Send a Christmas card to Minister Clement

December 4, 2009 — xanthippa

Today, this came via email:

As you probably know, Big Internet Service Providers (Bell, Rogers, Shaw, etc.) are trying to take control of how we use the Internet. BUT Industry Minister Tony Clement can put a stop to this. So let’s send him a Christmas card asking him to give Canadians the gift of the Open Internet this holiday season!

Sign the card through Twitter.

Sign the card through Facebook.

Sign it on our site.

Tell Minister Clement to be our Open Internet Santa!

Thousands of people have already told Minister Clement to stop Big Telecom from taking control of our Internet use. Considering we’ve successfully pushed the CRTC to develop open Internet guidelines and convinced the two major political parties to support Net Neutrality, we can win this if we send the minister enough letters. If you haven’t already done so, please take a few seconds to send Tony Clement a letter.

If you’ve already taken action, tell all your friends.

Share on Facebook.

Stay in the loop at SaveOurNet.ca and be sure to check out videos of our Open Internet Town Hall Events.

Thank you.

The SaveOurNet.ca team

Posted in freedoms, politics, society, technology. Tags: , , , , . 3 Comments »

‘The data is posted’ excuse by IPCC fraudsters

December 3, 2009 — xanthippa

Yesterday, Dr. Phil Jones – perhaps the most influential ‘Climate Alarmist’ scientist who headed up THE centre of ACC research, resigned.  At least, he has stepped down temporarily (original report by AP, corrected with actual facts here), while there is a fraud investigation into his and his team’s  treatment of the very data on which the IPCC reports (and the trillions of dollars in spending by the politicians – and setting up a ‘World Government’) is based.

Not mistakes, not errors – fraud!

And, unless a person is plugged into the blogosphere,  they would be unlikely to hear about it. The mainstream media seems to think this is not worth reporting….

This whole ‘ClimateGate’ (oh, how I hate that term) is being swept under the carpet and whitewashed by those who are guilty, their friends, and journalists who don’t want to reveal (or, in many instances, don’t want to admit to themselves) just how deeply they failed to do their job and check the ‘facts’ they ‘reported’ with an impartial source and how easily they allowed themselves to be manipulated into reporting only one side of the ACC debate.

And, since only one side of the scientific debate was being reported, it was easy to pretend that there is a ‘consensus’ and that the ‘debate is settled’…

It does not help that a lot of the things that are at the heart of the scandal are not easily understandable by people who are not used to the ‘scientific method’ or the language used to describe ‘stuff’ when scientists talk amongst themselves.  It seems that every field of human specialization develops its own jargon, as much to prove that the ‘insiders’ are ‘in’ as to elevate themselves (in their own eyes) above ‘the outsiders’.  It’s human nature.

Here, this ‘jargon’ and ‘specific methodology’ makes it very difficult for the ‘outsider’ to understand exactly how rude and contemptuous some of the communication – published in the leaked (and, latest evidence available now suggests it was leaked by a whistle-blower and not illegally hacked by an outsider) emails – truly is.

I am referring to the ‘Accees to Information’ thread – specifically, to the one described by the ‘requestee’ himself, Willis Eschenbach.

OK – I will do my best to explain the depth of disrespect, arrogance and {insert expletive of your choice} attitude the CRU team in East Anglia has demonstrated.

Point #1.

Lots and lots of ‘surface temperature data’ has been collected. That is true.

Point #2

Most of this data is openly published at all kinds of official websites.  That is also true.

Point #3

Some of this data is of poor quality – for all kinds of reasons. Anthony Watts has demonstrated this, through his photographic documentation as well as analysis of the ‘surface stations’, where he showed some of these were placed next to barbecues and heat vents…  The Phil Jones and his team also admit there are problems with some of the stations:  that is why they had only decided to use data from some stations, rejecting others.

Point #4

In order to re-produce the results that Dr. Phil and his team got – an integral part of the scientific peer-review process – Willis Eschenbach needed to know which of the stations were used in Dr. Phil’s CRU studies, and which were excluded.

