Climategate turns into a legal battle
Meet David Holland. He describes himself as a David taking on the Goliath that is the prevailing scientific consensus on climate change, and is now seeking prosecutions against some of Britain’s most eminent academics for allegedly holding back information in breach of disclosure laws. He complained to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) last week after the leaked emails included several Freedom of Information requests he had submitted to the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, and scientists’ private responses to them. Within hours, a senior complaints officer in the ICO wrote back by email: “I have started to examine the issues that you have raised in your letter and I am currently liaising with colleagues in our Enforcement and Data Protection teams as to what steps to take next.” The official also promised to investigate other universities linked to the CRU.
In one email dated May 28, 2008, one academic writes to a colleague having received Mr Holland’s request: “Oh MAN! Will this crap ever end??”. Holland, who graduated with an external degree in electrical engineering from London University in 1966 before going on to run his own businesses, told The Sunday Telegraph: “It’s like David versus Goliath. Thanks to these leaked emails a lot of little people can begin to make some impact on this monolithic entity that is the climate change lobby.” He added: “These guys called climate scientists have not done any more physics or chemistry than I did. A lifetime in engineering gives you a very good antenna. It also cures people of any self belief they cannot be wrong. You clear up a lot of messes during a lifetime in engineering. I could be wrong on global warming – I know that – but the guys on the other side don’t believe they can ever be wrong.”
Scientists at the CRU, who were accused of manipulating climate change data, have recently agreed to publish their figures in full. In a statement welcomed by climate change sceptics, the university said it would make all the data accessible as soon as possible, once its CRU had negotiated its release from a range of non-publication agreements. The publication will be carried out in collaboration with the Met Office Hadley Centre. The full data, when disclosed, is certain to be scrutinised by both sides in the fierce debate.
Anyone who were hoping that the media would soon lose interest in Climategate could be in for a nasty surprise. This ain’t over by a long stretch, and no doubt the Copenhagen summit discussing the international response to climate change is going to put Climategate centre stage yet again.
Witanagemot Blogs
Even the normally supine BBC have moved slightly from their early position on ‘Climategate’; that is to say avoiding it like the plague in the first few days of the UEA exposure.
I notice that this morning Andrew Marr emerged somewhat from the keep-it-under-wraps wing of the BBC to enquire of Caroline Lucas, leader of the Green Party, her take on the matter. Predictably unphased by the issue she dismissed it in just a little more than a nano-second as, yes, an embarrassment, and then proceeded to try and muddy the waters informing us that there were, in fact, two separate issues here. Nothing, mind, on the deception and mendacity of the stalwart ’scientists’ at UEA. She rounded off nicely by agreeing with Marr that there had been no temperature increase for ten years but that didn’t matter because it’s about CLIMATE don’t-you-know, not temperature. So there! Equally predictably, there were few challenges from Marr by way of supplementary questions on the specifics of the UEA fiasco.
Good luck, David Holland; it will be tough taking on what is the new religion. But worth the effort.
PS. John Redwood today sets out quite neatly the various positions on global warming.
It sounds very much like the goalposts are being moved. It was all about global warming, but as Talwin corectly points out, the language has moved on.
Where it might have been possible to prove to a degree that CO2 levels and temperature levels are correlated, they now have a situation where so much of the opinion is centred around the idea that we killing the planet, that all change must therefore be our fault.
It seems that it is to the advantage of some to do this because the correlation must be more complicated by its very nature. To study temeperature patterns is one thing, (even if they discounted sun activity and urban heat sink to make the figures add up). Studying ‘climate’ takes in a whole series of data streams from humidity & rainfall to solar radiation and wind speeds. It can now be made so arcane a study that no-one outside a small group will be able to challenge it because they will never have enough of the raw data to hand to make a coherent argument.
Information is power. Control the flow of information and you control the levers of power.
“Even the normally supine BBC have moved slightly from their early position on ‘Climategate’..”
