Hadley CRU destroyed climate data
Posted by Richard on November 28, 2009
David Aitken (who really should be posting this stuff at his blog instead of just emailing his friends) called it, "Not just the smoking gun, but the bullet." The UK TimesOnline reported that "the world’s leading centre for reconstructing past climate and temperatures" destroyed the raw data it used to arrive at its conclusions in support of anthropogenic global warming (AGW):
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.”
… 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.
Well, that explains why they've refused to reveal their raw data and stonewalled all previous requests. One of the core principles of the scientific method is transparency — you share with others exactly how you arrived at your conclusion so that they can replicate your results or disprove them. The proponents of the AGW theory have fought such openness every step of the way, as if they had something to hide. It's reasonable to conclude that they do. Indeed, it would be foolish and naive to assume that they do not.
Some recent comments on the TimesOnline post put things in perspective nicely:
Joe Horner wrote:"Dear Inland Revenue, I enclose my latest accounts. Please note that I accidentally destroyed all the original invoices but I promise they were all entered correctly. Honest"Truely unbelievable!
Whitbread Tankard wrote:
One of them said in the leaked emails that he'd rather delete the raw data than release it, maybe he did just that!Truth Orator, yes one could theoretically back out the corrections but that in turn implies trust in those values being archived correctly. What we've seen so far is a rather chaotic organisation when it comes to documentation etc.The whole thing is an utter disgrace and a blot on British scientific work.
Whitbread Tankard wrote:
One of them said in the leaked emails that he'd rather delete the raw data than release it, maybe he did just that!David Aitken wrote:Reversing the alterations is probably impossible because the alterations were probably done by 1 or more complex algorithms that may no longer exist. It's not just a matter of adding or subtracting a simple number.
David Bryant said
Gordon Crovitz wrote a nice editorial in the Wall Street Journal today. Readers are enjoying themselves. Here’s a typical comment.
”Word on the street is that the researchers at East Anglia are blaming somebody called Piltdown for accidentally deleting the original weather data years ago, but authorities are having trouble tracking him down for questioning.”
Frank White said
The Australians explained why “Harry” (Ian Harris) thought the database of Australian records was useless. Harry was using the raw data feed not same as the database that Australian scientists use.
The Hadley data was deleted, not to hide the lack of warming, but to hide the fact that it was useless for scientific study.