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view · edit Frequently asked questions To view an explanation to the answer, click the link to the right of the question. Q1: Why is this article not called "Climategate"? A1: There have been numerous discussions on this subject on the talk page. The current title is not the common name, as is generally used for Misplaced Pages articles, but instead a descriptive title, one chosen to not seem to pass judgment, implicitly or explicitly, on the subject. A recent Requested move discussion has indicated that there is no consensus to move the article to the title of Climategate, and so further discussion of the article title has been tabled until at least June 2011. Q2: Why aren't there links to various emails? A2: The emails themselves are both primary sources and copyright violations. Misplaced Pages avoids using primary sources (WP:PRIMARY), and avoids linking to Copyright violations. If a specific email has been discussed in a reliable, secondary source, use that source, not the email. Q3: Why is/isn't a specific blog being used as a source? A3: Blogs are not typically reliable sources. Blogs may, in some circumstances, be acceptable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications. Blogs should never be used as third-party sources about living persons, even if the author is a well-known professional researcher or writer; see WP:BLP#Reliable sources. Q4: Aren't the emails/other documents in the public domain? A4: No. Some of the hacked documents are covered by Crown copyright, others by private copyright. The Freedom of Information Act does not affect copyright. Q5: Why does the article refer to a hacking and to stolen documents? Couldn't this be an accidental release of information or released by a whistleblowing insider ? A5: Misplaced Pages reports the facts from reliable sources. In their most recent statement on the issue, Norfolk Constabulary have said that the information was released through an attack carried out remotely via the Internet and that there is no evidence of anyone associated with the University being associated with the crime. Both the University and a science blog, RealClimate , have reported server hacking incidents directly associated with this affair. The University has stated that the documents were "stolen" and "illegally obtained". Q6: Why is there a biographies of living persons (BLP) notice at the top of this page? This article is about an event, and the Climatic Research Unit is not a living person. A6: The BLP applies to all pages on Misplaced Pages, specifically to all potentially negative statements about living persons. It does not apply solely to articles about living persons. The notice is there to remind us to take care that all statements regarding identifiable living persons mentioned in the article or talk page comply with all Misplaced Pages policies and with the law, per the BLP. Q7: What do I do if I have a complaint about the conduct of other people editing or discussing this article? A7: Follow the dispute resolution policy. It is not optional. Unduly cluttering the talk page with complaints about other editors' behavior is wasteful. In the case of egregiously bad conduct only, consider contacting an administrator. Q8: I think there is inadequate consensus on a matter of policy. What should I do? A8: There are several options. Consider posting the issue on one of the noticeboards, or starting a request for comment (RFC) on the question. Q9: Why doesn't the article report that BBC weather reporter Paul Hudson received an advance copy of the leaked content? A9: Because it isn't true. In fact, the only involvement Paul Hudson reports (see here) is that he had been the subject of emailed complaints from CRU climatologists concerning a blog article he had recently published, and that he was able to confirm that those emailed complaints which had been copied to him by the senders, and which later appeared in the zip file of stolen documents, were authentic. That is to say, Hudson received some of the later leaked e-mails, but only those originally also addressed to him or the BBC, which forwarded them. It appears that some blogs and newspapers have misinterpreted this. This was also confirmed by the BBC on the 27th November 2009 and on the 13th March 2010 when the issue arose again. Q10: Newspapers have reported that this article and a lot of the global warming articles are being controlled and manipulated. Why don't we report that? A10: The items in question are opinion columns by James Delingpole and Lawrence Solomon. Misplaced Pages's guidelines on self-references discourage self-referential material unless publicity regarding a Misplaced Pages article is determined to be significant enough to be included. This requires the Misplaced Pages coverage to be a major part of the controversy. There is no consensus that the two opinion columns meet this criterion. This does not preclude coverage of those writers' opinions on Misplaced Pages in other articles, such as James Delingpole, Lawrence Solomon, Global warming conspiracy theory, and Criticism of Misplaced Pages, but that would be a matter for the editors of those individual articles. On specific charges against an individual named by Lawrence Solomon and repeated uncritically by James Delingpole, please see this discussion on the Conflict of interest noticeboard.

Issues related to this article have been raised at the Biographies of living persons noticeboard on 21 November 2009 (archived) 28 November 2009 (archived) 31 December 2009 (archived) 6 January 2009 (archived) and at Neutral point of view noticeboard on 7 December 2009 (active as of December 15, 2009) and at Requested moves on 11 December 2009 (failed) 23 December 2009 (Talk:Climatic_Research Unit hacking incident/Archive 14#Proposed page move

Problems with "Naming of the incident" section

Fact Check citation inappropriate for subsection: proposed removal

This discussion got kind of de-railed. I take your point to be that the Fact Check article doesn't appear to be asserting that skeptics named the incident "Climategate" in that quote, and that it should be taken out of that section. Is that fair? If so I'd agree.--Heyitspeter (talk) 20:17, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

It doesn't say whether or not skeptics introduced the term, it does express the view that they're using the name and why. A neutral finding. . . dave souza, talk 20:41, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

No, it doesn't say that skeptics use the term. Re-read? It's weirdly phrased.--Heyitspeter (talk) 18:33, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

It's clear enough–"Skeptics claim this trove of e-mails shows the scientists at the U.K. research center were engaging in evidence-tampering, and they are portraying the affair as a major scandal: "Climategate.".... We find such claims to be far wide of the mark." Clearly that's what they're portraying it as, and the name they're using. Pretty obvious. . . dave souza, talk 18:47, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Of course they're using the name - that isn't informative. Even MIT is using the name. As this section is about the "naming of the incident," and not "the way the incident is being referred to," we should remove that sentence. Agreed on this count? I'm willing to cede on your interpretation if/given that the removal stands on these (separate) grounds.--Heyitspeter (talk) 01:47, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm willing to accept your concession, but consider this independent source on the naming and framing of the "controversy" a useful clarification which belongs at the start of the naming section. The fact that MIT World™ used the term in announcing a debate doesn't mean that MIT have officially adopted the term, and is synthesis – if you can find a third party analysis stating that the term has entered the mainstream, that would be useful. However, picking examples, expecially where reporters distance themselves from the term by using inverted commas for "climategate", is original research and not the way to go. Hope that helps, dave souza, talk 10:29, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I've not picked any such examples...

Be that as it may, and backed by a rather ingenious double deployment of "modus tollens+the two preceding comments" and modus ponens, here I go:

It simply isn't true that

Skeptics claim this trove of e-mails shows the scientists at the U.K. research center were engaging in evidence-tampering, and they are portraying the affair as a major scandal: 'Climategate.'

means

Skeptics are using or have named the affair 'Climategate'.

To argue the contrary one must break WP:OR. The sentence is uninformative and irrelevant to the section. It should go. QED.--Heyitspeter (talk) 21:58, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

As stated before, it's plain English, and you've offered no alternative interpretation. Restoring, sorry didn't keep coming back on your keeping coming back on this. Thanks, dave souza, talk 00:12, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/28/cru_foia_guilty/ - UK Authorities wanted to prosecute those at CRU, but loopholes in law wouldn't allow it. The 'email hacking' incident has uncovered highly suspect behavior, regarding evasion of FOI requests, prompting a desire to change relevant laws. "The leaked emails are widely believed to be the work of an insider in response to the delaying tactics." I and many people have commented on this issue, THAT THE HACKING INCIDENT WAS NOT VERIFIED AND THAT THE MEDIA REPORTS SUGGESTING SUCH WERE UNFOUNDED.128.61.127.19 (talk) 17:40, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

The Name of the Game

On Nov 27, 2009, the Wall Street Journal published an editorial summarizing what they called the "leaked email and document scandal" using quotes from the FOIA trove. So it has been thought of as a scientific scandal rather than an information theft for quite a while, even before the coining of "Climategate". That moniker therefore does not introduce anything pejorative not previously identified. Their summary includes text that might be considered for inclusion in this article, or a related one devoted more to the revealed behavior than to the method of revelation -

The furor over these documents is not about tone, colloquialisms or whether climatologists are nice people. The real issue is what the messages say about the way the much-ballyhooed scientific consensus on global warming was arrived at, and how a single view of warming and its causes is being enforced. The impression left by the correspondence among Messrs. Mann and Jones and others is that the climate-tracking game has been rigged from the start.

According to this privileged group, only those whose work has been published in select scientific journals, after having gone through the "peer-review" process, can be relied on to critique the science. And sure enough, any challenges from critics outside this clique are dismissed and disparaged.

This September, Mr. Mann told a New York Times reporter in one of the leaked emails that: "Those such as McIntyre who operate almost entirely outside of this system are not to be trusted." Mr. McIntyre is a retired Canadian businessman who checks the findings of climate scientists and often publishes the mistakes he finds on his Web site, Climateaudit.org. He holds the rare distinction of having forced Mr. Mann to publish a correction to one of his more famous papers.Oiler99 (talk) 06:39, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

More Literature

I award Dave Souza two Stalinpedia BarnStar's , you see Dave if you are going to act like a control freak on these global warming topics and enforce the pro-AGW perspective no one will take wiki seriously ( oh that's already happening). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.172.0.196 (talk) 20:55, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Proposed change to the first paragraph

A rough consensus is forming (see earlier section) for the following text to replace the first paragraph of the lede:

The Climatic Research Unit hacking incident came to light in November 2009 when it was discovered that thousands of e-mails and other documents had been obtained through the hacking of a server used by the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwich, England. The subsequent dissemination of the material caused a controversy, dubbed "Climategate", about whether or not the e-mails indicated misconduct by climate scientists. The University of East Anglia described the incident as an illegal taking of data. The police are conducting a criminal investigation of the server breach and subsequent personal threats made against some of the scientists mentioned in the e-mails.

