Knowledge Laundering

I was going to offer this as a comment on this post, but I decided it deserved a post of its own. In a comment on that post, QG writes:

From what I've read, the ClimateGate emails were a wonderful example of folks who are willing to lie to the public, but not an example of academic fraud or a significant refutation of the case for climate change. Their data has been subsequently independently verified by other labs.

Not to pick on QG, because this post is aimed at anyone interested in the subject, but I would respond that ClimateGate is an example of a scientific community that has adopted an article of faith about Anthropogenic Global Warming and, much like the Catholic Church in the dark ages, is determined to discredit or silence those who would disagree with it.

While there may be thousands of scientists working on the issue of global climate change, the data sets they work from are primarily the province of three organizations: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU), which is where the leaked emails of ClimateGate originated.

And while it’s possible to do independent research, anyone who wants to be taken seriously on the subject needs to deal with one, or possibly all three of these organizations. And, without their blessing, anyone arguing an alternate theory of climate change is certain to be branded a denier, an oil company stooge and never receive an invitation to the best parties.

It’s clear from the emails that certain influential people within these organizations attempted to exert control over the peer review process and define what would be considered legitimate research on the subject. And while this smacks of an egocentric Old Boys Club (We’re the smart kids and you’re not!), it does not, as QG pointed out, prove academic fraud or refute their findings, although it certainly inspires a measure of skepticism.

However, one email – the “Harry Read Me Text” – does refute the science, or at least the methodology of the data sets behind it. Combined with the admission by the University that the original “raw” temperature data had been thrown away years ago and the discovery of Phil Jones sloppy record-keeping, this email is the first real hint that there might be something wrong in Bedlam.

The Harry Read Me Text details the efforts of a programmer to take existing code and data (which apparently hadn’t been thrown away) and use it to replicate the scientists theory. You can read the entire email here or get the condensed version here, but either way it ain’t pretty. To add insult to injury, an analysis of the source code reveals, well, fudging. Lots of fudging.

So maybe there is a case to be made for academic fraud and refutation of the case for AGW. But wait, as Billy Mays used to say, there’s more.

It also appears that the scientists on this side of the pond haven’t been exactly pristine in their record-keeping either. To start with, there’s the mysterious case of the unexplained warming from 1940-1978. Not the actual temperature, mind you, just the reporting of it. Maybe it’s because the GISS data sets aren’t any better than the CRU’s are.

You remember the early 70’s, don’t you? You know, back when the biggest climate danger was the next ice age? You don’t remember that? Maybe it was airbrushed. And then there are those pesky urban biases. Does it really make a difference where your data comes from? I mean, really, what’s 1200 kilometers between friends? And maybe that independent verification wasn’t so independent, after all.

So where does this leave us? Well, being a skeptic myself, I certainly can’t complain about a little skepticism, so have at it, people. Tell me where I made my big mistake. Is man responsible for a changing global climate? Does it matter if he is? Who knows, maybe it’s El Nino. And maybe it’s not unprecedented, either. One thing QG and I can agree on: current climate models suck.

And until we remove the politics, the money and the advocacy groups from the equation, they’re not going to get any better.