[Vision2020] Climate change data dumped

[Paul Rumelhart]

This just keeps getting more and more unbelievable. Below is an article 
describing how the raw data that is being used to determine if global 
warming is really happening has been lost. Thrown out, actually, years ago.

Forget the fact that this subject is a major talking point for Rush 
Limbaugh, right-wing blogs, "denialists", and Fox News. This subject 
will affect the global economy to the tune of trillions of dollars. 
Don't you think it would be wise to handle this a little more 
professionally? Now other scientists can't access the raw data and 
validate the transforms that were performed on the data to make it 
"value-added" (their term, not mine).

If the governments of the world were taking this seriously, they would 
be demanding complete transparency. Let's make ALL of the data easily 
accessible publicly, and let's open source all of the code behind the 
adjustments and the climate models. All of it. This is too important to 
leave to a small group of (presumably well-intentioned) scientists. The 
world needs to see this data, and other scientists need to replicate 
their work in order for this hypothesis to be considered "settled" science.

And where is the main-stream media in all of this? I realize that global 
warming is supposed to be a colossally important subject, so why isn't 
something of this caliber that has the potential to undermine years of 
supposed consensus NOT being poured over by them in detail? Let's not 
let the divide that has grown in this country widen even further. 
Sometimes you need to swallow your pride and accept that sometimes the 
"other side" has something important to say, once all the hysteria has 
been removed.

Anyway, I guess the world lets me down again. Here is the story I mentioned:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6936328.ece

 From The Sunday Times
November 29, 2009


  Climate change data dumped

Jonathan Leake, Environment Editor

SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing 
away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of 
global warming are based.

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations 
said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss 
following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.

The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then 
adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. 
The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and 
magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new 
building.

The admission follows the leaking of a thousand private emails sent and 
received by Professor Phil Jones, the CRU’s director. In them he 
discusses thwarting climate sceptics seeking access to such data.

In a statement on its website, the CRU said: “We do not hold the 
original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and 
homogenised) data.”

The CRU is the world’s leading centre for reconstructing past climate 
and temperatures. Climate change sceptics have long been keen to examine 
exactly how its data were compiled. That is now impossible.

Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at Colorado University, 
discovered data had been lost when he asked for original records. “The 
CRU is basically saying, ‘Trust us’. So much for settling questions and 
resolving debates with science,” he said.

Jones was not in charge of the CRU when the data were thrown away in the 
1980s, a time when climate change was seen as a less pressing issue. The 
lost material was used to build the databases that have been his life’s 
work, showing how the world has warmed by 0.8C over the past 157 years.

He and his colleagues say this temperature rise is “unequivocally” 
linked to greenhouse gas emissions generated by humans. Their findings 
are one of the main pieces of evidence used by the Intergovernmental 
Panel on Climate Change, which says global warming is a threat to humanity.