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Climate science document hacked

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Re: Climate science document hacked

#21

Post by mattmaroon »

bokonist wrote: post #18
mattmaroon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just flagging it all and suggesting everyone else do the same. I don't know how global warming skepticism got so popular here, but it's at best way off-topic and at worst trolling.

Would you advocate flagging all posts about global warming, period? Or just about skepticism? Would you advocate flagging all posts about science, or just scientific matters that are controversial?

Its a hard line to draw on global warming because most of what's written about it (probably on both sides of the aisle) is politically-motivated pseudo-science at best. You can argue about whether Al Gore is right or wrong, demon or savior, but his involvement has undeniably tied the debate in with our typical right vs. left political dogfight. It's sad and alarming to see science caught up in such squabbling, but it has happened and taints the whole conversation.

Science in general does not cause flame wars and would usually fit within HN's guidelines. A surprisingly large number of people consider themselves qualified to have opinions on global warming because they read about it on a blog. That isn't true of physics.

If this particular article were more about how the servers were hacked, in some new, novel way, I'd be more inclined to give it a pass, but its not. It's basically trolling via intentional sample bias.

Re: Climate science document hacked

#22

Post by youngian »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #14
mattmaroon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just flagging it all and suggesting everyone else do the same. I don't know how global warming skepticism got so popular here, but it's at best way off-topic and at worst trolling.

What? Weren't you here for the Ron Paul epidemic of 2008? I'd agree with you except 1) it's a story about server hacking, 2) it's a story about not only politics but science, and 3) there's been a long-term trend of posting climate articles on HN I get tired of being sucked into the political side of the debate -- no winners there -- but dang it, climate change science is a really fascinating topic from a purely inte…

I agree - it would be nice to be able to talk about these things in a healthy academic environment. Sadly, I think that's quite impossible at this point (at least in the U.S.).

These scientists were out of line, but I can understand how they ended up there. The "drill baby drill" crowd pounces on every bit of academic debate and builds a little strawman to agree with them. "I think your model is flawed" becomes "global warming doesn't exist," and "what about the impact of the xxx effect" becomes "global warming doesn't exist" and "we're missing some data for this period" becomes "global warming doesn't exist."

If every bit of your research gets twisted and misreported like this, it's easy to see why you would start talking about how to hide data and skew the facts to leave no room for doubt. Presenting a flawless, united, impenetrable front would seem like the only way to make any real progress. Not saying what they did was right, but the motivation is there.

Re: Climate science document hacked

#23

Post by robotrout »

WilliamLP wrote: post #5

It's kind of amusing to see these guys froth at the mouth at the prospect of scouring through millions of lines of text to find a couple of scientists with less than absolutely pure motivations and research methods. When the witch-hunt succeeds, it of course invalidates everything we leftist propagandists try to convince the people that we know!! It's exactly parallel to creationists taking some instance of one scien…

You're amused, I'm happy. Looks like good times for all.

This is unmodified, untampered data from climate scientists. Do you know how rare that is! Now you do. Of course we're excited!

Re: Climate science document hacked

#24

Post by gloob »

bokonist wrote: post #18
mattmaroon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just flagging it all and suggesting everyone else do the same. I don't know how global warming skepticism got so popular here, but it's at best way off-topic and at worst trolling.

Would you advocate flagging all posts about global warming, period? Or just about skepticism? Would you advocate flagging all posts about science, or just scientific matters that are controversial?

Would you advocate flagging all posts about global warming, period? Or just about skepticism?

All of them.

Would you advocate flagging all posts about science, or just scientific matters that are controversial?

Neither. Just the ones that are political.

Re: Climate science document hacked

#25

Post by nkurz »

gloob wrote: post #24
bokonist wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you advocate flagging all posts about global warming, period? Or just about skepticism? Would you advocate flagging all posts about science, or just scientific matters that are controversial?

Would you advocate flagging all posts about global warming, period? Or just about skepticism? All of them. Would you advocate flagging all posts about science, or just scientific matters that are controversial? Neither. Just the ones that are political .

