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23 Sep 09 - Excerpts – “The data needed to verify the gloom-and-doom
warming forecasts have disappeared.
“Or so it seems. Apparently, they were either lost or purged from
some discarded computer. Only a very few people know what really
happened, and they aren’t talking much. And what little they are
saying makes no sense.
“In the early 1980s … scientists at the United Kingdom’s University
of East Anglia established the Climate Research Unit (CRU) to
produce the world’s first comprehensive history of surface
temperature. It’s known in the trade as the “Jones and Wigley”
record for its authors, Phil Jones and Tom Wigley, and it served as
the primary reference standard for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC) until 2007.
“Jones and Wigley, however, weren’t specific about what was done to
which station in order to produce their record, which, according to
the IPCC, showed a warming of 0.6° +/– 0.2°C in the 20th century.
“Now begins the fun. Warwick Hughes, an Australian
scientist, wondered where that “+/–” came from, so he politely wrote
Phil Jones in early 2005, asking for the original data. Jones’s response
to a fellow scientist attempting to replicate his work was, “We have 25
years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available
to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”
“Reread that statement, for it is breathtaking in its anti-scientific
thrust. In fact, the entire purpose of replication is to “try and find
something wrong.” The ultimate objective of science is to do things so
well that, indeed, nothing is wrong.
“Faced with a growing number of such requests, Jones refused them all.
“Enter the dog that ate global warming.
“Jones responded:
"Since the 1980s, we have
merged the data we have received into existing
series or begun new ones, so it is impossible to say if
all stations within a particular
country or if all of an individual record should be
freely available. Data storage
availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able
to keep the multiple sources
for some sites, only the station series after
adjustment for homogeneity issues. We,
therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only
the value-added (i.e., quality
controlled and homogenized) data.
“The statement about “data storage” is balderdash. They got the records
from somewhere. The files went onto a computer. All of the original data
could easily fit on the 9-inch tape drives common in the mid-1980s. I
had all of the world’s surface barometric pressure data on one such tape
in 1979.
“So the question remains: What was destroyed or lost, when was it
destroyed or lost, and why?
“All of this is much more than an academic spat. It now appears likely
that the U.S. Senate will drop cap-and-trade climate legislation from
its docket this fall — whereupon the Obama Environmental Protection
Agency is going to step in and issue regulations on carbon-dioxide
emissions. Unlike a law, which can’t be challenged on a scientific
basis, a regulation can. If there are no data, there’s no science. U.S.
taxpayers deserve to know the answer to the question posed above.”
See entire article:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/23/taking-a-bite-out-of-climate-data/
Thanks to Andy Patel for this link
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