In an ideal world, the CRU team would release openly not only the list of the stations whose data they actually used, they would also publish their selection criteria and the reasons for it.  (That is, ‘only data from stations that are not located within 100m of artificial heat sources was used’, or ‘stations which have been re-located more than 5 times are excluded’ etc.) After all, scrutinizing the reasoning for including and excluding some data is very important, as it double checking that the ‘mechanics’ of including/excluding was done without errors.

The original FoI request:

In his original FoI request (September 2006), Willis Eschenbach asks the CRU for the actual data which was used in their study, so he can replicate their methodology.

The 1st CRU reply:

Some 6 months or so later, Mr. Eschenbach finally gets a response and is told to check the websites, as all the info is out there- somewhere !

“Your request for information received on 28 September now been considered and I can report that the information requested is available on non-UEA websites as detailed below.

…

Between them, these two datasets have the data which the UEA Climate Research Unit (CRU) uses to derive the HadCRUT3 analysis.

…

In accordance with S. 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 this letter acts as a Refusal Notice, and the reasons for exemption are as stated below

Exemption Reason
 s. 21, Information accessible to applicant via other means Some information is publicly available on external websites

This is really, really an official ‘PFO’ – yes, the data is somewhere out there, in these here websites.  Go ‘f’ yourself, because we’re not telling you which ones of these sets of data we used, which we threw away, or why!

It’s sort of like asking for the bus schedule and being told to look at the list of all the arrivals and departures at all the different bus stops, but without telling you which bus route goes to which stop…

The second FoI request:

Willis Eschenbach was outraged – and made a second FoI request in which he explained that he needed to know WHICH data was actually used, and why.  He also pointed out that the two sites the response to his first FoI request have different numbers for many stations – and wants to know which ones the Dr. Jones’ team actually used.

The 2nd CRU response:

Interestingly enough, the 2nd response does not claim that the data is ‘all out there’, like the first one does.  No!

The claim NOW is that 98% of the data is on these sites – and, again, ‘we’re not telling you which bits we chose to use and which to toss out, so go boil your head’.  So look.  BUT, 2% of the data we used isn’t there anyway, and it is too secret to tell you what it is.  Go ask the people we got it from!

“In regards the “gridded network” stations, I have been informed that the Climate Research Unit’s (CRU) monthly mean surface temperature dataset has been constructed principally from data available on the two websites identified in my letter of 12 March 2007. Our estimate is that more than 98% of the CRU data are on these sites.

The remaining 2% of data that is not in the websites consists of data CRU has collected from National Met Services (NMSs) in many countries of the world. In gaining access to these NMS data, we have signed agreements with many NMSs not to pass on the raw station data, but the NMSs concerned are happy for us to use the data in our gridding, and these station data are included in our gridded products, which are available from the CRU web site. These NMS-supplied data may only form a very small percentage of the database, but we have to respect their wishes and therefore this information would be exempt from disclosure under FOIA pursuant to s.41. The World Meteorological Organization has a list of all NMSs.

So,which is it?  Both responses can’t possibly be true!

Either the data is on these websites, as per the 1st response, or some of it isn’t, as per the 2nd reply.

Regardless, the main question, the subject of both the FoI requests (for either 100% or 98% of the data) has not been addressed!  There is no list of stations which were actually used.

You’d think they had Dogbert write these responses!

AFTER A FEW MORE TRIES…

… the CRU finally claims they cannot hand over the list of stations, because they lost it.

Actually, they say they deleted it because they needed the space…

This really is inconcievable!

How could a prestigious place of scientific research loose the very data on which years of their research is based?

Going back to my ‘bus schedule’ parallel – this would be like saying that they can’t tell you which bus route goes to which stop, because they lost the list of routes!

OK – I am getting all worked up, and this post is getting rather long – my apologies.  It’s just that this just boggles my mind: I just hope I have explained just how revealing this particular exchange of correspondence truly is.

Posted in politics, science, scientific fraud, society. Tags: , , , , . 1 Comment »

ACC is real – just not the way IPCC claims

December 1, 2009 — xanthippa

Let’s face it:  us pesky humans are constantly changing the climate around us!

