BPSDB “While the administrative effort imposed by these legal moves can be burdensome, there was a much more sinister tactic available to the tobacco industry – baseless accusations of scientific fraud made against individual researchers.”
.
- The meme
- Whistleblower
- The Code
- Official inquiries
- Ironic and illustrative
- Harassment & intimidation
Mark Lynas’ article “Leaked emails mark dangerous shift in climate denial strategy” noted: “Instead of targeting high-profile science communicators like Al Gore, climate deniers are now encouraging mistrust of those who collect and interpret global warming data.”
New to climate change Denial perhaps, but not to the anti-science Deniers, or many of the individual Deniers who are veteran tobacco lobbyists.
The Meme
The “scientific fraud” meme itself is not new. Variations of the smear that we have endured to date include:
- “The UN/IPCC is political”
- “Scientists are lying to get grants”
although there are a lot of sub-memes and variants, but the Climate Research Unit email theft has certainly given it new and increased energy.
Which is not to suggest that there is some grand conspiracy orchestrating the spread of this meme. In the first place correlation does not mean causation, and that this would be the next step in the Denier campaign is perfectly logical.
Since the scope and scale of the science is so huge, and it’s unanimity in supporting the fact of looming catastrophic anthropogenic climate change, the argument of legitimate “scientific uncertainty” had descended to many orders below that of pathetic farce. Only the most gullible of hysteric ideologues could find that believable any more.
As such to restore the impression of “scientific uncertainty” it became necessary to try and undermine the real science somehow. The allegation of fraud does so quite nicely, and the Climate Research Unit hack is a God send to the Deniers in giving them a chance to give new life to this meme.
Second, an orchestrated campaign is not necessary. The Denialosphere of frightened, misinformed, scientifically illiterate and ideologically motivated drones is in place. It is sufficient for the core meme to be fed to the bobbleheads and from there the lynch mob will propagate it far and wide.
As George Marshall notes, that it is false:
” … is hardly the point. This is an orchestrated smear campaign and does not require balance or context. The speed with which the emails have been cut apart and fed into existing storylines is remarkable. The story has been led from the beginning by the denial site climatedepot.com … where you find the entire page given to ‘Climategate’, ‘smoking guns’, ‘blood in the water’ – lines that have all been fed to and doltishly repeated in the mainstream media.
The meme works because it preys on multiple elements of public ignorance about climate science. Some of the mistaken ideas are ‘natural’ and some created or nurtured by the Deniers. These include the mistaken ideas that the science is:
- exclusively model based
- done by only a handful of scientists
- limited in scope
- conducted largely by (US) government researchers
- all recent
Having given the meme new life, there is also the need to give it additional credibility.
“Whistle blower”
An important addition to the story is the suggestion / lie that the email leak is the work of a inside whistle blower. I think that this is misinterpreted by some as an attempt to gloss over an illegal act of data theft. Far from it, the Deniers could care less about the legality (and it is a side issue to the content regardless).
The alleged significance of the emails content is much, much higher if it 
is thought to be the release of selected, important information by a troubled insider who knows the issue rather than the snatch of a random chunk of hard drive by an outsider looking for anything at all.
The frame goes from “we went fishing and here’s what we got” to “someone who knows said you need to know this.” The story takes on an appeal to authority (fallacy) based on the implied knowledge of the fictional insider.
The Code
Of course the emails don’t show any actual tampering with any data or anything, notwithstanding the various attempts to misrepresent the “hide the decline” phrase (some of them hilarious). What the story needs is something that appears to be evidence of actual tampering, hence the computer code claims.
In many ways this is gold for the Deniers as to most people computer code is even more unintelligible than discussions of tree ring proxies and climate sensitivity. For 99% of the population you could throw up a snippet of code from any program at all and make whatever claim you like, and they would have no idea whether it was true or not.
They will assume it must be true (or at least possibly true) because you ‘included the evidence’. In Mining The Source Code AllegationAudit shows how the Deniers are doing just that, albeit apparently with a snippet of actual CRU code. See also “Quote mining code” for more of the same.
Another thread in this line of attack is the “HARRY_READ_Me.txt.” file in which a computer programmer documents the work being done to clean up the CRU data bases and computer code. In it s/he laments the mess they are being asked to deal with, and these quotes are being circulated as evidence that the code is junk.
