Global Warming ate my data...

[EarlyBird]

ooops...

Global Warming ate my data


We've lost the numbers: CRU responds to FOIA requests

By Andrew Orlowski • Get more from this author

Posted in Environment, 13th August 2009 14:35 GMT

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The world's source for global temperature record admits it's lost or destroyed all the original data that would allow a third party to construct a global temperature record. The destruction (or loss) of the data comes at a convenient time for the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in East Anglia - permitting it to snub FoIA requests to see the data.

The CRU has refused to release the raw weather station data and its processing methods for inspection - except to hand-picked academics - for several years. Instead, it releases a processed version, in gridded form. NASA maintains its own (GISSTEMP), but the CRU Global Climate Dataset, is the most cited surface temperature record by the UN IPCC. So any errors in CRU cascade around the world, and become part of "the science".

Professor Phil Jones, the activist-scientist who maintains the data set, has cited various reasons for refusing to release the raw data. Most famously, Jones told an Australian climate scientist in 2004:

Even if WMO agrees, I will still not pass on the data. 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.[COLOR="Red"](something to hide?)[/COLOR]

In 2007, in response to Freedom of Information Act requests, CRU initially said it didn't have to fulfil the requests because "Information accessible to applicant via other means Some information is publicly available on external websites".

Now it's citing confidentiality agreements with Denmark, Spain, Bahrain and our own Mystic Met Office. Others may exist, CRU says in a statement, but it might have lost them because it moved offices. Or they were made verbally, and nobody at CRU wrote them down.

As for the raw station data,

"We are not in a position to supply data for a particular country not covered by the example agreements referred to earlier, as we have never had sufficient resources to keep track of the exact source of each individual monthly value. Since the 1980s, we have merged the data we have received into existing series or begun new ones, so it is impossible to say if all stations within a particular country or if all of an individual record should be freely available. Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites, only the station series after adjustment for homogeneity issues. We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (i.e. quality controlled and homogenized) data."[COLOR="Red"](ha ha ha)[/COLOR]

Canadian statistician and blogger Steve McIntyre, who has been asking for the data set for years, says he isn't impressed by the excuses. McIntyre obtained raw data when it was accidentally left on an FTP server last month. Since then, CRU has battened down the hatches, and purged its FTP directories lest any more raw data escapes and falls into the wrong hands.

Full;
Global Warming ate my data ? The Register

And still some religious fools believe every word put out by the IPCC backed scientists.
Question the crock of sh*t they present to us as "proof of manmade climate change/global warming" and they will tell you you can't or shouldn't question "the science".

[TrueBlue forever]

Incredible.

Also gives critics exactly what they want.

If they are just saying this it is self defeating as they will look even more ridiculous if they miracalously found it again later on to be used to support their arguments...

[lapsedmethodist]

Bastards over at Yale have been doing science again! Who do they think they're fooling ?
First Comes Global Warming, Then An Evolutionary Explosion by Carl Zimmer: Yale Environment 360

[EarlyBird]

Incredible.

Also gives critics exactly what they want.

If they are just saying this it is self defeating as they will look even more ridiculous if they miracalously found it again later on to be used to support their arguments...

Their arrogance knows no bounds. To think that we will be soon paying carbon taxes on the basis of the confused, fabricated and corrupted theories put out these so called scientists. That's a sickener, isn't it?. People are conditioned to accept their bogus theories as gospel truth. The religious freaks will defend this BS all the way, everybody will pay for it in one way or another and anyone who doesn't agree with "the science" is labeled as a 'denier'. It stinks.

[jpc]

There is something totally antiscientific here.
And they (CRU) will pay for their relectuance to share information.
Credibility is very hard to earn.

[Jock_the_Waster]

mythbusters?

[MsAnneThrope]

They're lucky they don't have to provide proof of their findings to Justice Kelly in the High Court here, or on appeal to our Supreme Court

[Akrasia]

If the CRU is indeed suppressing its data then this is unacceptable from a scientific standpoint.

However, it is possible that there is quite a lot of spin in this article. FOI requests were made, but what data was being requested. If it was chosen specifically to be the most obscure and easily lost data in the set, then this could be another tactic in the propaganda war of industry funded climate skeptics.

[Propforward]

The green movement is a religion - they are faith built around impending armaggedon.

Like tribal villagers they try to appease the volcano with gestures of self flaggalation such as sacrifice and carbon taxes.

Like the catholic church they need to control and censor the only bit of evidence they have.

They howl and scream at anyone who disagrees. They use guilt as a prime motivator and preach conservatism.

It is all about the conservative need to control the masses (and by the masses to be controlled), it is filling the gap that religion has started to dissipate from. It gives people a design for life.

The truth is... We have very little or no impact on the environment. Since the industrial revolution we have produced less toxins into the atmosphere than a single eruption of Mount St helens.

[MsAnneThrope]

The green movement is a religion - they are faith built around impending armaggedon.

Like tribal villagers they try to appease the volcano with gestures of self flaggalation such as sacrifice and carbon taxes.

Like the catholic church they need to control and censor the only bit of evidence they have.

They howl and scream at anyone who disagrees. They use guilt as a prime motivator and preach conservatism.

It is all about the conservative need to control the masses (and by the masses to be controlled), it is filling the gap that religion has started to dissipate from. It gives people a design for life.

The truth is... We have very little or no impact on the environment. Since the industrial revolution we have produced less toxins into the atmosphere than a single eruption of Mount St helens.

That is one of the most wonderful, concise in-a-nutshell descriptions I have ever read. Add in money, now that they have a taste for it and are welcome - albeit on a leash - at the trough of their previous enemies, and your jigsaw is complete.

Great post Propforward.