CLIMATE: Scientists return fire at skeptics in 'destroyed data' dispute

E&E Publishing ^ | 10/14/09 | Robin Bravender

[sima_yi]

...deleted less than 5 percent of its original station data from its database because the stations had several discontinuities...

Reputable scientists do NOT EVER delete data. If there is a problem with a datum, they may not use it in, for example, calculating an average or a trend, but it is not deleted. It is recorded, along with a notation of why it was not used in a subsequent calculation.

For example, a notation might read "The data from this station were not used in the calculation of the trend, because the temperature sensor was found to be next to the exhaust from an air conditioner." Then, anyone can go back to see why the data point was not used. But, the data are NOT deleted.

In the business I come from (pharmaceutical research), anyone caught deleting data would be in very serious trouble.

In my opinion, any time one hears the phrase "Data were deleted", the first thing that should come to mind is "Fraud".

[JPG]

I've just ooogled ‘Climategate’. # of returns...20,8000,000, yesterday was 14M. This baby is going viral and the alarmists are pissing in their pants.

[Conservative Vermont Vet]

Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit, said that the vast majority of the station data was not altered at all, and the small amount that was changed was adjusted for consistency.

The research unit has deleted less than 5 percent of its original station data from its database because the stations had several discontinuities or were affected by urbanization trends, Jones said. "We rarely removed a station in a data-sparse region of the world."

"Adjusted for 'CONSISTENCY'."

"Had several 'DISCONTINUITIES'."

"We 'RARELY' removed a station."

If anyone doubts that this is not politics as opposed to "Science" needs only read the boilerplate, typical, gobbledygook language employed by most pols who are trying to convince their constituents that (a) they are honest when in fact, crooked as a snake or (b) when pis*sing on us, trying to convince us its only rain.

As an aside, the 1980's was not the turn of the century and with their Multi-Millions in funding, this moron must think we are all stupid not to realize that it would not have been that difficult to find adequate storage for their data

Also ONLY 5% of MILLIONS of documents and data can add up to a substantial amount.

[SDShack]

In the business I come from (pharmaceutical research), anyone caught deleting data would be in very serious trouble.

In my opinion, any time one hears the phrase “Data were deleted”, the first thing that should come to mind is “Fraud”.

Excellent comment. Anyone in any technical field - research, manufacturing, etc. knows to never destroy data. You denote the outlayer and remove it from calculation but never destroy it. That is only done if you have some other agenda other than scientific discovery.

[bjc]

5% sure doesn’t sound like a lot - but actually it depends upon which 5% of the data we are talking about. If the 5% includes the meta data which in turn includes station location and move information then it becomes impossible to replicate and verify the adjustments to the other 95% of the data. This is a big a deal and for Santer and others to knowlingly minimize its relevance is as unethical as the original acts by Jones.

Moreover this deleted data may also have obscured one of the major questions concerning the temperature record namely the scope and significance of changes in land use particularly the urban heat island (UHI) effect. For example, the missing metadata on key China locations led to a significant reassessment of the temperture record, not to mention charges of academic misconduct brought against Prof. Wang, one of Jones co-authors at SUNY-Albany. (More is now likely to emerge from FOIA requests as to the specifics of that investigation.)

It is certainly possible that the missing data may not have any material impact on the temperature record but the attitudes and behaviors manifested in the released emails are certainly sufficient to justify suspicion that the data was “lost” for a reason.

[antiRepublicrat]

Consistency with their belief in AGW.

[radu]

Good grief. These idiots are spinning harder than Whirling Dervishes. LOL!!

[LibLieSlayer]

It is a bullsh!t and these lying commies that call themselves scientists... and THESE scientists are now a hated group because of the lies and corruption that they have been caught openly scamming the world with... all know it.

LLS

[usurper]

Here’s an alternative explanation: they all used a similar methodology, but 3 of them haven’t been caught yet.....

They all used the same methodology to “value add” to the data. Even the perps on some of the e-mails recognized this was going to be a problem for them.

[LibWhacker]

I hate to say “there ought to be a law...,” but there ought to be a law against using secret data in making public policy. We don’t know how much these clymertologists fudged the data and so no environmental laws should be based on them.

[RossA]

How to read double-speak. When you see a quote like:

‘Ben Santer, a climate scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, dismissed that argument. “Raw data were not secretly destroyed to avoid efforts by other scientists to replicate the CRU and Hadley Centre-based estimates of global-scale changes in near-surface temperature,” he wrote in comments to the advocacy group Climate Science Watch.’

well, we never said you destroyed data “secretly”. You problably published your data-destruction policies in an obscure Korean journal (yeah, I skipped Korean 101 in college).

And we never said you did it “to avoid efforts....etc.”

this statement is as good as an admission that data WAS destroyed.

If they want to deny it, how about, a statement that “data was not destroyed PERIOD.” (That ain’t gonna happen [unless they get Bill “not-having-sex” Clinton to advise them]).

[RJL]

So, the CRU does not have a list of the subset of stations they relied on for HadCRUT3, nor does it have the original data for those specific stations, nor does it have the “corrected” data for those stations, nor does it have the correction factor numbers used to massage the original data.

Can you imagine the reaction of a real professor to a PHD candidate presenting a "The Earth's sky is falling and massive global taxes is the only fix" paper and then informing the professor that he doesn't have the raw data?

[JPG]

Dear IRS, I have received your notice of additional taxes owed. Enclosed please find my income and expense figures that I have adjusted based on my desire to avoid paying you any more of my money. Unfortunately, all of the original documentation has been thrown away due to space limitations. Trust me.

[o2bfree]

What we have now is results tampering on two levels: Data and Software

For any of these Climategate results to be taken seriously, the climate scientists need to drop the manufactured data and process the original climate data using an accredited statistics package like SAS. Custom software isn’t going to cut it.

[mia]

Don’t they know that when the facts don’t compute, the results are suspect. Duh!

[Stosh]

“The research unit has deleted less than 5 percent of its original station data from its database because the stations had several discontinuities or were affected by urbanization trends, Jones said.”

Oh yeah - and the fact that Jones for eight years has refused Steve McIntyre’s requests for his original data is completely innocent as well.

[Carling]

Their too busy “creating” it. Wait, then they’ll show you!

[w1andsodidwe]

But climate scientists familiar with the data insist that the reports are based on sound science and that the data in question was altered as part of standard operating procedure to ensure consistency across reporting stations.

I guess this explains the October 2008 data at many reporting stations in Siberia being exactly the same as the September 2008 data. At the time October was proclaimed as the warmest on record until this anomaly was found by others. They then said it was just an error that anyone could make. Well September has 30 days and October 31 days, so it had to be deliberate. But hey for consistency sake I guess it makes sense. /NOT

[piasa]

At issue is raw data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England...

No, I think the issue is cooked data...

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks for the topic and pings!