From as far back as we know, we have always tried to create pockets of micro-climates where we controlled the water flow and maintained temperatures as close to the 20-22 degrees Celsius optimum as possible! We call these ‘our homes’.

And, we have become very good at creating and maintaining these human-changed pockets of climate!

As I point out to my husband just about every summer, when he suggests that camping might be a fun family activity:  it took our ancestors thousands of years to develop running water at just the optimal temperature to fill a ‘soaker-tub’, it took centuries of engineering to be able to control the heating and cooling of our house with the touch of a button, it took decades of scientific research to put little box into our basement so I can connect to the whole world!  To voluntarily sleep on the hard ground, separated from the elements by nothing but a thin piece of cloth held up by glorified sticks – that would be disrespectfully turning our backs on our ancestors!

The tent, of course, is also an artificial  microclimate:  but nowhere as nice as our home.  But, ‘indoors’ is not the only climate we are building…

It is a well known phenomenon that the temperature inside a forest is several degrees cooler than in the meadow just beside it:  this is a function of the type of vegetation that grows there.  Plants use the energy from the air which surrounds them to eat up carbon dioxide and poop out oxygen – this energy ‘in the air’ is indeed what we measure as ‘temperature’.

In a meadow, the plants are usually (plus or minus) ‘knee deep’.  In a forest, there are short plants, too – plus they are surrounded by plants which are much taller.  And, all the green bits of these plants are eating up the carbon dioxide and cooling the air around them in the process.  Since the plants here are ‘stacked up above each other’, and each bit is sucking in energy out of the air, it is not surprising that the forest is cooler than the adjoining meadow because some of the heat from the air is absorbed by the plants (and turned into food) at every layer of the forest.

When we surround our homes with tiny little short lawns, where each blade of grass is chopped into stunted obedience (admission – I think that ‘manicured lawns’ are hideous and unsightly, as well as philosophically offensive), we have replaced the trees and bushes which used to grow there with plants which are nowhere near as good at cooling the air as a forest (or even scrub, or the plants in a marsh) would be.  We may not think of it that way, but when we mow our lawns and pull out the thistles, we are altering our climate by propagating plants which are relatively inefficient in cooling the air and reducing the carbon dioxide levels.

The same holds true when we cut down forests and plant crops (OK – I am not referring to Christmas tree farms….I mean grains, and so on).  And I am not even talking about the large areas we pave, because we find pavement to be convenient – forests which absorb heat are now replaced by cement or asphalt which absorb the heat and radiate it right back out.

Predictably enough, the temperatures we measure in cities are higher than in the ones we measure in the countryside just outside them. This effect is called ‘urban heat islands’ and is well known to climatologists.  (OK- my description is a simplification… these references do a better job.)

Here is a nifty video I came across, which really clearly illustrates this:

This video used the surface temperature data collected by NASA’s GISS – the same data was also available to the IPCC scientists…. If you would indulge me, I would like to point something out:  I have not verified that what this kid and his dad have done is accurate.  BUT – I could, if I wanted to! Because unlike the IPCC cabal, which swore they would rather delete their ‘source data’ than reveal it – and this data has, mysteriously, been accidentally deleted due to lack of storage memory (!), this kid and his dad have  (in preparing a YouTube video) followed the scientific method with much greater integrity than our esteemed IPCC experts.  Notice what theboy and his dad did:

  1. Stated what they wanted to find out, and why (their hypothesis)
  2. Stated where they took their data from (the NASA GISS site – they showed both the web address and screenshots), so people would be able to get the same data from there and check that they were not making it up, or that they did not make any mistakes.
  3. Stated how they selected the sites they used:  a pair of readings, one inside a city, one in the countryside nearby
  4. Stated how they defined ‘city’ (minimum population size) and ‘countryside’ (maximum population size)
  5. Stated how they ‘controlled’ for geographic variations:  the maximum distance separating the ‘city’ and ‘country’ pair, to make sure that they really were located in the same geographic area
  6. Showed the points they actually used – each and every one of them, along with the selection criteria, was scrolled down the screen, making it possible for everyone to check their work and reproduce it
  7. Showed their methodology:  the dad explained, in detail – and repeating himself to make sure he was clear – exactly what they did with the data once they decided which points to use….again, everyone can follow his steps EXACTLY in order to verify his claims
  8. Showed intermediate results:  the ‘in-between’ stages of the data, the various graphs, are shown and clearly explained what it is they are showing and how they were generated
  9. Showed final results and explained how they related to (confirmed, in this case) tw thheir hypothesis – in other words, they said this is why/how our results confirm what we said at the beginning