I am, therefore, turning this into a formal proposal and seek to build a consensus. I believe this has reasonable support from both "sides" of the debate, and so I request supports/opposes/comments to get a general idea of how this might be received. If adopted, it will mean the second paragraph will also need a little bit of revising, but we can get to that next. -- Scjessey (talk) 23:42, 25 January 2010 (UTC) - Note: This subsection broken out of earlier section and moved here. -- Scjessey (talk) 12:33, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

• Comment - It's been well over 3 days and that should have been enough time for everyone to have had a gander and made their preferences known. Apart from a few comments expressing concern, there is near unanimous support for this change. I believe consensus can be fairly assumed. I am, therefore, going to go ahead an stick it in the article. I will then review the second paragraph to make sure it makes sense with the changes to the first. If there are any last-minute objections, please express them below rather than reverting the change. -- Scjessey (talk) 13:37, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
• Support iff the bolding of Climategate don't get thrown out. Nsaa (talk) 12:25, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Code section

Proposed removal

Following Nightmote Hipocrite's reorganization of this section, I'd like to propose we remove the second paragraph completely. Stuff like "various editorials and blogs have stated" and a quote from Declan McCullagh that adds nothing but crystal ball gazing "what-iffery" isn't worthy of this article. -- Scjessey (talk) 18:08, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

"Current" version

The CRU files also included temperature reconstruction programs written in Fortran and IDL, programmer comments and a readme file. In a BBC Newsnight report, software engineer John Graham-Cumming found the code to be "below the standard you'd expect in any commercial software" because it lacked clear documentation or an audit history. Graham-Cumming also reported finding a bug in the code's error handling that could result in data loss. Other investigations posted in various editorials and blogs have stated that the comments and readme files indicate that the temperature reconstructions hide and manipulate data to show a temperature increase and question the accuracy of the instrumental temperature record. In his CBS News blog, columnist Declan McCullagh stated that "East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit might have avoided this snafu by publicly disclosing as much as possible at every step of the way."

Proposed version

I propose the following, shortened version, written to take account, from the start, of our (i.e. everyone's) current ignorance as to purpose:

The CRU files also included temperature data processing software written in Fortran and IDL as well as programmer comments and a readme file. There is no indication as to the purpose of the code, nor any that it was ever used in the preparation of data for publication. Various sources, including a BBC Newsnight report, have found the code to be "below the standard you'd expect in any commercial software" possibly including bugs and poor error handling.

Totally broken

We should not be discussing re-writing this section. It should be removed. It is totally and irrevocably broken. It contains gobbledegook of the Sokal hoax type: Graham-Cumming also reported finding a bug in the code's error handling that could result in data loss. - this is just wrong. The code does not work like that. We're not talking about real-time software that can lose data (obviously). You cannot drag in an outside "expert" who knows nothing about the code, have him read some undocumented fragments, and expect them to say anything useful. And indeed, he has said nothing useful William M. Connolley (talk) 18:41, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Edit warring at code section

Bold, revert, revert, revert, revert while discussing is not a good model for editing this or any other article. This is a developing story and improvements to the rest of the article are ongoing, making me loathe to lock it from editing. In the meantime, any further edits to Climatic Research Unit hacking incident#Code and documentation made absent consensus here will be considered edit warring. Edit warring is damaging to the encyclopedia, and may lead to your account being blocked. - 2/0 (cont.) 09:50, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Proposals

To gauge the current consensus, can people indicate their preferred version of the 'Code and documentation' subsection below? --Nigelj (talk) 10:39, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Longer version

The CRU files also included temperature reconstruction programs written in Fortran and IDL, programmer comments and a readme file. In a BBC Newsnight report, software engineer John Graham-Cumming found the code to be "below the standard you'd expect in any commercial software" because it lacked clear documentation or an audit history. Graham-Cumming also reported finding a bug in the code's error handling that could result in data loss. Other investigations posted in various editorials and blogs have stated that the comments and readme files indicate that the temperature reconstructions hide and manipulate data to show a temperature increase and question the accuracy of the instrumental temperature record.

Myles Allen, head of the Climate Dynamics group at the University of Oxford, said that the code investigated by Newsnight had nothing at all to do with the HadCRUT temperature record used for climate reconstructions, which is maintained at the Met Office and not at CRU. When he challenged Newsnight on this, they responded that "Our expert's opinion is that this is climate change code" and declined to retract the story. He commented that on the same basis the quality of code he put together for students could be used to discredit other research code.

Shorter version

The CRU files also included temperature data processing software written in Fortran and IDL as well as programmer comments and a readme file. Various sources, including a BBC Newsnight report, have found the code to be "below the standard you'd expect in any commercial software" possibly including bugs and poor error handling.

Myles Allen, head of the Climate Dynamics group at the University of Oxford, said that the code investigated by Newsnight had nothing at all to do with the HadCRUT temperature record used for climate reconstructions, which is maintained at the Met Office and not at CRU. When he challenged Newsnight on this, they responded that "Our expert's opinion is that this is climate change code" and declined to retract the story. He commented that on the same basis the quality of code he put together for students could be used to discredit other research code.

Even shorter version

The CRU files also included temperature data processing software written in Fortran and IDL as well as programmer comments and a readme file. On BBC Newsnight, software engineer John Graham-Cumming said that the code lacked clear documentation and an audit history, and possibly included a bug and poor error handling. Myles Allen, head of the Climate Dynamics group at the University of Oxford, said that the code investigated by Newsnight had nothing at all to do with the HadCRUT temperature record used for climate reconstructions, which is maintained at the Met Office and not at CRU.

Modified Even shorter version

Incorporating the changes discussed above

The CRU files also included temperature data processing software written in Fortran and IDL as well as programmer comments and a readme file. On BBC Newsnight, software engineer John Graham-Cumming said that the code lacked clear documentation and audit history, and found a bug in the error handling code. The purpose of the code and its effect, if any, on the scientific conclusions reached by the CRU is unknown. Myles Allen, head of the Climate Dynamics group at the University of Oxford, said that the code investigated by Newsnight had nothing at all to do with the HadCRUT temperature record used for climate reconstructions, which is maintained at the Met Office and not at CRU.

(Please add your !vote here) JPatterson (talk) 22:36, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Removal of subsection

Interim step

John Christy's Climategate thoughts

Interesting new interview of John Christy at IEEE Spectrum here: " What's disturbing in the mail is the resistance to share fundamental data with the outside community. That raised a lot of suspicions and red flags, and now we see that those suspicions were well justified." --Pete Tillman (talk) 19:24, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Sounds like a good bit of information to add to the reactions section. We have a paucity of reactions from skeptics at the moment which needs to be rectified. I say add it. JettaMann (talk) 23:16, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to weigh in here. I believe the quote from John Christy should absolutely be used. As it says at the top of the page, this article has serious problems with NPOV. It needs more comments from those who align with mainstream opinion on climate-gate. No doubt the "RC and friends" crowd (which currently holds the majority of editors) will block it, arguing that Christy represents "fringe" viewpoints, is not "notable", etc. And they may have a point if the quote was related to the science, since, with the science, they do have "peer reviewed" articles on thier side. (which I suspect is a result, at least in part, to the type of behavior revealed by the leaked emails.) However, climate-gate is not a forum for peer-reviewed articles, it's about a scandal. And I believe the mainstream view is that several of the email authors are guilty of at least some misconduct / unethical behavior, regardless of whether they believe in the science. Right now, the article is very misleading because it gives the false impression that experts think nothing is wrong with the emailers behavior. What's worse is that half the quotes are from the authors of the emails themselves, yet they are not presented that way.Sirwells (talk) 01:27, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

In the interest of neutrality Christy's quote should be balanced by the fact that CRU never had ownership of the original data to begin with, and that the data sets were available to other researchers from their original sources. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 01:41, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Good points, to be dealt with carefully. Christy is accurately described in the article as holding a minority view, disputing the expert consensus, which should be shown as such in accordance with WP:NPOV. . . . dave souza, talk 19:33, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

A "Who's Who" of the "Reactions to the Incident Section"

I'd like to present a little "who's who" of the "Reactions to the Incident Section". The follow individuals are quoted, with virtually no indication that they may have a direct interest in covering up any wrong-doing with the behavior of those who wrote the emails:

Michael Mann – climate-gate email author currently under investigation by Penn State, obvious conflict of interest issues when quoted in connection with the climate-gate emails.

Phil Jones – another climate-gate email author who stepped down as head of CRU while climate gate is being investigated, again, obvious conflict of interest issues when quoted in connection with the climate-gate emails.

Eric Steig – Real Climate contributor and climate-gate email author.

Richard Somerville – Yet another climate-gate email author.

Kevin Trenberth – Yet another climate-gate email, some of which contain conspiratorial-type discussions with Michael Mann.

Tom Wigley – And yet another climate-gate email author at the center of the controversy.

John Hirst – A weatherman (not a climatologist), blasted for receiving a bonus after predicting mild winters in UK. Famous for incorrectly predicting years of “hottest weather on record” which have not come true. Works with CRU scientists.

Julia Slingo – Associate of John Hirst.

Patrick Michaels – No complaints there

James Hansen – Another climate-gate email author, now under attack for creating misleading temperature records.

Hons von Storch – Finally, here’s one with a non-biased view. Had no part in the climate-gate emails.

Gavin Schmidt – Climate-gate author, Real Climate contributor

There's more, but you get the idea....

