Riverwind

You linked a paper from 2007. Such as paper CANNOT be used to justify Briffa and co's actions in 2000. Then you are admitting that Jones just made it up because he did not like the MM paper. If there was actual support in the peer reviewed literature for his comment he would have referenced that paper. If you disagree then produce the paper.

Great. Now you go an find the peer reviewed literature support for the claim that "Hence, the correlation of warming with industrial and socioeconomic development ceases to be statistically significant". You will find that no such paper exists and the referenced sections have a general discussion that does not refute MM in any way. The distinction you are making is irrelevant. A coordinating author has no right to exclude papers from the report which he did twice and then add unsupported negative commentary on a paper after being forced to include it.

Your own links don't even support your claims. His approach makes sense. If a drug addict commits a crime they should be kept in jail until they accept treatment.

Prove it. Show me the peer reviewed literature that supports Briffa's claim that the divergance was due to some factor which was unique to the late 20th century. This paper will have to include actual experimental results that demonstrate the biological mechanisms claimed.You won't find it because such a paper does not exist. Briffa's claim is just something he made up because if he did not make up some excuse he would have to throw out his entire dataset. That is also why he needed to 'hide the decline' because anyone with any analytical ability would smell a rat if the decline was left in. I make my decisions based on evidence. In this case the evidence shows that climate science community is made up of thousands of practicing scientists either find behavoir of people like Jones and Mann to be perfectly acceptable or work in environment were they cannot express their opinion on that behavoir. What it means is I cannot trust the scientific judgment of these people. Of course there are exceptions (Judith Curry of Georgia Tech) but her voice has been drowned out by the Mann/Jones supporters.

The onus was on Jones to provide a reference to the peer reviewed literature that actually refuted the paper in the IPCC report. He did not because none existed at the time. That means his criticisms were baseless. If you disagree then you come up with a paper from BEFORE May 2006 and show that Jones referenced that paper in his criticisms of MM. The 2009 Schmidt paper is irrelevant (it is also wrong but that is not the point being argued here).Incidentally, you will never understand the points I am making as long as you insist that the ends always justify the means in scientific investigations. i.e. you cannot excuse someones unethical behavior simply because you believe he is right. In science the process is more important than the answer.

It is not going to happen. I have come to the view that a certain segment of the population are black and white thinkers - e.g. one can be right or wrong and there is no middle ground. These are the people who form the extremes of any debate and are simply incapable of viewing their opponents as anything other than evil.

The defenses have already been presented via proxies like Real Climate. Mann has been given editorial space in major newspapers to defend himself. I find the explainations offered to be completely inadequate. The only thing the UAE investigation can do is determine whether Jones actually violated the FOI laws in the UK. If you look back at my statements you will find that I have not accused Jones of breaking the FOI laws because I do not have enough information to determine that and I am willing to defer judgment until the investigation completes. I agree provided scientists recognize that such trust comes ethical and professional obligations. The trouble with climate science is the scientists think they are entitled to the trust without assuming the obligations. Bias in media is a matter of opinion. Alarmists have insisted for years that 'balance is bias' and that sceptics should not be allowed to express their views. OTOH, sceptics insist that the media does not give their views a fair hearing. I am still disgusted with the G&M over its coverage of the climategate issue and think they should be called to account for the blatant bias yet I suspect you would not agree. So the question becomes: how do you call people to account when no one agrees on the standard to use? What happens in reality is people vote with their wallets and only support media that support their biases. This has led to a media that is fragmented in echo chambers appealing to different market segments.A similar thing is happening with climate science. People like me who feel climate scientists have failed to live up their ethical and professional obligations to the public are simply refusing to accept their scientific claims until they have been independently verified. This, in turn, makes it impossible to achieve the political consensus required to enact the policies that many climate scientists feel are necessary. In a rational world the scientists would recognize that they have failed the public and work to restore trust. Unfortunately, most scientists have responded with name calling (e.g. denalists/flat earthers) and conspiracy theories (e.g. big oil/big tobacco).