EVERYONE CAN RE-DO THIS TO CHECK IT FOR THEMSELVES!!!

And THAT is what ALL scientists are supposed to do – not just for little videos, but especially for work based on which trillions of dollars are being spent!  But, I digress from my original point…

Which was that yes, we humans ARE changing the climate around us.  If nothing else, this little amateur video has demonstrated this:  but this ‘ACC’ is not caused by carbon dioxide emissions, it is caused by deforestation and urbanization….

 

Carbon caps will have no effect on it whatsoever!

In science, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

The CRU climatologists have not only failed to provide any proof of their claims (aside from their say-so), they have actively destroyed data so that nobody else can provide a proof, either.   Without a proof, why should we believe them – especially when an alternative explanations for the same data, presented transparently and verifiably, is so easily available?

Posted in human nature, perceptions, politics, science, society. Tags: , , , , , , . 1 Comment »

Paul Graham: essays

November 30, 2009 — xanthippa

My son told me I had to read this guy’s essays – they were brilliant!

I have barely ‘scratched the surface’  – but I do agree with him.  His ‘news’ feed is also interesting.

Enjoy!

Posted in education, freedoms, philosophy, science, society, technology. Tags: , , , , , . 1 Comment »

The ‘Tree Ring Circus’: what does ‘divergence of the proxy’ mean?

November 26, 2009 — xanthippa

With the ‘leaked emails’ confirmed as authentic, many experts are sifting through the materials and analyzing them.

One thing which has been highlighted was the discussion about tree ring studies, from which the (now infamous – you can get T-shirts with it) ‘hide the decline’ phrase comes from. Here, I would like to explain what the ‘tree ring’ and ‘multi-proxy reconstruction’ thing is all about, and why it really, really matters.

When constructing the graphs of global temperatures, the scientists ran into a tiny little problem:  how do we know what the Earth’s temperature was like, say, 1 500 years ago? There were no ‘standardized measurements’…. So, how do we ‘know’?

Aside:  my explanation is going to be a simplification for the sake or clarity, which runs the danger of being an over-simplification.  Please, consider it to be a starting point for your own inquiry, not anything more.

The idea is that there are other ‘indicators’ of the Earth’s temperature than just ‘direct measurements’, like we can make today.

For example, ‘tree ring data’.  Each year’s growth can be measured on each tree, because tree-trunks grow radially outwards:  the latest year adds the newest (out-most) ring to the tree.  By looking at the rings, scientists can see which ones are thicker (meaning that the tree added ‘more growth’ that year) and which ones are thinner (meaning the tree grew less that year).

The reasoning goes something like this:

  1. The years when the weather is nice and warm, plants do well and grow more.
  2. Trees are plants, therefore trees do well grow more:  the warmer a year it was, the bigger the tree’s growth ring for that year will be!
  3. Therefore, looking back and comparing the size of tree rings will tell us when it was warmer and colder.

Sounds good, right?

So, that is what they did.

(By ‘they’, I mean the scientists who promote the ‘Anthropogenic Climate Change’ agenda and on whose scientific work the current political policies are based.  I shall refer to them as ‘the IPCC cabal’.)

They took core samples of very, very old trees and looked at their rings, counted the years and centuries, compared them, analyzed them, assigned temperature values to various ring thicknesses – and they came up with a nifty little graph. Because it does not measure the temperature directly, but uses a ‘proxy’ (a substitute) – the growth of trees – this nifty little curve was included on the graph they submitted to the IPCC report as one of the ‘proxies’ for actual temperature records from long ago.

Except that….

