News Hacked E-Mail - New Fodder for Climate Dispute

[Moonwalker]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/21/science/earth/21climate.html

Climate-Gate :lol:

 

[Urwumpe]

Rather an example of "show me three lines written by the most innocent man on Earth, and I will find something to sentence him to death".

Just that instead of needing just three lines, they needed 161 MB of emails, from 1996 to November 2009, for finding 7 partial quotes out of the emails (without the full context of the email) that can be exploited that way.

Also funny is the history HOW the data spread. The hackers attempted first to upload it to realclimate.org, got detected by the IDS, and the CRU got notified of the possible hacking by realclimate.org. The hackers in the mean time uploaded the emails to a climate skeptic page.

 

[Ark]

161 megabytes of:

"You try the coffee today?" "Yeah, sucks."

"You know who's cool? Al Gore." "I hear that."

"*insert prominent climate change opponent here* sucks." "Agreed, that guy's a douche."



Truly, we have discovered a massive conspiracy.

 

[jinglesassy]

personally i think that we have changed the climate a bit but not as much as the earth is changing atm but they have to hack to get there point across? better then peta which has to bomb buildings to get there point across i guess

 

[insanity]

The tree-ring trick is pretty well known and statistically valid, so I see nothing of merit in the article. If we looked at the e-mail servers of the skeptics we would probably find the same inane comments.

The body of evidence still strongly suggests human beings are directly influencing their climate. The new theory of 'global cooling' used statistically invalid methods for their data.

 

[Moonwalker]

The body of evidence still strongly suggests human beings are directly influencing their climate.

I also wouldn't like the idea of redeployment. To claim "science" is more profitable rather than being the weatherman in a news channel or an unknown meteorologist nobody listens to. Since hockey stick graphs of trace gases are widely loved and accepted as a body of evidence, it's quite easy to keep and gain jobs and money that way and make politics moreover

 

[movieman]

The tree-ring trick is pretty well known and statistically valid, so I see nothing of merit in the article.

So tree rings are perfectly good measurements of temperature prior to 1960 and then magically stop being good measurements of temperature afterwards? Am I the only one who sees a problem here?

But, in any case, that's a minor issue compared to the other emails and the documents and software.

Edit: incidentally, I'm not convinced that any 'hacking' was involved... to me this looks a lot like a collection of documents put together for an FOI request which was then released by a whistleblower. Given the numerous emails about how they were planning to avoid responding to FOI requests, that seems at least as plausible as some random Russian hacker.

 

[Ghostrider]

So tree rings are perfectly good measurements of temperature prior to 1960 and then magically stop being good measurements of temperature afterwards? Am I the only one who sees a problem here?

Everybody knows that from the mid-60s onwards trees went all hippy and started taking drugs and grow their hair long and burn draft cards. From then on, they stopped being reliable for almost anything.

 

[Urwumpe]

So tree rings are perfectly good measurements of temperature prior to 1960 and then magically stop being good measurements of temperature afterwards? Am I the only one who sees a problem here?

No, the "trick" is a bit different: It just adds the instrument temperature data plot to the tree ring reconstruction plot.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/#more-1853

So, you are sure not the only one who sees a problem there, the whole right-wing mafia is busy masturbating over the news, but people who know what "mikes trick" will tell you that it is no problem and far less magical or conspiracy as it is presented.

Of course, who would have expected different. But I prefer trusting people on that who had documented Mike's trick already 5 years ago in Wikipedia.

 

[Hielor]

Proof that there's a conspiracy...this article was taken down from msnbc:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34079149

 

[insanity]

No, the "trick" is a bit different: It just adds the instrument temperature data plot to the tree ring reconstruction plot.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/#more-1853

So, you are sure not the only one who sees a problem there, the whole right-wing mafia is busy masturbating over the news, but people who know what "mikes trick" will tell you that it is no problem and far less magical or conspiracy as it is presented.

Of course, who would have expected different. But I prefer trusting people on that who had documented Mike's trick already 5 years ago in Wikipedia.

Again we face the problem of people not understanding anything about the logic of science. You're dead-on right about the validity of 'Mike's Trick' and the fact that the media takes it out of context and the idiots run with it.

 

[Moonwalker]

While not everything that is called science is real science indeed.

But we don't have to worry in any case. Europe is going to reduce the future crystal-ball-calculated global warming by 2°C. Well, at least they think they can do so...

 

[Urwumpe]

While not everything that is called science is real science indeed.

You should say: Not everything that calls itself science...

There is a good definition of what science is:

http://physics.ucr.edu/~wudka/Physics7/Notes_www/node5.html

Applies also to climatology. Not every published statistic is science, but most of the work published in this field is.

 

[Eagle]

If you want to peruse the emails online without downloading potentially infected zip files:
http://www.anelegantchaos.org/cru/

 

[Suzy]

Even without climate change, there is still pollution, mass extinctions and overpopulation to worry about!

 

[garyw]

MOD NOTE: Thread closed pending investigation.