[Vision2020] Benjamin D. Santer, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Re: CRU E-mail Hack: "CRU (Climatic Research Unit) colleagues deserve great credit."

[Paul Rumelhart]

I'm sure Mr. Santer is highly qualified in his field.  However, he's 
making the same mistakes I see others making in this dialogue. 

Language like "powerful forces of unreason" doesn't help this debate in 
the slightest.

To be skeptical of the magnitude of the anthropogenic component of 
global warming does not equate to "challenging the scientific findings 
of a warming Earth".  There may be skeptics that believe this, but they 
are in the minority.

Simply making up motives for climate skeptics out of whole cloth does 
not make them true.  Among other things, he has claimed that skeptics 
are trying to "find dirt", "skew meaning", "distort", "misrepresent", 
"take out of context", "destroy reputations", and "destroy scientific 
careers".  This indicates a failure of understanding that I've seen in 
many places on the web - skeptics are not attacking climate scientists 
just because they've run out of puppies to torture.  They simply 
question what is almost always stated as an undeniable truth.  These 
scientists need to work towards understanding the motives of the 
skeptics.  They might find that they have more in common than they 
realize. 

All pro-AGW theory people I've come across stress the criminal nature of 
the hacking of emails at CRU.  They tend to  ignore the other 
possibility: that a whistle blower on the inside might have leaked them. 

