climategate

[Aquariareview]

Just got back from Israel (diving in the red sea) and Europe and mid east is buzzing with news of major climate scandle.

Scientific progress depends on accurate and complete data. It also relies on replication. The past couple of weeks have uncovered some shocking revelations about the practices that pass as sound science about climate change and have been based on lies.

It turn out that the main team of science jockeys, the guys who came up with the model that the UN used to come up with the Global warming concept HAVE BEEN COOKING THE NUMBERS. It turns out that computer hackers had obtained 160 megabytes of e-mails from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in England. Those e-mails involved communication among many scientific researchers and policy advocates with similar ideological positions all across the world. Those purported authorities were brazenly discussing the destruction and hiding of data that did not support global-warming claims.

In some of the emails published they talk about how they cant explain the cooling that defies their theory so they must just suppress the data.

If you say I saw the data that shows the warming trend in Climate Research journal, or in NOAA reports, Guess what all of that data comes from the the tainted pool. They are in the process of losing all grants and positions.

I read the whole 160 gig of email and the web site. There is email from their main people asking each other why the real trend is cooler (for years and years) and reply from peers telling them to rig the numbers so as to not lose control of the debate.

Quote from one of the stories "Professor Phil Jones, the head of the Climate Research Unit, and professor Michael E. Mann at Pennsylvania State University, who has been an important scientist in the climate debate, have come under particular scrutiny. Among his e-mails, Mr. Jones talked to Mr. Mann about the "trick of adding in the 'real temps" to each series ... to hide the decline [in temperature]."

Mr. Mann admitted that he was party to this conversation and lamely explained to the New York Times that "scientists often used the word 'trick' to refer to a good way to solve a problem 'and not something secret.' " Though the liberal New York newspaper apparently buys this explanation, we have seen no benign explanation that justifies efforts by researchers to skew data on so-called global-warming "to hide the decline." Given the controversies over the accuracy of Mr. Mann's past research, it is surprising his current explanations are accepted so readily.

All of the data belongs to British funded centers and was supposed to be released under their freedom of info act and they even discuss how to avoid releasing it as it will destroy they cause. their new talking point is these documents were stolen so are out of context,, read a few and then make up your mind. "

I believe we need to care for the planet but this destroys the credibility of the sky is falling crowd. however we will see people fight back against this truth because they are invested either politically or their mass investment in the economy of low impact products. If we stop buying cfl bulbs more than 100,000 people will be out of work(but we forget they impact massive mercury in the landfills, or the massive buy of hybrid autos that even the most ardent global warming advocates admit cause a greater carbon footprint than driving a hummer (research sudbury Ont Can) by the time they mine the nickel, ship to plants in Japan, make batteries, then dispose of them their is no saving.

Hiding data, destroying information, and doctoring their results raise real questions about many American academics at universities such as Pennsylvania State University, University of Arizona, and University of Massachusetts at Amherst. When at all possible available data must be shared.

Usually academic research is completely ignored by the general public but in this case proposed regulations, costing trillions of dollars, are being based on many of these claimed research results. This coordinated campaign to hide scientific information appears unprecedented.

SIDE NOTE NASA is defying a court order to release uncorrected climate data to a major magazine. - internal discussions about NASA's quiet correction of its false historical U.S. temperature records after two Canadian researchers discovered a key statistical error, specifically discussion about whether and why to correct certain records, how to do so, the impact or wisdom or potential (or real) fallout therefrom or reaction to doing so (requested August 2007);

I love the reefs, I want to do the right things, who do I listen to. It has to be someone who uses science that they can replicate over and over and that they don't have to hide some of the results to prove their point.

Now it looks like the flat earth group is the people who refuse to look at new evidence that suggest we may have been lied to all along.

Congress should call for investigation,

 

[SirTony76]

This definitely makes me mad. As a scientist, you expect peer reviewers to help us make our work better (even though we get so mad at them). Unfortunately, these guys make the whole scientific community look bad.

Regardless of their intentions or what the truth is--they should be called out and receive some kind of punishment so the general public can still believe scientists and the work we do.

