Editor:
Traitors? Fraudsters? Hank, I’m surprised at you. One would think the CRU scientists had been caught red-handed indeed. And yet to date there’s no evidence of fraud at all (“Town Dandy,” Dec. 17)
The two most hyped examples of alleged fraud (out of thousands of e-mails over years of time) are the code for a chart that calls for a significant artificial adjustment, and the “trick” to hide a decline shown by tree ring data that did not match instrumental data. Neither example has panned out as anything even nearing scientific fraud.
The adjusted chart data was not used. The published version of the chart used the unaltered data. Furthermore, the paper it was used in was specifically discussing the apparent unreliability of tree-ring data.
The “trick” to hide the decline was to leave off just the tail end of one (out of many) sets of tree ring data that, as the original researchers themselves noted back when the study was first published, they did not trust.
To date, none of this information is controversial. The problems with the tree ring data has been know for over a decade. No one anywhere has been able to show any fraud in any published report as a result of these e-mails. The CRU group’s data and results line up well with the same from numerous other labs around the world. The data is sound.
The smoking gun isn’t just not smoking, it’s not even there.
Scott Lamorte, Redway
This article appears in Top Ten Stories of 2009.
I suggest that people pay no attention to the Scott Lamortes of this world, and instead start reading the emails themselves, and especially the code and comments in the harry_read_me file. Comments such as "fudge factor" next to code are self explanatory.
Then start reading the extensive analysis of them which is being done on sites such as wattsupwiththat.com and climate audit.com. Also see the UK Telegraph James Delingpole articles. Get to these sites and you will see that a lot of very bright analytical people have demolished the code which has been used in a bad way.
The Russians have disputed the data for Siberia, there is doubt about New Zealand and Australian temperatures. There is even a paper predating global warming hysteria which showed how the thermometers used are unreliable.
Then go to a site such as http://seekingalpha.com/article/175641-climategate-revolt-of-the-physicists to see what real scientists are researching with regard to the effects of cosmic rays on cloud formation, the effect of the solar wind, and the CLOUD project at CERN in Europe.
The extensive work done by physicists and mathematicians show up the shoddy work done by the "hockey team".
As has been shown by recent events, cold is the killer, not heat. Do readers know that there is an unusually low number of sunspots in cycle 24? The last mini ice age a few hundred years ago correlated with low sunspot activity.
Those scientists including the Russians who are watching this are seriously worried about a possible very cold downturn.
Does it not astound that the record breaking snow falls and low temperatures in the US and elsewhere, are being ignored by the people obsessed with their global warming faith?
What is more astounding is that people keep believing these doomsday scenarios. I am a life long democrat and I remember the "we are all going to die because of global cooling" in the 70’s. Anyone with an ounce of intelligence would say this is the same stuff I heard with Y2K, the tech bubble, the housing bubble, the financial bubble. Wake up people. Go outside this morning and every other morning and tell me that there is global warming outside. Totally rediculous. Remember this 10 years from now when you look stupid as this whole thing will be shown to be another bubble that you should never have believed in. Of course by that time you will believe in the next stupid thing that the media and scientists tell you.
jury is not out yet. FBI is investigating several US scientists for fraud in attempting to get funding. They received DoD funding and Government doesn’t like alleged fraudsters taking money away from their funding largesse. Stay tuned.