My point for this is I think this is one of the main problems with NPOV of the article and I think it needs to be fixed. Can anyone explain to me how the above situation presents a non-biased view? Sirwells (talk) 02:49, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

BRAVO! Well-caught! Any quotes from involved persons must be so identified, obviously, because of the inherant COI issues. "So-and-so, mentioned by name in the emails ...." or "So-and-so, author of several of the emails ..." Goes straight to motivation. I say, beautiful bit of work there. Nightmote (talk) 05:27, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

You failed to note that both Michaels and von Storch were mentioned several times in the emails. Given that they both were mentioned in not altogether flattering ways, it stretches credulity that their reactions could be considered "non biased." Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 06:28, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Not to mention that von Storch actually is an "email author"... 1155346370.txt --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 09:10, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

What is the point of this thread? Of course we quote those directly involved with the e-mails, since their reactions are extremely relevant. Is Sirwells saying we shouldn't? -- ChrisO (talk) 08:54, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Sirwells can speak for himself. Nightmote's basic question is reasonable: would it be sensible to try to indicate such potential conflicts in this section? It may prove difficult, as suggested above, but the question should not simply be dismissed. Jonathan A Jones (talk) 09:59, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't see how it's a conflict of interest to have sent an email to someone who works at the CRU. Perhaps someone could explain that to me? Hipocrite (talk) 11:57, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

The only people with conflicts of interest are Mann and Jones, since their conduct is under investigation. That is already clear in the article. Ignignot (talk) 13:51, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

@hipocrite and @ignignot - The relationships ought to be clearly stated; it goes both to motive and expertise. To make a ridiculous example, "John Smith said that Robert Jones was a man of stirling reputation and unparalleled knowledge" is not the same as saying, "John Smith, who shares a desk with Robert Jones at XYZ Corp., said ... " One can draw one's own conclusions about the significance (if any) of the relationship, but the relationship can reasonably be considered a salient fact and a possible Conflict of Interest. Nightmote (talk) 15:44, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Oh sure, if it was there. However, the only evidence presented above is that the people have, in the past, emailed someone who worked for the CRU and that email was stolen and published. That's not a COI. Hipocrite (talk) 16:01, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I think what this thread is arguing is that we should have more comment from people who have absolutely no idea what they're talking about. People who don't know what the emails were actually about, who don't have any connection with climate change science, and who never had any contact with a real climate change scientist. --Nigelj (talk) 16:13, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

(ec) For the sake of discussion, let's say that no COI exists. Wouldn't the fact that the commentator is involved in the data breach, even peripherally, be worthy of mention? Not as a seperate section, but as a parenthetical descriptor? "Doctor So-and-So (who originated 11 of the emails) said ... " "Professor Such-and-Such (an employee at CRU) noted that ... " Perhaps I'm being dense, but their relationship to the event seems salient to me. Not damning in any way, you understand, just part of the larger picture. Helping to define the commentator's relationship to the community, as it were. Nightmote (talk) 16:15, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

That would be undue weight, since the relevance is not established, and would run into original research and verifiability problems (what would be your source?). It would introduce a POV element of innuendo, which comes through very clearly in Sirwells' comments ("blasted for receiving a bonus", "conspiratorial-type discussions" and other nonsense). Sirwells appears to be angling for a "guilt by association" approach, which would be completely inappropriate and a blatant violation of NPOV. -- ChrisO (talk) 16:18, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Chris, there would be no need to add any judgemental terms to a parenthetical descriptor. If someone works at CRU, wrote an email, or received an email, that relationship is pertinent. No need to draw any conclusions on the nature of that relationship (i.e. "former employee" not "disgruntled employee"). Nightmote (talk) 16:27, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Certainly you'll have reliable sources (IE - not the emails themselves) for anything you want to put in the article, right? Hipocrite (talk) 16:29, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Honestly, I have no intention of adding a thing. My position is strictly theoretical, and is as follows: I admired the footwork of Sirwells, and believe that a valid point was raised. If a reliable source identifies a commentator as having an existential relationship to the event, that relationship is a pertinent piece of information, should be included, and in no event should a reliably-sourced pertinent truth be reverted unless a valid BLP concern exists. Nightmote (talk) 16:40, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

We're all good then - nothing about supposed conflicts of interest gets mentioned unless a reliable source thinks it's notable. Good to go. I'd further note that Sirwells did miss the fact that Hons von Storch is a climate-gate email author. Hipocrite (talk) 16:42, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure we're in accord, yet. My position is that a list of people is uncalled for, but that a brief reliably-sourced parenthetical description of relationship would be appropriate. Any conclusions regarding Conflict of Interest would be inappropriate unless reliably sourced. OK? Nightmote (talk) 16:49, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm loathe to say that's ok. Including people's current employer and job is certainly ok, but if we're going to be digging around to figure out some old relation, that's not ok, unless done by a reliable source in relation to this event. For instance, if one of the people above attended someone's 30th birthday party, it would not be appropriate to find an entry in the social register for that party and use that as a source to include (attended John Smith's 30th birthday party) as opposed to (Climatologist at Harvard University). Hipocrite (talk) 16:57, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Almost there. Direct social relationships pertinent? So 30th birthday party-out, friends since 2nd grade-in? Nightmote (talk) 17:04, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Only if mentioned in direct relationship to this - again, finding a social register item on their lifelong frendship does not make it notable for this article. Hipocrite (talk) 17:12, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough, then, from my point of view. Nightmote (talk) 17:44, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Proposed solution

I suggest we create a subsection titled "E-mail Authors." That or intersperse them in the actual e-mail sections.--Heyitspeter (talk) 06:05, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

No, we should not engage in prohibited research. Listing all of the email authors also adds nothing to the article. Hipocrite (talk) 13:43, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

That's not what I'm suggesting. I'm proposing another subsection of the "Reactions" section for 'Email authors' to demarcate them from other climatologists. --Heyitspeter (talk) 00:27, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

But it seems they should be removed entirely. According to WP:BLP "Criticism and praise of the subject should be represented if it is relevant to the subject's notability and can be sourced to reliable secondary sources, and so long as the material is written in a manner that does not overwhelm the article or appear to take sides; it needs to be presented responsibly, conservatively, and in a neutral, encyclopedic tone." (my emphasis)--Heyitspeter (talk) 00:27, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Second paragraph

Now that the first paragraph has been re-worked (thanks again SCjessey et. al.) How about we tackle the second.

Extracts from the e-mails have been publicised and allegations have been made that they indicate misconduct by leading climate scientists such as withholding scientific information, interfering with the peer-review process of scientific papers, deleting information to prevent disclosure under the United Kingdom's Freedom of Information Act, and selecting data to support the case for global warming. The University of East Anglia and climate scientists have described these interpretations as incorrect and misleading, with the extracts being taken out of context in what has been described as a smear campaign. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change head Rajendra Pachauri are among those who have suggested that the incident was intended to undermine the then imminent December 2009 Copenhagen global climate summit. Though the vast majority of climate data have always been freely available, the incident has prompted general discussion about increasing the openness of scientific data. Scientists, scientific organisations, and government officials have stated that the incident does not affect the overall scientific case for climate change. Allegations that UEA violated the Freedom of Information Act were confirmed by the Information Commissioner's Office but the people involved cannot be prosecuted because the complaint was made too late.

My problem with it is its length, composition and flow. I do not see any POV issues here. YMMV. Here's a target to shoot at.

Published excerpts from the e-mails gave rise to allegations that some leading climate scientists withheld scientific information, impeded the publication of opposition papers in the scientific journals, deleted information to prevent disclosure under the United Kingdom's Freedom of Information Act (an allegation later confirmed by the Information Commissioner's Office), and selected data to bolster their theories. The University of East Anglia and many climate scientists strongly denied these allegations as incorrect and misleading and said that the e-mails in their proper context show nothing untoward. The timing of the publication caused some officials to brand the unauthorized publication as a smear campaign designed to derail consensus at the December 2009 Copenhagen global climate summit, then just weeks away. While most climate experts who expressed a view opined that nothing in the released documents undermined the science behind the prevailing theory of global warming, some scientists and opinion journalist expressed concerns about the scientific process and transparency practiced at the CRU and other climate centers.

The University of East Anglia said the data was taken illegally and the police conducted a criminal investigation of the server breach as well as subsequent personal threats made against some of the scientists mentioned in the e-mails.

JPatterson (talk) 22:56, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

The added bit about the FOI opinion was incorrect, so I've changed it to "The Information Commissioner's Office stated the opinion that in one instance the UEA had not dealt properly with requests under the Freedom of Information Act, but as sanctions have to be imposed within six months of the offence it was too late to impose sanctions."

In the proposed paragraph, "(an allegation later confirmed by the Information Commissioner's Office)" is wrong as all they've said is that in that one case the emails showed that FOI request wasn't dealt with properly, and as far as I've seen did not state that any information was deleted. No immediate idea of how to fix it, and gotta go now. . . dave souza, talk 23:25, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

What's your source for it only being one case? The three sources cited by the article says "requests". A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 23:36, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

"Smith's statement refers to an FOI request from a retired engineer and climate sceptic in Northampton called David Holland. The CRU had been bombarded with similar requests for data, and the hacked emails between scientists suggest they were extremely frustrated with having to deal with them." The Guardian. When the ICO release their press release we'll be able to check that out. . . dave souza, talk 23:45, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't think that necessarily means there was only one request. Smith also states "The emails which are now public reveal that Mr Holland's requests under the Freedom of Information Act were not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation." Do you have a reliable source that explicitly states there was one and only one violation? A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 00:23, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

BBC News reports that "the requests were made by a climate change sceptic in the 2007-2008 period". I doubt a single request happened over a two year time frame. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 00:31, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

The UPI is reporting as "The University of East Anglia violated Britain's Freedom of Information Act by refusing to fulfill requests for data supporting claims by university scientists that human-made emissions were causing global warming, Britain's Information Commissioner's Office said." JPatterson (talk) 03:30, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

The sources specifically refer to one case, that of Mr Holland who appears to have made two or more requests. From memory, he requested data and programs, then requested emails over a period to see if they supported his idea that there had been deliberate fiddling of the IPPC reports. Sure I've seen that somewhere. That is quite distinct from the ICO stating an opinion that all the other accusations were true, and we have to be careful to avoid exaggerating the official ICO opinion. The text of their press release would help, but regrettably they still haven't made it available at their website though they've put up a few from the 28th, the latest being "28 Jan 10 - ICO to help keep Vale of Glamorgan children safe online". . . dave souza, talk 07:30, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

I changed the wording from "With reference to a FOI request made by David Holland" to "With reference to FOI requests made by David Holland" since as agreed here, he made multiple requests. And the very quote in the next sentence of that paragraph says "reveal that Mr Holland's requests"...

Incidentally, while I understand why the ICO finding is significant, is it really necessary to mention it in the "Timeline" section, in the "E-mails" section and in the "Jones e-mail of May 2008" section? In other words, 3 times not counting it also being mentioned in the summary/intro (which obviously will repeat what is in the article)

Nil Einne (talk) 21:21, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the change to plural, a very useful correction. The situation arose because three editors more or less simultaneously thought of adding it, in three different places. As I've suggested previously, the latter two could appropriately be merged – a brief mention in the timeline seems appropriate. Any other views on the best location for this? . . dave souza, talk 10:41, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Here we go again

Edit warring over bold-face?