During the time period when we have had the most reliable, actual temperature readings, say, from 1960 to now, the tree ring growth did not correspond to the temperatures the scientists measured!

To the contrary:  while these scientists measured an in increase in temperatures, the tree ring ‘record’ from 1960 to now shows a DECLINE in temperatures!

The scientists did notice this divergence:  one set of readings went up, the other down. That can clearly be seen from the email exchanges between them – and from the graphs they exchanged, which I linked to above. Now, at this point, a real scientist would look at their data and say:  “We have actual, measured temperatures going up, while the temperatures reconstructed from tree-ring temperatures are going down!  Obviously, there are other factors at play here:  either some of our measurements are wrong, or the method how we are using to figure out temperatures from tree rings is wrong.  Therefore, either have to figure out what we are missing or figure out where we have made a mistake:  either way, this data cannot be used as is!”

Alas, that is not what happened.

Instead, they decided that since the first ‘divergent’ year that the ‘common data’ was available for both the actual measured temperatures and the tree-ring proxy temperatures was 1960nto now, they would simply stop showing the tree-ring data from 1960 on!!!

Then, nobody could tell that the tree-ring data showed something different than what they were claiming! This is hard to believe.  Please, consider the picture below:

get_th31.jpg get_th32.jpg

The bigger graph was what these people submitted to the IPCC thing.

The picture on the right (or below – depending on your browser and settings) is a close-up of the last few decades of the graph.  It shows the actual temperatures measured in modern times (black), and the ‘proxy’ temperatures as they were gleaned by the ‘scientists’ for the past dozen or so centuries.

The ‘tree-ring data’  – the temperatures they figured out the Earth ‘had to have been’ based on the thickness of the tree-rings from those years – is the pale blue line.

When one looks at the enlarged view of the graph, it becomes obvious that that line stops a few decades before the other ones do:  1960, to be exact…. And, the email exchanges show that the only reason that this data was excluded – why the line was not continued – was not because they did not have the data….it was because they did not like what the data showed!!!

And THAT is FRAUD!

By excluding the data, by stopping the blue line on that graph in 1960, even though the data since then exists, the IPCC Cabal of scientists PROVED they knew they were committing fraud!

And THAT is why so many respectable scientists are so very, very angry.

Disappointed, and angry.

Note:  the formatting of this post got ‘messed up’, so, I edited it to fix it.  Aside from formatting (and this note), the post has not been altered.

Posted in debate, opression, politics, science, society. Tags: , , , , , , , , . 3 Comments »

Feynman says: good science demands scrutiny!

November 25, 2009 — xanthippa

Our policymakers have all been coerced, in one way or another, to ‘accept’ (or, at least, pay lip service to) the assertions that the Earth is getting warmer and warmer, and that we, humans, are the cause of it.

These policies are largely based on the UN’s series of IPCC reports on Global Warming/Climate Change which claim that there is a scientific concensus that the Earth is warming and that the increase of CO2 due to human activity is the cause.

Recently released documents (originally hacked, but since verified as authentic) have demonstrated that many of the scientists who produced the studies which demonstrated this ‘CO2 forced (caused) climate change’ have refused to release their data for scrutiny by other scientists:  they have even stated they would rather destroy their original data than permit other scientists to analyze it!

And, they have been caught hiding data which would contradict their official findings….

So, what would Richard Feynman – in my never-humble-opinion, THE most brilliant scientist to have ever walked this Earth – say about this?

Lubo Motl, of The Reference Frame, reminds us of Richard Feynman’s famous commencement speech at CalTech in 1974 , in which Dr. Feynman discusses ‘cargo cult science’ and how it is gaining a hold in our mainstream education and science….  The whole speech is an excellent read!  Still, this is perhaps the most salient point he makes:

It’s a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty–a kind of leaning over backwards.

For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid–not only what you think is right about it:  other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked–to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.  Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can–if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong–to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem.  When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition.

In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.

 

And, Dr. Motl asks:

Do you think the e-mails indicate that the climate scientists have followed the same principles?

