Climategate and the difference between Science and Unscience

Monday, November 30, 2009


The scientific way of resolving Climategate via UK Telegraph:

In a statement welcomed by climate change sceptics, the university said it would make all the data accessible as soon as possible, once its Climatic Research Unit (CRU) had negotiated its release from a range of non-publication agreements.

The publication will be carried out in collaboration with the Met Office Hadley Centre. The full data, when disclosed, is certain to be scrutinized by both sides in the fierce debate.

As I pointed out last week, this is the way a scientific person would settle the Climategate scandal.  I also said that the above would never happen.  Was I wrong?

The unscientific way of resolving Climategate via Times Online:

SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

The UEA's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.

The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.

Question!  If you release all data, but the data you've scrubbed, can this be considered releasing all data?  

It also begs the question, "why would a scientist throw out raw data."  To a real scientist, raw data is gold.  You'd never destroy it!  Raw data is what allows people to find errors, recreate your work, prove your theories and establish improvements to models.  

CRU is boasting of 95% disclosure of their temperature data.  Sounds nice, 95%, but sometimes the devil is in that 5%.

1 comment

Teresa said...

My suspicions tell me that the raw data that was thrown away was actually proof that the global warming alarmists were pulling off one of the biggest hoaxes in history on people across the globe. They obviously can't release all of the data if they do not have all the data to release. So, the lying continues...

November 30, 2009 at 6:49 PM

Post a Comment