Friday, August 14, 2009
WHY SHOULD A SCIENTIST MAKE HIS DATA AVAILABLE IF SOMEBODY IS GOING TO FIND SOMETHING WRONG WITH IT?
This from The Register -
Professor Jones' remark shows he has no connection to science. The reason any real scientist wants to share their data is precisely because somebody might find something wrong with it. That is what science is - the testing of theories against evidence.
Since their story has repeatedly changed it is obviously impossible to believe any of them. If the we accept Professor Jones assurance that he simply refuses to hand over the data then the claim that they have been destroyed is a lie. If we accept the claim that they have been destroyed then the statement that they are being kept because of untraceable confidentiality agreements is a lie. If it is confidentiality agreements then the claim that it is the Professor's decision is a lie. What we can say for certain is that (A) the Met Office are a pack of liars & (B) that the global temperature figures are worthless.
This is important because a couple of years ago Stephen McIntyre got hold of the data making up the US temperature figures & proved that 1998 was not the warmest on record, 1934 was warmer. This was actually accepted by the US authorities as correct. Since then the alarmist case has depended on saying that though the US figures are correct the world figures show warming went on till 1998 (& predicting the current cooling is merely an 11 year blip). To do this they had to ignore that US figures were inherently more reliable because they had not been interrupted by war etc & that they had not been corrected. Now, however, it turns out that the data making up the world figures have been allegedly destroyed & hence the conclusions are worthless.
Obviously since this is the most important global warming news since McIntyre [proved 1934 was warmer 2 years ago it is going to receive hundreds of times more coverage than the normal global warming story, at least in any honest newspaper, which currently means only the online Register.
The world's source for global temperature record admits it's lost or destroyed all the original data that would allow a third party to construct a global temperature record. The destruction (or loss) of the data comes at a convenient time for the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in East Anglia - permitting it to snub FoIA requests to see the data.Anybody not familiar with the processes of science may not realise exactly how fraudulent this is. In politics we are used to being told that there is information that would prove we are all going to die in 45 minutes but security consideration prevent us knowing what it is but science, real science, is different.
The CRU has refused to release the raw weather station data and its processing methods for inspection - except to hand-picked academics - for several years....
Professor Phil Jones "I will still not pass on the data. We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it."
In 2007, in response to Freedom of Information Act requests, CRU initially said it didn't have to fulfil the requests because "Information accessible to applicant via other means Some information is publicly available on external websites".
Now it's citing confidentiality agreements with Denmark, Spain, Bahrain and our own Mystic Met Office. Others may exist, CRU says in a statement, but it might have lost them because it moved offices. Or they were made verbally, and nobody at CRU wrote them down.
As for the raw station data,"We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data"
Canadian statistician and blogger Steve McIntyre, who has been asking for the data set for years, says he isn't impressed by the excuses. McIntyre obtained raw data when it was accidentally left on an FTP server last month. Since then, CRU has battened down the hatches, and purged its FTP directories lest any more raw data escapes and falls into the wrong hands.
Professor Jones' remark shows he has no connection to science. The reason any real scientist wants to share their data is precisely because somebody might find something wrong with it. That is what science is - the testing of theories against evidence.
Since their story has repeatedly changed it is obviously impossible to believe any of them. If the we accept Professor Jones assurance that he simply refuses to hand over the data then the claim that they have been destroyed is a lie. If we accept the claim that they have been destroyed then the statement that they are being kept because of untraceable confidentiality agreements is a lie. If it is confidentiality agreements then the claim that it is the Professor's decision is a lie. What we can say for certain is that (A) the Met Office are a pack of liars & (B) that the global temperature figures are worthless.
This is important because a couple of years ago Stephen McIntyre got hold of the data making up the US temperature figures & proved that 1998 was not the warmest on record, 1934 was warmer. This was actually accepted by the US authorities as correct. Since then the alarmist case has depended on saying that though the US figures are correct the world figures show warming went on till 1998 (& predicting the current cooling is merely an 11 year blip). To do this they had to ignore that US figures were inherently more reliable because they had not been interrupted by war etc & that they had not been corrected. Now, however, it turns out that the data making up the world figures have been allegedly destroyed & hence the conclusions are worthless.
Obviously since this is the most important global warming news since McIntyre [proved 1934 was warmer 2 years ago it is going to receive hundreds of times more coverage than the normal global warming story, at least in any honest newspaper, which currently means only the online Register.
