[ExI] climategate again

[spike]

I am not a climate change skeptic, but I can see this episode sets
everything back to square 1.  Surely CRU will no longer be considered the
premier research center for climate change.  I don't know what will take its
place.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6936328.ece

This is the comment that blew my mind:

...In a statement on its website, the CRU said: "We do not hold the original
raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenised)
data." ...

The leaked emails show how the CRU defines the term "value" in value-added.

spike





>From The Sunday London Times  November 29, 2009

Climate change data dumped	Jonathan Leake, Environment Editor

SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing
away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global
warming are based. 

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said
to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years. 

The UEA's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss
following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation. 

The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then
adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The
revised figures were kept, but the originals - stored on paper and magnetic
tape - were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building. 

In a statement on its website, the CRU said: "We do not hold the original
raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenised)
data." 

The CRU is the world's leading centre for reconstructing past climate and
temperatures. Climate change sceptics have long been keen to examine exactly
how its data were compiled. That is now impossible. 

Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at Colorado University,
discovered data had been lost when he asked for original records. "The CRU
is basically saying, 'Trust us'. So much for settling questions and
resolving debates with science," he said. 

Jones was not in charge of the CRU when the data were thrown away in the
1980s, a time when climate change was seen as a less pressing issue. The
lost material was used to build the databases that have been his life's
work, showing how the world has warmed by 0.8C over the past 157 years. 

He and his colleagues say this temperature rise is "unequivocally" linked to
greenhouse gas emissions generated by humans. Their findings are one of the
main pieces of evidence used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, which says global warming is a threat to humanity.