[RonPaulalways]

I don't have to have a position on the tree ring data to call them hypocrites. They should have either used all of the data, or thrown all of it out. What they did was blatant fraud.

Regarding funding, it's not just tenured professors who believe in GW, but also researchers who depend on grants to continue being employed.

[The Clockwork Rat]

I don't have to have a position on the tree ring data to call them hypocrites. They should have either used all of the data, or thrown all of it out. What they did was blatant fraud.

They couldn't because it was crap before 1960. It was not reliable data.

[ThereBeDragons]

I don't have to have a position on the tree ring data to call them hypocrites.

What have they done that is hypocritical? If I am approximating a function across a domain where I believe the approximation is roughly accurate, does that mean I must use the approximation where I know it to be inaccurate, lest I be called a hypocrite?

They should have either used all of the data, or thrown all of it out. What they did was blatant fraud.

Here is a statement:

Tree rings make a reasonable temperature proxy before 1960, and but do not make a reasonable temperature proxy after 1960.

And you know for a fact that this statement is false; am I correct?

You have provided no justification for the statement "either you should have used the data across all time scales, or you should have used none of it." The only possible justification I can think of for this statement is one of the following:

1) Tree rings are always a good temperature proxy and the temperature after 1960 has taken a steep dive.
2) Tree rings are always a horrible temperature proxy and the correlation between tree rings and other proxies in times before 1960 is entirely spurious.

I'll even relax the conditions - are you adamantly, one hundred percent sure, that at least one of these statements is true?

What they did was blatant fraud.

Fraud – noun
1. deceit, trickery, sharp practice, or breach of confidence, perpetrated for profit or to gain some unfair or dishonest advantage.
2. a particular instance of such deceit or trickery
3. any deception, trickery, or humbug
4. a person who makes deceitful pretenses; sham; poseur.

Where have climate scientists been deceitful about the divergence problem? They published a paper about it in Nature in 1998 and the problem has been referenced elsewhere as well. Where is the deception?

[grassroots1]

Have you read the emails? You seem to have a lot of faith in these crooks. Blind socialist faith.

Congratulations, you've just revealed that you have a prejudice toward anything considered leftist, including a knowledge and appreciation of the effects of not only climate change, but various other forms of environmental degradation.

You are drawing a connection between global warming skeptics and the oil companies. Your approach is hypocritical and blindly trusting of the global warming proponents.

No, RPA, I'm OBSERVING a CONNECTION that ALREADY EXISTED. YOU are the one who is drawing a connection between cap-and-trade and climate scientists. And it's incredibly interesting the context in which you're doing so, so let me show you: this is an article about thousands of candid emails between the scientists discussing the tactics of how to present data, even with some discussion of hiding trends and whatnot. Nowhere in these emails is there a connection between any businesspeople and these climate scientists, and YET you USE this email story to try and propagate the bullshit theory that climate scientists are somehow financially benefiting from their discoveries? Wouldn't that be the ONE thing you WOULD find in a list of candid emails?

[RonPaulalways]

Congratulations, you've just revealed that you have a prejudice toward anything considered leftist, including a knowledge and appreciation of the effects of not only climate change, but various other forms of environmental degradation.

No, I have a prejudice towards crooks, whose un-ethical and fraudulent behavior you excuse due to ideological bias.

No, RPA, I'm OBSERVING a CONNECTION that ALREADY EXISTED. YOU are the one who is drawing a connection between cap-and-trade and climate scientists.

What connection? You haven't cited any evidence of a connection. You've made extreme accusations against un-named climate change skeptics, without any citations. When the same is accused against climate change proponents who have been demonstrated to engage in science fraud, you fall over yourself insisting that it's unfair to suspect they have corrupt motives without evidence.

Your position is hypocritical and not objective.

What have they done that is hypocritical? If I am approximating a function across a domain where I believe the approximation is roughly accurate, does that mean I must use the approximation where I know it to be inaccurate, lest I be called a hypocrite?

They conveniently take the part of the data that fits their hypothesis to be accurate, and the part that doesn't to be inaccurate. The selective use of the tree ring data is fraud, not science.

