

The 'very artificial correction' flap looks like much ado about nothing to me  - jgrahamc
http://www.jgc.org/blog/2009/11/very-artificial-correction-flap-looks.html

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gaius
_Since I don't have the datasets that underlie this code I can't actually
execute it_

That's the point. No-one can. Let me tell you, if a bank "lost" their trading
data, or a drug company "lost" their clinical trials data, or an engineering
firm "lost" the data they verified their avionics with, there would be hell to
pay. Why's everyone giving these bozos, whose model materially affects all our
lives, a free ride?

~~~
jgrahamc
Did you read my last paragraph?

 _But all the talk of not releasing data and hiding from FOIA requests does
make me uneasy. Science is better when other scientists can reproduce what you
are doing,_

I'm not happy about that either.

~~~
gaius
If a bank repeatedly refused to hand over its data to the regulator after some
fraud occurred, then suddenly changed their tune and said the data was lost,
someone's going to jail. If a drug company does the same after some side-
effects are discovered, ditto. If an engineering firm after an airliner goes
down, or a bridge collapses, ditto.

Now we are being asked to redirect resources in the entire global economy
based on... What, exactly? The word of people who have been caught with a
smoking gun of disregarding the scientific process to silence their critics by
any means necessary? Everyone, the greens especially, ought to be _furious_.

~~~
sethg
If this one study were the _only_ evidence of global warming, it wouldn't
justify redirecting the global economy's resources, _even if we had all the
raw data_.

~~~
flipbrad
fine, but losing it undermines the overall case and any present justification
there is. how much is a matter of opinion, but it's bound to be non-negligible
given the continuous obstructionism to releasing it in the first place.

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Kliment
Excellent analysis. And seriously, would someone trying to hide something
document it this carefully?

~~~
gaius
Well, sure. He wasn't trying to hide it from his colleagues; they were all in
on it.

~~~
henrikschroder
Three can keep a secret if two are dead.

The biggest counter-argument to any sort of conspiracy is that it's _really
hard_ to keep a secret, so what would motivate such an effort? How would all
potential whistleblowers be kept silent? What would these people gain from
perpetuating a global warming scare? It really doesn't add up.

~~~
gaius
As evidenced by the fact that we're all poring over his code :-)

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gort
Interesting that the paper in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, which
discusses "the decline", has amongst its authors Jones and Briffa, two names
I've seen associated with the alleged "hiding" of the decline.

