Police Close Climategate Investigation 277
ananyo writes "The Norfolk Constabulary has closed its investigation into the November 2009 release of private emails between researchers at the Climatic Research Centre at the University of East Anglia in Norwich after failing to identify those responsible. Despite not being able to prosecute any offenders, the police have confirmed that the data breach 'was the result of a sophisticated and carefully orchestrated attack on the CRU's data files, carried out remotely via the internet.' The investigation has also cleared anyone working at or associated with UEA from involvement in the crime. The hacking resulted in the release of more than 1,000 emails and shook the public's trust in climate science, though independent investigations after the breach cleared the scientists of wrongdoing."
Re:"Cleard them of wrongdoing" (Score:2, Informative)
Yeah, you two internet trolls know so much more than the several committees and investigators who looked into this and found that there was no falsification of data and that the data and methods used were reliable and robust.
Re:Wikipedia (Score:3, Informative)
Years and years of trying to undermine AGW, and this is ALL they came up with ??? --> STILL no proof of NOT-AGW, while there's a 1000 times more money at stake for the oil-industry than for the scientists ... You can bet the scientists have less budget to 'prove' AGW than the oil industry has been using to delay any CO2-mitigating policies one way or the other. You can bet they tried to blow this story out of proportion.
Yes, Cleared of Wrongdoing" (Score:5, Informative)
Well, except it's pretty clear that, despite the accusations, the scientists involved did not "falsify data." Again quoting the BBC article [bbc.co.uk]:
"Some of the e-mails released appeared to show scientists at CRU and their collaborators in other institutes deviating from accepted academic standards in an attempt to paint an alarmist picture of climate change. However, examination of the broader context by three separate investigations resulted in the scientists being cleared of malpractice."
Most notably, take a look at the graph in the article [bbcimg.co.uk]. The light blue is the Hadley Climate Research Unit data on temperature. The two other graphs show NASA data and NOAA data for the same period, independently generated from different data sets. The dark blue is the Berkeley data-- this was a project funded by some of the climate skeptics [washingtonpost.com] specifically to do an unbiased re-examination. They all show pretty much the same temperature trend [washingtonpost.com]
In science, ability to replicate results is important. The climate results has it.
So, when you are claiming that they "blatantly falsified data," here is the conspiracy theory that you're supporting:
1. The Hadley CRU is falsifying data to make a point which (if you're right) know will be shown to be false.
2. Three separate investigations in the UK independently conspired to hide the falsification. Yet another investigation, this one in the US, also conspires to hide the falsification.
3. Two US agencies-- on a different continent-- come up with pretty much the same temperature graphs, working on different data sets.
4. An independent analysis put together specifically to avoid the putative bias the other measurements also comes up with the same result, and
5. By an amazing coincidence, the result happens to pretty well fit the predictions of sixteen different climate models made by universities and research institutes on four different continents, many of which are open source (meaning that anybody can search through the code and look for the putative fudge factors), dating back to Manabe and Wetherald's 1967 model, which, as it turns out, agrees quite well with the results.
Or, alternatively: maybe the science is actually right, the scientist actually are not stupid, fraudulent, or deluded (or all of the above), and the climate is warming at pretty much the rate predicted, for the reasons that are well explained by well-known, not-at-all-controversial physics.
Re:Their conclusion is unlikely. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wikipedia (Score:5, Informative)
"The worst thing these emails show is someone asking what function would best fit his data."
That's simply not true. I had (might still have, I should look) a copy of the leaked emails, and they did show worse things than that.
For example, they proved that the researchers:
(A) were engaged in a united attempt to keep other people's papers out of the peer-reviewed journals (maybe not illegal but certainly not ethical),
(B) agreed to avoid giving information to certain people they viewed to be on "the other side", even if it meant they had to break the law to do so, and
(C) attempted to illegally refuse perfectly legitimate FOI requests.
Not to mention some of their other behavior which, while again not criminal, was hardly very professional.
Re:"Cleard them of wrongdoing" (Score:2, Informative)
I broke my right ankle in a car accident in 2002. It went over $100,000. I don't know what country you live in, but a ride in an ambulance can set you back $4000 and a day in the hospital can cost up around $25,000. You don't need much more than an infected blister today to smoke a $100,000 so fast it'll give you whiplash (the cost of which to medicate, they'll add to your bill.) A frigging TUMS, antacid tablet will cost you $10 if your butt is in a semiprivate bed. A ten hour wait, get's you a 1 minute visit with an emergency room doctor, and you get a $400 bill for the privilege. Please tell the system isn't full on broken. What the heck do call an extreme case? Nosebleeds? My friend, you need to come back down onto this planet. Wherever you're living doesn't seem to be getting cable from reality.
Re:Yes, Cleared of Wrongdoing" (Score:4, Informative)
"Good scientists try to keep papers out of journals if they think it's bad science. Good scientists don't welcome ignorant criticism or criticism in bad faith. Good scientists would be aware when some nutcase in the energy industry is firing billion dollar bullets at them, and good scientist will fight back."
But that isn't what they did. They made an agreement to try to block legitimate criticisms of their statistical methods by McIntyre and McKittrick, which have since been validated by statisticians.
So they were trying to block legitimate science, from people who knew what the hell they were talking about.
Re:Wikipedia (Score:4, Informative)
'Mike's nature trick', is arguably a case of data manipulation through omission and obscurity. By cutting data off at an inconvenient point and substituting data obtained from an entirely different methodology to visually obscure on a chart how key data diverges and fails to correspond to what they claim it corresponds to . An honest broker would admit that the data may not necessary represent what they hope it represents. Instead the say the data is perfectly fine up until the point where it was not fine but it is a-okay to hand wave the problem away and make up some untested, unverified excuse why that bit can be ignored.
Professional conduct that certainly falls short of what R.Feynman advocated: " It's a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty--a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid--not only what you think is right about it"
Now you could argue this is nit picking and I guess it is. But this is not some inconsequentual field of science. It has global political ramifications as folk are trying to radically deconstruct and reconstruct our global society in order to dodge the CAGW bogeyman. Personally, I would prefer if there were more people of R.Feynman's calibre involved in the discovery and analysis process. The climategate emails reveal that there are not.