RonPaulAlways wrote:
They should have either used all of the data, or thrown all of it out. What they did was blatant fraud.

Here is a statement:

Tree rings make a reasonable temperature proxy before 1960, and but do not make a reasonable temperature proxy after 1960.

And you know for a fact that this statement is false; am I correct?

It's conjecture, that conveniently helps their favored theory. It smells like bullshit. It's bad science.

[ThereBeDragons]

You have not actually answered any of my questions. I'm presuming you did this on purpose.

They conveniently take the part of the data that fits their hypothesis to be accurate, and the part that doesn't to be inaccurate.

What do you mean "inaccurate"? "Not an effective temperature proxy" means it is "inaccurate"?

The selective use of the tree ring data is fraud, not science.

Hypothesis: Tree rings are a temperature proxy.
Experiment: Compare tree rings with temperature.
Results: Tree rings correlate well with temperature before 1960, but diverge afterwards.
Conclusion: Tree rings are a good temperature proxy before 1960, but are not afterwards.

What was this problem with this logical sequence?

It's conjecture,

All theories are conjectures. Conjectures that are supported by evidence become theories.

that conveniently helps their favored theory.

I guess people should only conjecture things that are at odds with the current consensus. The fact that the conjecture supports their theory is simply not enough either to discredit their conjecture or their theory without some other reason to support it.

It smells like bullshit.

Unfortunately, your suspicion of a paper is not enough to discredit it.

It's bad science.

Is the theory not supported by the evidence? Is the field of dendrochronology entirely bullshit? Was the Maximum Lakewood Density tree ring series a bad temperature proxy? At some point you are going to have to tell me precisely what they said that was factually inaccurate instead of making statements as broad as "bad science."

Tree rings make a reasonable temperature proxy before 1960, and but do not make a reasonable temperature proxy after 1960.

And you know for a fact that this statement is false; am I correct?

So you accuse them of fraud because you know for a fact that this statement is false, and you know for a fact that this statement is false because the statement "smells like bullshit," and it "smells like bullshit" because these guys are doing "bad science," and it's "bad science" because what they're doing is fraudulent.

Circular reasoning much?

[Michaeluj]

Why is information before the 60s so bad?

[RonPaulalways]

RonPaulAlways wrote:
The selective use of the tree ring data is fraud, not science.

Hypothesis: Tree rings are a temperature proxy.
Experiment: Compare tree rings with temperature.
Results: Tree rings correlate well with temperature before 1960, but diverge afterwards.
Conclusion: Tree rings are a good temperature proxy before 1960, but are not afterwards.

That's total bullshit.

Hypothesis: Tree rings are a temperature proxy.
Experiment: Compare tree rings with outputs from other temperature measurements
Results: Tree rings correlate well with other temperature measurements before 1960, but diverge afterwards.
Possible conclusions:
*Tree rings could be a poor temperature proxy, and the overlap with other temperature measurements pre-1960 is a coincidence.
*Tree rings could be a good temperature proxy, and the divergence post-1960 is because the other temperature measurements are not good proxies post-1960.
*Tree rings are a good temperature proxy before 1960, but are not afterwards.

It's conjecture to assume the latter conclusion the right one, one that conveniently supports their favored theory. It's fraud.

RonPaulAlways wrote:
It's conjecture,

All theories are conjectures. Conjectures that are supported by evidence become theories.

That's some pretty weak evidence that they're basing their theory on, certainly not enough to base global environmental policy on.

[ThereBeDragons]

Possible conclusions:
*Tree rings could be a poor temperature proxy, and the overlap with other temperature measurements pre-1960 is a coincidence.

A large portion of the paper is dedicated towards comparing the density series with temperatures, and high correlations are found. I am reasonably sure that it is extremely unlikely that a randomly generated series with similar mathematical properties would achieve such a high correlation. It is not easy to dismiss something this rare as coincidence (such as flipping a coin twenty times and getting eighteen heads).

*Tree rings could be a good temperature proxy, and the divergence post-1960 is because the other temperature measurements are not good proxies post-1960.

For recent years, temperature proxies are not needed as we are able to rely on direct instrumentation, which has demonstratively falsified this hypothesis. So this is not true.

