Earth Hour

[DimPrawn]

The Earth's climate is now clearly out of balance and is warming. Many components of the climate system—including the temperatures of the atmosphere, land and ocean, the extent of sea ice and mountain glaciers, the sea level, the distribution of precipitation, and the length of seasons—are now changing at rates and in patterns that are not natural and are best explained by the increased atmospheric abundances of greenhouse gases and aerosols generated by human activity during the 20th century

Doomed!

I'm going to have nightmares tonight!

I'm more worried about Labour winning the election to be honest. Far more scary.

[shaunbhoy]

These were personal and professional communications, no more or less 'hidden' than similar private communications in any similar organisation and never intended for publication. Remember that this material was most likely stolen, and what was released was a selection. In other words you are reading what a criminal wants you to read. Some of it does not read well, I concede, but see here for a description of the pressure being applied by an orchestrated campaign of vexatious FOI requests, arriving at the rate of 14 a day at one point. Small wonder scientists occasionally used some intemperate and hyperbolic language, in what they had every right to assume were private mails.

BTW Here are some of those requests. Every one has to be responded to within 20 working days. Click

Can we see your inbox please ?

Looks to me like there is too much hiding behind the Data Protection Act going on. If they have all the irrefutable facts in the raw data then why not release it publicly for scrutiny and verification if it is so solid?
I fail to see what parts of this data can possibly be "classified".

[TykeMerc]

I fail to see what parts of this data can possibly be "classified".

That's an absolutely critical issue, if the data isn't fit to stand up to independant and widespread analysis by scientists, mathematicians and statisticians then quite frankly it's being fiddled with.
If there are important fudge factors that should be used in the analysis of the data then those should be published like they are with any proper scientific paper.

Acting like the data should be protected and treated as some kind of confidential item simply damages the credibility.

I had little faith in AGW prior to the scandal breaking and since then I don't believe that any of it is real.
The geological and ice core records clearly show that the planet has been significantly warmer and colder than it is now and that CO2 levels have been massively higher and lower.
Antarctica used to host a dense forest populated by dinosaurs (and yes it was at the South Pole then too) so the planet is meant to have some pretty extreme climate swings periodically. I've seen no convincing evidence that mankind releasing a bit of CO2 since the industrial revolution has made a jot of difference, for that matter CO2 isn't much of a greenhouse gas compared to water vapour and there's a damn sight more of that in the atmosphere.

[pjclarke]

Looks to me like there is too much hiding behind the Data Protection Act going on. If they have all the irrefutable facts in the raw data then why not release it publicly for scrutiny and verification if it is so solid?

Erm, I think you mean Freedom of Information rather than DPA. If you are referring to the CRU at UEA, remember that they do not produce or own the data; it is supplied by weather stations and National Met Services (NMS) around the world. CRU work this up into a gridded global temperature index, which is the product they do release. The vast majority of the stations are part of the Global Historical Cimate Network - GHCN - and you can download freely all that data. However a small percentage of non-GHCN data is subject to nondisclosure agreements from National Weather Services. What non of the sceptics, even those with some statistical expertise ever do, is take the simple step of calculating the index using only the open source data and compare it with the index using all the data. Because if you do that it looks like this The black line is the publically released index, the red is using the subset for which data can be downloaded from the Met OFfice. Also, the CRU index is just one of several measures of global temperature used by the IPCC. Another is the GISTEMP index from NASA, this uses 100% freely available data and the source code for the analysis is also open source. Here is a plot of the open source NASA GISTEMP vs the 'suspicious' UEA CRU data... They clearly have something to hide. Not.

I fail to see what parts of this data can possibly be "classified".

Its implausiable that a poster here is unaware of the concept of commercial confidentiality. Some of the data providers also sell the raw data as a commercial product and so supply it only on the specific basis that it is NOT redistributed other than for academic research purposes. Don't take my word for it, here is Halldór Björnsson of the Icelandic Met Office

The reasons for restricting access is often commercial, NMSs are often required by law to have substantial income from commercial sources, in other cases it can be for national security reasons, but in many cases (in my experience) the reasons simply seem to be “because we can”.

What has this got to do with CRU? The data that CRU needs for their data base comes from entities that restrict access to much of their data. And even better, since the UK has submitted an exception for additional data, some nations that otherwise would provide data without question will not provide data to the UK. I know this from experience, since my nation (Iceland) did send in such conditions and for years I had problem getting certain data from the US.

The ideal, that all data should be free and open is unfortunately not adhered to by a large portion of the meteorological community. Probably only a small portion of the CRU data is “locked” but the end effect is that all their data becomes closed. It is not their fault, and I am sure that they dislike them as much as any other researcher who has tried to get access to all data from stations in region X in country Y.

These restrictions end up by wasting resources and hurting everyone. The research community (CRU included) and the public are the victims. If you don’t like it, write to you NMSs and urge them to open all their data.

[ratewhore]

overpopulation

[BlasterBates]

Phil jones said they couldn't release the data because the Swedish authorities, wouldn't allow him. The truth was he'd manipulated the data, so the Swedish authorities didn't want it published as their data (a bit like libel, the whole dataset being a lie).

But the point is McKintyre just wanted to check Phil Jones calcs.

Well how can he when it is deliberately withheld, and blatant lies are given as an answer.

.

[pjclarke]

You don't give a reference, but I guess you have in mind the Press Release by the Stockholm Institute, as faithfully reproduced by Watts etc.

Turns out the 'Stockholm Institute' is an advocacy group with some non-reality-based ideas. Their PR was riddled with factual errors, see here.

http://maxandersson.blogspot.com/201...bout-phil.html

[BlasterBates]

so like Phil Jones and co. an advocacy group who've lost touch with reality

Is Phil Jones running the CRU at the moment?

[pjclarke]

http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/...c/CRUphiljones

[BlasterBates]

http://www.accuweather.com/ukie/bast...urope-blog.asp