Have you indeed concluded that all posts about global warming are 'political' rather than 'scientific'? Possibly true for the majority of such articles, but it would be nice if there was somewhere that the small remainder could be discussed in a scientific but non-political manner.

Re: Climate science document hacked

#26

Post by fburnaby »

tome wrote: post #2

These people have acquired millions if not billions of taxpayers' money Millions I can imagine. That's several peoples salaries over several years. But billions? Surely he shouldn't be making such an extreme claim without detailing how he thinks that value is broken down. It seems obviously nonsense just by rough order of magnitude estimates.

When we're talking about how much money is involved with this research, and claiming it as an incentive for climate scientists to lie, we realize that this is money that's being spent on research right? Do we? There is no incentive for them to do anything other than get published, and this by no means requires any lying or forging of data.

Please tell me we understand this fact. Nobody (that is, no scientists) is pocketing money and running here, they're spending this money on research gear and on hiring analysts and grad students and the like. Given this, how is the amount invested relevant at all?

Re: Climate science document hacked

#27

Post by CWuestefeld »

electromagnetic wrote: post #11
te_platt wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does he mean climate scientists in general or Hadley Climate Research Unit specifically? Or some mix? From http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220 : "Indeed, the success of climate alarmism can be counted in the increased federal spending on climate research from a few hundred million dollars pre-1990 to $1.7 billion today" Billions of taxpayers money is no exaggeration for the general case.

Hadley is presently the only place where proof of tampering has emerged, which IMO casts serious doubt on any work emerging from Hadley if it cannot prove that its work is not being tampered with. IMHO I doubt this is an endemic problem in climate research, no matter how much I despise the many statisticians claiming they're scientists. Statisticians show correlations, scientists prove causation. However with literal…

AIUI, Hadley is the origin of much of the baseline data that everyone else uses. And that data itself isn't just raw numbers, but is massaged to factor out the heat island effect, for example.

The snippets of emails that I saw suggest (but don't prove, contrary to their opposition) that the methodology for building that baseline data was tainted.

So if that underlying data must now be considered corrupt, then it also calls into question any other research that used the baseline data.

Re: Climate science document hacked

#28

Post by nkurz »

Here's the question that interests me: how much is this information worth, and to whom? Who stole and published this information, and why?

Given the amount of money in play here, the value of this release to certain parties is enormous. What would a multinational oil company be willing to pay to derail Copenhagen? What would the Chinese government pay to avoid being subject to global CO2 emissions rules down the road?

While this is probably an inside job by a disgruntled IT worker, if this was a paid job the value delivered is truly enormous: definitely hundreds of millions of dollars, and conceivably much more.

Is there any level of data security that can protect against such a large incentive?

Re: Climate science document hacked

#29

Post by bokonist »

mattmaroon wrote: post #21
bokonist wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you advocate flagging all posts about global warming, period? Or just about skepticism? Would you advocate flagging all posts about science, or just scientific matters that are controversial?

Its a hard line to draw on global warming because most of what's written about it (probably on both sides of the aisle) is politically-motivated pseudo-science at best. You can argue about whether Al Gore is right or wrong, demon or savior, but his involvement has undeniably tied the debate in with our typical right vs. left political dogfight. It's sad and alarming to see science caught up in such squabbling, but it…

The issue is so heated because so much is at stake. The reason laymen have to weigh in on their opinions, is that ultimately, it is our tax dollars that will be spent and our way of life that will be altered. So at the end of the day, we have to decide, do we trust the scientists enough to spend $x hundreds of billions of dollars.

Most issues that a) have a lot at stake and b) are non-obvious are going to generate a lot heated controversy. But it seems to me those are precisely the issues that need to be talked about in a forum with a lot of intelligent people ( Hacker News).

Re: Climate science document hacked

#30

Post by vannevar »

adamcrowe wrote: post #17

Speaking of skepticism... Skeptics Handbook http://joannenova.com.au/global-warming Skeptics Handbook II http://joannenova.com.au/2009/11/skeptics-handbook-ii-global... It's always been about the science.

And god knows, good science always involves political cartoons and exclamation points. Spam.
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