 

[skanderson]

the whole global warming scam is much more a religion than a science. just look at the way they talk about anyone who publishes data that runs in the face of theyre belief. they talk about stopping people from publishing and stopping grants. its just like they want to excommunicate the nonbelievers. for what its worth if algore really thought the whole climate thing was real would he really live in a giant carbon dioxide consuming house, and for that manner would he have bought a beach house in florida if he thought it would be underwater in 40 years. its a good thing that people are becoming aware of how worthless the science is on global warming before the U.S. cripples its economy by agreeing to worthless carbon limits. the replies to this thread may prove interesting so i think i will subscribe.

 

[Aquariareview]

Here is a fun piece of news from the Telegraph

The total number of limos in Copenhagen next week has already broken the 1,200 barrier. The French alone rang up on Thursday and ordered another 42. "We haven't got enough limos in the country to fulfil the demand," "We're having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden."

The airport says it is expecting up to 140 extra private jets during the peak period alone, so far over its capacity that the planes will have to fly off to regional airports – or to Sweden – to park, returning to Copenhagen to pick up their VIP passengers.
As well 15,000 delegates and officials, 5,000 journalists and 98 world leaders, the Danish capital will be blessed by the presence of Leonardo DiCaprio, Daryl Hannah, Helena Christensen, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Prince Charles. A Republican US senator, Jim Inhofe, is jetting in at the head of an anti-climate-change "Truth Squad." The top hotels – all fully booked at £650 a night – are readying their Climate Convention menus of (no doubt sustainable) scallops, foie gras and sculpted caviar wedges.

In Scandinavia, even the prostitutes are doing their bit for the planet. Outraged by a council postcard urging delegates to "be sustainable, don't buy sex," the local sex workers' union – they have unions there – has announced that all its 1,400 members will give free intercourse to anyone with a climate conference delegate's pass. The term "carbon dating" just took on an entirely new meaning.
At least the sex will be C02-neutral. According to the organisers, the eleven-day conference, including the participants' travel, will create a total of 41,000 tonnes of "carbon dioxide equivalent", equal to the amount produced over the same period by a city the size of Middlesbrough.
The temptation, then, is to dismiss the whole thing as a ridiculous circus. Many of the participants do not really need to be here. And far from "saving the world," the world's leaders have already agreed that this conference will not produce any kind of binding deal, merely an interim statement of intent.

Instead of swift and modest reductions in carbon – say, two per cent a year, starting next year – for which they could possibly be held accountable, the politicians will bandy around grandiose targets of 80-per-cent-plus by 2050, by which time few of the leaders at Copenhagen will even be alive, let alone still in office.
Even if they had agreed anything binding, past experience suggests that the participants would not, in fact, feel bound by it. Most countries are on course to break the modest pledges they made at the last major climate summit, in Kyoto.

And inside the hall, not everything is looking bad. Even the sudden rush for limos may be a good sign. It means that more top people are coming, which means they scent something could be going right here.

The hot air this week will be massive, the whole proceedings eminently mockable, but it would be far too early to write off this conference as a failure. We could have a great result like last time

 

[wdt2000]

You can access raw data from NOAA.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov

 

[greenbean36191]

All of the data belongs to British funded centers and was supposed to be released under their freedom of info act and they even discuss how to avoid releasing it as it will destroy they cause.

That's the crux of the problem right there. The data do NOT belong to CRU and are not responsive to FIO requests. The CRU isn't a climate monitoring agency. The analyze data collected and owned by other agencies. More than 95% of the data used is freely available from the ncdc link above and has been for many years. The rest is sold by the agencies that collected it. The CRU does not have the right to distribute other people's data nor are they able to destroy it since all they have are copies they got from the originating agencies.

That's immaterial though because there are other agencies such NASA that produce similar products, for which all of the raw data and the processing code are available (and have been for years). The results are the same. The results from the satellites are the same. The results from proxies are the same (mostly). You can throw out everything from CRU, Jones, Mann, and just about everyone involved in the emails and the big picture doesn't change. We still know the planet is warming, we still know it's primarily due to humans.

They are in the process of losing all grants and positions.

Wrong. None of the universities involved have started any process to remove any of the researchers involved because there's simply no evidence of wrongdoing. Jones has temporarily stepped aside while UEA investigates what actually happened, but they have stated unequivocally that they have no plans to remove him and they will not accept his resignation.