The "basis for the presentation" is NOT soundly understood in dendroclimatology. It basically crap that Briffa pulled out of a** in order to salvage what would otherwise be a useless reconstruction. He needed to hide the decline in the public graphs because showing it would make it painfully clear that his tree rings were garbage. It was dishonest. Why should I? The Heartland institute was not a lead author on a IPCC report. The Heartland institute is not responsible for one of the major temperature datasets which are used to determine the extent of warming. Get over yourself. If a scientist expects me to trust their scientific judgment they better be prepared to demonstrate that their scientific judgment is sound. As far as I am concerned, any scientist who defends Mann and Jones has no integrity and their scientific judgment cannot be trusted.

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Show me anything that was in the peer reviewed literature before May 2006 (IPCC AR4 cutoff date). You will find nothing. The criticisms that Jones added to the IPCC report were nothing but his opinion and were never submitted to any peer review process. Jones had an obligation as the lead IPCC author to include the MM paper in the IPCC report. Jones knew this and that is why he said he would have to 'redefine what peer reviewed literature is' in the climategate emails. It was unethical for him to use his position as an IPCC author to suppress research that he did not agree with and it is unethical for any scientist to defend what he did.

And if the officials choose to ignore the public's view they will likely find that politicians will be pressured to get the officials to render a different decision. It is true that many people misinterpreted what that email was talking and this error is something that bugs many sceptics too. However, that error does not change the significance of the email since manipulating any data to hide an inconvenient decline from the public is intellectually dishonest. I don't outsource my ethical standards to institutions whose funding would be adversly affected if they admitted there were serious problems. I do my own research and feel I have enough facts to draw my own conclusions. Anyone can dispute what a journalist says and they are not tolds to shut up because they are not a journalist. Scientists need to be held to higher standard as long as they expect to be taken at their word.

In other words, you agree that it is the pubic that ultimately decides whether any wronging has occurred and the investigators only collect the information that will allow the public to make a determination. If you actually believed it was up to the investigators to make that determination then you would have to say that a public inquiry could not be justified once the investigators decided that no wrong had occurred. For me the same logic applies here. It is public that decides whether those scientists crossed any ethical boundaries and, as with the RCMP case, the publicly available evidence makes it clear to many that boundaries were crossed and the only question is who exactly should be punished and what changes to the system are required. The ethical boundaries are set by the public that provides the funding and are expected to accept policies that are based on the science. IOW - it is up to people like you and me to decide what the boundaries are - it is not up to a group of people who are biased by their desire to preserve their reputations. Blame the messenger? Give me a break. For every pundit saying that these emails show AGW is a hoax there is another saying that the leak was carefully planned attack by the oil industry. We live in a society where we depend on many institutions which are given authority to act on behalf of the public. These institutions depend on the trust of the public to function and they must be accountable to the public and live up to the standards that the public sets for them. I realize that it is difficult to determine what exactly the 'public' expects because there are many different opinions but I think I can reasonably say that a large percentage of the public think those scientists crossed a line and should be held to account. This means that any investigation that does not come to that conclusion will be rightfully rejected by the public.

What was breached? There are no clear written policies that can be looked at. The question of whether a line was crossed depends entirely on the biases of the investigator. Investigators that wish to sweep it under the carpet will conclude that no line was crossed. Investigators that actually care about the public perception of science will conclude that many serious breaches occurred. In either case the investigator's opinion will not change the opinion of the public because the public has their own standard for what they expect from professional scientists. Just like the public has its own standard for what they expect from the police.

Perhaps they don't speak for themselves but skeptic's POV has been available on the web for awhile. When you compare the skeptic's long standing claims with the evidence in the emails one can only conclude that the scientists behavoir is grossly unprofessional and unethical. Please answer this question: did you agree that there was no need for a public inquiry after the RCMP internal investigation concluded that the officers did nothing wrong at YVR. If not why not?

Jones is not entitled to make that determination as the lead author of the IPCC report. His duties are to summarize the state of the science including any minority opinions. He was eventually forced to include it for those reasons but added a bunch of baseless criticisms. The fact that he tried exclude it demonstrates that he is not is trustworthy. And you think that makes a point? When they can, they keep skeptical papers out the peer reviewed literature. If that is not possible they collude with the journal editors to delay skeptical papers so they can produce a 'rebuttle paper'. If the journal editors won't cooperate they black ball the journal that published the paper. The fix is in. The evidence is available. People with open minds can see this.