1) This is a document about work in progress on an inherited project (ie one that they did not start). Just about everyone in that situation makes many references to what a mess they were given and how it would have been better to start from scratch. I have certainly done so myself.
2) Missing from the quotes is all of the references to problems being solved, eg
No, hang on. Easier to analyse the output from metacmp! And so.. postmetacmp.for:
Stats report for: report.0909181759.metacmp.badHmmm.. lots of groups that could be eliminated if we incorporated the WMO reference list, because then we could allow an element of ‘drift’ from a reference point.
3) Notwithstanding the truth of 1) for projects that I have worked on, in the end the final products that resulted did what they were supposed to. What matters for judging the product is the result, not the difficulties encountered along the way.
4) What has been shown in “HARRY_READ_Me.txt.” is that the code needed to be cleaned up (gee, could that why they had someone cleaning it up?) and that it was difficult, no more than that. This is still not evidence that the final result did not do what it was supposed to.
Official inquiries
For the meme to get additional credibility it is useful to have official 
inquiries into all of climate science, not merely the events at CRU. This sustains the myth that notwithstanding the relative insignificance of the CRU allegations, that it actually calls all of climate science into question.
The advantage of an official inquiry is that it preys on conventional sentiments like there is “no smoke without tobacco lobbyists fire” and “if he was innocent why did they arrest him?” Hence calls for official hearings and inquiries from the usual sock puppets such as Inhofe (here) and Nigel Lawson (here).
Which is not to say that there should not be an impartial and real enquiry into some elements of the CRU story, such as the question of data and Freedom of Information requests. Merely that the attempt to sprawl the smear to all of climate science is ideologically motivated politicking.
In addition to credibility, the Deniers need the story to sprawl. Earlier I discussed a few examples of their attempts to spread it to the Hadley Centre and Peter Stott, Jim Salinger and New Zealand’s National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research, and John Holdren. Naturally the attempts are not going to stop there.
Ironic and illustrative
In a pathetic bid for the appearance of relevance to a breaking story, climate change Denier Paul Hudson claimed to have received some of the CRU emails on Oct 12th. What he had actually received were copies of emails discussing what an appalling piece of nonsense his BBC article had been, emails that subsequently turned up in the hacked release (or something like that). In a delicious piece of irony Hudson is now under attack as part of the nonexistent global conspiracy:
BBC weatherman ‘ignored’ leaked climate row emails
The BBC has become tangled in the row over the alleged manipulation of scientific data on global warming.
One of its reporters has revealed he was sent some of the leaked emails from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia more than a month ago – but did nothing about them.
Despite the explosive nature of some of the messages – which revealed apparent attempts by the CRU’s head, Professor Phil Jones, to destroy global temperature data rather than give it to scientists with opposing views – Paul Hudson failed to report the story.
This has led to suspicions that the scandal was ignored because it ran counter to what critics say is the BBC’s unquestioning acceptance in many of its programmes that man-made climate change is destroying the planet.
That he is being attacked shows just how unhinged from reality the whole thing is. Further, the claims being made against Hudson are following the same pattern as the others, viz guilt by association, no acknowledgment that the emails do not contain any actual evidence of anything substantive, no mention of which emails he received and how they demonstrate anything, etc. It’s a template devoid of substance that will be used against every available target.
Harassment & intimidation
Freedom of information and data sharing is vital to healthy science and a healthy society. That goes without saying, but I say it anyway just to be clear. Unfortunately it is also subject to abuse:
“These methods aren’t limited to tobacco, and nowadays the process has become more subtle and indirect. In many cases it is bloggers, rather than companies, that do the legal chasing, and Freedom of Information requests have replaced subpoenas as the instrument of choice.
Here’s an example from a climate sceptic blog. Inspired by the UK Parliamentary expenses scandal, Steve McIntyre of the Climate Audit blog and his readers started sending Freedom of Information requests for the expenses claims of Prof. John Mitchell, Director of Climate Science at the U.K. Met. Office.
