Rush Limbaugh: Hurricanes are a liberal conspiracy for promoting climate change

[Mountain Man]

And it’s a pretty amazing claim that the bulk of scientists are cheating. Why would they?

I can only speculate why they would, but the evidence shows rather conclusively that they are.

See, the thing is, science isn't a religion for me, so when I'm confronted with evidence of scientific fraud, I can accept it. It's no big deal to me. But you guys? It's basically proof that your "god" doesn't exist, which is almost fatal to your worldview. This is why you guys are reacting so strongly.

[Mountain Man]

Apart from the fact that most of the scientific community don't knnow and don't care what creationists do or say, the creationists do worse than your so-claimed manipulation in every single technical article they write!

Found the contact plane between the Tapeats and Redwall strata yet?

So you're not even willing to do a little digging, huh? Because a simple website search would have given you this article:

http://creation.mobi/the-case-of-the...-geologic-time

[Leonhard]

But of course they did. And Comey recommended no indictment for Hillary, so that must mean she's innocent.

I'm just citing the facts, and providing reference. If you disagree with them you can tell why, otherwise you're just being a contrarian.

but people can read the sources for themselves

I actually think people are very reasonable. People don't have to agree with me if they don't want to, however in a discussion what matters is what arguments are made. You're free to blast away with arguments other people have made, without much substantive discussion of it. That's easy. If I started doing that I could fill twenty pages on this thread no problem. In this discussion, you've just copy-pasted some things you found here and there. I went there and read it, and gave some serious problems with them. If you don't want to interact with that, then that's your problem, but then this is no longer a discussion.

you accuse one author of not citing any sources, ... look at the article in question and see links to at least three external sources, and each of those sources has links to even more sources, so the rabbit hole goes a lot deeper than you're willing to admit.

I haven't accused any author of not citing sources.

I said he [Jim Taylor from Forbes] hadn't cited sources specifically for a slanderous remark he made about data manipulation. You're the one making the contention that scientists are engaging in criminal fraud, which is what a lot of your cited sources call this. When I ask you to provide evidence of this you link to a news article that describes this happening, but doesn't provide evidence of it.

It's not my job to chance down your rabbit hole, its up to you to make the argument. I will make one post below this one going through the article bit, by bit, and even the references cited to see if there's any evidence of fraud.

But I'm feeling charitable, I doubt you'll actually engage with it, but let me go through Jim Taylor's article bit by bit, and even the sources he provides for a single reference for the specific claim I wanted references to.

[rogue06]

So you're not even willing to do a little digging, huh? Because a simple website search would have given you this article:

http://creation.mobi/the-case-of-the...-geologic-time

facepalm3.gif

I warned you about using sources where those who write for them sign oaths stating that they will never say anything that supports either evolution or the fact that the earth and surrounding universe is anything more than a few thousand years old. It leads to a combination of cherry picking and hand waving away of any and everything that doesn't support what they already decided.

[rogue06]

There was a lot more to it than that.

I've said it before, but if creationists ever "manipulated" the data like this to support their hypothesis, the howls of outrage from the "scientific" community would be deafening.

Unfortunately that is par for the course with these groups.

An example that immediately springs to mind is Jonathan Sarfati's (who used to post here as "Socrates") incredibly fraudulent critique of the PBS series on Evolution which aired back in 2001 where he dishonestly pretended that Ambulocetus' pelvic girdle hadn't been found and any comments about it were nothing but baseless speculation. He used the following illustration saying that the yellow parts in the lowest picture are the only pieces recovered.

ambulocetus1.gif

This is unmitigated balderdash at the very least. Here is a picture of the fossils that actually exist based on what was known at the time the PBS show aired.

ambulocetus.jpg

That the outrage wasn't deafening is this is so common from these groups that it has come to be expected. A dog bites man kind of story.

[Adrift]

Unfortunately that is par for the course with these groups.

