Climategate: some context

Charlie Martin at Pajamas Media looks at the ‘Divergence Problem’.

The green line is the version we saw above as part of the IPCC report, and the red line is the full series — which goes down rather dramatically, instead of up as the story suggested. If the full Briffa series had been included, the figure would look rather different. The hook upward, the blade of the hockey stick, would have been much less dramatic, the implied global warming much less significant. By truncating the data as they did, the global warming looks much worse.

And as the Climategate emails show, this was the result of a long discussion of how to best deal with “pressure to present a nice tidy story.” A story that fit the IPCC’s political goals, whether it suited the science or not.

Michael Laprarie at Wizbang states:

It seems clear from the emails between the CRU scientists, and their generally testy attitude toward those who would question their work, that deep down they are uncertain whether their work would stand up against rigorous scientific scrutiny. Yet there is no doubt that this group of scientists still believes they are on the right track -- they are convinced that greenhouse-induced global warming is real, and that if mankind does not immediately begin altering the way he interacts with the planet, permanent damage will be done. They further believe that attempts question their work are actually harming the planet, since such questions inevitably lead to delays in governing bodies implementing climate change policies.

To this end, they had no problem starting with a conclusion (which is the antithesis of good scientific research, even if you believe that you are right) and selectively using the "right" data in order to support their conclusion. It seems they were also interested in guiding the UN and other international policy-making organizations toward making the "right" policy decisions. In their own eyes they were blameless -- after all, they were the last best hope to save the world.