*Tree rings are a good temperature proxy before 1960, but are not afterwards.

This conclusion was reached because the other two were rejected.

That's some pretty weak evidence that their basing their theory on, certainly not enough to base global environmental policy on.

Then it's a good thing that the AGW theory doesn't rest solely on this one paper.

[RonPaulalways]

For recent years, temperature proxies are not needed as we are able to rely on direct instrumentation, which has demonstratively falsified this hypothesis. So this is not true.

Direct instrumentation is still a temperature proxy.

RonPaulAlways wrote:
*Tree rings are a good temperature proxy before 1960, but are not afterwards.

This conclusion was reached because the other two were rejected.

They were rejected based on weak evidence. Their whole theory relies on flimsy conjectures. It's bullshit science.

Then it's a good thing that the AGW theory doesn't rest solely on this one paper.

It relies considerably on the CRU data, which relies on flimsy conjectures as above.

[ThereBeDragons]

Direct instrumentation is still a temperature proxy.

It is generally considered to be the most reliable proxy we have, unless you're going to claim that there's something wrong with our instruments that would prevent them from accurately assessing the temperature.

They were rejected based on weak evidence. Their whole theory relies on flimsy conjectures. It's bullshit science.

At least make statements to back them up, unless you want us to take your word for it. What is your scientific background? How are you able to make blanket statements about "weak evidence," "flimsy conjectures," and "bullshit science" without supporting your statements? Is choosing not to dismiss a high correlation with no reason to do so "weak evidence"? Is a conjecture supported by the data whose main competitors have major flaws "flimsy"?

It relies considerably on the CRU data, which relies on flimsy conjectures as above.

The MDX has nothing to do with the HADCRUT data, so no. Furthermore, even if we nuked the University of East Anglia and engaged in a Stalinist information campaign to wipe all traces of the CRU temperature records off the earth we could still use GISTEMP to do about 99% of what HADCRUT does for the IPCC report.

[RonPaulalways]

RonPaulAlways wrote:
Direct instrumentation is still a temperature proxy.

It is generally considered to be the most reliable proxy we have, unless you're going to claim that there's something wrong with our instruments that would prevent them from accurately assessing the temperature.

There could be something wrong with the locations where the instruments take their readings, like for example being concentrated in cities, which are subject to the Urban heat island effect.

Who knows, this is why you use multiple sources of data- to hedge against the risk of unknown problems with the temperature proxies- rather than homogenizing the data by disqualifying outliers.

RonPaulAlways wrote:
They were rejected based on weak evidence. Their whole theory relies on flimsy conjectures. It's bullshit science.

At least make statements to back them up, unless you want us to take your word for it. What is your scientific background? How are you able to make blanket statements about "weak evidence," "flimsy conjectures," and "bullshit science" without supporting your statements?

We've already established the evidence they used: there was a divergence in 1960 between the tree ring data and the other data. That's not a compelling enough reason to conclude that it's absolutely certain the tree ring data was a reliable proxy pre-1960, and an un-reliable proxy post-1960.

Since requires proof, not conjectures spruced up as facts.

RonPaulAlways wrote:
It relies considerably on the CRU data, which relies on flimsy conjectures as above.

The MDX has nothing to do with the HADCRUT data, so no. Furthermore, even if we nuked the University of East Anglia and engaged in a Stalinist information campaign to wipe all traces of the CRU temperature records off the earth we could still use GISTEMP to do about 99% of what HADCRUT does for the IPCC report.

Let's omit the CRU data and then see what conclusions are formed. As it is, the institution providing data used UN IPCC panel is discredited.

[ThereBeDragons]

There could be something wrong with the locations where the instruments take their readings, like for example being concentrated in cities, which are subject to the Urban heat island effect.

Scientists have generally done their best to isolate and remove the urban heat island effect. An analysis of rural stations only, Peterson et al, Global Rural Temperature Trends, Geophys. Res. Lett., 26(3), 329–332. also shows warming. They are not perfect, but to claim that the tree rings are more correct that direct instrumentation would indicate that the world has cooled since 1960, which is at odds with direct land instrumentation, satellite temperature records, etc.

