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That's exactly what they've been doing! Or, perhaps more correctly, they've let their "algorithms" run amok without doing any quality control on the final resul

That's exactly what they've been doing! Or, perhaps more correctly, they've let their "algorithms" run amok without doing any quality control on the final results, thereby turning modest warming into "scary" warming. Whether this was intentional or not is debatable (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor), but it certainly looked that way to me at the time. About ten years ago, after some remarkably incorrect statements about local heat levels made by the folks at NOAA or wherever, and then repeated (but very quickly retracted) by our own local weather folk, I went to the trouble of doing a bit of a deep dive on the HadCrut3 data sets. And what I found there was appalling. Other folks did more comprehensive deep dives and found far more problems with it than I had. I could only do what I did at the time because some authority (I forget who) had finally forced the entire data set to be released to the public, over the strenuous objections of the folks who administer that data. Much of that data has since been hidden again, though, from what I can tell. That was the older HadCRUT3 data set. The newest one is HadCRUT4, but I haven't done any kind of deep dive on that. (Without digging further into the matter I don't even know if there is enough data publicly available to do the kind of analysis on it that I did on the earlier set.) But other people have, and have noted serious problems with it, and have even written entire books about that. The short version, though, is that there is an awful lot of "data" out there which they're using that is mostly just made up, and what is genuine has been adjusted so much that it can no longer really be considered "data" at all.

agent008t 7y ago
There is also some conflict of interest. Academics studying climate change have a big incentive to show that ACC is real - it increases their importance, potential for funding, relevancy, political power, etc. At this point, the issue is also way too political. I would love to see a group of researchers, ideally originally from a different discipline (studying complex systems, so finance perhaps?), with pro-economic-activity, pro-capitalist leaning beliefs (this will give them a higher hurdle for being convinced by data), apriori skeptical of the level of certainty that ACC is real, self-funded, looking at the models and come up with some probabilities of various outcomes for the future.
- Flip-per 7y ago
  I work as software developer in the climate research field. According to the researchers here, during the past decades the problem has been being played down by science. Predictions of effects and outcomes and especially the chosen language in publications was rather conservative. This changed during the last couple of years.
  - southern_cross 7y ago
    Why the change?
viraptor 7y ago
> Much of that data has since been hidden again You mean the datasets here? https://crudata.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/crutem3/ https://crudata.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/crutem3/ with the data used to generate it available here? https://crudata.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/crutem3/station-data/ https://crudata.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/crutem3/station-data/ What do you think has been hidden?
- southern_cross 7y ago
  At the time I went back later to look at the data again, almost none of the various links on the relevant web pages still worked. Some working links claimed to link to both raw and adjusted data but then didn't actually have the raw data. Some still had things like precipitation data but the temperature data itself was now missing. Some claimed to have "raw" data but it wasn't the data I was actually looking for and had accessed in the past. And so on. I know that I saw at least one statement which seemed to indicate that the data I was looking for was no longer available for legal reasons. "Legal reasons" was the cover they used to not make this data available to begin with, but some authority or another finally forced their hand here. It wouldn't surprise me to find that they still don't want it out there, and so it may only be available on an on-again, off-again basis, maybe only after somebody complains about not being able to get it. Nor would I be surprised to find that the data itself mysteriously changes over time, as many have claimed. I believe that they have even admitted to such - that they routinely "correct" various data sets, meaning that what you see today may be different from what you see tomorrow. In any case, I didn't expend a lot of effort the second time around, and the first time around I was mostly interested in what the "official", final data sets were claiming about temperatures (at least at first), because that was what was being put out to the public. And after finding issues with local temps, I ultimately went out and got local data from local sources, completely bypassing the official sources. And one of the first things I discovered was that there was an awful lot of data - both old and new - that was ultimately marked as "missing" in the official records but was sitting there plain as day in the local records. I never did quite figure out what was going on there either, but I have my suspicions. The whole process just left me with a bad taste in my mouth, and so I don't generally trust anything other than the original station data from the original sources. The HadCRUT4 stuff may be a bit better; I haven't really looked into it but others have and they say it can't really be trusted either.

agent008t 7y ago

There is also some conflict of interest. Academics studying climate change have a big incentive to show that ACC is real - it increases their importance, potential for funding, relevancy, political power, etc. At this point, the issue is also way too political. I would love to see a group of researchers, ideally originally from a different discipline (studying complex systems, so finance perhaps?), with pro-economic-activity, pro-capitalist leaning beliefs (this will give them a higher hurdle for being convinced by data), apriori skeptical of the level of certainty that ACC is real, self-funded, looking at the models and come up with some probabilities of various outcomes for the future.

Flip-per 7y ago
I work as software developer in the climate research field. According to the researchers here, during the past decades the problem has been being played down by science. Predictions of effects and outcomes and especially the chosen language in publications was rather conservative. This changed during the last couple of years.
- southern_cross 7y ago
  Why the change?

viraptor 7y ago

> Much of that data has since been hidden again You mean the datasets here? https://crudata.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/crutem3/ https://crudata.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/crutem3/ with the data used to generate it available here? https://crudata.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/crutem3/station-data/ https://crudata.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/crutem3/station-data/ What do you think has been hidden?

southern_cross 7y ago
At the time I went back later to look at the data again, almost none of the various links on the relevant web pages still worked. Some working links claimed to link to both raw and adjusted data but then didn't actually have the raw data. Some still had things like precipitation data but the temperature data itself was now missing. Some claimed to have "raw" data but it wasn't the data I was actually looking for and had accessed in the past. And so on. I know that I saw at least one statement which seemed to indicate that the data I was looking for was no longer available for legal reasons. "Legal reasons" was the cover they used to not make this data available to begin with, but some authority or another finally forced their hand here. It wouldn't surprise me to find that they still don't want it out there, and so it may only be available on an on-again, off-again basis, maybe only after somebody complains about not being able to get it. Nor would I be surprised to find that the data itself mysteriously changes over time, as many have claimed. I believe that they have even admitted to such - that they routinely "correct" various data sets, meaning that what you see today may be different from what you see tomorrow. In any case, I didn't expend a lot of effort the second time around, and the first time around I was mostly interested in what the "official", final data sets were claiming about temperatures (at least at first), because that was what was being put out to the public. And after finding issues with local temps, I ultimately went out and got local data from local sources, completely bypassing the official sources. And one of the first things I discovered was that there was an awful lot of data - both old and new - that was ultimately marked as "missing" in the official records but was sitting there plain as day in the local records. I never did quite figure out what was going on there either, but I have my suspicions. The whole process just left me with a bad taste in my mouth, and so I don't generally trust anything other than the original station data from the original sources. The HadCRUT4 stuff may be a bit better; I haven't really looked into it but others have and they say it can't really be trusted either.