…
David Holland then submitted FOI requests for Mitchell’s expenses for trips to IPCC destinations and information on whether he had done so on vacation time, while also confronting Hadley Center with their representations to the public on how Hadley Center scientists were doing the British public proud through their participation as Hadley Center employees in IPCC.“
Apropos of the CRU story Spencer Weart said:
“Even the tobacco companies never tried to slander legitimate cancer researchers. … Aside from crackpots who complain that a conspiracy is suppressing their personal discoveries, we’ve never before seen a set of people accuse an entire community of scientists of deliberate deception and other professional malfeasance.” (Tip of the Hat to Deltoid)
Well, the former is not strictly true, and the tobacco industry did not actually have to accuse the “entire community of scientists of deliberate deception” to achieve it’s ends, although they probably would have if they thought it would help.However, he is right in that those are the stakes here. This is a war on science, on rational thought itself. Anyone who questions the Denier fabrications will soon find themselves being accused of being guilty of climategate … because the Deniers know all about smoking guns.
“Over the 20th century, ocean temperatures in the North Atlantic main development region warmed during peak hurricane season, with the most pronounced warming occurring over the last four decades.” Earth GaugeWe give our consent every moment that we do not resist.
IMAGE CREDITS:
earth ate the gun by shioshvili
smoked my last cigarette… by onkel_wart
woman’smoke 04 by Tonino Donato
Comment Policy
Comments that are not relevant to the post that they appear under or the evolving discussion will simply be deleted, as will links to Denier spam known to be scientific gibberish
- The “Mostly” Open Thread” is for general climate discussion that is not relevant to a particular post. Spam and abuse rules still apply;
- The “Challenging the Core Science” Comment Thread is for comments that purport to challenge the core science of anthropogenic climate change.
.
Greenfyre's 
Mike you have your work cut out for you trying to defend these guys and salvage this train wreck. It does indeed look like the final nail.
Phil Jones has admitted to destroying past records that would have allowed duplication of past climate work…work that right now desprately needs (but no longer has) confirmation to salvage any scientific credibility.
You keep saying this is a small issue out of the vast amount of science pointing toward AWG…bullsh#t, this cabal was controlling the message which throws the entire IPCC into question.
—-
—-
Ray said:
“Phil Jones has admitted to destroying past records…”
What were they exactly?
Please elaborate. If not then you don’t have any evidence.
http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2009/11/is-phil-jones-supressing-data.html
Note the date. Note the reference to those holding the raw data.
Facts, so damn inconvenient!
Phil Jones has admitted to destroying past records that would have allowed duplication of past climate work
… except that his past climate work has been duplicated and no data has been lost.
So nice of one of the “Climategate” dupes to show up so everyone can see how ignorant they are.
Over on the Paul Hudson blog. Some one calling themselves John Marshall is claiming that AGW breaks the second law of thermodynamics.
“One problem with the greenhouse effect is backradiation, that which causes the warming, which violates the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics so cannot happen.”
Anyone got some links to good pages that refute this?
—-
The second law of thermodynamics – also a favourite argument of creationists against evolution.
(I hope I offend no creationists by making that comparison).
—-
The physics hasn’t changed. But human knowledge of physics has.
Professor Wegman identified 42 people who were publishing together and also peer-reviewing each other’s literature, thats certainly enough when a primary few take measures to control what makes it into the IPCC report. [1]
Phil Jones has not been found to have destroyed records, my mistake. He did admit instead the original records no longer exist which still remains the only means to assess the changes made since. No records/No science. [2]
He has however requested others delete pertenent emails. I cannot see how that can be taken out of context when the entire email is published and so ghastly straightforward. [3]
—-
Isn’t the original raw data still available from the nation that provided it?
My understanding is that CRU have adjusted sets of the ‘lost’ raw data, but not the original raw data.
Gavin Schmidt’s response at Real Climate to questions about whether the original raw data has been destroyed by CRU (Comment 824, The CRU Hack) –
[Response: No data has been destroyed, the original files and numbers are with the national weather services that provided them. Removing a copy of a original file because it is not useful for my purposes is not ‘deleting data’ – gavin]
1) Quotes from the Wegman report unmolested or spun by Realclimate.