We've already established the evidence they used: there was a divergence in 1960 between the tree ring data and the other data. That's not a compelling enough reason to conclude that it's absolutely certain the tree ring data was a reliable proxy pre-1960, and an un-reliable proxy post-1960. Science requires proof, not conjectures spruced up as facts.

I believe they rejected the other two conjectures as a priori incorrect since they were directly at odds with everything they knew about science, leaving them to conclude what they did.

Let's omit the CRU data and then see what conclusions are formed.

You'll have to convince your local friendly scientist to do that, since neither of us are writing the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report.

As it is, the institution providing data used UN IPCC panel is discredited.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but citation, please. I assume by "discredited" you are meaning that their data cannot be trusted.

[RonPaulalways]

RonPaulAlways wrote:
There could be something wrong with the locations where the instruments take their readings, like for example being concentrated in cities, which are subject to the Urban heat island effect.

Scientists have generally done their best to isolate and remove the urban heat island effect. An analysis of rural stations only, Peterson et al, Global Rural Temperature Trends, Geophys. Res. Lett., 26(3), 329–332. also shows warming. They are not perfect, but to claim that the tree rings are more correct that direct instrumentation would indicate that the world has cooled since 1960, which is at odds with direct land instrumentation, satellite temperature records, etc.

The fact is, there is too much that is potentially unknown, that could be skewing the data either way. My reference to the Urban heat island effect was just an example. The global climate is impossibly complex, and any theory and any reading can only be accepted tentatively.

Given the reality of our limitations with respect to our grasp and certainty of the facts, omitting one source of data is a decision that is based heavily on conjecture, which makes it highly liable to be affected by the personal biases of the scientists, and is therefore scientifically irresponsible. Given the evident personal biases of the scientists in question, their objectivity when coming to the decision on the tree ring data is highly suspect.

RonPaulAlways wrote:
As it is, the institution providing data used UN IPCC panel is discredited.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but citation, please. I assume by "discredited" you are meaning that their data cannot be trusted.

Yes, I assumed discredited means cannot be trusted.

[ThereBeDragons]

Given the reality of our limitations with respect to our grasp and certainty of the facts, omitting one source of data is a decision that is based heavily on conjecture, which makes it highly liable to be affected by the personal biases of the scientists, and is therefore scientifically irresponsible. Given the evident personal biases of the scientists in question, their objectivity when coming to the decision on the tree ring data is highly suspect.

Scientists cannot always be counted on to be perfectly objective; they are human and humans have biases. If the fact that the scientists in question think lowly of people they consider deniers and are supporters of the "consensus," to you, means that their prejudices and subjectivity will taint their science to the point that it is fundamentally untrustworthy, I do not think there is very much I can do to convince you otherwise.

Good luck finding some "unbiased" scientists to do your work for you, as you're going to have to work hard to find them.

[RonPaulalways]

Scientists should always aim to be cautious about drawing definitive conclusions, even to a fault. These guys didn't, and they put their agenda in front of good practices like transparency.

[PredatorOC]

Scientists have an interest in preventing garbage from getting published; nothing wrong with that.

Perhaps, but they clearly were working with a preconceived notion that all "denier" papers are automatically garbage. That's very different.

But to be more precise; I don't really care about the science. I don't have the skills to judge climate science one way or the other anyway. But I am bothered that their science might directly lead to trillions of euros being spent on ecological projects. So when these scientists apparently are silencing dissent, I get very uneasy.

For example, one recent model I read about had the climate warming up by 6 degrees celcius rather quickly. And while I may not fully understand the science behind it, I am left to wonder why I keep hearing "the science is settled" and yet these models keep producing very different outcomes. Not to mention why catastrophic warming trends are always just around the corner, even when the past decade has seen a rather stable temperature pattern while greenhouse emissions have apparently gone up considerably. Yet these things are never discussed in the open because it would interfere with the politicians' message of "the science is settled".

So I am left wondering if the needs of politics have placed a burden on the science to be "settled", thus leading to the situation reflected in the emails.

If somebody actually had bombed a dataset off the face of the earth presumably somebody would have made a reference to it somewhere.

