Joanne98 primitive thinks it's a conspiracy

[franksolich]

http://demopedia.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7087947

Oh my.

Joanne98  (1000+ posts)      Wed Nov-25-09 01:48 PM
Original message
 
Those hacked climate e-mails: Good scientists, poor conspirators
 
So many things can be said about the hacking of the East Anglia Climate Research Unit’s e-mails. If nothing else, it shows that the ground rules for scientific and scholarly communication are changing rapidly. The dubious ethics of hacking aside, should we expect science, especially on politically charged issues, to get done with the world looking over researchers’ shoulders? Could you do your job with hecklers in the room?

Island of Doubt has this to say:

What’s interesting is how rapidly the climate denial blogosphere has latched onto this as proof that the entire climatology community are in on a scheme to defraud the world. And why whoever the hackers are would think that this material was actually all that interesting in the first place. The hacking of the data is a worthwhile story, insofar as IT security goes, but the content is just plain banal. All we learn is that scientists are humans after all.

Science historian Spencer Weart comments:

The theft and use of the emails does reveal something interesting about the social context. It’s a symptom of something entirely new in the history of science: Aside from crackpots who complain that a conspiracy is suppressing their personal discoveries, we’ve never before seen a set of people accuse an entire community of scientists of deliberate deception and other professional malfeasance. Even the tobacco companies never tried to slander legitimate cancer researchers.

RealClimate makes the winning comment, IMO:

More interesting is what is not contained in the emails. There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to ‘get rid of the MWP’, no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders’ from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords. The truly paranoid will put this down to the hackers also being in on the plot though.

Instead, there is a peek into how scientists actually interact and the conflicts show that the community is a far cry from the monolith that is sometimes imagined. People working constructively to improve joint publications; scientists who are friendly and agree on many of the big picture issues, disagreeing at times about details and engaging in ‘robust’ discussions; scientists expressing frustration at the misrepresentation of their work in politicized arenas and complaining when media reports get it wrong; scientists resenting the time they have to take out of their research to deal with over-hyped nonsense. None of this should be shocking.

Smart enough to hack, not sophisticated enough to appreciate the daily give-and-take of how science works–is that how we nonscientists are going to approach critical issues? Maybe we can do better than that.

http://futurismic.com/2009/11/23/those-hacked-climate-e... /

I think there's a secret conspiracy among conservatives to kill their own children and grandchildren!

One suspects the Joanne98 primitive's disappointed with the responses.

paulsby  (1000+ posts)      Wed Nov-25-09 03:26 PM
Response to Original message
 
1. more denial

scientists colluded to fudge data. and the apologists spring to action

if these hacked emails had been a bunch of corporate executives colluding to screw the consumers via price fixing, there would be an outrage.

but since they are climate scientists, it's okey-dokey that they were fudging data, and conspiring to do same. because lying for a good cause is a-ok.

notesdev  (1000+ posts)        Wed Nov-25-09 06:01 PM
Response to Reply #1
 
2. It's absolutely incredible

I've been digging into what the actual scientific basis of global warming claims are. I was flabbergasted to find out that there's no independent corroboration of these guys' findings, no audit of their work.

All of the temperature reconstructions that show warming depend on a highly flawed statistical technique and a dozen cherry-picked tree cores. Toss those out and try to independently verify the measurements - you can't. They won't share their data, and instrumental data doesn't agree with their conclusions.

Yet this same small group of people has managed to establish themselves as the leaders in their field, and run the IPCC as well... all on the basis of a single-point-of-failure. I couldn't get a change control through for an application on a network with that level of due diligence!

obliviously  (1000+ posts)     Wed Nov-25-09 10:48 PM
Response to Reply #2
 
3. It is unusual

I am hearing almost nothing about these emails are they real or faked? Why the silence? Crickets.

RoyGBiv  (1000+ posts)        Thu Nov-26-09 01:52 AM
Response to Reply #3
 
8. There is no silence ...
 
If you read publications from the scientific community, this has been a raging discussion since the moment it became news.

You just won't get much about it on mainstream news except for the bogus idea that these guys were conspiring to present a conclusion without a sound scientific basis.

notesdev  (1000+ posts)        Thu Nov-26-09 02:02 AM
Response to Reply #3
 
10. Verified as real and, believe it or not, the practices are actually being defended.

At least they have the good sense not to claim they're faked.

Now they got a heck of a lot of 'splainin to do.

Johonny  (1000+ posts)        Thu Nov-26-09 12:17 AM
Response to Reply #1
 
5. well actually scientist have been caught falsifying data from time to time. In fact there has been a growing concern and several high profile cases of late on this very subject.

However the discussion in the emails don't clearly show data fudging. They do show discussion of several techniques people have used to reconstruct temperature data.

There are valid reasons for throwing out some data sets and valid statistical ways to do data smoothing. The said scientists have already responded to the accusation.

If you don't like their response, you can request the raw data or look the published stuff up yourself and do your own temperature reconstruction.

For obscure scientific projects it's hard to double check results, however they're so many people now in this field and so many trying to out do the other it would be remarkable for bad and falsified data to exist for very long without discovery.

Johonny  (1000+ posts)        Thu Nov-26-09 12:04 AM
Response to Original message
 
4. I'm amaze anyone cares about this crap

If you can prove global warming is fake. Publish it. Trust me you will win a Nobel Prize and be one of the most famous scientists ever. Or you can pretend some hacked emails are smoking guns to... sigh.