We're edit warring over whether a word should be in bold-face? Really, guys? A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 01:17, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

WP:MOS implies that if emphasis is needed it should be in italics rather than bold, though it's not entirely clear. But yeah, it does seem to be a small thing to edit war. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 01:26, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Not an edit war, since there is only a single reversion. A clear consensus for the current first paragraph was established in a previous section. The question of using a bold typeface has yet to be discussed. We have conflicting issues:

• There is a guideline (not a policy) that states:

  "Normally, we try to make sure that all "inbound redirects" other than mis-spellings or other obvious close variants of the article title are mentioned in the first couple of paragraphs of the article or section to which the redirect goes. It will often be appropriate to bold the redirected term." This seems to indicate a bold typeface is preferable.

• "Climategate" is not actually an alternative name for the hacking incident that is the subject of this article. Rather it is an alternative name for the controversy that followed the incident. This seems to indicate a bold typeface would be inappropriate.

We need to discuss how to reconcile these and reach a consensus before any more attempts to apply a bold typeface to the term occur. That is reasonable and consistent with Misplaced Pages best practices for resolving disputes amicably. -- Scjessey (talk) 01:32, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

There's been a bolding of this paragraph since I started editing on this article around 25. November. Every (even the most pro AGW ones, see Talk:Climatic_Research_Unit_hacking_incident/Archive_22#Non_skeptic_sources_using_climategate) media outlet uses this as the name for this incident. There's been a lot of work done by you (this is the third or fourth time you have tried to remove the the term, or the bolding. For how long shall you go on with this partisan editing? Nsaa (talk) 14:50, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

There was broad agreement for the first paragraph is it stands; however, there was also a commitment to undertake a discussion about the bold-face issue. As outlined above, it is not clear whether or not the use of a bold typeface is appropriate. In case you hadn't noticed, the person who proposed moving your beloved "Climategate" moniker into the first paragraph was me - hardly "partisan editing", is it? Perhaps if you would participate in the discussions and help develop a consensus instead of just making antagonistic, agenda-driven edits to article space you would find it easier to get your point across. Also, please refrain from creating bullshit redirects - another example of your clear agenda. -- Scjessey (talk) 15:03, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Scjessey, it has been your contention from as long as I can remember to remove or minimize the word of Climategate. And now you are claiming that this article and climategate are not the same thing? If I remember correctly, the article was originally Climategate, changed to this and now is in baby steps trying to minimize the origin of the story. To me this is very disingenious. But if I understand you correctly, it is now ok to start an article called Climategate. Arzel (talk) 16:38, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

You continue to misinterpret everything, and now you have compounded the issue further with an agenda-driven reversion. How can you possibly accuse me of attempting to "remove" or "minimize" the word "Climategate" given the great lengths I went to in order to get it promoted to the first paragraph of the article? You should refactor your comment and self-revert your article edit to avoid further embarrassment. -- Scjessey (talk) 18:14, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

@Scjessey on your comment "creating bullshit redirects" please discuss it on the relevant page Misplaced Pages:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2010_January_30 where I agree with you on that this was not a god redirect, but not delete it as you wish. Nsaa (talk) 19:09, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Comment on content, not on the contributor Prodego 18:16, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

It's a little unclear at this point but this article seems to be about the hacking incident, and to some extent about the emails itself, but is not really about the public scandal/controversy popularly known as "climategate". Under the circumstances we would not normally bold "climategate" because it is not truly an alternate title for this article, it is a title of a slightly different thing. A like within the article seems a little nonstandard. - Wikidemon (talk) 20:34, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. There should be a separate article titled "Climategate controversy". Parts of this article could be transferred there. This has been suggested before and I suggest it again since the controversy is very much alive and well and changing as time goes by.130.232.214.10 (talk) 20:45, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Agree with wikidemon, removed link and put climate gate in italics, everyone ok with this now? mark nutley (talk) 20:49, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

That seems logical to me. I think I put the link in because Jpat suggested it. "Hell no" on the "Climategate controvery" idea though - obviously that would be a POV fork. -- Scjessey (talk) 20:52, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

There's no need for a separate Climategate controversy article since that's what this article is about. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 00:31, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

If editors will not allow an article of Climategate, then I do not see why it cannot be bolded in this article. The original title of this article was Climategate. It was then changed to the current title, and now some editors are claiming that this article is not about Climategate so Climategate cannot be bolded? Yet at the same time a seperate Climategate article cannot be created because it creates a POV fork? I fail to see how anyone can justify that logic. The continued attempt to 1984 this story is disturbing to say the least. Arzel (talk) 00:49, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

It is utterly irrelevant what the original title of the article was. Besides, it was only called "Climategate" for a single day before it was changed (per WP:WTA#Controversy and scandal). I think the current arrangement is perfectly acceptable per Wikidemon's sensible rationale. -- Scjessey (talk) 00:54, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Arzel makes some good points. --SPhilbrickT 12:55, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry, where was the removal of the in-text link agreed on? I gave an inch on removing the "dubbed by AGW skeptics" in exchange for that link. It's not appropriate to now take a mile and remove the link without restoring "dubbed by AGW skeptics." Hipocrite (talk) 15:04, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Reliable source interlude

Questions about the BBC's suitability as a reliable source have been raised, but this video should put everyone's mind at ease. -- Scjessey (talk) 20:58, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Ha ha great piece :-) Nsaa (talk) 00:06, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

WP:OR violation in Code and Documentation section

The section currently reads:

On BBC Newsnight, software engineer John Graham-Cumming said that the code lacked clear documentation and an audit history, and possibly included a bug and poor error handling.

This is in violation of WP:OR, as the RS does not say that the code "possibly included a bug and poor error handling," it says that the code "included a bug and poor error handling." I don't expect that there will be any argument here, as they would fly in the face of WP policy, but it's on semi-lock right now so I feel I should mention it before editing directly.--Heyitspeter (talk) 00:20, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I re-examined the source and you are correct. It does not contain the word "possibly". The word "possibly" is WP:OR and should be removed from the article. Good catch! A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 00:41, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

As I previously stated, this entire section should be deleted because it was based on an error by Newsnight. -- Scjessey (talk) 00:44, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Except the BBC News is sticking by their story. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 01:29, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Nevertheless, the error remains and this has been confirmed by another reliable source. The two sources cancel one another out, which means the section should be removed so that Misplaced Pages isn't needlessly reporting the BBC fail. If in doubt, leave it out. -- Scjessey (talk) 01:52, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Haha. The entire article would be canceled out if this were true. It's a controversy. RSs are reporting conflicting information throughout.--Heyitspeter (talk) 06:02, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

As far as I know, when reliable sources disagree, you document the dispute. Consider, for example, the debate among historians regarding the functionalism/intentionalism of the Holocaust. Or the debate among scientists whether the ALH84001 meteorite contains evidence of ancient life on Mars. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 02:02, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Those are examples of significant, widely-known disagreements. This is a trivial matter known by very few that has received virtually no coverage in reliable sources. -- Scjessey (talk) 13:38, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I have taken a stab at rewriting that sentence, which includes the removal of the word "possibly." Hipocrite (talk) 13:54, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Refocusing the discussion

I'm not asking whether the entire section should be left out (though on that, review WP:V. It's a policy, not a behavioral guideline). I'm asking, given that the above sentence is there, whether there would be any serious objections with me altering it to bring it in line with WP:OR. Specifically, removing the word "possibly." So far it sounds OK with people.--Heyitspeter (talk) 05:56, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Support --SPhilbrickT 13:00, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Another (only semi-related) edit

It's not clear to me why these two sentences were removed, and I'd like to re-add them:

When he challenged Newsnight on this, they responded that "Our expert's opinion is that this is climate change code" and declined to retract the story. He commented that on the same basis the quality of code he put together for students could be used to discredit other research code.

This is informative, relevant and backed by the same source. Shall we readd? --Heyitspeter (talk) 00:20, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I believe Hipocrite removed this saying that "I will revert this edit on request by anyone who also gives reasoning for their request on the talk page.". A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 00:33, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes. I want to add this particular section back. I'm not asking for a full revert here.--Heyitspeter (talk) 05:50, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Does anyone know what "climate change code" is supposed to mean? Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 02:06, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

WP:RS not opinion please WMC. @ Boris I would assume they are refering to the climate data found in the foi.zip --mark nutley (talk) 09:10, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Marknutley, your assumption is not a rs. As a complete non expert I'd have thought it referred to programs or macros, hence the references to Fortran, but looking up a dictionary it appears that "S: (n) code, computer code ((computer science) the symbolic arrangement of data or instructions in a computer program or the set of such instructions)"] is the relevant meaning, which indicates that it could be any of the stolen documents, including the emails. A good source giving clarification would be useful, but without explanation it appears that the BBC's expert was being very uncommunicative. . . dave souza, talk 10:59, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Dave, i am well aware that my assumption is not an rs :) However think about it, you can`t run an e-email through a program to see what the results will be so it was not a ne-mail they were talking about :). You can run temperature data processing software which is what i believe hippocrite has put in the article, but you would need the data to run the program. So by simple reasoning then it must have been climate data he ran through the software, so he ran the code through the program, found errors in the code (not surprising after looking at harry`s readme) and gave his expert opinion on it. --mark nutley (talk) 11:25, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Accepting that you're speculating, do you mean climate data, climate data processing code, or climate projection simulation code, to name but three? . . dave souza, talk 11:40, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Here is a one of those horrible car analogies: If a car mechanic sees a car missing key components such a spark plug the mechanic does not need to try to drive the car to say it's not going to work. In the same way anyone familiar with computer code can spot errors that cause loss of data without running any actual data.85.76.33.7 (talk) 11:47, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

But of course it depends what the code was to be used for, and whether it was a finished product or an early effort to find the bugs, including feeding in test data which was deliberately not real climate data. This expert view seemed quite informative to me. Obviously we can't expect a scientist using code to achieve the level of bug-free perfection that full time professionals were producing at that time, like Windows Vista for example. So, we still need a source if we describe it in any detail. . . dave souza, talk 11:54, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

"Obviously we can't expect a scientist using code to achieve the level of bug-free perfection that full time professionals were producing at that time, like Windows Vista for example." - Oh the irony of that sentence! -- Scjessey (talk) 13:44, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Which brings us back to the original question. Heyitspeter's proposal to re-add the two sentences about Myles Allen's statement seems reasonable to me, it does indicate that "climate change code" is pretty meaningless – could the wording be improved to make that plainer? . . dave souza, talk 12:02, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I believe those sentence should stay out. That newsnight is standing behind its story isn't intersting, and there's no reason to include every rhetorical device used to refute the relevence of the code. However, if we were to reinsert newsnight standing behind the story, I would support making it clear that the attack wasn't on the fact that the code existed, or was about climate change, but rather that it wasn't used for anything of relevence (which is made clear in the article as it stands). Hipocrite (talk) 13:54, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

What is a bug?

