CRUde hack, and the bleat goes on

BPSDB The bleat goes on, the bleat goes on

Deniers keep pounding a rhythm to the brain

La de da de de, la de da de da

• Plimer sinks even lower
• Lost and tampered data
• $22 million FUD
• Jones steps down, data being released

Plimer sinks even lower

“If you have to argue your science by using fraud, your science is not valid.”

Ian Plimer commenting on the theft and release of the emails from the Climate Research Unit

This absolutely beggars belief. This from the man who’s climate book is nothing but one long string of frauds from start to finish, who’s idea of debate is juvenile fraud. Is he that clueless about science? integrity? himself? or all three?

If you have the stomach for a relentless spew of hypocrisy and stupidity you can read the rest here, but it’s just the same old frauds that Plimer has been spouting all along. A more recent debunking of Plimer is Leprechauns and climate by the apsmith 🙂 .

Lost and tampered data

In my run through of the CRUde Hack memes the other day I neglected to mention the “lost and tampered data” memes.

Data tampered with

This is the effort to try and spin the tree proxy related “hide the decline” quote into some sort of evidence of temperature data tampering. As discussed, it’s not. However, just for those who find the real explanation unconvincing, here are the plotted temperature records from the four major data aggregators, including CRU:

Notes and Musings

We can clearly see how CRU differs wildly from the others due to the alleged tampering … NOT; so can we dismiss that claim for the politically motivated lie that it is?

Lost data

Another meme that has resurged is that HadCRU lost/destroyed all of the raw data so that no one could check their results. The facts are that in the 1980s CRU disposed of their copies of the original data, although they still have the adjusted data and the record of corrections.

The originals are still available from the various national weather service sources for anyone who wants to ask for it:

• Is Phil Jones supressing data?
• McIntyre versus Jones: climate data row escalates
• Santer, Jones, and Schneider respond to CEI’s phony attack on the temperature record
• Data available from CRU

And would someone please tell me what Freeedom of Information requests were active at the time, almost 20 years before there was an FOI Act? Just asking.

Somehow all of this reminds me of a quote I saw recently:

“If you have to argue your science by using fraud, your science is not valid.”

Now where did I see that?

In the meantime CRU is releasing all of the data that it is legally entitled to, which I will paranthetically note has always been available to and released to other scientists, and 95% of it has been released to others in the past.

For those who like to claim all of the climate data is hidden RealClimate offers a guide of where to find pretty much all of the major climate data. It’s a handy guide for sure, but in fact in the past all you actually had to do was use a search engine for a few minutes to find it; a challenge that seems to defeat your average Denier.

$22 million FUD

Another strand in the Denier flock’s bleating is that Phil Jones received $22 million in research grants. Needless to say this is meant to appeal to those who imagine that Jones got to slip it into his own pocket. The truth is that grants are administered by the University and the researcher has to account for every penny.

Naturally there are some opportunities for limited abuse, such as attending more conferences, staying in slightly nicer hotels while at conferences, etc. However this tends to be self defeating in that every dollar wasted in this manner does not support your research (new equipment, more tech support, etc). As a result your research declines, and then so do your grants.

As a consequence pretty much every researcher I have known has been modest to Scrooge like in their discretionary spending. From staying in student dorms during conferences to using the conference wine and cheeses to cut out meal expenses, they scrounge every dollar they can for the work.

The funniest attempt to spin this one that I saw was the claim that by getting big grants Jones guarenteed his job security and likelihood of career advancement. Ahhh … doing your job well is an underhanded way of keeping your job … how nefarious and corrupt of Jones!

Predictably no one can show that Jones got even a penny for himself that he was not legally and ethically entitled to, nor that he ever did anything but good science. It’s just the usual Denier slander and nothing more.

Jones steps down

Well, the news of Jones stepping down as Director of the Climatic Research Unit has certainly taken the wind out of my call for his resignation.

This was drafted in response to Monbiot’s The Knights Carbonic:

In a coming post I will document why I think there is probably no grounds for actual prosecution etc, at least based on what we know to date, but Jones had clearly become obsessive about not releasing the data to McIntyre. His actions may not have been actually criminal, but the most charitable one can be is to say that some of them were quite probably unethical.

I understand the pressures he was under and his reasons for the actions. I can even sympathize, but sympathy does not equal exoneration, nor is an explanation an excuse. It’s pretty clear that he went too far and no one did Jones any favours by not reigning him in.

Whether Jones actually deserves formal consequences is up to some sort of impartial, formal review process at the CRU.  Regardless, the reality is that he is now so compromised that he is a liability to CRU in particular and climate science generally. I agree with Monbiot that he should resign.

Not merely resign, but come forward with the details on any and all instances where his behaviour was even borderline, even those that may not be known about at all.  It is the only way to clear the air about the science itself.

And CRU should release all of the data that it is legally permitted to.

More prescience blown (damn the blogging backlog). Anyway, as the song suggests, this too shall pass

Charleston was once the rage, uh huh

History has turned the page, uh huh

CRU hack posts on this blog here.

“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 Gauge

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