Posted in politics, science, society. Tags: , , , , . 1 Comment »

ACC scientists’ fraud fallout: the lawsuits are starting!

November 24, 2009 — xanthippa

While much of the mainstream media (MSM) is still sounding apoplectic apologetic about the ‘Global Warming Guilt’ scientists being caught in large scale fraud and subversion of the peer-review process, the documents leaked last week from UK’s University of East Anglia’s (UEA) Climatic Research Unit (CRU) (I so do not want to use the term ‘ClimateGate’!), others are not so idle.

‘Watts Up With That?’, a well-regarded blog run by the outspoken and highly respected Anthony Watts, posted a story by Chris Horner of The American Spectator, entitled: ‘CEI Files Notice of Intent to Sue NASA GISS’.

Why, and how is it important?

CEI is the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a think-tank, which has focused on verifying whether or not ‘the government’ is releasing accurate statements, especially when it comes to issues with impact as pervasive as ‘Global Warming’ or ‘AGW’ or ‘ACC’ (whatever you want to call it).

NASA is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (yes, the astronaut people) and GISS is NASA’s Goddart Institute for Space Studies.  And, in their own words, “Research at GISS emphasizes a broad study of global climate change.”

Dr. Hansen heads up GISS, and is perhaps one of the best known voices on this side of the Atlantic pond (aside from politicians and celebs) calling for drastic action to save us all from the inevitable catastrophe caused by man-made ‘climate change’.

The article starts out:

Today, on behalf of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, I filed three Notices of Intent to File Suit against NASA and its Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), for those bodies’ refusal – for nearly three years – to provide documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act.

The information sought is directly relevant to the exploding “ClimateGate” scandal revealing document destruction, coordinated efforts in the U.S. and UK to avoid complying with both countries’ freedom of information laws, and apparent and widespread intent to defraud at the highest levels of international climate science bodies. Numerous informed commenters had alleged such behavior for years, all of which appears to be affirmed by leaked emails, computer codes and other data from the Climatic Research Unit of the UK’s East Anglia University.

So – this is why it matters:

‘Good scientists’ – even the CRU scientists know this, as per the leaked documents – always hand over the ‘raw data’ (that means, exactly as it was collected (along with the methodology used, conditions under which it was collected), before it was processed or ‘normalized’ (scientific meaning of the word) in any way-shape-or-form), what they did with it and why, and their results along with their hypothesis and conclusions when they submit their work for peer-review.

This is really, really important:  errors or mistakes (not to mention fraud) can occur at any point of the work.  It can occur at the very point of data-collection.  For example, if a thermocouple ‘x’ were used to measure temperatures at 5 out of 15 points, and thermocouple ‘y’ was collected for the rest, it will be necessary for any reviewer to read up on both thermocouples to make sure they behave exactly the same way under all conditions.

Simplification:  consider 2 thermometers commonly used to measure fever.  One is an old fashioned mercury one, the other is the modern, stick-in-the-ear one.  If one takes a child’s temperature using the ear thermometer, they may get a different temperature than if they use the old-fashioned mercury one under the child’s arm.  Therefore, one would have to document taking the child’s temperature simultaneously with both temperatures and record the readings.  Then, one would ‘analyze the difference’ between the readings to see what the difference in readings is.  Then, if one recorded 5 temperatures with the ear thermometer, and 15 with the mercury one, then one would have to ‘normalize’ one set of the readings (by adding or subtracting the ‘normal difference’ between their readings) before one could lump all 20 together as one dataset.

When doing peer-review of another scientist’s work, making sure there were no errors or mistakes in how the data was collected (like lumping together readings from the two thermometers in the example above), that there were no mistakes in making any ‘normalization’, and so on. And, since errors or mistakes can occur at any point from here on, all the ‘work’ has to be subjected to scrutiny by one’s peers.

‘Good scientists’ consider this to be a necessary part of any peer-review process.

Yet, the ‘leaked documents’ demonstrate that many of their studies, on which so much policy is being based, have been submitted for ‘peer-review’ without supplying any of their actual data to the peer doing the reviewing!

They even threatened to stop publishing in journals which demanded to see all of their data and work!