An example that immediately springs to mind is Jonathan Sarfati's (who used to post here as "Socrates") incredibly fraudulent critique of the PBS series on Evolution which aired back in 2001 where he dishonestly pretended that Ambulocetus' pelvic girdle hadn't been found and any comments about it were nothing but baseless speculation. He used the following illustration saying that the yellow parts in the lowest picture are the only pieces recovered.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]24081[/ATTACH]

This is unmitigated balderdash at the very least. Here is a picture of the fossils that actually exist based on what was known at the time the PBS show aired.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]24082[/ATTACH]

That the outrage wasn't deafening is this is so common from these groups that it has come to be expected. A dog bites man kind of story.

While you're probably correct on this matter, the picture that you got from Ed Babinski's website clearly states that the picture of the fossil you presented as a counter to this Sarfati guy's claim is an "Approximate computerized reconstruction of Ambulocetus, based on the fossil remains that do exist [Based partially on a photograph in November 2001, National Geographic "The Evolution of Whales", pages 71]".

[Mountain Man]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]24080[/ATTACH]

I warned you about using sources where those who write for them sign oaths stating that they will never say anything that supports either evolution or the fact that the earth and surrounding universe is anything more than a few thousand years old. It leads to a combination of cherry picking and hand waving away of any and everything that doesn't support what they already decided.

Like I said, is the demand that submissions to "peer reviewed" publications walk in lockstep with the "consensus", or the fact that any scientist who bucks the "consensus" is in real danger of losing reputation and funding, really so different than a Christian organization wanting a faith statement? Heck, even Richard Dawkins is always cautioning scientists to guard against reaching conclusions that contradict their a priori assumptions to the effect of "You must never conclude that the universe is intelligently designed no matter how much the evidence might seem to support this hypothesis."

But like I said, science is not my god, so I have no problem with accepting that scientists can be wrong.

[Mountain Man]

Unfortunately that is par for the course with these groups.

An example that immediately springs to mind is Jonathan Sarfati's (who used to post here as "Socrates") incredibly fraudulent critique of the PBS series on Evolution which aired back in 2001 where he dishonestly pretended that Ambulocetus' pelvic girdle hadn't been found and any comments about it were nothing but baseless speculation. He used the following illustration saying that the yellow parts in the lowest picture are the only pieces recovered.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]24081[/ATTACH]

This is unmitigated balderdash at the very least. Here is a picture of the fossils that actually exist based on what was known at the time the PBS show aired.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]24082[/ATTACH]

That the outrage wasn't deafening is this is so common from these groups that it has come to be expected. A dog bites man kind of story.

Do you have a link to the thread on question? Because I would like to see for myself what was really said. Or was that all lost in the infamous tweb crash?

[Mountain Man]

While you're probably correct on this matter, the picture that you got from Ed Babinski's website clearly states that the picture of the fossil you presented as a counter to this Sarfati guy's claim is an "Approximate computerized reconstruction of Ambulocetus, based on the fossil remains that do exist [Based partially on a photograph in November 2001, National Geographic "The Evolution of Whales", pages 71]".

Good catch. Just how "approximate" is the reconstruction?

[Leonhard]

A foreword about quote mining. There is an informal fallacy in general which consists of sifting through a huge amount of texts, looking for a quote, removing it from its proper context and presenting it as a scandalous admission. This is old fallacy, but its fairly a common mistake that pseudoscientists make. Its way to get a 'gotcha' at your opponent. However in the end it is just a strawman. If its succesful its not on the merit of being a sound argument, but rather on causing fear, uncertainty and doubt.

Finding out whether data fraud has taken place would be straight forward if they found an email actually describing a practice of data fraud. So far, in this entire discussion Mountain Man hasn't presented a single piece of data fraud. At best he's just shown that calibrations have been made, and that the case for global warming was stronger after wards. In defense he's argued that calibrations ought to be neutral, not favoring any hypothesis, however there's no reason to believe that. Evidence isn't fair in that sense.

So lets move to the Forbes article by Jim Taylor that I called slandarous and accused of having no references or citations in support of its main claim that the scientists admitted that the science 'was weak' and 'dependent on deliberate manipulation of facts and data'.

Here's the offending quote.

Source: Jim Taylor - Forbes

(3) many of these scientists frankly admit to each other that much of the science is weak and dependent on deliberate manipulation of facts and data.