Why? If I commit a crime, I'm not going to talk about it in an email. Also, you are assuming whoever got these emails that they had the time and ability to look through all the emails to find the most damning ones.

[ThereBeDragons]

So when these scientists apparently are silencing dissent, I get very uneasy.

There are dissenting papers that get into the literature. From what I have seen, they are usually flawed in some way or another. Peer-review is designed to filter out bad science, so necessarily some voices will be silenced. But even outside the peer-reviewed literature (safe from the prying gatekeepers who are the editors of journals) I have yet to see anything that changes the ball game.

For example, one recent model I read about had the climate warming up by 6 degrees celcius rather quickly. And while I may not fully understand the science behind it, I am left to wonder why I keep hearing "the science is settled" and yet these models keep producing very different outcomes.

A lot of the science is not settled. Usually the phrase "the science is settled" is brought out when one runs into people who deny that humans are causing CO2 which is absolutely not disputed. However, uncertainty in prediction (most parts of the IPCC report come with measures of certainty and of course error estimates abound) and the science not being settled are two very different things.

If you are looking at models and running them under different circumstances (for example, if one of them is running with the assumption that we keep pumping CO2 into the atmosphere full speed ahead, and the other attempts to halve emissions by 2050, you're going to get quite different results) you will get considerably different answers. Assuming identical CO2 conditions, models will still differ (even when the same model is run) because climate is a chaotic system and different runs with perturbed conditions may have internal variability, and among models, there may also be differences depending on how they treat factors that are unknown or not fully understood (in these cases, scientists look at physics and historical data to put upper and lower bounds on how much of a role these factors can play.) From the graph I'm looking at (IPCC AR4 Working Group I Chapter 10 Fig 10.26 pg. 803, if you care; it's a big pretty picture) it looks as though general circulation models have a standard-deviation spread of about one degree in 2100 for a given carbon output.

Not to mention why catastrophic warming trends are always just around the corner, even when the past decade has seen a rather stable temperature pattern while greenhouse emissions have apparently gone up considerably. Yet these things are never discussed in the open because it would interfere with the politicians' message of "the science is settled".

Global temperature doesn't behave in a linear fashion. If you'll look at the graph, it's rather clear that year-to-year fluctuations are hardly minimal; one has to separate natural year-to-year variability of the system from the long-term trend. It would be quite premature to declare that global warming has now "stopped" based on a "stable" decade (which, if you'll run the numbers, still contains a weak positive trend.) The fact is that basic radiative physics models of the atmosphere predict that an increase in CO2 will shift the Earth towards a new, hotter, long-term equilibrium system, and scientists have identified the effect a doubling in CO2 would have in the simple radiative model. The real earth is more complicated because of positives and negative feedbacks associated with our real earth, but scientists have worked to place upper and lower bounds on the system response. No physical phenomenon I have heard of could somehow "stop" this effect at 350 ppm of CO2.

So I am left wondering if the needs of politics have placed a burden on the science to be "settled", thus leading to the situation reflected in the emails.

I think most scientists are independent-minded enough to resent outside pressure - you won't find any of the CRU researchers taking heat from Obama for being insufficiently certain, or kowtowing to Al Gore's demands for more warming. However, there may be a political element to it - the climate scientist Judith Curry, who is basically the only climate scientist who is on good terms with such skeptics as Anthony Watts or Steve McIntyre, has a post on ClimateAudit expressing concern about the "situation reflected in the emails":

2. Climate tribalism. Tribalism is defined here as a strong identity that separates one’s group from members of another group, characterized by strong in-group loyalty and regarding other groups differing from the tribe’s defining characteristics as inferior. In the context of scientific research, tribes differ from groups of colleagues that collaborate and otherwise associate with each other professionally. As a result of the politicization of climate science, climate tribes (consisting of a small number of climate researchers) were established in response to the politically motivated climate disinformation machine that was associated with e.g. ExxonMobil, CEI, Inhofe/Morano etc. The reaction of the climate tribes to the political assault has been to circle the wagons and point the guns outward in an attempt to discredit misinformation from politicized advocacy groups. The motivation of scientists in the pro AGW tribes appears to be less about politics and more about professional ego and scientific integrity as their research was under assault for nonscientific reasons (I’m sure there are individual exceptions, but this is my overall perception). I became adopted into a “tribe” during Autumn 2005 after publication of the Webster et al. hurricane and global warming paper. I and my colleagues were totally bewildered and overwhelmed by the assault we found ourselves under, and associating with a tribe where others were more experienced and savvy about how to deal with this was a relief and very helpful at the time.