“In our further exploration of the social network of authorships in temperature reconstruction, we found that at least 43 authors have direct ties to Dr. Mann by virtue of coauthored papers with him. Our findings from this analysis suggest that authors in the area of paleoclimate studies are closely connected and thus ‘independent studies’ may not be as independent as they might appear on the surface. …
“It is important to note the isolation of the paleoclimate community; even though they rely heavily on statistical methods they do not seem to be interacting with the statistical community. Additionally, we judge that the sharing of research materials, data and results was haphazardly and grudgingly done. In this case we judge that there was too much reliance on peer review, which was not necessarily independent….
BTW to link to realclimate under the circumstances is a little weird.
2) You are saying science need not be documented or replicated? We are to take it on faith these guys (after this exposure) have any credibility left? Again, no records/no science!
3) Bullsh#t, AR4 and everything that went into it was bought and paid for by taxpayers including mundane communications obviously related to AR4. In the off chance there is questionable proprietary or security implications you note that concern, you do not delete it. What were they hiding?
—-
Ray, repeating stupidity doesn’t un-stupid it.
link
This is why you think there’s a problem, Ray:
And it continues to move:
http://agwobserver.wordpress.com/2009/11/28/the-copenhagen-diagnosis-references/
—-
From Wegman’s testimony to Congress
(emphasis below is mine):
“The controversy of Mann’s methods lies in that the proxies are centered on the mean of the period 1902-1995, rather than on the whole time period. This mean is, thus, actually decentered low, which will cause it to exhibit a larger variance, giving it preference for being selected as the first principal component. The net effect of this decentering using the proxy data in MBH and MBH99 is to produce a “hockey stick” shape. Centering the mean is a critical factor in using the principal component methodology properly. It is not clear that Mann and associates realized the error in their methodology at the time of publication.”
—-
Wegman disagrees.
Click to access StupakResponse.pdf
“The fact that Wahl and Ammann (2006) admit that the results of the MBH methodology does not coincide with the results of other methods such as borehole methods and atmospheric-ocean general circulation models and that Wahl and Ammann adjust the MBH methodology to include the PC4 bristlecone/foxtail pine effects are significant reasons we believe that the Wahl and Amman paper does not convincingly demonstrate the validity of the MBH methodology.”
Wahl & Amman (2006) admit that Mann’s temperature reconstruction doesn’t agree with other temperature reconstructions:
“The comparison of the MBH reconstruction, derived from multi-proxy (particularly tree ring) data sources, with widespread bore-hole-based reconstructions is still at issue in the literature.”
There’s more to add on this – Wegman’s responses to Stupak’s questions, linked in my last post, covers other points relating to the validity of Mann’s methods & proxies, & Wahl & Amman’s paper.
Entirely off-topic, although correct in all likelihood. I was thinking about this in light of the divergence issue that has come to attention following the CRU theft. If climate sensitivity to CO2 doubling is 3C, then the borehole and glaciar reconstructions make more sense than the CRU reconstruction. The CRU reconstruction is too warm in the 17th century.
Note that non-CRU reconstructions will produce an even sharper “hockey stick.”
Jospeph, a colder 17th century is consistent with the consensus from the peer-reviewed literature that warming has been taking place for several centuries, not just the 20th, as explained in the NAS 2006 report, “Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years”, which had been prompted by doubts raised about Mann’s work :
“Large-scale surface temperature reconstructions yield a generally consistent picture of temperature trends during the preceding millennium, including relatively warm conditions centered around A.D. 1000 (identified by some as the “Medieval Warm Period”) and a relatively cold period (or “Little Ice Age”) centered around 1700. The existence of a Little Ice Age from roughly 1500 to 1850 is supported by a wide variety of evidence including ice cores, tree rings, borehole temperatures, glacier length records, and historical documents.”)
Mann’s ‘hockey stick’ was missing the cold period known as the Little Ice Age, and showed centuries of slow cooling followed by sudden rapid warming in the 20th century. It doesn’t agree with the vast body of evidence documenting the global cold period of the Little Ice Age.
It should also be noted that the Sun has been increasing in activity for several centuries. The cold blip in the early 19th century also coincides with the solar Dalton minimum.
Also, solar activity has a ‘hockey stick’ shape. The Sun was more active in the recent decades of the 20th century than it had been for 8000 years:
Solanki, S.K., I.G. Usoskin, B. Kromer, M. Schüssler and J. Beer. 2004. An unusually active Sun during recent decades compared to the previous 11,000 years. Nature, Vol. 431, No. 7012, pp.1084-1087, 28 October 2004.
