Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 11/30/2009 4:31:49 PM PST by ricks_place
How much concern should there be over the revelations about hacked emails and files from the computers of British climate scientists?
In my Findings column, I mention a stolen file from a computer expert named Harry and discuss one of the issues of contention — a British scientist’s mention of a technique to “hide the decline”“>”hide the decline” in a temperature graph that appeared on the cover of a 1999 report from the World Meteorological Organization. You can see the relevant graphs at the bottom of this post. You can read critiques of the graphing technique at Steve McIntyre’s Climate Audit blog, and a defense of the technique from one of the scientists responsible for the graph, Phil Jones, head of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.
I’ve long thought that the biggest danger in climate research is the temptation for scientists to lose their skepticism and go along with the “consensus” about global warming. That’s partly because it’s easy for everyone to get caught up in “informational cascades”, and partly because there are so many psychic and financial rewards rewards for working on a problem that seems to be a crisis. We all like to think that our work is vitally useful in solving a major social problem — and the more major the problem seems, the more money society is liable to spend on it.
I’m not trying to suggest that climate change isn’t a real threat, or that scientists are deliberately hyping it...
(Excerpt) Read more at tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com ...
Those files were carefully chosen and then liberated by information Freedom Fighters.
In sort of a snotty way he references the “denier” articles but says “I’m not trying to suggest that climate change isn’t a real threat, or that scientists are deliberately hyping it.” In essence he’s giving the “deniers” a sliver of Thanksgiving turkey while he and his journalist friends devour the rest of the bird.
I’m not trying to suggest that climate change isn’t a real threat, or that scientists are deliberately hyping it...Well, if you had the least bit of integrity, you certainly would be doing both.
I was too kind in my last post - The liberated emails (I suspect a whistleblower rather than a hacker.) remove all necessity of “suggesting” such things.
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