Paul

Ted Moffett wrote:
>
>
>     http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/index.php/csw/details/ben_santer_open_letter/
>
>
>     Ben Santer: Open letter to the climate science community
>
> /Posted on Tuesday, December 01, 2009 /
>
> Climate scientists are being subjected to slanderous attacks by 
> demagogues in high office and the global warming disinformation 
> campaign.  Climate Science Watch is posting here an “Open letter to 
> the climate science community” by Ben Santer of Lawrence Livermore 
> National Laboratory.  Santer says: “We are now faced with powerful 
> ‘forces of unreason’—forces that (at least to date) have been 
> unsuccessful in challenging scientific findings of a warming Earth, 
> and a ‘discernible human influence’ on global climate.  These forces 
> of unreason are now shifting the focus of their attention to the 
> scientists themselves.  They seek to discredit, to skew the truth, to 
> misrepresent.  They seek to destroy scientific careers rather than to 
> improve our understanding of the nature and causes of climate change.” 
>
> *Open letter to the climate science community*
>
> Dear colleagues and friends,
>
> I am sure that by now, all of you are aware of the hacking incident 
> which recently took place at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic 
> Research Unit (CRU). This was a criminal act. Over 3,000 emails and 
> documents were stolen. The identity of the hacker or hackers is still 
> unknown.
>
> The emails represented private correspondence between CRU scientists 
> and scientists at climate research centers around the world. Dozens of 
> the stolen emails are from over a decade of my own personal 
> correspondence with Professor Phil Jones, the Director of CRU.
>
> I obtained my Ph.D. at the Climatic Research Unit. I went to CRU in 
> 1983 because it was - and remains - one of the world’s premier 
> institutions for studying the nature and causes of climate change. 
> During the course of my Ph.D., I was privileged to work together with 
> exceptional scientists - with people like Tom Wigley, Phil Jones, 
> Keith Briffa, and Sarah Raper.
>
> After completing my Ph.D. at CRU in 1987, I devoted much of my 
> scientific career to what is now called “climate fingerprinting”, 
> which seeks to understand the causes of recent climate change. At its 
> core, fingerprinting is a form of what people now call “data mining” - 
> an attempt to extract information and meaning from very large, complex 
> climate datasets. The emails stolen from the Climatic Research Unit 
> are now being subjected to a very different form of “data mining”. 
> This mining is taking place in the blogosphere, in the editorial pages 
> of various newspapers, and in radio and television programs. This form 
> of mining has little to do with extracting meaning from personal email 
> correspondence on complex scientific issues. This form of mining seeks 
> to find dirt - to skew true meaning, to distort, to misrepresent, to 
> take out of context. It seeks to destroy the reputations of 
> exceptional scientists - scientists like Professor Phil Jones.
>
> I have known Phil for over 25 years. He is the antithesis of the 
> secretive, “data destroying” character being portrayed to the outside 
> world by the miners of dirt and disinformation. Phil Jones and Tom 
> Wigley (the second Director of the Climatic Research Unit) devoted 
> significant portions of their scientific careers to the construction 
> of the land component of the so-called “HadCRUT” dataset of land and 
> ocean surface temperatures. The U.K. Meteorological Office Hadley 
> Centre (MOHC) took the lead in developing the ocean surface 
> temperature component of HadCRUT.
>
> The CRU and Hadley Centre efforts to construct the HadCRUT dataset 
> have been open and transparent, and are documented in dozens of 
> peer-reviewed scientific papers. This work has been tremendously 
> influential. In my personal opinion, it is some of the most important 
> scientific research ever published. It has provided hard scientific 
> evidence for the warming of our planet over the past 150 years.
>
> Phil, Tom, and their CRU and MOHC colleagues conducted this research 
> in a very open and transparent manner. Like good scientists, they 
> examined the sensitivity of their results to many different subjective 
> choices made during the construction of the HadCRUT dataset. These 
> choices relate to such issues as how to account for changes over time 
> in the type of thermometer used to make temperature measurements, the 
> thermometer location, and the immediate physical surroundings of the 
> thermometer. They found that, no matter what choices they made in 
> dataset construction, their bottom-line finding - that the surface of 
> our planet is warming - was rock solid. This finding was supported by 
> many other independent lines of evidence, such as the retreat of snow 
> and sea-ice cover, the widespread melting and retreat of glaciers, the 
> rise in sea-level, and the increase in the amount of water vapor in 
> the atmosphere. All of these independent observations are physically 
> consistent with a warming planet.
>
> Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof. The claim that our 
> Earth had warmed markedly during the 20th century was extraordinary, 
> and was subjected to extraordinary scrutiny. Groups at the National 
> Climatic Data Center in North Carolina (NCDC) and at the Goddard 
> Institute for Space Studies in New York (GISS) independently attempted 
> to reproduce the results of the Climatic Research Unit and the U.K. 
> Meteorological Office Hadley Centre. While the NCDC and GISS groups 
> largely relied on the same primary temperature measurements that had 
> been used in the development of the HadCRUT dataset, they made very 
> different choices in the treatment of the raw measurements. Although 
> there were differences in the details of the three groups’ results, 
> the NCDC and GISS analyses broadly confirmed the “warming Earth” 
> findings of the CRU and MOHC scientists.
>
> Other extraordinary claims - such as a claim by scientists at the 
> University of Alabama that Earth’s lower atmosphere cooled since 1979, 
> and that such cooling contradicts “warming Earth” findings - have not 
> withstood rigorous scientific examination.
>
> In summary, Phil Jones and his colleagues have done a tremendous 
> service to the scientific community - and to the planet - by making 
> surface temperature datasets publicly available for scientific 
> research. These datasets have facilitated climate research around the 
> world, and have led to the publication of literally hundreds of 
> important scientific papers.
>
> Phil Jones is one of the gentlemen of our field. He has given decades 
> of his life not only to cutting-edge scientific research on the nature 
> and causes of climate change, but also to a variety of difficult and 
> time-consuming community service activities - such as his dedicated 
> (and repeated) service as a Lead Author for the Intergovernmental 
> Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
>
> Since the theft of the CRU emails and their public dissemination, Phil 
> has been subjected to the vilest personal attacks. These attacks are 
> without justification. They are deeply disturbing. They should be of 
> concern to all of you. We are now faced with powerful “forces of 
> unreason” - forces that (at least to date) have been unsuccessful in 
> challenging scientific findings of a warming Earth, and a “discernible 
> human influence” on global climate. These forces of unreason are now 
> shifting the focus of their attention to the scientists themselves. 
> They seek to discredit, to skew the truth, to misrepresent. They seek 
> to destroy scientific careers rather than to improve our understanding 
> of the nature and causes of climate change.
>
> Yesterday, Phil temporarily stepped down as Director of the Climatic 
> Research Unit. Yesterday was a very sad day for climate science. When 
> the forces of unreason win, and force exceptional scientists like 
> Professor Phil Jones to leave their positions, we all lose. Climate 
> science loses. Our community loses. The world loses.
>
> Now, more than at any other time in human history, we need sound 
> scientific information on the nature and causes of climate change. 
> Phil Jones and his colleagues at CRU have helped to provide such 
> information. I hope that all of you will join me in thanking Phil for 
> everything he has done - and will do in the future - for our 
> scientific community. He and his CRU colleagues deserve great credit.
>
> With best regards,
>
> Ben Santer
> ——————————————————————————————————————
> Benjamin D. Santer
> Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison
> Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
> Livermore, CA U.S.A.
> ------------------------------------------
> Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
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