Discussion: Global Warming and Other Environmental Issues

[Heretic]

I just want to say that as a long time "Climate Change Denier" I am glad that my "crazy conspiracy theory" has been proven to be 100% true.

Elected officials in several countries are starting to call for arrests to be made. These men, on taxpayers dime...defrauded the public and caused countless deaths and money losses due to the legislation that was put into effect thanks to their lies.

Amazingly, even after the emails have been leaked...even after the people involved have admitted that the emails are real...some people still defend it with "but global warming has to be real...the science" completely disregarding the proof that the science was total lies, threats and cover-ups.

Arrests must be made or there will be riots.

 

[Ipodman]

We could all move to Pandora

 

[bell110]

I just want to say that as a long time "Climate Change Denier" I am glad that my "crazy conspiracy theory" has been proven to be 100% true.

Elected officials in several countries are starting to call for arrests to be made. These men, on taxpayers dime...defrauded the public and caused countless deaths and money losses due to the legislation that was put into effect thanks to their lies.

Amazingly, even after the emails have been leaked...even after the people involved have admitted that the emails are real...some people still defend it with "but global warming has to be real...the science" completely disregarding the proof that the science was total lies, threats and cover-ups.

Arrests must be made or there will be riots.

What is this, the middle ages? ARREST THE SCIENTISTS! HOW DARE THEY USE SCIENCE! HERETICS! Of course they admit the emails are real, they have nothing to cover up.

Sigh. Sometimes I ready do hope we **** up our planet, maybe thin out the worlds continuously growing population.

As for the biggest peice of "damning" evidence they found:

Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,
Once Tim's got a diagram here we'll send that either later today or first thing tomorrow. I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline. Mike's series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998. Thanks for the comments, Ray.

Here is an explaination for it:

The paper in question is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) Nature paper on the original multiproxy temperature reconstruction, and the ‘trick’ is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear. Scientists often use the term “trick” to refer to a “a good way to deal with a problem”, rather than something that is “secret”, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all. As for the ‘decline’, it is well known that Keith Briffa’s maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the “divergence problem”–see e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommend not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while ‘hiding’ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is ‘hidden’ in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens.

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

So, before we start burning scientists at the stake, how about we give the people who know what they are talking about some slack instead of listening to politicians would couldn't tell you the difference between a cumulus and a cirrus cloud, and reporters that get paid to tow the Republican line.

 

[BlackLantern]

to me, the fact that something like this has even happened is causing irreparable damage...isn't the scientific community supposed to be above these petty things like suppressing or fudging research information ??

 

[bell110]

That's my problem. I don't see any evidence of fudging or suppressing information. I see private emails being sent by two professionals using language that could be completely missinterperated. And that is the dangerous part. It's being disseminated amongst laymen and presented as indisputable evidence of some widespread conspiracy.

Image if this was email between two evolutionary scientist, how the right would cling to this as PROOF that the bible was right all along.

And this idea that scientist are lying for the money is completely ridiculous. This may come as a shock to Republicans, but not everybody in this world's soul purpose in life is to make money.

 

[BlackLantern]

but survival and salvaging ones reputation is paramount in a field like science....your reputation is half of what you are...imagine a scientist makes a discovery and stands by it for years, gets research money, publishes papers, etc....then one day discovers that the very thing he built his career on is false, but he's the only one that knows this....do you really think he's going to tear his life down for that??

save for Ghandi and Mother Teresa, no one is that selfless

 

[Paradoxium]

Well there is the part where they completely botched the god damn data with poor programming in the HARRY READ ME file. So even if they got legitimate data that help the cause, they kind of ****ed up there.

 

[BlackLantern]

I want the truth to come out as much as the next person, and I would hope that the truth isn't spun or buried so that someone can save face

 

[bell110]

but survival and salvaging ones reputation is paramount in a field like science....your reputation is half of what you are...imagine a scientist makes a discovery and stands by it for years, gets research money, publishes papers, etc....then one day discovers that the very thing he built his career on is false, but he's the only one that knows this....do you really think he's going to tear his life down for that??

save for Ghandi and Mother Teresa, no one is that selfless

I'm not saying all scientists are above corruption. But science by it's very definition is serching for knowledge. It's what they do. And to think that all these scientist all discovered that they were wrong, and they all decided to cover it up, I think that is completely ridiculous. And even if they did, since science is about serching for the truth, it would be found out sooner or later.