Among his e-mails, Mr. Jones talked to Mr. Mann about the "trick of adding in the 'real temps" to each series ... to hide the decline [in temperature]."

Why alter the quote to change its meaning? The email says- “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”

First of all, if temperatures have actually declined, how does adding in "real temps" hide that? Unless "real temps" is code for "fake temps" which I don't see any evidence to support in any of the emails.

Second, you might notice that there was no decline in temperatures since 1961 in any of the temperature records- with one exception. That exception was a temperature reconstruction published by Keith Briffa based on one subset of tree ring data. In a series of articles, including in Nature, he warned that that decline was not reflective of an actual temperature decline, but rather tree rings that were no longer linked to temperatures since about 1960. How can you tell that the decline wasn't real? Because it didn't show up in instrumental records, satellite records, ocean temperatures, any other proxies, and even most other tree ring reconstructions. Guess whose paper Jones cited as a source in his graph where he "hid the decline." Keith Briffa's. Guess who else uses the phrase "the decline" in the emails? Keith Briffa, in reference to his own reconstruction for the period 1961 onward.

It almost seems like Jones took the temperature from Keith Briffa's temperature reconstruction which he cites in the caption of the graph in question, heeded Briffa's warning that temperatures from 1961 onward were not accurate, and replaced the reconstructed temperature for that time period with the instrumental temperature measurements which are monitored by at least 4 agencies besides CRU. There's no malfeasance there.

I'm not a climate scientist, but I knew about the papers discussing "the decline" before the emails, so it obviously wasn't hidden very well.

There is email from their main people asking each other why the real trend is cooler (for years and years) and reply from peers telling them to rig the numbers so as to not lose control of the debate.

Having read the emails, I'm not sure where you found this. The closest thing I can find is Kevin Trenberth's comments that- "Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming?... The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate." He also includes a reference to his recent paper-

Trenberth, K. E., 2009: An imperative for climate change planning: tracking Earth’s global energy. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 1, 19-27, doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2009.06.001.

The argument of the paper is that the measurement system in place right now cannot account for the energy exchange between the land, sea, and air to the degree needed to accurately track short-term changes in temp like those associated with El Nino and PDO. Trenbeth doesn't suggest that global warming has stopped or been less than expected, only that we cannot track the actual trend on yearly to decadal scales because we're not tracking the total energy of the system.

He makes no suggestion that people rig the numbers, nor does anyone else.

 

[pfish]

subscribe

 

[skanderson]

green you are wrong. we do not know that the planet is warming in a long term trend, and we don not what the changes in the weather are caused by. the warmest year that we have records of was 1998, there in no reason that there should be a 11 year pause in the warming trend if that warming trend was caused by human produced co2. the concentration of which is now higher than it was in 1998. one of the things that is gone over in the data that was hacked was the basic uncertainty about the global temperature beyond our recorded history of it. people used to talk about the " medieval climate ideal". that was a period at least europe was considerably warmer than it is now. some think it was as much as 2 degrees centigrade warmer than the present. this is why the romans could produce wine in briton but you couldnt do that in the 20th century. the climate then went into the little ice age that we are probably now just rebounding from. the climate has always been and will always be variable. i find it astonishing that people with a science background dont raise more objections to the falsehoods that are put out in support of global warming. for instance why doesnt anyone take al gore to task for his repeated incorrect statements. why we get all excited about what someone who probably has never taken a science course unless it was a prereq for prelaw is beyond me. sorry to rant i just have a hard time seeing something this poorly thought out taking over the world. the bottom line is that kyoto was unsuccessful at limiting the nations that signed it from changing there carbon footprint, and any future treaty that would successfullly limit carbon usage would cripple the worlds economy and harm far more people than any possible change the temperature may make. one other final point why arent ALL the global warming people huge nuke supporters. it is the only practical way to significantly decrease the amount of co2 made in the us and yet almost all the people who support global warming seem just as vigorously anti nuke as they are anti carbon.

 

[jcolletteiii]

The planet has warmed and cooled many, many times. It will continue to do so long after we become extinct. However...