© Copyright Original Source

That's a pretty strong claim to make.

While the other claims Jim Taylor made weren't that strong, this is the main claim I objected to. As far as I can see not a single citation or reference to back this up was provided. Mountain Man claimed that the 'rabbit hole' was deep, which fairly vague a claim to back this up, and there were further references. So I'll systematically go through things.

First Jim Taylor plucks out a few emails dealing with whether access to the data from the weather stations should be provided in a raw form. There is an email exchange about this.

Source: Jim Taylor - Forbes

“I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI [Freedom of Information] Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the process,” - Phil jones

“Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we get – and has to be well hidden, ... I’ve discussed this with the main funder (U.S. Dept of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original station data.” - Phil Jones

© Copyright Original Source

I see nothing here about data manipulations. These scientists did not destroy any actual data, anyone wishing to reproduce their work can submit for requests for the data sources they used, and get the same data they had. What is being destroyed here is basically intermediate data, work in progress. You don't have to be given access to that, though the methods of work did change in response to public pressure, so now even that is available going forward. In destroying the work in progress they were just following ordinary scientific protocols at the time.

All of this can be read in the Final Investigation Report from Penn State University.

Source: Final Investigation Report

The first question was "Would you please tell us what you consider in your field to be accepted, standard practice with regard to sharing data?" A follow-up question asked how Dr. Mann had dealt with requests for data that were addressed to him during the period covered by the stolen emails. Dr. Mann offered a brief historical perspective on the issue of sharing data in his field, concluding with the observation that data are made generally available (e.g., in the NOAA public database) after those scientists who obtained the data have had a chance to be the first to publish findings based on the data. He noted that sometimes data are made available on a collegial basis to specific scientists before those who collected the data have published their initial findings. Typically, this involves a request to not release the data to others until the data are made publically available by the scientists who obtained the data. Dr. Mann concluded his answer by stating that he has always worked with data obtained by other scientists, and that when such data were not already in the public domain, he made them available as soon as he was permitted to do so by those who initially obtained the data. Dr. Mann drew a distinction between actual data and intermediate data that are produced as part of the analytic procedures employed. He indicated that while such intermediate data may occasionally be shared with colleagues, it is not standard practice to publish or make generally available this intermediate data (to which he and others refer to as "dirty laundry" in one of the purloined emails). Finally, he indicated that someone who wanted to reproduce his work would be able to independently reproduce this intermediate data and that, in fact, other researchers had done this.

The Investigatory Committee next inquired how he constructed his source codes and what he considered to be accepted practice in his field for publishing source codes. Dr. Mann indicated that in his field of study, in contrast with some other fields such as economics, publishing the source code was never standard practice until his work and
that of his colleagues came under public scrutiny, resulting in public pressure to do so. He indicated that he initially was reluctant to publish his source codes because the
National Science Foundation had determined that source codes were the intellectual property of the investigator. Also, he developed his source codes using a programming
language (FORTRAN 77) that was not likely to produce identical results when run on a computer system different from the one on which it was developed (e.g., different
processor makes/models, different operating systems, different compilers, different compiler optimizations). Dr. Mann reported that since around 2000, he has been using a more accessible programming style (MATLAB), and since then he has made all source codes available to the research community.

© Copyright Original Source

Then follows some emails about Jim Taylor's point that the scientists were 'politicized'.

Source: Jim Taylor - Forbes

“The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid[e] what’s included and what is left out” of IPCC reports, writes Jonathan Overpeck, coordinating lead author for the IPCC’s most recent climate assessment.

“I gave up on [Georgia Institute of Technology climate professor] Judith Curry a while ago. I don’t know what she thinks she’s doing, but its not helping the cause,” wrote Mann in another newly released email.

“I have been talking w/ folks in the states about finding an investigative journalist to investigate and expose” skeptical scientist Steve McIntyre, Mann writes in another newly released email.

© Copyright Original Source

If there was something about data manipulation here I missed it.

