E-Mail Fracas Shows Peril of Trying to Spin Science

The New York Times ^ | November 30, 2009 | JOHN TIERNEY

[ricks_place]

If you have not delved into the thousands of e-mail messages and files hacked from the computers of British climate scientists, let me give you the closest thing to an executive summary. It is taken from a file slugged HARRY_READ_ME, which is the log of a computer expert’s long struggle to make sense of a database of historical temperatures. Here is Harry’s summary of the situation:

Aarrggghhh!

-snip-

In fact, one skeptic raised this very issue about tree-ring data in a comment posted in 2004 on RealClimate, the blog operated by climate scientists. The comment, which questioned the propriety of “grafting the thermometer record onto a proxy temperature record,” immediately drew a sharp retort on the blog from Michael Mann, an expert at Penn State University:

“No researchers in this field have ever, to our knowledge, ‘grafted the thermometer record onto’ any reconstruction. It is somewhat disappointing to find this specious claim (which we usually find originating from industry-funded climate disinformation Web sites) appearing in this forum.”

Dr. Mann now tells me that he was unaware, when he wrote the response, that such grafting had in fact been done in the earlier cover chart, and I take him at his word. But I don’t see why the question was dismissed so readily, with the implication that only a tool of the fossil-fuel industry would raise it.

[Windflier]

John Tierney,the author, has never drunk the leftist kool-aid.

That's good to hear. I'm still surprised that this article appeared in the NY Times. Is John Tierney one of their resident writers?

[bpjam]

This is like Piltdown Man but on STEROIDS!!!! And with the hundreds of trillions of $$$$ on the line!!!!

And yet none of the media want to admit that they were duped??? At least the media were happy to blame the one screwy bastard who created Piltdown Man. In this case, their religions won’t let them.

[Clara Lou]

Yes, Tierney has written for the NYT for 4-5 years, as I recall.