Well there is the part where they completely botched the god damn data with poor programming in the HARRY READ ME file. So even if they got legitimate data that help the cause, they kind of ****ed up there.

I haven't read that file, but, one file out of almost 20 years of email exchanges, I still have my doubts.

 

[bell110]

I want the truth to come out as much as the next person, and I would hope that the truth isn't spun or buried so that someone can save face

True, that's why I'm cautious, because the people who are falling over themselves to report this are the same people who WANT global warming to be false.

One of the quotes someone posted, the reporter was calling for Al Gore to be arrested over this. It tells me people are less concerned with the truth, and more concerned with holding something over the Democrats head.

 

[Paradoxium]

I've said repeatedly that HARRY_READ_ME is the biggest problem. Even Fox is not reporting it, because they don't even understand it, or know how to explain it to public without it being dry. It's a legitimate and specific technical problem. Something like that fudges all the data output in the past, present and future.

An example

In comments, FrancisT has a link to his in depth look at just a couple of the comments in “HARRY_READ_ME”. Well worth a read:

http://www.di2.nu/200911/23a.htm

Oh, and I’ve added a bit of time stamp forensics in a comment near the bottom too.
Original Article

From:

http://www.neuralnetwriter.cylo42.com/node/2421

We have [begin quote]:

The bit that made me laugh was this bit. Anyone into programming will burst out laughing before the table of numbers

Quote:
17. Inserted debug statements into anomdtb.f90, discovered that
a sum-of-squared variable is becoming very, very negative! Key
output from the debug statements:
OpEn= 16.00, OpTotSq= 4142182.00, OpTot= 7126.00
DataA val = 93, OpTotSq= 8649.00
DataA val = 172, OpTotSq= 38233.00
DataA val = 950, OpTotSq= 940733.00
DataA val = 797, OpTotSq= 1575942.00
DataA val = 293, OpTotSq= 1661791.00
DataA val = 83, OpTotSq= 1668680.00
DataA val = 860, OpTotSq= 2408280.00
DataA val = 222, OpTotSq= 2457564.00
DataA val = 452, OpTotSq= 2661868.00
DataA val = 561, OpTotSq= 2976589.00
DataA val = 49920, OpTotSq=-1799984256.00
DataA val = 547, OpTotSq=-1799684992.00
DataA val = 672, OpTotSq=-1799233408.00
DataA val = 710, OpTotSq=-1798729344.00
DataA val = 211, OpTotSq=-1798684800.00
DataA val = 403, OpTotSq=-1798522368.00
OpEn= 16.00, OpTotSq=-1798522368.00, OpTot=56946.00
forrtl: error (75): floating point exception
IOT trap (core dumped)

..so the data value is unbfeasibly large, but why does the
sum-of-squares parameter OpTotSq go negative?!!

[end of quote and quoted quote ;-) ]

For those unfamiliar with this problem, computers use a single “bit” to indicate sign. If that is set to a “1″ you get one sign (often negative, but machine and language dependent to some extent) and if it is “0″ you get another (typically positive).

OK, take a zero, and start adding ones onto it. We will use a very short number (only 4 digits long, each can be a zero or a one. The first digit is the “sign bit&#8221. I’ll translate each binary number into the decimal equivalent next to it.

0000 zero
0001 one
0010 two
0011 three
0100 four
0101 five
0110 six
0111 seven
1000 negative (may be defined as = zero, but oftentimes
defined as being as large a negative number as you can
have via something called a 'complement'). So in this
case NEGATIVE seven
1001 NEGATIVE six
1010 NEGATIVE five (notice the 'bit pattern' is exactly the
opposite of the "five" pattern... it is 'the complement').
1011 NEGATIVE four
1100 NEGATIVE three
1101 NEGATIVE two
1110 NEGATIVE one
1111 NEGATIVE zero (useful to let you have zero without
needing to have a 'sign change' operation done)
0000 zero

Sometimes the 1111 pattern will be “special” in some way. And there are other ways of doing the math down at the hardware level, but this is a useful example.

You can see how adding a digit repeatedly grows to a large value (the limit) then “overflows” into a negative value. This is a common error in computer math and something I was taught in the first couple of weeks of my very first programming class ever. Yes, in FORTRAN.

We have here a stellar example of it in real life in the above example where a “squared” value (that theoretically can never become negative) goes negative due to poor programming practice.