The article currently says, "and included a bug in its error handling that might ignore some input data". The reason I had put 'possibly' in there is that, in the light of the information overlooked by/ignored by/unavailable to Newsnight but made clear by the later analysis in the Guardian, nobody knows the purpose of the code. You can't define a 'bug' in the logic, until you know what the logic was meant to achieve. If that piece of code was meant to see what the graph would look like with certain data removed, then that was not a bug. Equally so if the purpose was to help teach students about the effects of removing some data from a further analysis. What I say here is speculation, but in the light of the, now clear, lack of knowledge of that analyst, I hope it shows that we cannot say that what he found was clearly 'a bug' - i.e. a logic error. The best we can say is that he thought it was a bug at the time, based on his assumptions, which have since been found to be wrong. The shortest way of saying all that, I felt was to put 'possibly' in. If it is felt that that is not clear from that one word, the answer is not to take it out and make the statement of finding a bug definite, but to explain the true situation, of false assumptions, more fully. --Nigelj (talk) 15:12, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Nigel, we (WP) are not saying there is was a bug in the code. We (WP) are saying that the BBC says there was a bug in the code, a true and verifiable statement. Big difference. Your suggestion above if followed violates . We can not talk two competing sources and try to synthesize a new point which neither make. JPatterson (talk) 15:30, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

We can, however, say he says he found a bug, and that other people say that he was looking at code that "had nothing at all to do with the HadCRUT temperature record used for climate reconstructions." Hipocrite (talk) 15:24, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

We can? Does the guy in the guardian actually know what code newsnight was looking at? or is he just saying all the code in the foi.zip was not climate data? mark nutley (talk) 15:43, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

We can. A reliable source said so. Hipocrite (talk) 17:05, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

@MN, Neither. He is said that all programs dealing with the HadCRUT temperature record are maintained elsewhere. We don't know if that is true or not but we do know that a reliable source says so. While not germane to the issues raised by the BBC (poor documentation, audit controls etc.), it is a verifiable point that goes to end effects, and so should be included. I think the current version is good. It is factual and neutral from both angles. Do you agree? JPatterson (talk) 17:24, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Actually, re-reading the current version there are two minor problems. We say "software engineer John Graham-Cumming said that the code lacked ...". I think this should be changed to "...the code he examined lacked ...". Later we say "included a bug in its error handling that might ignore some input data" which isn't quite right. I think "...would ignore some input data under certain circumstances" is a more accurate paraphrase in that "might" could be taken as an equivocation as to whether input data would be ignored. Graham-Cumming expressed no such doubt. JPatterson (talk) 17:40, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Dave, can you self revert?

Dave, I believe that you might have accidentally violated 1RR with the following two edits. You reverted one of my edits here and one of Heyitspeter's edits here. Can you please self-revert one of them? A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 00:28, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Eh, I did revert Heyitspeter, but I didn't revert you, I added a new and minor clarification to your edit. Your change, my further change. Not the same as it was before. As discussed at #Second_paragraph, the opinion was "With reference to FOI requests made by David Holland". I've left out "opinion" which is a useful refinement, but the wording didn't seem crucial. Do plesae discuss on the article talk page, with references, if you want to dispute that. Thanks for the helpful hint, dave souza, talk 01:09, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

NOTE: I copied and pasted the above discussion from Dave souza's talk page. He asked that I discuss this on the article talk page. So here I am.

Granted, I am not as well versed in these matters as other editors, but you reverted my removal of the word "one" in your first edit and Heyitspeter's entire edit here.. This seems to violate the 1RR restriction. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 01:28, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I accepted your removal of "the opinion that in one instance" before "the UEA had not dealt properly with requests", thus leaving the initial empasis on the plural "requests" which I understood to be your preference, then after that multiple added "made by one individual" as discussed at #Second paragraph above. Two very good sources explicitly state that the announcement was about complaints brougnt by David Holland, any other sources can be considered. As for "one", Heyitspeter changed it to "an" and I'm happy with that. . . dave souza, talk 07:42, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Climate change emails hacked by spies

The independant http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/climate-emails-hacked-by-spies-1885147.html Interception bore hallmarks of foreign intelligence agency, says expert . By Steve Connor , Science Editor Off2riorob (talk) 07:22, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Ugh... that is so speculative it gives me that uncomfortable feeling I get about the whistleblower speculation. If wikipedia has proven anything, it doesn't take a sophisticated organization to do something exceptional (good or bad). Ignignot (talk) 15:11, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

David King admits to speculation over source of climate science emails - Former government adviser backs away from sensational claims over involvement of foreign intelligence or wealthy lobbyists 91.153.115.15 (talk) 22:58, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

We have to take this out then. It is just ridiculous. Ignignot (talk) 13:53, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm going to remove it from the lead. It makes us look like idiots to put something completely made up in the head of the wikipedia article. The other reference to it will need to be updated, I don't know if people would want to just remove it or modify it to mention that the comments were later retracted. Ignignot (talk) 14:31, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Dear sweet god remove it, it is pure speculation by king. We may as well put in Ignignot did it cos i`m speculating that he is :) Until plod has finished the investigation there really should be zero about who did it or why. mark nutley (talk) 14:35, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

The material also exists in this section. Presumably this speculation should be removed as well? Ronnotel (talk) 14:42, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

For now let's remove it - just having the tinfoil hat viewpoint is a little silly. It could be an improvement to mention what he said and then later retraction though. Ignignot (talk) 15:05, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Why has David King been expunged from the article? The above does not look like a fulsome discussion to me. His inclusion is not "just ridiculous", and does not "make us look like idiots". Those aren't rational arguments, just personal comments. David King is a very significant figure in the fields of science and politics in the UK. His conclusions are fully attributed as being his own statements. We have the opinions of other significant individuals in the article, what's so wrong with DK? (Of course, a lot of this is only provisional, as most of it will be superseded by the results of formal inquiries, but still) --Nigelj (talk) 18:08, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

What would make the opinion of a "government science advisor" any more relevant on what is and what isn't a clandestine intelligence operation than, say, Joe Six-pack? He's clearly speaking as an individual, not as a representative of the government or the university and I don't see much in his CV that would indicate expertise in this area. Best to leave it out unless corroborated. Ronnotel (talk) 18:32, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I think that Sir King has backed off his story slightly, which would make it better not in the lede. He's still in the article as noting the intent to disrupt Cophenhagen, I believe. Hipocrite (talk) 18:10, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Kinda predictable – which is why WP:NOTNEWS. . . dave souza, talk 18:32, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

So Nigelj - it was basically speculation taken out of context that King has since stepped back from, as referenced in the guardian. There is still a short mention of him in the lead - I am completely open to revising that somewhat, but in this (rare) case there wasn't a big discussion because people that are normally arguing on different sides of this article both wanted it gone. The reason I said it makes us look like idiots is because it is silly to make what was revealed as off the cuff speculation into a sizable portion of the lead of the article. At first I left it in the reactions section but then people asked to take that out as well - personally I would have left it in and then added to it that he had later clarified somewhat, but I didn't feel strongly enough about it to argue and didn't have the time to do it myself, so I shut up. Ignignot (talk) 20:40, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

PS - it is still in the article almost in its entirety. It was actually repeated 3(!) times. Ignignot (talk) 21:01, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Inch given - MILE TAKEN

Oh, look, I gave an inch on the lede (excluding who did the dubbing on climategate) because I was told "note that "dubbed" links to explanation." Apparently it no longer does, so untill it does, I'd like to know exactly where these changes were discussed. Hipocrite (talk) 14:48, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Are you talking about the in page redirect? I removed it via consensus reached above in Edit warring over bold-face?. What exactly is your issue with this? --mark nutley (talk) 14:54, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Bozmo said it was unusal, i removed it, scjessy agreed with it. A few guys further up the page also said they did`nt like it. I removed the link + the bold typeface as it was causing needless arguing, i thougth it was a good compromise lose the link and the bold typeface? --mark nutley (talk) 15:02, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

What happened to hippocrites comment? Sorry if i deleted it :( --mark nutley (talk) 15:04, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I removed it when I found two people commenting on it. I don't think you should be undoing compromises I make with others without first waiting for me to opine. Hipocrite (talk) 15:05, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

PSU Inquiry to conclude later this week

- I don't know if this merits inclusion in the article but the findings will definitely be important to the reaction section. Since the PSU paper will probably be the first to carry this, does it constitute a RS on the subject? Ignignot (talk) 15:44, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the useful heads-up, something to look forward to. Not sure if they'd be counted as an RS, but I'd expect there to be plenty of coverage immediately afterwards, and presumably the conclusions of the findings are likely to be released. The difficulty may be finding neutral commentary. . . dave souza, talk 16:18, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm uneasy about using a student newspaper. Better to refer directly to the university's press releases. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 00:33, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

"Uneasy"?!? Sweet Jesus. A University Newspaper is one step removed from crayons and butcher block paper. I wouldn't use it to line my bird cage. (ahem) By which, of course, I mean that we should be careful in the sources we choose. Nightmote (talk) 02:49, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Student-run newspapers have come up on the WP:RSN, and the general feeling is that they are reliable, especially if the university has a good journalism department. I would guess Penn State qualifies. The article doesn't contain anything controversial or factually inaccurate that I can see. Then again, it won't kill us to wait until another reliable source picks up the story. It doesn't really add much to the article anyway. Based on everything I've read so far, it appears as if Mann is going to be exonerated anyway. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 03:08, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Guardian - Phil Jones - UHI - China

If it is in the Guardian it must be the truth, right?

