most damning excerpts are evidence enough of that.
Errors are errors. It doesn't really matter from what source they are discovered. It's important for future work that they be eliminated.
The number of times I been able to talk to a climate scientist is few, but always full of hedging. It's a young science and predictions are always difficult (to say the least.) Scientific certainty is a sham. The best bet is to consider near-term action an insurance policy against potential outcomes.
I don't agree with your premise that any opposition is always a net benefit. Do you really believe that the intelligent design movement is making the science of evolution stronger or better?
(Please don't misread this: I do believe that climate science needs and benefits from skeptics, dissent, and alternative theories. I just don't believe that any opposition is good opposition, and in particular I believe that political opposition makes for worse science.)
My point was that politicization alone accounts for the tone and content of the internal correspondence on display, regardless of the soundness of the actual science.
It sounds an awful lot like you were arguing by analogy that it's okay to conspire to hide or even fudge your data if you are a Right Thinking Person defending the world from Evil Polluters. Ends, means.
If the evolution had the same impact shaping economic policy (or any policy for that matter) as global warming, I could guarantee you a similar scenario as to what we have before us. It does not, and humans place way more value on money than they do dogma, so evolution is safe and global warming will be controversial regardless of our ultimate findings.
Climate data does not make global warming a lightening-rod issue. What makes it such a controversial issue is that, if true, it would require dramatic changes to the way the First World operates.
This is not a call to abandon global warming research. This is a call to shine a little sunlight on it, open up data sets and source code to the public, and get politics the hell out of our science. We need to rethink the standards we hold science to in the modern world.