Source: Jim Taylor - Forbes

“Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the uncertainty and be honest. Phil, hopefully we can find time to discuss these further if necessary,” writes Peter Thorne of the UK Met Office.

“I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run,” Thorne adds.

“Mike, The Figure you sent is very deceptive ... there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model results by individual authors and by IPCC,” Wigley acknowledges.

© Copyright Original Source

This is as close as it gets. Despite what Mountain Man asserted, there's actually no further citations. There's no links, or references, to anything but these emails in general. However since this is as good as it gets, lets take these in turn then.

The two first ones by Peter Thorne aren't about data manipulation, but from a longer discussion about whether the pause was real or not. This discussion eventually resulted in a section that was added to the Fifth IPCC Report, so you can read about it, why there is a pause, what it means, the odds of it happening, whether it discounts the range of models in expectation, etc... again, nothing here that wasn't made fully known. So what Peter Thorne discussed here, was done. Nothing was hidden. This is just science working as it should.

He has an interesting discussion of the progress of scientific discussion on the so-called pause. In general a discussion of it is included in the Fifth IPCC Assessment Report due to political groups wanting answers on it. He's not a very good speaker, but its an interesting talk if you want to know about this.

So that leaves the last one. That one quote is the best that Jim Taylor has, and its arguable what would save him from a lawsuit.

So far I've yet to track down the quote, but that's it. One researcher complaining about a figure and making reference to some models. I'll make another post if I found out what he was referring to.

Here's what wasn't there, there weren't any emails at all that described any method to actually introduce bias. There was no methodology discussed of doing that, no discussion of cooking the books, nothing of the sort. All we have is one researcher making one complaint about a graphical figure. That's all Jim Taylor provides.

Unfortunately it doesn't get much better than that.

[Adrift]

First Jim Taylor plucks out a few emails dealing with whether access to the data from the weather stations should be provided in a raw form. There is an email exchange about this.

Source: Jim Taylor - Forbes

“I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI [Freedom of Information] Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the process,” - Phil jones

“Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we get – and has to be well hidden, ... I’ve discussed this with the main funder (U.S. Dept of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original station data.” - Phil Jones

© Copyright Original Source

I see nothing here about data manipulations. These scientists did not destroy any actual data, anyone wishing to reproduce their work can submit for requests for the data sources they used, and get the same data they had. What is being destroyed here is basically intermediate data, work in progress. You don't have to be given access to that, though the methods of work did change in response to public pressure, so now even that is available going forward. In destroying the work in progress they were just following ordinary scientific protocols at the time.

Wait, what? It's normal scientific protocol to destroy work in progress? Is this Phil Jones guy a climate scientist? You're saying its normal protocol to hide work done on the back of research grants? I accept man made climate change, but wow, that...that doesn't sound right to me.

[Adrift]

A foreword about quote mining. There is an informal fallacy in general which consists of sifting through a huge amount of texts, looking for a quote, removing it from its proper context and presenting it as a scandalous admission. This is old fallacy, but its fairly a common mistake that pseudoscientists make. Its way to get a 'gotcha' at your opponent. However in the end it is just a strawman. If its succesful its not on the merit of being a sound argument, but rather on causing fear, uncertainty and doubt.

Finding out whether data fraud has taken place would be straight forward if they found an email actually describing a practice of data fraud. So far, in this entire discussion Mountain Man hasn't presented a single piece of data fraud. At best he's just shown that calibrations have been made, and that the case for global warming was stronger after wards. In defense he's argued that calibrations ought to be neutral, not favoring any hypothesis, however there's no reason to believe that. Evidence isn't fair in that sense.

So lets move to the Forbes article by Jim Taylor that I called slandarous and accused of having no references or citations in support of its main claim that the scientists admitted that the science 'was weak' and 'dependent on deliberate manipulation of facts and data'.

Here's the offending quote.

Source: Jim Taylor - Forbes

(3) many of these scientists frankly admit to each other that much of the science is weak and dependent on deliberate manipulation of facts and data.

© Copyright Original Source

That's a pretty strong claim to make.

