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The Spectacle Blog

Andy Did Something Good Last Night

By Paul Chesser on 11.24.09 @ 9:47AM

The Amazing Revkin of the New York Times, that is, who at about 5:00 yesterday posted a reader response to the whining of University of Chicago climatologist Raymond Pierrehumbert, who also contributes to the alarmist RealClimate blog. The responder is Geoff Smith, who is mentioned a few times in the Climategate emails. Smith challenges Pierrehumbert to overlook the "cyberterrorism" (Waaah!) and instead question: the deletion of emails to avoid Freedom of Information requests; the exclusion of research that CRU scientists and their colleagues disagree with; the "tricks" of playing with data to fit the scientists' assumptions; and the desire to oust scientific journal editor who published the works of their enemies.

So, good for Andy for posting those succinct thoughts by Mr. Smith. But here are points deducted for Mr. Amazing:

1. He provides "balance" in his blog post by repeating verbatim the latest defense attempt on the scandal by the University of East Anglia. The spin includes, besides "out of context," blah, blah:

CRU’s published research is, and has always been, fully peer-reviewed by the relevant journals, and is one strand of research underpinning the strong consensus that human activity is affecting the world’s climate in ways that are potentially dangerous. CRU is one of a number of independent centers working in this important area and reaching similar conclusions. It will continue to engage fully in reasoned debate on its findings with individuals and groups that are willing to have their research and theories subjected to scrutiny by the international scientific community.

"Peer-review" and "reasoned debate" were two issues that were proven to be disregarded by Phil Jones and his henchmen. Why does CRU want to surge even deeper into laughingstock territory?

2. Still waiting for Andy to do some of his own original reporting, for actual stories in the newspaper rather than blog posts, after he said on Friday that repercussions "continue to unfold" and "there's much more to explore." Does his curiosity extend only to reader comments on his own blog posts?

3. He also posted yesterday a regurgitation of the Times' position on global warming, which is the same as the old position ("consensus!"). Perfect timing Andy!

topics:
Global Warming, Environmentalism, New York Times, Climate Change

View all comments (2) | Leave a comment

Joel Raupe| 11.25.09 @ 6:40PM

It's that "consensus" thing, Paul, that I don't think the "skeptics" have hit the alarmists on often enough and hard enough. Perhaps in trying to substitute science for religion, explaining it all, a large number of the alarmists forgot science is better defined by the skeptics than by consensus. It's always seemed all that was ever necessary for the skeptics was to sew sufficient doubt, that the burden of proof was with the alarmists. Instead we've been required to prove a case against what is thoroughly unproven.

jallen| 11.26.09 @ 2:06PM

It wan't cyber-terrorism -- it wasn't even a hacker...

Consider - The emails were not going to be produced under a FOIA request. Rather, they are the residual emails comprising those which had already been *sanitized* from the CRU systems to illegally prepare an incomplete response for a future (likely successful) FOIA request.

Note that there is a very small percentage of personal chatter that typically make up close colleagues' communication. Therefore, it points to a previous culling.

Theory: These are deleted emails from a sanitized batch which were foolishly or purposely archived and/or discovered by an insider (perhaps the sanitizer himself). The insider then had pangs of conscience or an axe to grind and released them surreptitiously.

Also, data fabrication and algorithm manipulation are not at all the important issues here.

The real travesty is that they were peer-reviewing each other's work! They had control of their own process. It was a closed-loop system comprised of several dozen researchers in an incestuous, self-affirming academic relationship.