There are ways around this. If a simple “REAL” (often called a FLOAT) variable is too small, you can make it a “DOUBLE” and some compilers support a “DOUBLE DOUBLE” to get lots more bits. But even they can have overflow (or underflow the other way!) if the “normal” value can be very very large. So ideally, you ought to ‘instrument’ the code with “bounds checks” that catch this sort of thing and holler if you have that problem. There are sometimes compiler flags you can set to have “run time” checking for overflow and abort if it happens (there are also times that overflow is used as a ‘feature’ so you can’t just turn it off all the time. It is often used to get “random” numbers, for example.)

But yes, from a programmers point of view, to watch someone frantic over this “newbie” issue is quite a “howler”…

And that is why I’ve repeatedly said that every single calculation needs to be vetted for rounding, overflow, underflow, precision range, …

Because otherwise you are just hoping that someone did not do something rather like they clearly have done before…

Also, from :

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/20/mikes-nature-trick/

we have in comments:

Paul W (15:05:29) :
Phil Jones writes that the missing raw CRU data could be reconstructed:

(from file 1255298593.txt)

From: [email protected]: &#8220;Rick Piltz&#8221; <[email protected]
Subject: Re: Your comments on the latest CEI/Michaels gambitDate: Sun, 11 Oct 2009 18:03:13 +0100 (BST)Cc: "Phil Jones" <[email protected]
, "Ben Santer" <[email protected]
Rick, What you've put together seems fine from a quick read. I'm in Lecce inthe heal of Italy till Tuesday. I should be back in the UK byWednesday. The original raw data are not lost either. I could reconstruct what wehad from some DoE reports we published in the mid-1980s. I would startwith the GHCN data. I know that the effort would be a complete wate oftime though. I may get around to it some time.

So we have a tacit confirmation that they start with GHCN data. That means that ALL the issues with the GHCN data (migration to the equator, migration from the mountains to the beaches&#8230 apply to Hadley / CRU just as they do to GIStemp.

Both are broken in the same way, so that is why they agree. They use biased input data and see the same result.

Heck, I&#8217;ve even stumbled onto another programmer type doing stock trading stuff&#8230;

The discussion is very interesting, even if a bit &#8216;rough language&#8217; at times:

http://www.tickerforum.org/cgi-ticker/akcs-www?post=118625&page=13

In comments there we get a picture of &#8220;Mr. Harry Readme&#8221;:

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/photo/harry.jpg

Somehow, I can feel his pain at the code he must deal with. Best of Luck to you Harry.

 

[Paradoxium]

I tried looking at some Progressive apologist sites like Media Matters and nothing about HARRY_READ_ME. Not even an attempt to spin it. I think I see maybe one or two guys bringing this up in their comments and still nothing. It's not dumping the data so people cannot try to replicate it, it's not teh trick, it's not the violent fantasies, it's not the FOI act issue... it's this. This is the biggest smoking gun, and it could very well be incompetence of all things.

 

[Heretic]

What is this, the middle ages? ARREST THE SCIENTISTS! HOW DARE THEY USE SCIENCE! HERETICS! Of course they admit the emails are real, they have nothing to cover up.

Sigh. Sometimes I ready do hope we **** up our planet, maybe thin out the worlds continuously growing population.

As for the biggest peice of "damning" evidence they found:



Here is an explaination for it:

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

So, before we start burning scientists at the stake, how about we give the people who know what they are talking about some slack instead of listening to politicians would couldn't tell you the difference between a cumulus and a cirrus cloud, and reporters that get paid to tow the Republican line.

Where is this "scientists using science" that you speak of?? The emails very clearly show that they disregard science, ignore data, even create whatever data they need to arrive at the destination they want.

The explanation for The "trick" is clear. Mike used this trick of replacing data witn new data that showed the result they wanted. If data doesnt agree with global warming, they simply tossed it aside. That is not science.

But global warming never has been about science. Its been about profit and control.

 

[BlackLantern]

exactly

 

[bell110]

I've said repeatedly that HARRY_READ_ME is the biggest problem. Even Fox is not reporting it, because they don't even understand it, or know how to explain it to public without it being dry. It's a legitimate and specific technical problem. Something like that fudges all the data output in the past, present and future.

