Tricked Out

Doesn't it seem like we're just destined to fail at this?

I mean first the summer is cooler in the US (almost to the EXCLUSION of the rest of the world save for Scandinavia) and now this? The gods are mocking us.

Oh, and fuck captcha

Common versus scientific usage of language differs. The most notorious being theory, which in science means a theoretical body of knowledge in which we have a high degree of confidence, versus wild assed guess. I hadn't thought of trick being in this category, but clearly various tricks to come up with mathematical results are common -and can be proven correct. More scope for conflating things for the undereducated masses.

I'm not surprised there isn't all that much dissing of critics. At least in industry we've all be warned to be careful what you say in emails, someone may someday find an old one to try to build a case against you. So, people should always consider that someday some "enemy" may get ahold of their emails -even to trusted colleges.

My simplistic understanding is the climate scientists in question have brought this on themselves by refusing to release data, and by keeping the data they do have improperly so that they cannot reproduce original data sets.

Sometimes there are contractual reasons that data can't be shared, and sometimes it's just dick waving.

But if we're going to audit the fed, there's no reason that any random group of scientists should be able to play some game of shouting DOOM while refusing to open up their (taxpayer funded) data.

> My simplistic understanding is
> the climate scientists in question
> refusing to release data,

Flat wrong.

> and by keeping the data they do have improperly

Completely wrong.

> so that they cannot reproduce original data sets.

Not even wrong.

You've been listening to people who are misleading you.
If you can't read the primary science or secondary sources yourself, you might think twice about offering an opinion.

"The rest of the email stash contains plenty of examples of scientists being annoyed with skeptics and wishing them ill, but that's about it."

You really wonder why Kevin types in things like this. The emails are all over the internet and anyone with 30 seconds to spare can trivially see the falsity of Kevin's statement. But he just blurts it out anyway.

http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2009/11/20/climate-cuttings-33.html is a time-saver.

And maybe Kevin you could be charitable and delete the amazingly stupid comment by cld.

sorry, my bad, I looked back at the page and they were gone. I guess they were not censored after all.

If you take a glass of ice-water, and put into it a Fahrenheit thermometer and a Celsius thermometer, the F thermometer will say 32 degrees, and the C thermometer will say 0 degrees.

If the ice melts, and you warm that glass of water a bit, when the C thermometer says 6 degrees C, the F thermometer will say 42.8 degrees F.

Another data point: the temperature -40 degrees (forty degrees below zero) is the same on both scales.

cld - Having taught math, let me try to explain. We measure temperature with two different scales Fahrenheit and Celsius. They do not have the same zero point. I apologize for the ALL CAPS, but I am only using them to help you.

0 degrees Celsius does NOT equal 0 degrees Fahrenheit.

As a matter of fact, 0 degrees Celsius = 32 degrees Fahrenheit.

So 6 degrees Celsius DOES equal 42.8 degrees Fahrenheit.

But an INCREASE of 6 degrees Celsius DOES NOT equal an INCREASE of 42.8 degrees Fahrenheit.

How much does an INCREASE of 6 degrees Celsius mean in Fahrenheit

Well lets compare. 6 degrees Celsius - 0 degrees Celsius = 6 degrees Celsius.

42.8 degrees Fahrenheit - 32 degrees Fahrenheit = 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit.

So an INCREASE of 6 degrees Celsius equals an INCREASE of 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit.

Or in other words, I am 6 ft. tall. When I stand up in an airplane that is at 35000 ft. off the ground, I am not all of the sudden 35006 ft. tall. I am still 6 ft. tall. The increase from 35000 to 35006 is my correct height.

I hope that helps.

Kevin,

You should know better than this- "trick" isn't the critical phrase- "hide the decline" is. Regardless of whether the "trick" is statistically valid, the email implies that it was used specifically to massage the data. That is a big, red, no-no.

This is indeed pretty damning for the CRU scientists, in the context of the preceding argument about this data set, . Critics alleged that CRU added one dataset to another to make it look "better". CRU denied this. Now it turns out that it's technically true CRU didn't "add" the dataset, but instead conflated it via a complicated statistical trick. The critics are right, CRU all but lied in response.

Note this does NOT disprove AGW- it merely shows that the folks at CRU have been playing fast & loose with the truth. They are not doing the real science behind AGW any favors.

But again cld, you seem to be arguing about the emotional effect of the data. I find that "emotion" rather than science is all over the place in the field of climate change. The reason I reject AGW as a theory is not because I am able to go out and do all new experiments and refute the data, it is because the separation between the actual data reported, and the alarmist attitude toward the data. Scientists should learn early in their careers that producing a "fudged" graph in a paper has more emotional impact immediately, but in the end sacrifices both the results of your paper, and you reputation.

Phil Jones: "I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."

Richard Feynman:

But there is one
feature I notice that is generally missing in cargo cult science.
That is the idea that we all hope you have learned in studying
science in school--we never explicitly say what this is, but just
hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific
investigation. It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now
and speak of it explicitly. 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.

The easiest way to explain this idea is to contrast it, for
example, with advertising. Last night I heard that Wesson oil
doesn't soak through food. Well, that's true. It's not dishonest;
but the thing I'm talking about is not just a matter of not being
dishonest, it's a matter of scientific integrity, which is another
level. The fact that should be added to that advertising statement
is that no oils soak through food, if operated at a certain
temperature. If operated at another temperature, they all will--
including Wesson oil. So it's the implication which has been
conveyed, not the fact, which is true, and the difference is what
we have to deal with.

We've learned from experience that the truth will come out. Other
experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you
were wrong or right. Nature's phenomena will agree or they'll
disagree with your theory. And, although you may gain some
temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation
as a scientist if you haven't tried to be very careful in this kind
of work. And it's this type of integrity, this kind of care not to
fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent in much of the
research in cargo cult science.

Discussion of the emails (and the emails themselves) is all over the internet. NY Times and WaPo are running articles on the leaked/hacked messages. The scientists who authored the emails are now making statements (on blogs, and to the press) that only make the situation worse. So it is quite interesting how warming alarmists handle this issue.

This doesn't seem like a good way:

"The rest of the email stash contains plenty of examples of scientists being annoyed with skeptics and wishing them ill, but that's about it"

This is obviously untrue to anyone who's followed the issue. A good way to lose your reader, not a good way to stay on the message. Wouldn't it be much more skillfull agit-prop to throw this group of scientists (Mann, Briffa, Phil Jones) under the bus, like Obama did with his pastor, and say something like "These are just a few bad apples, but there is this huge scientific consensus about global warming, and that remains unchanged"?

The comments here illustrate why private emails dealing with complex issues are likely to confuse rather than enlighten an outsider. Two points in particular are highlighted by this little controversy: 1) Scientists are far less careful in the language they use in private emails then they are when communicating in public forums; and 2) People who lack scientific expertise, and therefore are oblivious to context, are likely to misinterpret what they're reading, in some instances understandably so. For instance, "hide the decline" actually refers to a well known divergence (decline) of temperatures calculated for proxies (tree rings) relative to instrumentally recorded temperatures. This has been particularly problematic in the Northern latitudes beginning in the mid 1980s.

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2006JD008318.shtml

Potential causes for this divergence include late summer draught, high temperature tree growth rate thresholds, pollution, and ozone depletion. In any case, Dr. Jones is not referring to an actual decline in temperatures, he's referring to this divergence which results in erroneous calculated temperatures that wrongly indicate a cooling trend, as compared to instrumental temperature measurements that clearly show a warming trend.

http://www.wsl.ch/staff/jan.esper/publications/Buentgen_2008_GCB.pdf