That means that their work was not FULLY ‘peer-reviewed’!

That means we ought not put much weight in that body of work!

But, even worse:  the leaked emails show that, in multiple instances, some of these ‘alarmist scientists’ stated they would rather delete their data than release it for scientific review!!!

That is NOT what ‘good scientists’ do!

Which  brings us to the point of the Notice of Intent to File Suit:

CEI, using ‘Freedom of Information Act’ FoIA, requested GISS to release much of the data it used to make its predictions of doom and cataclysms.  It appears that, for years, GISS has not released it.

In addition, CEI appears to have requested access to the records of ‘discussions’ between various GISS employees about how the data was collected, processed and analyzed.  It would seem that they requested sort of similar-type material like was leaked, except from GISS instead of CRU.  And, it appears that GISS has not released it, either.

And, though I am no lawyer and people ought to draw their own conclusions, but it does seem to me that CEI is citing the information from the ‘leaked files’ that this ‘cabal of scientists’ was willing to deleted information requested under FoIA (which might constitute a pattern of behaviour among this group of scientists) to put NASA’s GISS on notice that if they do not release the requested information (as the law demands they do), they will indeed face a lawsuit.

As they say, we do live in interesting times…

Posted in debate, politics, science, society. Tags: , , , , . 2 Comments »

Why do people do this?

November 24, 2009 — xanthippa

This is one of those tear-jerker stories I usually avoid:  it shows people at both our worst and our best.

About 150 km North-East of Ottawa, there once was a musher who bred Huskies as sled dogs.  Then the economy went bad….

This is the ‘worst’ bit….I will never understand how anyone, anyone can just leave animals tied up, without food or water….over a hundred of them!

I don’t know the full story, but my ‘educated guess’ is that the owner permitted rescuers to look after the dogs and eventually surrendered ownership to them in exchange for not facing charges.  Personally, I would find it difficult to be so generous with such a person.  The animal rescue folk are better people than I!

OK – here is the ‘best’ bit:  people are helping.  Complete strangers are opening their hearts and homes, and many others are opening their wallets. Looking after and protecting those who are not able to do it themselves (and, let’s not forget, in our society, we do not permit dogs to ‘look after themselves’!) is one of those best qualities we have.

My son brought this story home from school and asked me to blog about it, to make sure that as many people as possible learned about it. He proudly told me that his teacher was one of those good people who are helping.  And, he himself is dipping into his allowance…

Like I said – a tearjerker of a story!

Posted in human nature. Tags: , . Leave a Comment »

IPCC scientists, hacked emails and largescale fraud

November 23, 2009 — xanthippa

By now, most people are aware that the University East Anglia’s (UEA) Climatic Research Unit (CRU) has had their database hacked and tons of documents –  including emails between scientists (if one can use that term, in light of the ‘now confirmed’ information revealed therein) which contain some extremely incriminating evidence of scientific fraud, collusion to defraud the public and systematic efforts to subvert the scientific ‘peer review’ process and turn it from an objective assessment into partisan shill.

To me, the last one is the most serious.  But, first I have to ask:  how come this has not been the leading story in every newspaper and newsprogram everywhere?

Most people have only had a chance to come across a few apologetic articles, like this one in the New York Times, which present tiny snippets of the information unearthed (I condemn the means – let’s get that straight from the beginning – but now that the info is out there, we must assess it), without reasonable context, in order to explain it away as ‘harmless’ and thus diffuse any resulting criticism.  SHAME, SHAME, SHAME!

I first came across this at The Reference Frame, and I recommend it for the following reasons:  Mr. ReferenceFrame himself taught Physics at MIT.  Dr. Lubos Motl is a respected Physicist in his own right, with ties and connections with scientists all over the globe.  These, he put to good use himself, verifying whether or not the data the hackers leaked is genuine or not and whether what it reveals can be trusted.  As a Physicist, he is much more thorough in this than I would trust most journalists to be, he has the knowledge to evaluate ‘things’, and, let’s face it, as ‘one of them’, most scientists will be more comfortable and open discussing things with him.  (The corollary, of course, is that many ‘bad’ scientists will feel more threatened by him because he’s trained to detect any scientific BS!)