Perhaps this is of concern. It has been described by some at RealClimate as a "bunker mentality" or a "siege mentality;" I feel it to be rather undeniable that a lot of the criticisms they were getting were entirely spurious. If this has caused them to, in their zeal, reject "dissenting" papers without due consideration, I would find that to be a problem - but most of the "dissenting" papers, whether they made it through the peer review program or whether the authors decided to publish it Energy and Environment (a journal with basically no standards whatsoever,) have been flawed in a small or large capacity.

Why? If I commit a crime, I'm not going to talk about it in an email. Also, you are assuming whoever got these emails that they had the time and ability to look through all the emails to find the most damning ones.

There's a news post over in Today's News which suggested that the hackers had the emails for over a month before releasing a selection.

[Galoredk]

This is a farce. Even the climate scientists in question admit in the Email they cannot explain the current cooling trend. And they even go so far as to wish it was Warming, just to be right.
when you have leading scientists from the IPCC who is supposedly an objective scientific organ, mailing eachother back and forth to selectively oust people who disagree with them, delete important information about ar4 and deliberately withholding data for experiment reconstruction, then those scientists cannot be trusted. What you claim is bad science, is only claimed to be so since it has been deliberatelydenied by Phil Jones and his accomplises.

And claiming that trees are excellent temperature proxies is idiotic at best. These are numerous factors which influence tree ring growth. Temperature is one of them, which several biologist have already notified the scientists about and then have been deliberately ignored because that view is damaging to the consensus.

[ThereBeDragons]

Even the climate scientists in question admit in the Email they cannot explain the current cooling trend.

You did not address what I wrote previously about this in the thread. Here it is again for your reference:

You didn't need to hack into Trenberth's email to find this out. He published a peer-reviewed paper about it in October this year: An imperative for climate change planning: tracking Earth’s global energy, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, Oct. 2009.

If you don't feel like reading it; Trenberth is stating that we cannot track year-to-year variation in thermal flux at the top of the atmosphere.

And they even go so far as to wish it was Warming, just to be right.

Quotes, please.

when you have leading scientists from the IPCC who is supposedly an objective scientific organ, mailing eachother back and forth to selectively oust people who disagree with them,

There is one email suggesting that someone be "ousted," and the impetus for the suggestion was scientific misconduct.

deliberately withholding data for experiment reconstruction,

CRU has agreements with third-party data suppliers (national meteorological organizations) which prevent it from releasing all of it's data.

What you claim is bad science, is only claimed to be so since it has been deliberatelydenied by Phil Jones and his accomplises.

Pick a paper, then, and I can probably give you reasons why there's something wrong with it besides "Phil Jones and co. said so." But if you don't provide any examples, then I can hardly provide anything besides blanket statements.

These are numerous factors which influence tree ring growth. Temperature is one of them, which several biologist have already notified the scientists about and then have been deliberately ignored because that view is damaging to the consensus.

Nobody denies that there are a number of factors which influence tree ring growth; this has been well-known throughout the entire history of dendrochronology. They have not been "deliberately ignored" except to the degree where I would be ignored if I tried to tell somebody that the sky was blue. Here's a article from Science dating from 1966 - Growth-Rings of Trees: Their Correlation with Climate, Science 154 (3752), 973 which demonstrates such ignorance of factors other than temperatures with quotes like "[m]any differences in the ring-width growth within a tree may be attributed to changing supplies of food and hormones," or "dependence of ring widths on the gross regional patterns of precipitation" or "variance, which is not correlated among sites, may be attributed to local en-vironmental and climatic differences, to variability among and within trees, and to compounding effects of occasional fires, insect or other infestations, and recurring years of high seed production."