Someone should look into why a news broadcaster that ignores news should continue to receive fistfuls of public money…
@Tony E – I fear you’re right. If “Studying ‘climate’…… humidity, rainfall….wind speeds” now means a necessarily pragmatic shift to studying ‘weather’, we really are stuffed. For sure, sufficiently arcane not only to keep the plebs mystified – and the patronising eco-nutter, right-on, we-know-best in breathless obeisance – but to ensure juicy research grants into the foreseeable future.
The scientific consensus was a lot more brittle than the journalistic consensus so it’s hard to see who’d give voice to that question on this issue, Julia. The media has it’s good guys (polar bears! cuddly polar bears!) and bad guys (power generators, drivers, YOU!) and that makes it an easy tale to tell…
Intresting to note that they will now release the
data.
But what data ?
According to there own website the original data
had been destroyed due to “storage ” problems
in the 80s.
The only data they will be releasing is the “ajusted” data
that they have in there own emails admitted to
changing for there own ends.
How could this data been peer reviewed ,tested and pasted as correct
by others in the pro man made Gw camp?
And then used as a basis for the whole scam?
As the sun once said
“gotcha”
Regards
Ray
If the released both the adjusted data and the methodology of adjustments, the original values should be deducible. Or did I miss something?
@Ray –
Agreed.
I also think that anyone involved in the cover up should never again be allowed the title ‘Scientist’.
Scientists look for truth, these guys are more like sociologists; nice consensus, agreed (PC) terminology, no facts to speak of – just lovely, squidgy, shared theories.
Climatologists – the new socialogists.
Spouting PC garbage, with a thin crust of scientific pretense
@Shaun Pilkington –
Errrm, yes you definitely did miss something(!)
They have only kept the processed versions of the acceptable data, as far as I can ascertain.
i.e. the fudged versions of data that fitted their requirements (a.k.a. pet theories). They don’t appear to have recorded how they needed to fudge it. The rest of the data was just binned. Check out Bishop Hill’s site on the activities of ‘Harry’ – an unfortunate trying to reproduce earlier ‘results’ from a rats nest of incompetent, uncommented code and data (I’d buy him a drink, or three, out of sympathy for him, not his cause)
Not the actions of any scientist worthy of the title, is it?
@Gendeau – Yes but if they have a record of the formulas they used to make the fudge, you can just reverse the formula turning the output back into the input.
So when they say ‘oh yeah, the data is gone’ that would be bad but so long as they have a record of the transformations they applied and how/when they were used, the original values should be retrievable.
@Shaun Pilkington –
Sorry, I should have been clearer:
Reading the trials of Harry, it becomes clear that they cannot recreate (some of?) the results that they produced. The data is not all annotated, the code has bugs and is its use undocumented.
I was sceptical that they had lost some of the data (what ’scientist’ could be so cavalier with the root data?) then I started reading the blogs (forget the MSM for the moment, they are nt telling anything near the real story).
A small example…
From Devil’s Kitchen “Data horribilia: the HARRY_READ_ME.txt file”
++++ START INSERT ++++
So, come with me on a wonderful journey as the CRU team realise that not only have they lost great chunks of data but also that their application suites and algorithms are total crap; join your humble Devil and Asimov as we dive into the HARRY_READ_ME.txt (thanks to The Englishman) file and follow the trials and tribulations of Ian “Harry” Harris as he tries to recreate the published data because he has nothing else to go on!
Thrill as he “glosses over” anomalies; let your heart sing as he gets some results to within 0.5 degrees; rejoice as Harry points out that everything is undocumented and that, generally speaking, he hasn’t got the first clue as to what’s going on with the data!
Chuckle as one of CRU’s own admits that much of the centre’s data and applications are undocumented, bug-ridden, riddled with holes, missing, uncatalogued and, in short, utterly worthless.
And wonder as you realise that this was v2.10 and that, after this utter fiasco, CRU used the synthetic data and wonky algorithms to produce v3.0!
