jmw
Industrial
- Jun 27, 2001
- 7,435
Well, not a hoax as the original thread was initially careful to consider, and as anticipated there, a new tranche of emails has now been released.
Yes folks, its Climategate 2.0 and better late than never(I was anticipating a second release much earlier as revealed in the original threads).
Now the interesting question is: How clever were the scientists at the time?
I have two scenarios:
(a.i) at Climategate, the scientists could assume whoever leaked the data leaked all they had.
If it caused a serious enquiry then their files would be investigated by outsiders.
Since the leaked data was validated as genuine it all had to be discovered still on the servers.
But if they were intensively investigated that investigation would reveal a lot more damaging material.
So the best winning strategy would be to sanitise anything not leaked and try and explain away was what released and hope for a favourable whitewash (as actually happened).
(b) assume whoever leaked had access to everything. In that case sanitising what wasn't released would reveal, if a searching enquiry were conducted, that they'd sanitised the files but there is option (a.ii)
(a.ii) whoever leaked leaked all they had access to. A serious enquiry would access a lot more damning data.
Hence the question of whether to sanitise or not sanitise has only one winning solution in the event the politicos have to conduct a real enquiry and not a whitewash: sanitise the files.
Of course, the only winning strategy depends on there being a lot of breaks in their favour but the only alternative is to cop a plea and take up voluntary work for Barnardos.
So I'd really like to know if anyone can access their files and see just what exists and what doesn't. It would be very difficult to claim the new files are fabricated and the original files not so any gaps in the official files would be most revealing.
PS what I liked was this from Delingpole:
He can't plot data in Excel? and we were supposed to take him seriously as a scientist?
JMW
Yes folks, its Climategate 2.0 and better late than never(I was anticipating a second release much earlier as revealed in the original threads).
Now the interesting question is: How clever were the scientists at the time?
I have two scenarios:
(a.i) at Climategate, the scientists could assume whoever leaked the data leaked all they had.
If it caused a serious enquiry then their files would be investigated by outsiders.
Since the leaked data was validated as genuine it all had to be discovered still on the servers.
But if they were intensively investigated that investigation would reveal a lot more damaging material.
So the best winning strategy would be to sanitise anything not leaked and try and explain away was what released and hope for a favourable whitewash (as actually happened).
(b) assume whoever leaked had access to everything. In that case sanitising what wasn't released would reveal, if a searching enquiry were conducted, that they'd sanitised the files but there is option (a.ii)
(a.ii) whoever leaked leaked all they had access to. A serious enquiry would access a lot more damning data.
Hence the question of whether to sanitise or not sanitise has only one winning solution in the event the politicos have to conduct a real enquiry and not a whitewash: sanitise the files.
Of course, the only winning strategy depends on there being a lot of breaks in their favour but the only alternative is to cop a plea and take up voluntary work for Barnardos.
So I'd really like to know if anyone can access their files and see just what exists and what doesn't. It would be very difficult to claim the new files are fabricated and the original files not so any gaps in the official files would be most revealing.
PS what I liked was this from Delingpole:
Here's Jones flaunting his ignorance:
I keep on seeing people saying this same stupid thing. I'm not adept enough (totally inept) with excel to do this now as no-one who knows how to is here.
What you have to do is to take the numbers in column C (the years) and then those in D (the anomalies for each year), plot them and then work out the linear trend. The slope is upwards. I had someone do this in early 2006, and the trend was upwards then. It will be now. Trend won't be statistically significant, but the trend is up.
And here's Cumbrian Lad's comment below:
The fact that a scientist who is in charge of a major global data set claims not to be able to plot two columns in a spreadsheet is dumbfounding. Not only that, but he feels sure that relatively few people around him could either.
The line "I had someone do this in early 2006…, " suggests that it is the sort of menial task he'd leave to a non technical assistant. Now, I've some time for delegation of appropriate tasks, and keeping the best brains thinking, not engaged in mundane tasks, but data analysis is part of the science surely.
He can't plot data in Excel? and we were supposed to take him seriously as a scientist?
JMW