There are bad scientists out there, bad cops, bad teachers, bad doctors, bad children, and bad priests. I'm an invertebrate paleontologist, and one such bad name that stands out in my field is Viswa Jit Gupta. He was an Indian paleontologist and professor of geology that did alot of work on trilobites. Unfortunately, much of the work he did involved redescribing other poeple's previously described material as new, and having come from India. Often, he wouldn't even bother to change figure plates, simply republishing them as his own! He did this for 20 years before he was finally caught. Now, does this mean all paleontologists are dishonest, or that paleontology has not significantly helped to refine our understanding of evolution? Certainly not!

You, good sir, live in one of my favorite field areas, where you can look at 510 million year old fossil beaches. Whole swaths of intertidal zone are preserved, complete with ripples, rill marks where water cut the ripples as it drained away, microbial structures, raindrop impressions, and trace fossils from huge slug-like mollusks that were up to 32 centimeters wide! Wisconsin is in the center of the North American craton - there has been no uplift, tectonic activity, or significant faulting since prior to the Cambrian. Yet there it is - a beach in Wisconsin 510 milion years ago.

Now, this was obviously not caused by humans. But, since the industrial revolution, CO2 levels have risen quite markedly. Global temperature has risen. Ice has retreated. Greenland has enough freshwater locked up as ice to add more than 20 feet to global sea level. Warming water can destabilize methane clathrates (basically a frozen ice-methane slurpy) that can then sublime. Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than is CO2, and there are LOTS of clathrate deposits in the gulf of Mexico. If we continue to dump CO2 into the atmosphere at an unchecked rate, and we know that CO2 helps to insulate the planet, what do YOU think will end up happening? I'm not being rhetorical here, I am genuinely interested in what you think will happen.

Here's what I envision: We make CO2 -> CO2 raises our global R value -> more trapped sunlight -> elevated temps. Is this really that counterintuitive? I love the economy argument though.

 

[wdt2000]

the warmest year that we have records of was 1998, there in no reason that there should be a 11 year pause in the warming trend if that warming trend was caused by human produced co2.

El Nino was the main reason 1998 was so warm, however 2005 was warmer. Nine of the ten warmest years on record have all occurred this decade. There has been no pause.

people used to talk about the " medieval climate ideal". that was a period at least europe was considerably warmer than it is now. some think it was as much as 2 degrees centigrade warmer than the present.

Thomas R. Karl
"Parts of the world were warmer during the Middle Ages, particularly northern Europe, Iceland and Greenland. Several decades ago, scientists thought the whole world was warmer than it is now. But as new data sources come in from tree rings in the U.S., corals in the tropical oceans, etc. we have learned that the average temperature of the world was likely to have been cooler during the "Medieval Warm Period" than it is now."

 

[ctenophors rule]

green you are wrong. we do not know that the planet is warming in a long term trend, and we don not what the changes in the weather are caused by. the warmest year that we have records of was 1998, there in no reason that there should be a 11 year pause in the warming trend if that warming trend was caused by human produced co2. the concentration of which is now higher than it was in 1998..

I also had trouble with this, then i heard a nice debate between green, and scooter tdi. in it they debated the application of chaos theory. the climate is obviously chaotic, and just like other chaotic systems they are irregular, never linear! i you look at searise charts, the rise always happens suddenly, then a platoe, then another sudden rise. etc.

.[/QUOTE] the climate then went into the little ice age that we are probably now just rebounding from. .[/QUOTE]

for some one who just critisized green on using the word know, you seem to be offly sure of an uncertain thing. OMIF


for instance why doesnt anyone take al gore to task for his repeated incorrect statements. why we get all excited about what someone who probably has never taken a science course unless it was a prereq for prelaw is beyond me.

if you would list those it might be more helpful to the debate...

also organisations and scientist use celebrity figure heads all the time to get their message across. watch an hour of tv and count how many, so dont criticise him because he is not a scientist. if anything his contribution can be seen as nuthing more than inspiring interest to make people want to see it( and that would be more than enough!)

.[/QUOTE] sorry to rant .[/QUOTE]

dont appologise

.[/QUOTE]i just have a hard time seeing something this poorly thought out taking over the world. the bottom line is that kyoto was unsuccessful at limiting the nations that signed it from changing there carbon footprint, and any future treaty that would successfullly limit carbon usage would cripple the worlds economy and harm far more people than any possible change the temperature may make..[/QUOTE]

more certain uncertainties.