You’ll laugh! You’ll cry! You won’t wonder why CRU never wanted to release the data! You will wonder why we are even contemplating restructuring the world economy and wasting trillions of dollars on the say-so of data this bad.
++++ END INSERT ++++
Please visit:
WattsUpWithThat
Bishop Hill
Devil’s Kitchen
The truth IS out there, and it’s worse than you thought, waaaay worse.
And they’re using this ‘data’ to raise your taxes, restrict your freedoms
Almost to a man the Tory party voted for Ed Milliband’s draconian CO2 reductions.
But no-one seems to have any idea how an 80% cut in CO2 by 2050 can be achieved. Electricity (now 75GW installed) is but 20% of our total power; home heating is about 40% (gas) and vehicles another 40% (oil)
Presumably to make these “carbon free” we need to replace the oil & gas with something else = electricity?
Does the Tory party have a policy for dealing with this? Does the Tory party have a policy for anything other than getting into government? I fear not.
Good luck to David Holland. He is not alone in his quest for answers as it is happening in the US and I believe New Zealand. I just wish someone from the Tory party would have the balls to come out and say that all funding to do with ‘climate change/global warming’ should stop immediately. To follow that, they should say that there is no point to Copenhagen. People are angry all over the world. But politicians just dont seem to want to listen to us plebs.
@Willaim –
And their policy for getting to government appears to be “We’re not Gordon and his mental dwarves”
I’ve give up on the liblabcon party; none of them are listening to the facts, or the public.
That’s the biggest problem with CRUdgate; the ’scientists’ and the politicians’ interests are in scaremongering and lies:
Climatologists get funding; the more hysteric their ‘results’ the better.
Politicians get to raise taxes and provide moral leadership (for others, not themselves). 50 days to save the world, my a***
What’s not to like?
As long as you have an ethics-bypass (standard for both ‘professions’ it seems)
@Gendeau – I’m not defending them – I’m saying they committed at least two crimes (raw data loss and then loss of the meta data for their ‘value added’ data which would describe how values were arrived at) rather than just the one (‘Oops, moved office, left our lives’ work behind. Our bad!’) that people keep flagging as though it drew a line under something!
@Shaun Pilkington –
Okay, to me the fact that these ’scientists’ did not treat the raw data (ALL of it) as being more valuable than gold means that anything thay say lacks credibility.
I’m an engineer (software) rather than what most people call a scientist. ‘Even’ to me, the data is THE most important thing to ANY theory. It is what justifies your theory, or what allows the scientific process to develop better theories.
AFAICS The emails show that these clowns were more concerned about their theories (source of funding and scientific prestige) than the truth shown by the data. Anybody disagreeing wasn’t a source of legitimate criticism; they were an enemy to be discredited and sacked from their jobs.
SO…AFAIAC…anything they say is at least suspect. The fact they ‘lost’ data means that I think they should be drummed out of the ’scientific’ community (AFAIAC). Either that, or the whole of science should be relegated to the level of aromatherapy / reiki (sp?) / homeopathy.
They have destroyed / delayed (in a time critical subject) our ability to re-evaluate the data – that is UNFORGIVEABLE.
I happen to think that the traditions of Newton, Einstein, Darwin, Gallileo, Rutherford et al do not deserve to share the word science with these b’stards (I really feel that strongly).
PLEASE READ THEIR EMAILS…I don’t mind if you don’t agree with me(!) But the world should be aware of the type of ’science’ that lies behind all the CO2 hysteria and financial destruction of the lorld’s economy. Al ‘Goracle’ Gore is believed to have made around 100 million dollars out of Carbon trading – that should give you some idea about why the warmistas are going to give up without a debate.
So, is there any truth to the rumours that I’m starting that the head of the CRU is to be replaced?
The replacement wil have the same alarmist views on AGW, but have more scientific credibility; Marcus Brigstocke
If FoI investigations confirm that Climategate is real, it will come under immense pressure to make it more difficult for ordinary people like David Holland to uncover anything at all.