An example

None of that quote made any sense to me. I don't know how much you know about programing (apparently those numbers are hilarious to anybody that does), but how do you know those numbers are wrong? How do you know they weren't fixed 15 years ago or that they aren't completely fake? All I see are a bunch of links, quotes from "comments" and quotes within quotes.

I tried looking at some Progressive apologist sites like Media Matters and nothing about HARRY_READ_ME. Not even an attempt to spin it. I think I see maybe one or two guys bringing this up in their comments and still nothing. It's not dumping the data so people cannot try to replicate it, it's not teh trick, it's not the violent fantasies, it's not the FOI act issue... it's this. This is the biggest smoking gun, and it could very well be incompetence of all things.

Maybe no one is covering it because it really isn't a big deal.

Where is this "scientists using science" that you speak of?? The emails very clearly show that they disregard science, ignore data, even create whatever data they need to arrive at the destination they want.

The explanation for The "trick" is clear. Mike used this trick of replacing data witn new data that showed the result they wanted. If data doesnt agree with global warming, they simply tossed it aside. That is not science.

But global warming never has been about science. Its been about profit and control.

Those emails don't clearly show any of that.

As for the "trick", how would YOU deal with the maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960? What would you have done, if plotting the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming was the wrong way to deal with the problem. If you can answer that, then maybe I'll take this whole matter a little more seriously.

Have you guys ever worked at a place for a long time. You get fairly competent and knowledgable about what you are doing? Then one day you have a customer, or who ever, come in and tell you the right way to do your job. Isn't that the most annoying thing in the world. That is what this is like. These people have gone to school for years to study this stuff. They've been working in this field for longer than most of us have been alive. And now a couple of cherry picked sound bites from almost 20 years worth of emails hit the web and everybody's going "THEY'RE DOING IT WRONG!!"

And how is global warming science about control? Who are they going to control, and how? And if it's all about profit, why isn't cigarettes good for you. The tabacco industry makes tons of profit, why aren't all scientist getting on that boat? Reading that global warming is all about control and profit makes me think you need to put down the comics for a while.

 

[Heretic]

If the data I was looking at went against the result that I had wanted...I would have realized that the result i wanted was obviously not supported by this science.

The data says that the earth has cooled since 1960...well...we should just get rid of that info and threaten anyone who brings it up. Its the hockey stick argument all over again...no...it wasnt warmer in the past, just look at this chart! What? Oh yeah, I rigged the chart to not show that it actually was hotter in the past...I took that info out of the data stream...but the chart!!!!!

Also...this is NOT just about emails. You forget (or brush aside) that we have the data codes as well. The codes say very, very clearly that it is rigged information. The CODE ITSELF that is USED TO DETERMINE RESULTS shows that it is rigged to ignore data that goes against their desired outcome. There is no defense for that.

Global warming science is about control because...um...HAVE YOU NOT HEARD OF THE PROPOSED CARBON TAXES?????? This worldwide tax scheme that controls every aspect of carbon emission with taxes that...wait for it...CONTROLS LIVES AND BUSINESS...and wait for it again...GOES TO PROFIT THOSE WHO INVENTED THE LIE. Yu are well aware of these talks to tax the world on carbon emissions...and you know well that that will control everyone...you simply "removed that data" because it doesnt go with your argument.

 

[Paradoxium]

Your questions makes no sense whatsoever. Are you talking about the sum squared variable going negative or the general output. The thing is dated, from 2006-2009.

HARRY_READ_ME was a critique by Harry of all the bugs in the program. He is critiquing it because he wants to use the program. This program has already been in use to generate data for the scientific community. Their way of "dealing with the bugs" was to manually tweak the code for each instance to cook up an output they want to compensate the bugs. Kind of like a program that adds variable together, but with the wrong answer. So if you input (Lets assume they variables A + B = C) 1(A)+1(B) it becomes 3(C). Instead of fixing the code, they simply insert a line of C = C-1 to get the 2. But obviously if you insert other numbers the output would not be correct. Multiply this problem a couple hundred times and we have a nightmare. This is with no audit trail anywhere. This is all according to Harry.

I am seriously close to giving up, again. The history of this is so complex that I can&#8217;t get far enough into it before by head hurts and I have to stop. Each parameter has a tortuous history of manual and semi-automated interventions that I simply cannot just go back to early versions and run the update prog. I could be throwing away all kinds of corrections &#8211; to lat/lons, to WMOs (yes!), and more.