(Data viewable at http://gcmd.nasa.gov/records/GCMD_NOAA_NCDC_PALEO_2005-015.html )
The work by Svensmark and Shaviv, amongst others, is also showing that solar modulation of GCR flux is strongly affecting the Earth’s climate:
“Cosmic ray decreases affect atmospheric aerosols and clouds” (Svensmark, Bondo, Svensmark 2009, GRL)
“Cosmoclimatology: a new theory emerges” (Svensmark 2007)
This means that the IPCC’s estimate of climate sensitivity needs to be recalculated – the 3C figure appears to be too high.
Joseph, very sorry for the clumsy mispelling of your name.
Greenfyre has indicated that this conversation is “wasting our time”, so I shall respect that wish and make this a final post.
Is the 3C figure based on tree-ring reconstructions? I believe it’s possible to come up with this estimate with only 150 years of thermometer-based data, and even less than this.
That the CRU reconstruction is too warm in the little ice age I tend to agree with.
I read back, and what Greenfrye is referring to is the nitpicking of the methodology used to produce the “hockey stick.” I do agree that’s a waste of time. It’s possible to produce a “hockey stick” with a simple moving average calculation. There’s no point in discussing “tricks” or algorithms. (See my latest post.)
—-
Greenfyre,
The MBH & MBH99 papers were officially audited and found to be significantly flawed – therefore they’re discredited. It’s hardly nit-picking to point this out. [1]
MBH/MBH99 played a prominent role in the IPCC TAR and was widely displayed by the media, so it’s significant that they turned out to be faulty.
Michael Mann has tried to defend his use of decentered PCA by referencing Ian Jolliffe, a statistical expert (and AGW-believer). ( at http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/on-yet-another-false-claim-by-mcintyre-and-mckitrick/ ).
The blogger Tamino followed by doing the same. Jolliffe replied on Tamino’s blog ( http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/08/10/open-thread-5-2/#comment-21873 ):
“I am by no means a climate change denier. My strong impressive is that the evidence rests on much much more than the hockey stick. It therefore seems crazy that the MBH hockey stick has been given such prominence and that a group of influential climate
scientists have doggedly defended a piece of dubious statistics.”
The MBH hockey stick is a piece of dubious statistics. It should be discarded, as you say.
—-
Tell me where this is wrong:
Everything Michael Mann & Co have done is based on their 1,000 year temperature data bank. If this data is bad, their science is bad. It’s that simple. This data is mostly based on tree rings.
By 1998, many of these guys had invested years and even decades of work based on tree ring data. It’s in 1998 that the “divergence problem” was first recognized: Starting in 1960, tree ring data “diverted” from actual instrument readings. That means thermometers gave one reading, tree rings a different reading.
This is actual scientific proof that tree ring data is suspect. If tree rings don’t work for the last 40 years, why do we think they work for the last 1,000 years. If tree ring-based data is suspect, everything that Mann & Co have done is suspect. QED There are other issues with their methodologies, but this is fundamental. This is the elephant in the room.
They say that the “trick” to “hide the decline” was over how they spliced the old tree ring data with the new data from instruments. So they’re not denying the elephant in the room. They just hope we don’t see it.
From the horse’s mouth, Keith Briffa et al. (IPCC AR4):
“In
their large-scale reconstructions based on tree ring density data,
Briffa et al. (2001) specifically excluded the post-1960 data in
their calibration against instrumental records, to avoid biasing
the estimation of the earlier reconstructions (hence they are not
shown in Figure 6.10), implicitly assuming that the ‘divergence’
was a uniquely recent phenomenon, as has also been argued by
Cook et al. (2004a). Others, however, argue for a breakdown
in the assumed linear tree growth response to continued
warming, invoking a possible threshold exceedance beyond
which moisture stress now limits further growth (D’Arrigo
et al., 2004). If true, this would imply a similar limit on the
potential to reconstruct possible warm periods in earlier times
at such sites. At this time there is no consensus on these issues
(for further references see NRC, 2006) and the possibility of
investigating them further is restricted by the lack of recent tree
ring data at most of the sites from which tree ring data discussed
in this chapter were acquired.”