While the other claims Jim Taylor made weren't that strong, this is the main claim I objected to. As far as I can see not a single citation or reference to back this up was provided. Mountain Man claimed that the 'rabbit hole' was deep, which fairly vague a claim to back this up, and there were further references. So I'll systematically go through things.

First Jim Taylor plucks out a few emails dealing with whether access to the data from the weather stations should be provided in a raw form. There is an email exchange about this.

Source: Jim Taylor - Forbes

“I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI [Freedom of Information] Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the process,” - Phil jones

“Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we get – and has to be well hidden, ... I’ve discussed this with the main funder (U.S. Dept of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original station data.” - Phil Jones

© Copyright Original Source

I see nothing here about data manipulations. These scientists did not destroy any actual data, anyone wishing to reproduce their work can submit for requests for the data sources they used, and get the same data they had. What is being destroyed here is basically intermediate data, work in progress. You don't have to be given access to that, though the methods of work did change in response to public pressure, so now even that is available going forward. In destroying the work in progress they were just following ordinary scientific protocols at the time.

All of this can be read in the Final Investigation Report from Penn State University.

Source: Final Investigation Report

The first question was "Would you please tell us what you consider in your field to be accepted, standard practice with regard to sharing data?" A follow-up question asked how Dr. Mann had dealt with requests for data that were addressed to him during the period covered by the stolen emails. Dr. Mann offered a brief historical perspective on the issue of sharing data in his field, concluding with the observation that data are made generally available (e.g., in the NOAA public database) after those scientists who obtained the data have had a chance to be the first to publish findings based on the data. He noted that sometimes data are made available on a collegial basis to specific scientists before those who collected the data have published their initial findings. Typically, this involves a request to not release the data to others until the data are made publically available by the scientists who obtained the data. Dr. Mann concluded his answer by stating that he has always worked with data obtained by other scientists, and that when such data were not already in the public domain, he made them available as soon as he was permitted to do so by those who initially obtained the data. Dr. Mann drew a distinction between actual data and intermediate data that are produced as part of the analytic procedures employed. He indicated that while such intermediate data may occasionally be shared with colleagues, it is not standard practice to publish or make generally available this intermediate data (to which he and others refer to as "dirty laundry" in one of the purloined emails). Finally, he indicated that someone who wanted to reproduce his work would be able to independently reproduce this intermediate data and that, in fact, other researchers had done this.

The Investigatory Committee next inquired how he constructed his source codes and what he considered to be accepted practice in his field for publishing source codes. Dr. Mann indicated that in his field of study, in contrast with some other fields such as economics, publishing the source code was never standard practice until his work and
that of his colleagues came under public scrutiny, resulting in public pressure to do so. He indicated that he initially was reluctant to publish his source codes because the
National Science Foundation had determined that source codes were the intellectual property of the investigator. Also, he developed his source codes using a programming
language (FORTRAN 77) that was not likely to produce identical results when run on a computer system different from the one on which it was developed (e.g., different
processor makes/models, different operating systems, different compilers, different compiler optimizations). Dr. Mann reported that since around 2000, he has been using a more accessible programming style (MATLAB), and since then he has made all source codes available to the research community.

© Copyright Original Source

Then follows some emails about Jim Taylor's point that the scientists were 'politicized'.

Source: Jim Taylor - Forbes

“The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid[e] what’s included and what is left out” of IPCC reports, writes Jonathan Overpeck, coordinating lead author for the IPCC’s most recent climate assessment.

“I gave up on [Georgia Institute of Technology climate professor] Judith Curry a while ago. I don’t know what she thinks she’s doing, but its not helping the cause,” wrote Mann in another newly released email.

“I have been talking w/ folks in the states about finding an investigative journalist to investigate and expose” skeptical scientist Steve McIntyre, Mann writes in another newly released email.

© Copyright Original Source

If there was something about data manipulation here I missed it.

Source: Jim Taylor - Forbes

“Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the uncertainty and be honest. Phil, hopefully we can find time to discuss these further if necessary,” writes Peter Thorne of the UK Met Office.

“I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run,” Thorne adds.

“Mike, The Figure you sent is very deceptive ... there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model results by individual authors and by IPCC,” Wigley acknowledges.