Then you get stuff like this:

Had a hunt and found an identically-named temperature database file which
did include normals lines at the start of every station. How handy - naming
two different files with exactly the same name and relying on their location
to differentiate!

This leaves TOO MUCH ROOM for human error.

The code indicates it is not even professionally done. And their use of .dtb and .dts indicates it is incredibly out of date. It's technically similar to like those data card/tapes in the 70s. It's definitely not SQL.

Then you have this problem: since they got rid of the old raw data, they can no longer feed in a corrected program to output a new dataset.

As of right now, if someone wanted to replicate the data to vindicate or debunk them, they can't since they got rid of the raw data (or some of it). If the CRU is forced to release this program for inspection/investigation they would get KILLED. The longer they hold out on this investigation, the more time they can have to cover up this crap. If there is any solid smoking gun it is here. And it has mostly to do with incompetence which is kinda ironic for all things to be nailed on.

 

[Paradoxium]

It would not shock me if it was Harry or someone similarly in Harry's position who blew the whistle on this. After seeing how billions worth of world policy is based on such junk code.

 

[Heretic]

The pro-fraud crowd has one argument on their side "it was obtained by hacking"...as if that somehow justifies the billions spent and millions of lives lost over this fraud.

My hope...and belief...is that this wa actually leaked from someone on the inside. Someone who decided that they no longer wanted to take part in the scam. Someone who knew that if they came forward their lives would be ruined (as many threats are made in the emails to those who go against the fraud).

 

[Paradoxium]

There is stronger evidence this is an internal whistleblower. One of the chief characteristics of hacker is the attention ****ing of their achievement. Even the way the files are aggregated and packaged together suggest it's done internally. And yea there is actual legal protection for whistle blowers in the UK.

I still can't believe they are using those old school database. Not even something more up to snuff for security reasons.

 

[BlackLantern]

whatever the truth is, someone is getting ****ed in the ass hard...(from a professional standpoint)

 

[Carcharodon]

I just want to say that as a long time "Climate Change Denier" I am glad that my "crazy conspiracy theory" has been proven to be 100% true.

Elected officials in several countries are starting to call for arrests to be made. These men, on taxpayers dime...defrauded the public and caused countless deaths and money losses due to the legislation that was put into effect thanks to their lies.

Amazingly, even after the emails have been leaked...even after the people involved have admitted that the emails are real...some people still defend it with "but global warming has to be real...the science" completely disregarding the proof that the science was total lies, threats and cover-ups.

Arrests must be made or there will be riots.

You're adorable.

Question: do you believe that our carbon emissions are having no effect on the environment whatsoever?

 

[Carcharodon]

There is stronger evidence this is an internal whistleblower. One of the chief characteristics of hacker is the attention ****ing of their achievement. Even the way the files are aggregated and packaged together suggest it's done internally. And yea there is actual legal protection for whistle blowers in the UK.

I still can't believe they are using those old school database. Not even something more up to snuff for security reasons.

Jesus Christ, "strong evidence" coming from complete conjecture. Awesome. Seems to be the trend here.

Though I WILL admit that I can't comment on the code; that went right over my head.

 

[Handsome Rob]

Climate Change Data Dumped

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6936328.ece

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.


The admission follows the leaking of a thousand private emails sent and received by Professor Phil Jones, the CRU’s director. In them he discusses thwarting climate sceptics seeking access to such data.
In a statement on its website, the CRU said: “We do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenised) data.”


The CRU is the world’s leading centre for reconstructing past climate and temperatures. Climate change sceptics have long been keen to examine exactly how its data were compiled. That is now impossible.


Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at Colorado University, discovered data had been lost when he asked for original records. “The CRU is basically saying, ‘Trust us’. So much for settling questions and resolving debates with science,” he said.


Jones was not in charge of the CRU when the data were thrown away in the 1980s, a time when climate change was seen as a less pressing issue. The lost material was used to build the databases that have been his life’s work, showing how the world has warmed by 0.8C over the past 157 years.
He and his colleagues say this temperature rise is “unequivocally” linked to greenhouse gas emissions generated by humans. Their findings are one of the main pieces of evidence used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which says global warming is a threat to humanity.

 

[Paradoxium]

Ok, you are correct to say it is conjecture. There is absolutely no proof either way. Tell me, why do the majority of stories run with hacker instead of a "hacker or whistleblower"?