This sounds like Keith Briffa apologising for the missing MWP in the IPCC TAR 😉
He doesn’t really address the key issue: extracting the temperature signal in tree-ring data means dealing with several confounding variables.
Our poor knowledge of the relationship between these variables and tree-ring growth, and our poor to non-existent data about the past values of these variables, means that temperaute reconstructions from tree-rings remain a shot in the dark.
Even if tree-rings turn out to be extremely poor proxies, this is just science as usual. It wouldn’t be the first time some methods are discarded in favor of other methods. It doesn’t change any of the basic facts. There are other types of reconstructions, etc.
Climate science has a fundamental issue over data:
I can determine by myself the current temperature outside my door with some accuracy — easy to do.
I can accept the idea that scientists can determine the “current average temperature of Earth” — but it’s not easy to do this. I’d expect legitimate questioning of methodologies and assumptions. I wouldn’t be surprised if a substantial minority disagreed with the consensus view of how to do this. But I can see how a legitimate consensus can be reached.
I’m skeptical that scientists can — with precision — determine temperatures from hundreds of years ago. Why is this a surprise? Without a time machine, it’s a hard thing to even ballpark this data. The “divergence problem” is actually proof of the difficulty. I’m impressed scientists can ballpark it.
The key point is “precision.” I learned in my first high school science class that you can’t make your conclusion more accurate than the data you work with. It’s one thing to use proxies like tree rings to survey historic climate conditions. It’s another to say that global average temperature was 55.2 degrees in 1605 for purposes of a trend line to run computer forecasts of the future.
Genuine controversy over things like the Medieval Warm Period shouldn’t be surprising, because of this. But I’ve got real issue with computer modelling based on this kind of data.
Folks like Mann can’t admit this because it would mean they weren’t rock stars anymore.
—-
[…] I wonder how many other climate scientists have had their offices burgled? Or how many other attempts at hacking their computer systems have occurred? Seems to me that there might actually be a conspiracy here – a conspiracy to steal and hack with the purpose to smear. […]
Has anybody actually produced any evidence that the emails were leaked by a whistle blower? The claim seems to be made with increasing frequency (by those eager to use what they contain, of course).
Ross McKitrick made the claim on Channel 4 news.
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/science_technology/hacked+emails+revive+climate+debate/3447647
In fact there’s very good reason to believe that it wasn’t a whistle blower. The person or persons who “obtained” the emails also hacked the RealClimate web site and attempted to post them on the front page. That is a non-trivial act. It would be the work of a skilled hacker- somebody who spends his time on underground web forums in the murkier parts of the cyberworld looking for exploits and vulnerabilities to exploit. These would not be skills that a climatologist would have. Even a university IT person probably wouldn’t- and that IT person wouldn’t have the climatology back ground to read and cherry-pick the emails. More likely it would be the work of a “professional” hacker (somebody who normally makes a living from criminal activity).
An then there’s this report:
http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=2300282
I think Elizabeth May has it right:
“Strange, isn’t it that media are not wondering about who hacked into the computers and who paid them? Or why Dr. Andrew Weaver’s office in Victoria has been broken into twice. My guess is that all the computers of all the climate research centres of the world have been repeatedly attacked, but defences held everywhere but East Anglia.”
http://www.desmogblog.com/elizabeth-may-informed-look-east-anglia-emails
True?
“Suspicions were growing last night that Russian security services were behind the leaking of the notorious British ‘Climategate’ emails which threaten to undermine tomorrow’s Copenhagen global warming summit.
An investigation by The Mail on Sunday has discovered that the explosive hacked emails from the University of East Anglia were leaked via a small web server in the formerly closed city of Tomsk in Siberia.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1233562/Emails-rocked-climate-change-campaign-leaked-Siberian-closed-city-university-built-KGB.html
Usoskin et al. (2005) say that the sun activity is not correlated with temperature since the mid-1970s:
“during these last 30 years the solar total irradiance, solar UV irradiance and cosmic ray flux has not shown any significant secular trend, so that at least this most recent warming episode must have another source.”
Click to access c153.pdf
Have you seen Lord Monckton’s “Caught Greenhanded” report? How do you respond to the analysis of the programming code?
—-