.[/QUOTE]one other final point why arent ALL the global warming people huge nuke supporters. it is the only practical way to significantly decrease the amount of co2 made in the us and yet almost all the people who support global warming seem just as vigorously anti nuke as they are anti carbon.[/QUOTE]

so are their only two sides nuclear or carbon? and wanna site a study, or stat that shows the amount of "anti carbon/ anti nuke" scientist?

thanks buddy

 

[greenbean36191]

Well I can't speak for all scientists, but the reason I'm not up in arms about the "falsehoods" you mention is that they aren't falsehoods.

Scientists are trained in statistical inference. When someones says there's been an 11 year pause in warming or even a cooling trend, that strikes us as naive at best and an outright lie at worst. The reason is that real-world data is always noisy. There has never been any expectation that each year will be warmer than the last. Even as warming occurs there will still be warm years and cold year and there will even be periods with several cold years in a row. You can only infer a trend by using a time period long enough that the trend is greater than the natural variation. That's determining statistical significance and it's something scientists learn to do from the time they're undergrads.

The claim that the temperature has been stable or even cooled since 1998 is silly for several reasons. First of all there is NO statistically significant trend since 1998. That does NOT mean that there is no trend over that time period, but that the confidence interval includes 0, so it's possible that there has been no trend or even a decline. That does not mean though that its equally likely that there has been a decline or stagnation either. Even with 94% certainty that the trend is increasing, you would still say there is no statistically significant trend.

The data show that the past 10 years haven't deviated from the trend of the previous 30. If you took the trend from the previous 30 years and extrapolated out the trend, the past 10 years falls right along the line and every month of every year in that time period has been within the 95% confidence interval. That indicates that the trend probably has not changed and is still increasing.

GISSTEMP, which shows the greatest trend, doesn't produce a statistically significant trend unless you go back until 1996. That trend and the trend starting in every year prior going back to the 70s is a warming trend, so the only statistically significant trends that we have are warming trends.

If the concept of statistical significance and determining trends of short time periods is too complicated, you can experiment with it in Excel. In column A make a list of about 100 numbers increasing by 0.25. In column B enter the formula "=A1+ 20*SIN(RAND())" and copy that formula down 100 cells. Column A is a monotonously increasing trend. Column B is a monotonously increasing trend plus high magnitude random variation. Now make a line graph of column A and B using 11 rows of data. You'll get a straight line and crazy wavy line. Right click and add a trend line to the crazy line. The two series will most likely have very different trend lines, yet the real trend is the same in both (which we know because we set the trend to be 0.25x). Refresh the random number generator a few times by hitting F9 and you should see the trend line of the crazy line change direction from positive to negative. Now if you plot out the 100 cell time period for each you should see that the slope of the two lines is very similar and no matter how many times you hit F9 the slope changes very little and never becomes negative or flat. You should also notice that although the 11 year period here isn't significant, you have a better than 50% chance of getting an increasing trend.

Here's the graph I got the first time I ran it. Notice that when I just look at 11 years, there's a very strong decline, but if I look at the full 100 years, it's abundantly clear that the real trend is increasing at roughly the same rate as the blue line. The very next time I hit F9 the 11 year trend reversed and had a slope of 0.6158, which is more than twice the real rate.

Another reason it's wrong to say that temperature is stagnant or cooling is that that conclusion is highly dependent on the start date. If you pick virtually any start date besides 1998 you reach a very different conclusion- warming. That's you call cherry-picking. If I picked Jan. 2000 or Feb 2008 as the start point it would show that warming has increased dramatically. Do you think that's a fair representation of reality?

Your other point, that the climate has changed in the past, isn't very interesting to scientists because we already know that and bringing it up doesn't add anything to the conversation. It's a "so what?" point. If there was a wildfire headed towards your house and I told you, "Don't worry, wildfires were started by lightning before humans were even around," what would that mean to you? Does the fact that lightning causes natural wildfires mean that arsonists cannot cause wildfires? Does it mean that the wildfire poses no threat to you because they happened naturally before you were around? Similarly pointing out that climate changed in the past does not demonstrate that humans cannot cause climate change and it doesn't tell us how badly we will be affected.