© Copyright Original Source

This is as close as it gets. Despite what Mountain Man asserted, there's actually no further citations. There's no links, or references, to anything but these emails in general. However since this is as good as it gets, lets take these in turn then.

The two first ones by Peter Thorne aren't about data manipulation, but from a longer discussion about whether the pause was real or not. This discussion eventually resulted in a section that was added to the Fifth IPCC Report, so you can read about it, why there is a pause, what it means, the odds of it happening, whether it discounts the range of models in expectation, etc... again, nothing here that wasn't made fully known. So what Peter Thorne discussed here, was done. Nothing was hidden. This is just science working as it should.

He has an interesting discussion of the progress of scientific discussion on the so-called pause. In general a discussion of it is included in the Fifth IPCC Assessment Report due to political groups wanting answers on it. He's not a very good speaker, but its an interesting talk if you want to know about this.

So that leaves the last one. That one quote is the best that Jim Taylor has, and its arguable what would save him from a lawsuit.

So far I've yet to track down the quote, but that's it. One researcher complaining about a figure and making reference to some models. I'll make another post if I found out what he was referring to.

Here's what wasn't there, there weren't any emails at all that described any method to actually introduce bias. There was no methodology discussed of doing that, no discussion of cooking the books, nothing of the sort. All we have is one researcher making one complaint about a graphical figure. That's all Jim Taylor provides.

Unfortunately it doesn't get much better than that.

You know, I'm on your side on this subject, but in my opinion, you haven't made at all a compelling case. If these emails are accurate, then it appears to me that all you're doing is handwaving away some serious issues, including scientists hiding data, and blatantly making this a political issue. I still accept the Anthropogenic Global Warming theory, but this post, how you've decided to reply to it, far from reinforcing AGW, has actually produced in me a bit of misgiving.

[Leonhard]

Wait, what? It's normal scientific protocol to destroy work in progress? ... that doesn't sound right to me.

Source: Final Investigation Report

Dr. Mann offered a brief historical perspective on the issue of sharing data in his field, concluding with the observation that data are made generally available (e.g., in the NOAA public database) after those scientists who obtained the data have had a chance to be the first to publish findings based on the data.
...
Dr. Mann drew a distinction between actual data and intermediate data that are produced as part of the analytic procedures employed.
...
He indicated that while such intermediate data may occasionally be shared with colleagues, it is not standard practice to publish or make generally available this intermediate data (to which he and others refer to as "dirty laundry" in one of the purloined emails).

© Copyright Original Source

After they were done the work? Yes. This wasn't stuff that was underway, and then suddenly terminated. This was all the cruft amassed during research. Sketch work, mistakes, half-finished figures, rejected graphs, various models tested out, etc... its really stuff of no use to anyone.

They sentence is 'intermittent data', Phil Jones, as he stated, has always made his data sources public and if he's used data, then as far as it was possible for him, he's made it openly accessible to anyone. And he has, and they are. And all the data that the IPCC has used for their analysis is available for anyone to use, and was used by the Berkeley Earth Temperature reconstruction project to replicate hockey stick graph. In that sense nothing is hidden. What was deleted was the 'in progress work', I don't know why that is supposed to be offensive or bad? And yes its not uncommon, that's basically what I did when I published my thesis, and similarly with Phd thesees, and research papers. You don't have to have all the intermittent data and half-finished work sitting around, and sometimes for legal reasons you can't. Its normal practice to get rid of it, or at least not care about preserving it.

Remember, again, all the data sources used were fully documented in the final report, and were successfully used in other projects as the one by Berkeley.

in my opinion, you haven't made at all a compelling case.

I'd love to know any specific grievances you have.

If these emails are accurate, then it appears to me that all you're doing is handwaving away some serious issues, including scientists hiding data, and blatantly making this a political issue.

How did I handwave these posts away? I really tried to get into specifics. In fact I focused very narrowly on the very specific claim that Jim Taylor in Forbes had, of these scientists admitting to data manipulation. Which I didn't find any evidence of, Mountain Man had challenged me on that saying there were 'plenty of sources', so I went over the paper again in a detailed fashion, openly and explicitly, but I honestly couldn't find anything like that.

