ClimateGate: Oh, Jeez...

A Stanford professor holds a press briefing at the Copenhagen climate change conference.  A journalist and film-maker attending the briefing asks some awkward questions about ClimateGate.  The professor calls in armed U.N. security officers, who forced the journalist to stop filming – and threatened to eject him from the conference.

We can't even ask questions?

ClimateGate: Spotted in the Lamestream Media...

This is interesting both on its face, and for the fact that it was published by that well-known right-leaning institution called CBS News:

What irks the APS members circulating the petition are not claims that CO2 has been increasing for a century and that the Earth is warming; Lewis says the planet has been warming for thousands of years without our help, especially since the Little Ice Age a few hundred years ago. Instead, the physicists are concerned about the APS's claim that the science is settled on the question of the causal link between the two -- a claim that underpins the Copenhagen conference, the Democratic cap and trade proposals, and the EPA's announcement this week that CO2 is dangerous to human health.

APS is the American Physical Society, the main American organization for physicists.  I've posted about the internal debate there, which is mainly exhibiting the tension between the APS members support for good science (which ClimateGate revealed was not happening at the CRU) and other APS members inclinations for activism in support of AGW mitigation. 

It is so good to see the sunlight shining on this issue...

ClimateGate: Dennis Miller Interprets...

Ah, it's so much clearer now:

You ever come across raccoons in the outdoor trash can at 11:30 or so at night? As soon as they're exposed by the beam of the flashlight (by the way, how much CO2 does the beam of a flashlight put into the atmosphere?), they turn on you with fangs and paws and let you know what follows will be a short conversation with very little talking involved.

Currently, climate scientists are raccoons hip-deep in statistical garbage and you should approach them with caution because they are unarmed (with facts) and dangerous.

In lieu of having the facts (i.e., the thermometer!) bear out their hypothesis, they are now going to have to get creative. They are going to have to press the bet now and steer into the delusional skid, and that sort of desperation makes for a really unsavory individual no matter how much good they are ostensibly doing for their fellow man.

Deniers will be disparaged, data will be fudged and theories will be advanced that are, if possible, even more wing-nuttier than some of the claptrap currently out there. If heretofore depictions of Manhattan under water in the year 2057 were shown to sixth-graders, they're going to have to drop it down to preschoolers in deference to the Gullibility Expansion Joint.

It's amazing to see this topic so out in the open now.  Nice, too...

ClimateGate: Raw Data Revisionism...

Anthony Watts catches GISS in the act of changing the raw temperature data. 

For my readers who aren't familiar with such things, the issue here is that historical raw data (in this case, temperature readings) should never change.  If a thermometer at some site read a particular temperature on a particular date and time, then that should be that.  That historical temperature reading can't be 70° last week and 72° this week – but that's exactly what Watts caught GISS doing.

That's a big, big red flag for anyone whose research depends on this data – and the timing of the change, occuring in the midst of ClimateGate, just raises that red flag even higher.

Said another way: just what in the hell is going on with these climate researchers???

ClimateGate: Hobbyist Edition...

If you're reasonably competent with a spreadsheet, and you'd like to see for yourself how the CRU “cooked the books” to get the infamous hocky-stick graph, then this article is for you.  Essentially it's a tutorial on how to manipulate the raw proxy temperature data (which is publicly available) to get essentially the same results the CRU did. 

Even if you already understand, on an intellectual level, what the CRU did this is still an interesting exercise to see how it's done at a practical level.  It's also a bit surprising how easy it actually is.

Also interesting is who came up with this tutorial: David Burge, better known to most people as IowaHawk, the master of satire!

First Light on the VISTA Telescope...

The VISTA telescope – designed in the U.K., located in Chile – images in both visible and infrared wavelengths.  The image at right is of the Flame Nebula.  It's now been handed off from the development team to operations.

Congratulations to the folks who worked so hard to put this thing together!

Assyrian Tablet Decoding...

National Geographic talks about the decoding of this Assyrian baked clay tablet.  It seems to document the everyday inner workings of the government...