Don't trust scientists. Scientists lie, cheat and steal all the time. Trust science. If global warming is fake it will not survive the scientific process. It has now survived for nearly 30 years as a modern theory. It's evidence has only grown more strong with time. It would be remarkable at this point to be disproved.

However it is science and is falsifiable. So do it instead of hacking personal emails and pretending this is like other pretend non-scientific scandals. Do what countless scientist have done to disprove bad theories. Publish real facts that disprove it.

Countless bad theories that have been far more popular and even politically more favorable have fallen in the past. Until the deniers can do this, frankly this is just more crying on their part. It has no effect on the real scientific community, but will sway the people that want to believe.

Fire_Medic_Dave  (1000+ posts)      Thu Nov-26-09 01:52 AM
Response to Reply #4
 
9. They won't let them publish anything that's the point.

Andronex (86 posts)     Thu Nov-26-09 01:45 AM
Response to Original message
 
6. remember the vanishing Ozone Layer...

and how we would all die from skin cancer, 24/7 in the mainstream media the scientific community warning us of impending disaster, crop failures, mass starvation unless we banned Chlorofluorocarbon (freon) like yesterday, satellite photos of the hole in Ozone layer, the sky is falling, the sky is falling !

It so happens that Dupont who had a worldwide patent on the production of freon was very much behind this campaign for the banning of Chlorofluorocarbon, this may sound confusing at first until you understand that it's patent was coming to an end in the early 90's and CFC's could then be produced world wide and more cheaply outside of Dupont's control.

So tanks to "environmentalists" CFC's which is a rather harmless product got banned world wide to be replaced by a much more expensive, toxic and corrosive refrigerant HFC-134a a hydro fluorocarbon, and you guessed it Dupont got another 50 year patent for this new product and kept it's worldwide lucrative monopoly of refrigerant intact!

By the way Chlorofluorocarbons are heavier than the ambient air so how it got into the stratosphere damaging the ozone layer is still not explained but then you can't argue with science

The scientific community is not above corruption, and unless they toe the line they're not getting their research grants, and their work won't be published in scientific journals. The ones who controls the purse strings decides what is science...People are better off using their common sense than believing anything from "scientists".

[delilahmused]

Logic at the dump...it just feels wrong.

Cindie

[Happy Fun Ball]

Drop such a huge load of nuts on the ground and even the blind squirrels can't miss them.

[Celtic Rose]

Logic at the dump...it just feels wrong.

Cindie

I am very happy to see the reasonable responses though.  It seems that many are still going  but some are at least acknowledging that the scientific method has been tampered with, so a stronger look at the evidence is required. 

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

wow

 

[miskie]

Its obvious to me that many who were aware of the scam realized it was only a matter of time before it was exposed - Why else would they change the verbiage from an easy to understand "Global Warming" to "Climate Change" ? Now ANY variance from the average can be blamed on mankind.

[Freeper]

Its obvious to me that many who were aware of the scam realized it was only a matter of time before it was exposed - Why else would they change the verbiage from an easy to understand "Global Warming" to "Climate Change" ? Now ANY variance from the average can be blamed on mankind.

Global climate change is just vague enough to fool people. It would be very easy to collect data and point to it showing that in fact the climate is changing. However the case that it is caused by cow farts and SUV's is weak at best. Then if you look at the measures they want to take to correct this none of them do anything but collect more money from us. Unless dollars will cool or warm the earth somehow.

[thundley4]

Locally winters have been less cold and summers less hot, making both more tolerable, but that has only been the case for the last 3-4 years.  However, if that is what climate change is going to do, then bring it on.

[NHSparky]

Funny, I never seemed to classify -25 with a -45 wind chill as "less cold".  Still effin cold.

[thundley4]

Funny, I never seemed to classify -25 with a -45 wind chill as "less cold".  Still effin cold.

I'm not sure we even went below zero last winter or the one before. If we did it was only for a day or so. The same was true for the past couple of summers and hitting the century mark. 

[NHSparky]

I'm not sure we even went below zero last winter or the one before.

I.  HATE.  YOU.

And Farmer's is calling for a nice cold one this winter.  At least I wasn't in Cedar Rapids a week before I went there for work.  One morning it was -37F, with a -52F wind chill.  It got worse than that in the north country, and some place up in Maine hit -50F in January, not including wind chill.

[BlueStateSaint]

At least I wasn't in Cedar Rapids a week before I went there for work.  One morning it was -37F, with a -52F wind chill.  It got worse than that in the north country, and some place up in Maine hit -50F in January, not including wind chill.

Where I went to college, we were outside of the "lake effect" snow belt, but we sure as all Hell got the cold air roaring up the St. Lawrence River valley.  There were nights that the pizza places wouldn't deliver, it was so damned cold.

[GOBUCKS]

Why else would they change the verbiage from an easy to understand "Global Warming" to "Climate Change" ? Now ANY variance from the average can be blamed on mankind.

I don't think they've blamed anything on mankind. Have you heard anything negative about the billion Chinese, or the billion Indians? They blame everything on American industry, American prosperity, and the American way of life. Those are the things that are being attacked, and the bogus "climate" business is just a weapon.

[Karin]

When

Joanne98

says

IMO

, I fade away.  She is one of the stupidest people on DU, along with Beth and Gman and Greenbriar.