Yes the scientists are involved in a political aspect of this, because they were also commissioned to make a seperate report. There's the full one which is 2000+ pages long, hyper detailed, gives all the aspects both on how the data were gathered, as well as how they were analysed, and discusses just about every single aspect. And they were also to make smaller reports, more simplified for the use of politicians. Hence they're talking about that message, what to put in there. I'm not handwaving here either, I provided a link to a talk by Peter Thorne discussing the narrative of the 'pause' vs how the scientific community saw it at the time.

I still accept the Anthropogenic Global Warming theory, but this post, how you've decided to reply to it, far from reinforcing AGW, has actually produced in me a bit of misgiving.

That certainly wasn't my intent, if there's any places you feel I was handwavy I'd love to see them pointed out. Otherwise you're quite capable of making up your own mind Adrift.

[Leonhard]

Honestly at this point if the next post from Mountain Man is simple empty rhetorics, or another link blasting, or if Adrift is just going to refrain with 'Its obvious what's wrong', then I'll bow out of this discussion. Its just not worth my time to spend effort writing these posts, if people are just going to ignore them, or write a five sentences in response.

[Adrift]

Source: Final Investigation Report

Dr. Mann drew a distinction between actual data and intermediate data that are produced as part of the analytic procedures employed.

© Copyright Original Source

They sentence is 'intermittent data', Phil Jones, as he stated, has always made his data sources public and if he's used data, then as far as it was possible for him, he's made it openly accessible to anyone. And he has, and they are. And all the data that the IPCC has used for their analysis is available for anyone to use, and was used by the Berkeley Earth Temperature reconstruction project to replicate hockey stick graph. In that sense nothing is hidden. What was deleted was the 'in progress work', I don't know why that is supposed to be offensive or bad? And yes its not uncommon, that's basically what I did when I published my thesis, and similarly with Phd thesees, and research papers. You don't have to have all the intermittent data and half-finished work sitting around, and sometimes for legal reasons you can't.

Would you explain why it is you find it so bad? Remember, again, all the data sources used were fully documented in the final report, and were succesfully used in other projects as the one by Berkeley.

I simply do not find this line of argument very compelling. When someone literally says, "Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we get – and has to be well hidden"...that's hiding the work to me. Why would anyone want to hide their work? Especially on a topic this contentious. You'd expect that even "intermittent data" would be available for full transparency. He obviously did not make all his data accessible to anyone if he's talking about hiding some of it. Why would you think this is not a big deal? What am I missing here.

I'd love to know any specifics.

Well for instance, when citing people who are talking about other scientists not holding the line, and not "helping the cause", you seem completely dismissive. "If there was something about data manipulation here I missed it." I mean, maybe that's so, but there shouldn't be any "helping the cause" when it comes to scientific truths. Either climate is changing because of people, or it's not. What kind of insanity is it for a scientist to say that they're "finding an investigative journalist to investigate and expose" skeptical scientists? That sounds like something someone with an agenda would say, not a reputable individual who is attempting to follow the evidence wherever it leads. Again, what am I missing here?

How did I handwave these posts away? I really tried to get into specifics. In fact I focused very narrowly on the very specific claim that Jim Taylor in Forbes had, of these scientists admitting to data manipulation. Which I didn't find any evidence of, Mountain Man had challenged me on that saying there were 'plenty of sources', so I went over the paper again in a detailed fashion, openly and explicitly, but I honestly couldn't find anything like that.

Namely by pretending that they're not a big deal. Since I didn't visit the links, had you not quoted from the article, I wouldn't have even realized that these sorts of shenanigans were going on. You essentially shot your own position in the foot. At least for me. Again, I still firmly accept AGW, but jeezow dude, these are some seriously bad optics.

Yes the scientists are involved in a political aspect of this

You don't think that's a big deal? Because I think that's a big deal. How bout the scientists follow the evidence where it leads, allowing for full and complete transparency of their work, and leave the politics to the politicians.