Leaked climate change emails scientist 'hid' data flaws - Exclusive: Key study by East Anglia professor Phil Jones was based on suspect figures

Strange case of moving weather posts and a scientist under siege - In the first part of a major investigation of the so-called 'climategate' emails, one of Britain's top science writers reveals how researchers tried to hide flaws in a key study

How the 'climategate' scandal is bogus and based on climate sceptics' lies91.153.115.15 (talk) 22:49, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

There's a similar article in The Independent today. Thepm (talk) 05:10, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

• As ever, the Grauniad is pretty good at including differing viewpoints, though such a contrast between pieces by the same journalist seems unusual. The first two really do make the behaviour of Jones and Wang look problematic – perhaps a little mitigated by Jones struggling with a siege mentality and the belief based on bitter experience that any information released would be badly misrepresented. The Grauniad claims an exclusive study, the Indy refers to "a study" so they may be echoing the other newspaper.
  One good point made in the comments to the first piece is that the description of Jones & Wang 1990 as a "key study" and as being cited by the IPCC ignores many other studies of the same topic. The comment by Bioluminescence, 1 Feb 2010, 9:21PM, refers to Assessment of Urban Versus Rural In Situ Surface Temperatures in the Contiguous United States: No Difference Found which is useful as the second page onwards of the pdf gives a review of the literature on the subject, A Demonstration That Large-Scale Warming Is Not Urban, Urbanization effects in large-scale temperature records, with an emphasis on China, A closer look at United States and global surface temperature change.
  So, these first news reports need to be treated with caution, it will be interesting to see scientific responses. As the third Grauniad piece points out, so-called skeptics have grossly misrepresented innocuous statements, this issue appears to have more to it. The second piece includes a quote from Mann which is worth mentioning in our article: "This is all too predictable. This crowd of charlatans is always looking for one thing they can harp on, where people w/ little knowledge of the facts might be able to be convinced that there is a controversy. They can't take on the whole of the science, so they look for one little thing they can say is wrong, and thus generalise that the science is entirely compromised." . . dave souza, talk 11:22, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Wow. I am at a loss for words. I will get back to this but... wow... your glasses must have some heavy duty polarized coating to only get that from these sources. Are you sure we are talking about the same material? Shocked...91.153.115.15 (talk) 11:41, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Wow, wow! Suggest you read the articles more carefully. . dave souza, talk 16:08, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Supplement: Jones, Wang et al. 1990 isn't just about Chinese weather stations, the focus of the complaints, it also covers European parts of the Soviet Union and eastern Australia. . . dave souza, talk 11:38, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Have the russians also made statements of cherry picking data from their sites? i recall reading that recently. I`ll dig it out later on. But that would make two lots of stations they were messing around with. mark nutley (talk) 12:54, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

As always, reliable sources will be of interest. dave souza, talk 16:08, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

] Here's one.

Mr. Briffa sent Mr. Mann a copy of his Science article on April 12, advising Mr. Mann that he had "decided to mention uncertainties in tree-ring data while pushing the need for more work." Earlier emails also show Mr. Briffa struggling with Russian tree-ring results and the reports of Russian scientists on their difficulties. Their findings often contradicted the idea that the world is warmer today than hundreds or even thousands of years ago. "Relatively high number of trees has been noted during 750-1450 AD. There is no evidence of moving polar timberline in the north during the last century," wrote Rashit Hanntemirov from Russia in October 1998 -- implying that warming has been common in the past and nothing unusual was happening today. ... The public battles between Mr. Mann and the two Canadians are already on the record. The emails reinforce the worst of suspicions that the official scientific community did all they could to smear Mr. McIntyre and Mr. McKitrick, prevent publication of the work of skeptics, manipulate the peer-review process and isolate all skeptics as cranks. On May 31, 2004, Phil Jones, head of the IPCCdesignated Climatic Research Unit, wrote to Mr. Mann: "Recently rejected two papers (one for JGR and for GRL) from people saying CRU has it wrong over Siberia. Went to town in both reviews, hopefully successfully. If either appears I will be very surprised ... "

Again we see the pattern of wagon circling, with the emphasis on suppressing information the CRU scientists see as damaging to the cause. The irony is they have done more damage to their cause than anything that could have been accomplished by the skeptics if they had simply operated according to time honored principles of science. This is an important part of the story and deserves more attention than it is currently getting. JPatterson (talk) 18:01, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, interesting article. The National Post appears to give a clear account of the anti-action on AGW position, suspect it may not be a reliable source for the science: can we find mainstream journal info on this? . . . dave souza, talk 18:39, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't have access to the full article but by the Russian author mentioned in the NP article would be interesting to read in full. Note that the NP article appears to have the spelling of his name wrong it's Hantemirov not Hanntemirov JPatterson (talk) 19:20, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

It's a nice article. Roughly: Trees show clear damage on extreme weather events. This gives a binary type signal in the annual rings. "Normal" weather =0, Extreme weather =1. This is however not the same as using tree rings as a general temperature proxy which is obviously much more tasking.130.232.214.10 (talk) 19:43, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Is this really true? How can Nature accept such unsourced material. I'm speechless. I was in the believe that they worked after the Scientific Method standards (it looks like the "These steps must be repeatable in order to dependably predict any future results." and "is to document, archive and share all data and methodology so they are available for careful scrutiny by other scientists," is not part of the process ...)

Professor Jones and a colleague, Professor Wei-Chyung Wang of the State University of New York at Albany suggested in an influential 1990 paper in the journal Nature that the urban heat island effect was minimal – and cited as supporting evidence a long series of temperature measurements from Chinese weather stations, half in the countryside and half in cities, supplied by Professor Wei-Chyung. The Nature paper was used as evidence in the most recent report of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. However, it has been reported that when climate sceptics asked for the precise locations of the 84 stations, Professor Jones at first declined to release the details. And when eventually he did release them, it was found that for the ones supposed to be in the countryside, there was no location given.

— http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/climategate-scientist-hid-flaws-in-data-say-sceptics-1886487.html ()

Nsaa (talk) 13:10, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Yup, bad news. It seems very strange that positions weren't given in the 1990 paper, and Jones has dug a hole for himself by not stating earlier that info was missing or unfindable. . . dave souza, talk 16:08, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

@DS - We've already had a response from a scientist in the know, and a contemporaneous one at that. Tom Wiggins who was head of CRU at the time, thought Wang had "screwed up". "Were you taking W-CW on trust?" he asked Jones. He continued: "Why, why, why did you and W-CW not simply say this right at the start?". Why indeed. And why didn't Wiggins demand the article be withdrawn? Wang now says the original data can not be found. Where have we heard that before? The overall picture that is emerging here shows the CRU seemingly more concerned with the reputation the institution and its scientists than the integrity of the science. Not good.

I think you offered the Mann quote as some sort of justification. To me it is all the more damning. This overriding concern for how contrary results might be spun is at the heart of the problem. Suppressing data contrary to your theory is the definition of scientific fraud. "But we're right on the science and this will be misunderstood" is no excuse. JPatterson (talk) 15:02, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

The comments by Wiggins are part of the hacked emails, not a response to the current investigations. As stated above, not good.

The Mann quote is part of the report, and is highlighted by the Grauniad. The background to the seige mentality is an aspect of the issue that we should cover – the articles are clear that there was a lot of pressure on the scientists, and some reacted in exactly the wrong way by trying to stop information going to amateurs they regarded as untrustworthy, instead of making it all public.

As a clarification, the repetition between the first and second Grauniad pieces is explained by seeing the paper edition – the first piece is the headline front page story, and the second piece is the detailed report inside the paper. Perhaps this was obvious to others, but I found it a bit puzzling that two articles were covering the same topic in the same issue of the paper. . . . dave souza, talk 16:08, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Hang on, they can`t have it both ways, why was there a siege mentality if they only had one FOI request like it says in this article? Since when was one FOI request a siege :) mark nutley (talk) 16:18, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Read carefully. The ICO refer specifically to their opinion about one person making FOI requests. Also read the Grauniad's front page story – 105 freedom of information requests made to the university concerning the climatic research unit (CRU). It also says only 10 had been released in full, but doesn't say how many were released in part with some info properly redacted as exempted by the FOI legislation. . dave souza, talk 16:32, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Readability and style change

I started re-reading the article from scratch and I note that someone finally followed my suggestion and added the sentence "Scientists, scientific organisations, and government officials have stated that the incident does not affect the overall scientific case for climate change." to the lede. Not sure who wrote that, but thank you.  :)

When I got to the E-mails section, I noticed a similar sentence, "The Associated Press ... concluded that they ... did not support claims that global warming science had been faked."

The following paragraph then contains a similar sentence, "FactCheck stated that claims by climate sceptics that the emails demonstrated scientific misconduct amounting to fabrication of global warming were unfounded, and emails were being misrepresented to support these claims."

