Tuesday, December 08, 2009

When is data adjustment really data fraud?

So, the Copenhagen boondoggle has commenced and the hypocrisy is rampant.

Amongst the most galling claims are those that proclaim the changes in climate to be increasingly dire and that the email revelations from Hadley CRU are irrelevant as they do not significantly alter the "facts".

The problem is the emails do call the very facts that undermine the AGW theory into question because they do suggest that the very base data upon which the IPCC process is based are themselves suspect and the product of self-fulfilling manipulation: we know the result that is needed and here it is. The emails provide evidence to suggest this, but in the absence of an audit of the data themselves this remains assertion.

Well here is evidence that moves this claim past assertion and into the realm of substantiated cause for concern.

So, if the science really does matter, more of this type of specific audit of the base climate record is required to demonstrate that the data have not arbitrarily manipulated and biased.

However, if climate change is really only about the politics of constraint and guilt, then the science is irrelevant anyways.

  • ...delegates in the Danish capital have practically glossed over the CRU “Climategate” leaks. That’s partly because they refuse to let the facts get in the way of their cause, but it’s mostly because Copenhagen isn’t about climate change as a physical phenomenon, but rather climate change as an opportunity to regulate people’s lives and incomes on a global scale.