 

[greenbean36191]

Also, this thread is probably already too far gone to save, but it's against RC policy to get into political discussion. Talk about taxation or politicians is sure to get this closed. There is more than enough science to discuss without delving into the political debate.

 

[Sweetlou]

Great Article... I cant post the URL...but if you would like to read it google eric borneman climate change

I could (as I have and do) go on for pages on pages, citing studies, graphs charts, hundreds of thousands of papers, etc. I could argue any particular point to those who are “deniers.” I could offer personal data, personal observations, but there is no convincing some people. The real crux of the matter is largely one that exists in the US. Our understanding and level of science education is so low, and the topics of anthropogenic climate change so diverse and complex, that I have found arguing to actually give credence to debate that doesn’t exist. Those who don’t “believe” in climate change or think there is actually “another side” are generally beyond reason. For the majority of these people, their understanding is too low to converse with in a sensible manner, their minds are all but made up, and their primary sources of information are lay media sources and debunked sources, misinterpretation of data, and selecting certain “facts” as straw man arguments. They listen to Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh (with their high school educations) as purveyors of the truth, buy into debunked conspiracy theories like “climategate,” and think Al Gore is a respected authority on climate change when he is nothing but a celebrity – one of many – choosing to call attention to a real issue.

About 2-5% of the scientists are not on board and the majority of them are funded by energy or other similar industries or are seeking fame for a contrarian view because their own science doesn’t hold up.

 

[skanderson]

just a quick reply for jcollettii. not only do i live in wisconsin but i live in the baraboo valley. i find rocks in my fields that are called plum pudding stone that are a mix of baraboo range quartzite stones mixed into sandstone. these rocks were formed when baraboo was a island on the edge of a tropical sea and the hills were mountains. there is a great book called baraboo roadside geology that describes what you are driving past on all the majors roads across the state. my land also contains the terminal moraine from the green bay lobe of the most recent glacier to buldoze its way through here.

 

[skanderson]

as a further reply to jcollettii now that ive read your whole post i do believe that increasing the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere will increase the worlds temperature. i do not know what degree of change will cause what degree of warming. i do not think that anyone knows the answer to that question at this time. i believe that further research into this issue i desperately needed. i also agree that about 10 percent of people are often the problem in any career be they scientists, cops, or surgeons. with methane being a very potent greenhouse gas shouldnt all the global warming crowd be vegans?

 

[skanderson]

al gore quoted a scientist that the artic ice cap would melt in a certain time frame. i dont remember offhand when that was. the quoted scientist released a statement saying he said nothing of the sort. i try not to pay too much attention to al gore but that is one incorrect statement in the last 2 weeks.

 

[skanderson]

as to the uncertainty of carbon reduction hurting the economy i think obama had it right when he said that cap and trade would necesarily cause energy prices to greatly increase. it isnt a coincidence that the greatest period of wealth creation in the world happened when we started using fossil fuels. they are an incredibly powerful way of getting work done. i am not against alternatives but they have to make some economic sense. handicapping our economy while india china and brazil do nothing to change is a recipe for the decline of america.

 

[skanderson]

wdt2000 your facts challenging the medieval climate are at the root of the climategate scandal. the facts are that temperature estimation of past climate is not settled science. the numbers are certain. the climate we have the most accurate estimate on is northern europe and i am unaware of any theory that explains that raise in temperature whether it was regional or worldwide. just a note about the anti nuke attitude of the climate change folks. ask yourself why has the yucca mountain repository site had its study budget cancelled. that alone stops any new nuke building from happening and it was cancelled by the obama administration. i will try to get back and answer more of the questions raised here later tonight. i dont think we need to make this a political debate and i have no trouble keeping it civil. i dont have a problem with anyone questioning any of my statements. i do find it interesting that one of the posters above went into the "anyone who questions climate change is either stupid or on the payroll of an energy company." line.

 

[wdt2000]

wdt2000 your facts challenging the medieval climate are at the root of the climategate scandal.

I was quoting Thomas R. Karl, Director, National Climatic Data Center at NOAA