The next paragraph opens with a similar sentence, "An editorial in the scientific journal Nature stated that the e-mails had not shown anything that undermined the scientific case on human caused global warming"

By this time, (as a reader) I started noticing how redundant it was to keep stating basically the same thing: AGW is real. I wanted to read something new. So I removed that part of the sentence so it goes right into new information that the reader hasn't been told yet. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 00:31, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

You have removed a significant piece of the article. Why have you not sought a consensus for this controversial removal of referenced material? -- Scjessey (talk) 01:14, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I have restored this material, since it seemed especially significant. Rather than being redundant, it reinforced the prevailing view that the science remained sound. Please seek a consensus for such controversial edits in the future. -- Scjessey (talk) 01:22, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I decided to assume good faith that fixing readability issues wouldn't be controversial. It's repetitive. Try the same exercise that I did. Read the article from the beginning and see if you get bored by the fourth time you read essentially the same information. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 01:28, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I suggest both of you read the new sources from the Guardian (above). Major revisions appear likely.91.153.115.15 (talk) 01:33, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I did read the sources above and none of them change the scientific consensus regarding global warming. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 01:37, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

This (Heat Island) is one of the major criticism of the land based temp. measurements used by the temperatures that produced the Hockey stick if I remember correctly ... So this is possible another nail in the AGW coffin. Nsaa (talk) 14:02, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Or possibly another scientific question to be further investigated – as is continuing. See the sources above, for starters. What we need to reflect primarily is the mainstream view, not denialist spin, and the implications of removing all the research based on the east Chinese weather stations will be of interest. . . dave souza, talk 15:54, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

(outdent) The ironic thing is that when I suggested (twice!) that article should explicitly state that this controversy didn't change the scientific consensus, my suggestion was rejected both times. Now that it's finally in the article - at least 4 times - and want to drop it down to only 3 times for style reasons (it's redundant and the repetition bores the reader), my suggestion is again rejected. Where is the logic in that? A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 02:44, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

This is only a symptom of the real problem: the article is a jumbled mess because it's the product of warring factions. No one sane would volunteer to step in and make it coherent because they'd be caught in the crossfire. As a result things end up being repeated in different places because there's no effective organization. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 02:55, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more. The article looks like a cafeteria after a food fight because that's what it is. I think the paragraph-by-paragraph approach was showing promise (the first paragraph is much improved). I tried to keep the ball rolling with my rewrite of the second paragraph above but that discussion never really got started before it was sidetracked into the weeds on some minor point. We need to drop the us vs them mentality and concentrate on composition and coherency. JPatterson (talk) 15:22, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I think it is fair to say that virtually any change to this article will be controversial. I was tempted to except spelling corrections, but then I remembered the skeptic/sceptic wars, so even spelling isn't exempt. I agree that four statements of the same point is redundancy to the point of idiocy, but that said, there are probably fierce supporters for each and every one of the entries, so the best course is to itemize each of the entries, and propose which two or three would be best to remove. Then we can debate it, and possibly even reach a consensus.--SPhilbrickT 14:35, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

(ec)I think that it might be worth the effort to remove most of the references to the AGW hypothesis. If we look at this event as being comprised of three phases - the theft, the scandal, the consequences - the *only* section where the valididty of AGW needs to be touched upon is the "consequences" section, in which it can be asserted that the basic hypothesis remains valid, with a wikilink to the appropriate global warming article. We could cut down on the redundancy, reduce the number of contentious statements, and pass the whole AGW issue back to the appropriate article. *If* this scandal causes a re-think of the AGW hypothesis, the story would be continued in that article. Nightmote (talk) 15:09, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I disagree. First of all, "scandal" is a gross exaggeration. It's not like one of the CRU was caught fiddling the data while dressed as a Nazi and secretly dating Tiger Woods. The "controversy" arose because people specifically opposed to the theory of AGW seized upon the material (which was apparently cherry-picked for this particular cause) and tried to use it to suggest the theory was wrong. It is important that it is made completely clear that the anti-AGW people were wrong, and that the science remains rock solid. -- Scjessey (talk) 15:19, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Haha, at least the talk page produces comments like this gem... Ignignot (talk) 15:27, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

..... and so we start round 12 of this knock-down, drag-out, smash-fest. Nightmote (talk) 15:25, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Not as rock solid as it appeared in respect of one specific 1990 publication, the articles confirm that the consensus remains essentially the same. There's a lot of pointing at flaws found in old research as though newer research can be ignored. . . dave souza, talk 15:54, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to try and put it another way. To the best of my knowledge, nobody at this stage is saying that Climategate is a game-changer. The general contention is that one or more CRU scientists engaged in unprofessional behaviour (yes, they bloody well did fiddle the data; there's an article today about the Chinese stations that ought to raise eyebrows), but that Global Warming is real. There is some real-world sentiment that the "A" in "AGW" ought to be "a" or even "-", and the infighting on this talk page reflects that. I believe that we can describe what happened at UEA/CRU and the fallout without needing to pass judgement on whether that "A" belongs there. A statement in the summary paragraph stating that Global Warming remains a scientific fact, a statement in the consequences part of the article stating the same thing, and a wikilink to the Global Warming article where the "Anthropogenic" part of AGW can be debated all day. We don't need to compromise our beliefs, but we can best reach consensus by not forcing others to compromise theirs. Nightmote (talk) 16:17, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

You're right about what we should be doing, unfortunately some editors seem to think that it's not just a game-changer, but "another nail in the AGW coffin". Presumably not thinking of the deaths likely if worst case projections are correct. Per making necessary assumptions policy, we accept that mainstream scientific opinion is that AGW is significant, and present that as the majority view while also noting significant minority views raised by reliable sources relating to this article subject. . . dave souza, talk 16:38, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Irrespective of whether or not AGW is accepted "rock solid" science, does the valididty of AGW need to be debated in this article? This article is about Climategate - the theft of computer files and people's perception that the files suggested unprofessional behaviour on the part of CRU scientists. Maybe we can skip the "consequences" part altogether, since they are part of a much, much, larger sphere of debate. Really. If this scandal changes the ladscape of the Global Warming Controversy, then *that* article should be changed. Perhaps we can limit this article to saying (in about 10,000 more words) "These files were stolen (link). These guys looked really bad (link). The newspapers and governments reacted like this (link). This guy was fired (link). The scientific community changed these things (link). The police arrested this other guy (clink)." Nightmote (talk) 17:33, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I am a huge fan of rewriting this article to present just the bare facts. If someone were to draft a bare-facts version in their userspace that they thought the other "side" of the fence could get on board with, that would be quite helpful. Hipocrite (talk) 18:06, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

(grin) I'll get right on it! "Section 1: The Scheming Bastards ...." Nightmote (talk) 18:16, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

(outdent) Scjessey: Can you please rejoin this discussion to see if we can get some sort of consensus to remove some repetitiveness and improve the article's readability? Thank you. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 22:58, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I believe I've already made my opinion clear; however, if a new version is properly proposed here I'll take a look at it. -- Scjessey (talk) 23:05, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, you did and I asked that you try the same exercise that I did. Read the article from the beginning and see if you get bored by the fourth time you read essentially the same information. Did you get a chance to do so? A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 23:16, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I did indeed. I came to the conclusion that I'd like to see the point rammed home even further, with additional elaboration. Right now, much of the article seems to suffer from an anti-AGW point-of-view that unfairly maligns individuals and gives the skeptical hordes too much time on the podium. -- Scjessey (talk) 23:30, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Why should the point be "rammed home even further"? We're not supposed to engage in disputes, only cover them. If this is your reason for repeating the same things over and over again, then I suggest it's not a reason at all. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 00:14, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Ouch. So much for any semblance of NPOV. The article as it stands reeks of pro-AGW goaltending. Honestly, this article would be much clearer and more accurate if it simple read something like this:

"Data from CRU was posted on the Internet without the permission of CRU. CRU believes the data was stolen from their servers. The local police are looking into the matter to discern if a crime took place. The data in question consists of files and emails, of which a portion details questionable behavior on the part of a group of climatologists with regards to treatment of climate data. In other emails the authors discuss their preference for blocking publication of opinions and studies conducted by other climatologists that do not agree with their conclusions. People who believe that global warming is anthropogenic in nature, and most climatologists and scientists, state that the data and emails do not change the science, and should be considered as an unfortunate display of normal human nature. People who don't believe global warming is anthropogenic in nature, and some climatologists and scientists, state that the data and emails reveal flaws in the published works promoting the idea of anthropogenic global warming and expose an unscientific attempt to squelch studies and scientific work in opposition to the prevailing scientific thought."

There. You can all go get some rest. Textmatters (talk) 01:10, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Editing Question

In Mann_e-mail_of_11_Mar_2003 we have in square brackets and in Jones_e-mail_of_8_Jul_2004 we have also in square brackets. I thought these were editing errors, but the second is quite deliberate. If this has been discussed, please tell me when and I'll search for it, or if someone can explain why, I'd appreciate it, as both look out of place.--SPhilbrickT 14:54, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I think the bracketed bits are glosses rather than direct quotes, e.g. AR4 has been replaced by . But I think it would make more sense to use ]? Jonathan A Jones (talk) 16:15, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

<ec > :It's a standard way of dealing with things that are clear from the context, but not actually in the quoted text. In the 11 March example, I thought the bracketed text might have replaced "they", but looking at the source it actually says "the paper. CR should have requested appropriate revi-" so the bracketed name is to avoid readers thinking he meant Caledonian Railway. Haven't checked the 8 July text, but the same principle will apply. . . dave souza, talk 16:19, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

By the way, WP:MOS discourages linked text in quotations somewhere. . . dave souza, talk 16:20, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Indeed it does. Good point. Jonathan A Jones (talk) 16:23, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Inconsistently, we accept AR4 as a term in Jones_e-mail_of_May_2008, but replace it with an alternative in Jones_e-mail_of_8_Jul_2004. As noted, the replacement is wikified, in contravention to policy. The Guardian didn't feel the need to explain "AR4" to their readership, and neither do I. For consistency, I'm changing the quotation to its actual value. Should someone feel that some readers here won't know the term, it could be added to a footnote, but I don't think it is needed.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Sphilbrick (talk • contribs) 17:06, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Per MOS, the adjoining text is now modified to make it clear what AR4 means. Repeat and rinse until anyone reading the article will not have to remember an explanation given three sections earlier. The Grauniad does, of course, expect its readership to be uncommonly knowledgeable and erudite <ahem> . . . dave souza, talk 17:45, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Nice. Better than my suggestion of placing it in a footnote.--SPhilbrickT 17:57, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Climategate now re-directs to "naming the incident"

This is getting absurd. Where prey tell, was consensus reached over this piece of POV pushing? I don't know how to tell where the change came from but I hope that the person responsible would self revert and start a discussion here. JPatterson (talk) 17:38, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I did that in response to this edit. I suggest you stop calling things POV pushing, as it's not conducive to a civil atmosphere. I've reverted my edit to the redirect as the in-text redirect to naming the incident has lasted. Hipocrite (talk) 17:42, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

As you know I have always supported the link from Climategate to the naming the incident section. Ironically enough, my edit to put that link in was the one that prompted your request for a 1RR sanction against me that got me banned for a month. But as much as I agree with your position, tit-for-tat editing just promulgates the mentality that is keeping us from moving forward. Given the never ending controversy surrounding the naming issue, one could reasonably assume that a change to the redirect would be hotly contended. As you are well aware, the terms of the article probation require you to seek consensus here first for such changes. Please be more conscientious in the future. JPatterson (talk) 18:15, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I will certainly endeavor to do so. Thank you for your reminder. Hipocrite (talk) 18:22, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

The perception of scientific scandal predates the use of the term "Climategate", as discussed above in The Name of the Game. If this perception of scientific scandal cannot be discussed in this article, then another with the Climategate title may be appropriate.Oiler99 (talk) 23:13, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Collapse/Archive/Housekeeping

Would anybody object to my (partially) collapsing some of the discusisons, or would someone like to archive some of them? This page is just getting a little long for me, is all. Nightmote (talk) 18:19, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I've shrunk the archivebot to 2 days from 3 days. I can't imagine any shorter would be acceptable. Hipocrite (talk) 18:20, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I went ahead and collpased a few sections. I will be in no way offended if anybody expands 'em again. On this issue, I have no agenda. Nightmote (talk) 21:25, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Climategate Timeline

A very well done synopsis of the hacking and then the subsequent news/political fallout as it grows is documented on this PDF:

http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/climategate/history/climategate_timeline_banner.pdf

I suggest a preface to the time line like this: With the Internet release of the CRU e-mails last November, Mohib Ebrahim started work on a visual presentation setting out who, what, when, where, and how.