Wind power and other renewables are the most expensive form of electricity available. Each time you see a wind turbine goes up your hydro bill will increase. The cost of the wind power is factored into the 'delivery charges' since these projects are funded by forcing the distributor to buy wind power at much higher than market rates.If you are really worried about your electricity bill then you should be telling your MPPs to stop fooling around with expensive and ultimately useless power sources like wind. If GHGs are a concern we need more nuclear plants.

Jones are Trenberth were the lead authors on Part 3 of the IPCC report. You can find it here.You can find there official replies to the request to include the papers here. Their reply: It is painfully obvious that Jones used his position as the author of the IPCC report to suppress research that he did not like. His job as the author of the IPCC report was to summarize the current scientific understanding which includes minority opinions. He was not entitled to keep them out simply because he disagrees with them. The fact that he tried demonstrates that he is not trustworthy. What did you think when the RCMP report came back and said the RCMP officers did nothing wrong at YVR? Would you have simply accepted that and agreed that no public inquiry was required? If not then you are just as guilty of using your own judgment to evaluate the publically available evidence and deciding in advance what conclusions would be acceptable.In the climategate email case, the information is on the Internet. I can read the evidence myself and there is no possible context that could excuse what is already known. It is not possible for an unbaised investigation to conclude that Jones and the other scientists involved did nothing wrong.

Where did I say that NASA had not released its code? The NASA code has been available for a while thanks to the efforts of SteveMc and his blog but people have only recently been able to do any analysis with it. The issue with GISTemp is the UHI adjustments are crap an only succeed in averaging the UHI across all cells instead of removing it. There is also the issue with the choice of stations which is not adequately explained. Bottom line: releasing code that shows the algorithms are crap does not give us any more reason to trust the dataset. Because the climate scientist's old boys network would dismiss it just like they dismiss any other research that does not follow the AGW playbook. However, it is possible that fallout over climategate will make it harder for fixers to do that so I expect to see some efforts on that front but it will take some time.Your problem is you think that these scientists deserve to be trusted. Why? Trust is earned - not demanded. What did they do to earn the trust that you demand? Where is your evidence that the system for assessing science within the field of climate science is objective and reliable? Don't bother pointing to other discplines were is it possible to verify theories with real world experiments. In those fields reality is always the final abitrator. When it comes down to climate science is nothing but opinion and any displine that is largely based on opinion is extremely subject to group think.

Did you even read the second link I gave?1) Its not talking about a journal - the IPCC report which is supposed to cover all peer reviewed literature. He has no business trying to keep a paper out of the IPCC report simply because he does not like it. 2) He was not joking. The papers were kept out of the first draft of the IPCC report. There were only included after repeated protests by SteveMc and RossMc (read the link for more detail on Jones's malfeasance). 3) It does not make a difference whether the papers were included in the end - it is the fact that they even considered that to be an option which is problem. That is your opinion. It is not mine and it is not the opinion of many others. I do not trust these scientists and see no reason to. I am not interested in excuse making or rationalizations. If the institutions conducting the investigations choose to whitewash the events and pretend that there is nothing wrong then I will take that as evidence that the scientific establishment is corrupt and cannot be trusted to provide reliable scientific advice. I hope it does not come to that because I believe the system can be fixed if there is a willingness to confront the obvious problems.

You obviously have not read the emails or simply don't understand the context behind them. I suggest you do more than read the talking points produced by the alarmists. There is a book out now which looks at the emails in detail a shows why they are not something to be ignored.For me this comment best illustrates the fundementally unethical character of the scientists involved: For me there is no debate. A scientist who thinks that they are entitled to suppress science that they disagree with is not ethical. Any scientist who refuses to acknowledge the obvious ethical violations in that statement deserves no respect.You can find more background on that comment here. The only question the investigators should be asking why the scientists involved were allowed to get away with what they did for so long and what changes are necessary to prevent it from occurring in the future.