Plus, he is updating his post to include the latest bits…

AND, he has posted a comprehensive list of sites which are analyzing/discussing this. Again, I much recommend it… overall, I find his post to be a most useful frame of reference!

In case the absence of the mass media coverage on this topic has left you wondering what it is I am jabbering on about, here is the tip of the proverbial (and growing, not melting) iceberg:

If you would like to check through all the ‘leaked documents’, you can download them from Junk Science, or Friends of Science.  Or, look through the database Lubo Motl provides  on The Reference Frame:  it is excellent.  There are many well written blogs (as opposed to news stories(!)) that give the ‘scoop’ on this!

What the emails appear to have revealed:

  • data had been altered to ‘hide cooling’
  • data had been forged to demonstrate a ‘warming trend’
  • Scientists lamented that their data did not demonstrate the conclusions they wanted:  this is nothing new.  What is new is that they sought advice from each other how to fiddle the data in order to hide what it shows and instead conform to their desired conclusion
  • Scientists threatened to destroy data rather than permit other scientists examine the un-altered dataset on which their study is based (this is an essential part of the peer review process – without examining the raw data, another scientist cannot possibly assess if it had been processed ‘correctly’:  it is unthinkable that a proper peer review could possibly be done without examining the raw data
  • Scientists knowingly passed only  the data that supported ‘Global Warming’ on to the IPCC panel for evaluation, suppressing existing data that opposed it.
  • Scientists intentionally manipulated ‘impartial’ scientists performing peer review on studies which had findings which did not support AGW/ACC point of view, tricking them into rejecting non-AGW/ACC supporting studies…

All this is bad.  Very bad.  BUT – and this is, in my never-humble-opinion, is something so vile and unforgivable, I am having trouble wrapping my brain around it:  THEY COLLUDED TO SUBVERT THE SCIENTIFIC PEER REVIEW PROCESS!!!

Why is subverting the peer review process the thing that upsets me so much?

Because if people do ‘bad science’ – the peers reviewing it will, eventually, catch it and expose it.

Because if people are committing scientific fraud – the peers reviewing it will, eventually, catch it and expose it, and ruin the reputation of the scientist committing it.

Because if there is a group of scientists conspiring to defraud everyone – the peers reviewing it may take a while to catch on, but, eventually, they will catch it, expose it and make sure these conspirators never get near any science again!

The scientific peer review process relies on the honesty and integrity of scientists.  It is nothing more – and nothing less – than, when one writes up one’s experiment/scientific study, one submits BOTH the write-up AND all the supporting data and materials to other scientists who have expertise in this field.  These other scientists read the experiment’s/study’s hypothesis, then they examine the methodology used, data (the actual, physical data that was collected,  the method/means it was collected by, the ‘controls’ that were placed to limit other possible factors that might affect the data and so on, the methodologies and techniques used to analyze the data, and so on) and then they analyze whether or not the data, collected in the way it was, analyzed as it was, supports the hypothesis as proposed.

It is not an easy process – and it relies heavily on the integrity of the ‘peers’ doing the ‘review’!

That is why it is so highly valued!

There is no fame or fortune in it, yet it is hard (and necessary) work!  That is why most scientists take ‘peer review’ at face value!

By showing that this very process which is supposed to test (and thus assure) the integrity of scientific findings can be subverted, and subverted so easily, these people have ended the ‘age of innocence’ among the scientific community!

To sum it up – they have falsified science (and manipulated policymakers) in order to increase their own funding, they have subverted (and thus for ever destroyed the credibility of) the scientific peer review process and utterly destroyed the credibility of science and scientists!

I wish I could think of names vile enough to call them – but, there are none!  Their names will go down in history and become the worst possible insults a person can be called!

 

Posted in debate, politics, science, society. Tags: , , , , . 8 Comments »

‘His real name is Nitely Melikson’

November 20, 2009 — xanthippa

Via  CarolineGlick.com

Posted in Humour. Tags: , . 2 Comments »
« Older posts
Newer posts »