Can Wiki accommodate a visual style timeline? I don't know. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.68.95.166 (talk) 01:39, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

It ought to be seen unless there are those of you who would like to hide this too. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.68.95.166 (talk) 20:03, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I admit I find this timeline interesting but unfortunately it can not be used on Misplaced Pages due to how Misplaced Pages operates. Blogs are not acceptable sources... which is in many cases is a shame.130.232.214.10 (talk) 20:21, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

So, if this time line has been published elsewhere, such as a government web site, a book, a researchers paper then it would then be"acceptible"? There are numerous citations in wiki that refer to blogs. Realclimate is frequently referenced. The author of the Climategate Timeline, Mohib Ebrahim, has had his work published on many non-blog sites.

For example it is referenced here:

http://www.climatescienceinternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=256:mohibebrahim&catid=1:latest —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.68.95.166 (talk) 21:27, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Refer also to this very article, Anthony Watts, (reference 117) a blogger. It is archived at his site:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/?s=mohib+ebrahim

So, put the Climategate Timeline up. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.68.95.166 (talk) 21:33, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Please see FAQ question #3 Ignignot (talk) 21:40, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

If I understand it correctly; Yes, BUT with several other qualifiers. The source also needs to be NEUTRAL.

I think neutrality is a nebulous term, not befitting ALL CAPs like an understood legal term of art.

This means it's in effect easier to get something pro-AGW in than something anti-AGW. That's just the way it is for the moment. I'm really the wrong person to argue with as I feel your pain. I find that both Wattsupwiththat and ClimateAudit often rise to a quality well above many crappy peer-review articles of which there are plenty in all fields. In short: peer-review OK, blog's NOT. If anyone else wants to comment on this feel free to do so. (And I see someone has already done so.)130.232.214.10 (talk) 21:46, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I think it is clear to everyone that "crappy peer-review articles" are about eleventy-billion times more reliable than the skeptical rantfests like Watts' blog. I'm not even sure if 130's comment was meant to be serious. -- Scjessey (talk) 22:18, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

It was. I have published peer-reviewed articles in good/high impact factor journals (Nature Publishing, Springer Verlag). It is becoming common to first submit ones crappy article to one journal, get rejected, resubmit the same (identical) crap, get rejected, resubmit another 3 times... and surprise presto it's published peer-reviewed. There are simply too many papers submitted for reviewers to do proper reviews on all papers. I would accept Anthony Watts data on surfacestations.org if properly submitted. This does not change the fact the Misplaced Pages does not use blogs.130.232.214.10 (talk) 22:34, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Well irrespective of what you might think of peer-reviewed work, there is no possible way anyone could consider Watts' blog to be a reliable source. I suppose a printed version might be useful in the bathroom. -- Scjessey (talk) 22:40, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Peer-review does fail. For instance Phil Jones 1990 article is probably crap because he trusted that his friend Wang had done good job which he quite apparently did not. I believe Phil Jones acted in good faith when he submitting the article. And likewise the reviewers trusted that the data was good. Science is still built on a fair amount of trust, simply because it is in most cases not practical for the reviewers to replicate the study. So most of the review is checking for common sense errors and making (friendly) suggestions.130.232.214.10 (talk) 22:57, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Anthony Watt's "blog" is already abundantly referenced, and in the very article. see 117. There is no excuse to NOT include this very well done piece of work other than biased exclusion. FAQ #3 does not apply since wiki acknowledges Wattsupwiththat.com as a credible information source. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.68.95.166 (talk)

Er.... no. Watt's blog is only acceptable as a source for what it says. It is not a reliable source and it will never be regarded as such. -- Scjessey (talk) 22:19, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/Anthony_Watts_%28blogger%29

Read reference number 117 in the main article. So it already is acceptible. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.68.95.166 (talk) 22:26, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I am sorry but you do not seem to understand what I am saying. The Watts' blog is only used to reference statements attributed to the blog, or to Watts himself. It is absolutely not a reliable source for anything else, least of all science stuff. -- Scjessey (talk) 22:31, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Take you mouse, click "article" in the above tab, scroll down and there is a reference to Anthony Watts's site(117). That being said, I provided other sites that host Mohib Ebrahim's PDF, one being www.climatescienceinternational.org. It appears that some people dislike of the expansion of the Climategate scandal and some people wish to contain it or have it characterized an a hacking incident. That appears to be biased. I say put up the Climategate Timeline by Mohib Ebrahim, referenced on pro-AGW sites as I have shown. Concern yourself with the revelations that the IPCC used non-peer-reviewed evidence to "prove" the Himalayan glacier melt argument. Or that it used an article from the NY Times to "prove" the peripheral effects of warming. Climategate is not something that happened in the past, or simple a single incident. It is a growing multifaceted monster of hiding facts and concealing knowledge and suppressing information, alive and well... here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.68.95.166 (talk) 01:07, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Anthony Watts himself has done tremendous work on the Urban Heat Island effect study with extensive documentation of thermal stations left out or surrounded by asphalt. Utterances of hyperbolic dislikes of Watts' excellent work discredits those who are hyperbolic. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.68.95.166 (talk) 01:10, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I suggest disclosing the information, not "hiding" it or "tricking" it out. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.68.95.166 (talk) 01:13, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Wigley 2005

In 2005 Wigley appeared to agree. "This is truly awful," he said, suggesting to Mann: "If you think that Saiers is in the greenhouse skeptics camp, then, if we can find documentary evidence of this, we could go through official AGU channels to get him ousted."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/02/hacked-climate-emails-flaws-peer-review —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.68.95.166 (talk) 00:10, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for this reference. It's very good. Please remember to sign your edits with four tilde (~) at the end. Click on the (talk) page on your last post to find out more.91.153.115.15 (talk) 00:27, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm working on the wiki conventions... I'll get there, thanks for the pointer! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.68.95.166 (talk) 00:33, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I dropped by to note the same citation. Gwen Gale (talk) 00:46, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Himalayan Glacier Melt of 2035

As part of the increasing expansion of the scope of the Climategate scandal,knowledge of the inclusion of Non-peer reviewed works in the IPCC document has just come to light. Known by Rajendra Pachauri prior to the Copenhagen 2009 conference, he now admits the errors.

The basis of the claim that the Himalayan Glacier Melt to eliminate certain glaciers by 2035, now retracted by the IPCC, was non-peer reviewed publications. Specifically, the conclusion was based on 2 publications, one a student paper and a an article in a mountain climbing magazine, a sports enthusiasts magazine.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1955405,00.html?xid=rss-topstories

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1247616/Climate-emails-hacked-spies-claims-chief-scientist.html

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,583711,00.html

Could someone explain this reversion?

In the edit summary for this reversion of an edit, the following rationale is given: too much information for the lede. The edit originally made reduced the amount of words in the sentence, and so I am left wondering how this is "too much information" and thus needing reversion? Moogwrench (talk) 00:26, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't believe the comment that it too much information. It looks more like an excuse to kill a reference to a UK paper that is critical of the scientist's behavior. Several news resources and articles are actively being blocked. But they can't block them all so some other excuse has to be made up. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.68.95.166 (talk) 00:32, 3 February 2010 (UTC) This template must be substituted.

The reversion removed the repetition of the word "sanctions" (it appeared twice in the same sentence) and also removed the reference (there are no references in the lede of this article). -- Scjessey (talk) 00:35, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Oops. I got slightly confused there. Partially reverted. -- Scjessey (talk) 00:39, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I restored the content to the paragraphs, minus the reference (I assume the reference is what you wanted eliminated). I also eliminated the annoying passive tense of the timeline--"had been dealt" and "had been breached"--which featured no clear actor for the corresponding passive tense actions, and provided content to support the lede change. Moogwrench (talk) 01:20, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Overweight Balding Guys from Pennsylvania like Michael Mann?

The University of Pennsylvania has entered into an investigation of the behavior of Michael Mann. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.68.95.166 (talk) 01:18, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

"...e-mails reveal that Mr. Mann might have committed a variety of acts that constitute significant and intentional scientific misconduct, including data manipulation, inappropriately shielding research methods and results from peers, and retaliating against those who publicly challenged his conclusions and political agenda."

http://thebulletin.us/articles/2010/01/23/commentary/op-eds/doc4b5a2e41299e5579065379.txt —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.68.95.166 (talk) 01:22, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

1. ^ Cite error: The named reference SMH-12-04 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
2. ^ Cite error: The named reference freesoftware was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
3. ^ Cite error: The named reference newsnight-code was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
4. ^ Cite error: The named reference WashTimes1127 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
5. ^ Cite error: The named reference computerworld was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
6. Cite error: The named reference McCullagh2 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
7. ^ Cite error: The named reference Myles Allen, guardian was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

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