On the 18th Kevin Libin of the National post picked up the HadCrut idiocy. As a good reporter should he tried to make sens of the claims made at face value. Its fun to watch him struggle with it because I sure have.
Kevin Libin: You’ll just have to take our word on the global warming stuff
But probably nothing could damage the credibility of climate change believers than the recent revelation by the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) that it has lost or destroyed all the original data used to construct historic global temperature records. The CRU, at the University of East Anglia in the UK, which has been using information collected from weather stations across the globe for decades, is probably the most widely cited source worldwide for those mounting a case that the earth has exhibited an inexorable warming trend: its website boasts that CRU’s research has “set the agenda for the major research effort in, and political preoccupation with, climate research.” The critical raw climate data responsible, which scientists of all climate-creeds have a natural interest in, is now gone, apparently, forever. With the exception of a handful of countries that the CRU has agreements with to sell its data, all that remains for the bulk of the statistics are “value added” versions, which is to say, consolidated, homogenized data. Actually, the CRU says it doesn’t even have all the data for countries it has data-sharing agreements with. “We know that there were others, but cannot locate them, possibly as we’ve moved offices several times during the 1980s,” the CRU writes in a rather embarrassing explanation for all this posted on its website.
It’s good to see the press going after some of this ridiculous covering of data. It’s very clear that HadCrut has the data, after all they post global averages from it. Claims they don’t have raw data are untrue in my opinion, they are acting like people with something to hide. Interesting considering they have the highest warming trend of any temperature dataset.
The real point was picked up in this article though. Kevin Libin seems quite a bit braver than Nature in exposing the reality of climate science.
Professor Phil Jones, the fellow in charge of maintaining the CRU data set, told an Australian researcher a few years back that he refused to publicly share his statistics. “We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”
Exactly Dr. Jones. I should mention that without naming any sources there is credible information that discussions between primary publishers in climate science have been had regarding the best means to stall those who want data. The point is that I know damn well from several avenues these boys don’t wan you to know what they’re doing. There is at least some active planning in the field behind the scenes to withhold the code and data, how thorough it is I don’t know but it took a long time for RC to admit that the code wasn’t released for Steig et al (we haven’t got it yet and I’ve grown tired of asking for it anyway) and it also took a long time to get the data (7 months).
Here’s a great SteveM comment:
“We have never had sufficient resources to keep track of the exact source of each individual monthly value,” they explained in coming up dry for the FOI requests. As Stephen McIntyre, the Canadian economist famous for his addiction to poring through volumes of mind-numbing climate statistics, and occasionally finding errors (as he did, with Ross McKitrick, in deconstructing and undermining the famous “hockey stick” graph), writes on his Climate Audit blog, it appears that the impoverished CRU even lacked filing cabinets in which to store its records.
Kevin Libin finished the article nicely with a scientific point that should already have been obvious to the community.
Given that the Unit has admitted now that it cannot fully substantiate its work, it raises the uncomfortable question of whether CRU’s historic climate research should be used any longer at all.
Many of us live with the unproven belief that GISS exaggerates warming trend by some amount. We know the corrections are so loose that they defy any reasonable engineering explanation yet GISS trends are less than HadCRUT. Those who are intellectually honest will also question whether the government funding motive is possibly driving the result. It is a valid question, especially in climate science where quote after quote comes out of the leftist organizations from leaders advocating ends justify means scientific reporting. Greenpeace is the latest example where they actually got caught explaining that their real motive was less prosperity for America and developed nations. Not a nobody either, the CEO. It is one of many similar incidents. We deserve to know the truth, if the leftist government organizations want power through dishonesty, what does that say about motive.
The corrections to both of these datasets are nearly the same magnitude as the signal they proclaim. What would it mean if we discovered there was no good explanation for the source and corrections to the data? We know the financial motive exists, we know the fame motive exists, we’ve seen endpoint filtering used to manipulate impressions of this data, we’ve seen fake hockey sticks for a variety of BS warming Is it such a stretch to suspect the data homogenization may not be perfectly Kosher.
We’ve seen the other datasets closely from satellite and ground sources. From that, I believe the probability that HadCRUT has not inflated the warming signal through systematic overcorrections as very unlikely. This is the real problem, just thought I’d say it. I’m glad SteveM has kept at this and it’s good that one paper picked it up. This is NOT a small issue just as Greenpeace’s admission of their lies and true intent was not small. Google greenpeace in the news section, only 16 news stories for this admission, unbelievable.