This is not a criminal issue. There is no 'innocent until proven guilty'. We are dealing with ethical issues and on that point the emails are unambiguous evidence that they acted unethically and that their scientific judgment cannot be trusted. If these scientists want the public to trust their judgement then the onus is on them to prove that they acted ethically. So tell me what you thought of the RCMP after seeing the YVR video? Did you suspend your sense of judgement and insist that you could not form an opinion based on the video evidence until the investigations completed? Would you have accepted the results of the inquiry if the the inquiry concluded that such actions were perfectly acceptable police practice? Somehow I doubt you would. In the YVR case the only place where judgement needed to be suspended was on whether the individual RCMP officers followed proper procedures as defined at the time (i.e. calling for the officers to charged with murder was uncalled for). There was no need to wait when it comes to determining whether the incident represented a failure of policing and that changes were needed.

We are dealing with breaches of ethics - not law. There is no rule book or other document that must be consulted to determine whether they crossed the line. There are no technicalities or context that will excuse the individuals involved for the acts which are well documented online. It all comes down to what standard for professional conduct and ethical behavoir that we expect from scientists doing work that is used to set government policies.As far as I am concerned they have not met the standard that I expect. But it does appear that the climate science community does not share my standards of ethical behavoir and that tells me that I can only expect more of such behavoir in the future from them. The only difference is they will get better at hiding their shenaigans from the public. That said it is possible that the investigations will live up to my standards and will make appropriate findings. However, I am not optimistic. For example, the Penn State investigation will be conducted entirely in private and no third party observers will be allowed to witness the proceedings. This is pretty clear sign of a desire for a whitewash. I think it is worth contrasting it with the YVR incident. In that case, the RCMP officers have very specific rules they needed to follow when using force and we needed an investigation to determine whether those rules were followed and whether the officers deserved any sort of punishment. However, we did not need any investigation to determine that RCMP failed to live up to our expectations of professional conduct. The video made it pretty clear that they were too quick to resort to the taser and if the individual officers did not break any rules then the rules needed to change.

Insight caters to a class of addicts that are willing and able to defer use until they can get to the facility. This means it works ok of heroine addicts who only need to shoot up once or twice a day but it does not work much for cocaine addicts that shoot up 8-10 times a day. This means that insight can only have a marginal effect on the spread contagious diseases because the most at risk group (cocaine addicts) don't use the facility for most of their injections. We don't have an infinite budget to spend on these things and it is important to invest the money we do have in the programs that provide the most return on investment. One of the problems with drug use is there are often small 'windows of opportunities' where the addict is so beaten down that they are willing to accept treatment. When these windows open is it very important get the addict into detox and treatment ASAP. Unfortunately, budget constraints means that addicts often have to wait to get a bed and the opportunity is missed. I think the money spent on Insight would be better spent on detox/treatment beds.Incidently, the BC government recently closed some of its addiction councelling service offices in the GVA. These offices provided support to addicts that had already choosen to recover. In the meantime, Insight continues to get funding. Government priorities are completely screwed up by the media coverage on the issue. I believe more people are helped by the quiet recovery supports services that they used to offer than by flashy clinics which enable drug use.

To be effective, any investigation much be done in a public forum and must include effective cross examination. The investigations launched so far look like whitewashes because they will give no one the opportunity to cross examine the claims. i.e. the people involved will be allowed to spin whatever tales they want without being forced to answer any tough questions or to address the concerns of the sceptics who have been on the receiving end of their scientific malfeasance. What you seem to missing here is the problem is not what individual scientists have done - the problem is the scientific institutions that appear to be incapable of rooting out intellectual corruption on their own. Restoring faith in the scientific institutions is going to take a lot more than a secret inquiry set up by the institutions who are suspect.

Big deal. They managed to write a different program that takes the same inputs, applies the same algorithms and produces the same results. Other people have done that too. The issue is at hand is whether choice of input data and algorithms introduce biases that affect the results.This guy was also able to get the GISTemp to run and he has a much less sanguine opinion on its worth: