There is more out there than just the CRU data release to show a problem. The evidence was already out there despite the so-called consensus view:
Millions of measurements, global coverage, consistently rising temperatures, case closed: The Earth is warming. Except for one problem. CRU’s average temperature data doesn’t jive with that of Vincent Courtillot, a French geo-magneticist, director of the Institut de Physique du Globe in Paris, and a former scientific advisor to the French Cabinet. Last year he and three colleagues plotted an average temperature chart for Europe that shows a surprisingly different trend. Aside from a very cold spell in 1940, temperatures were flat for most of the 20th century, showing no warming while fossil fuel use grew. Then in 1987 they shot up by about 1 C and have not shown any warming since. This pattern cannot be explained by rising carbon dioxide concentrations, unless some critical threshold was reached in 1987; nor can it be explained by climate models.
For such a settled science, global warming scientists sure shows a lot of fear that skeptics (which in any other field might simply be called actual peer review to try to reproduce or find flaws in the warmers' results) might find problems or demonstrate problems with the whole racket. That insecurity does not speak well of the "consensus."
There is really only one way forward (and it was always the way forward), the partial data release of the CRU files must be followed by complete release of all the data:
Courtillot’s calculations show the importance of making climate data freely available to all scientists to calculate global average temperature according to the best science. Phil Jones, in response to the email hacking, said that CRU’s global temperature series show the same results as “completely independent groups of scientists.” Yet CRU would not share its data with independent scientists such as Courtillot and McIntyre, and Courtillot’s series are clearly different.
At the upcoming Copenhagen conference, governments are expected to fail to agree to an ambitious plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Here’s a more modest, if mundane goal for them: They should agree to share the data from their national meteorological services so that independent scientists can calculate global climatic temperature and identify the roles of carbon dioxide and the sun in changing it.
For those who think sunshine exposing the weaknesses of climate research automatically means policy makers will "follow the science" and enact policy based on real science, think again. Mad Minerva hopes this is so, but she may be far more optimistic than I am.
There is a lot of momentum behind enacting economy-killing regulations (that just happen to enrich global warming true believers, make avante guard elites feel good, and empower government to further run our lives). We've seen a much cheaper version of this story in relation to the "science" of acid rain:
Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz also got wind of the NAPAP cover-up after the fact. Trying to explain why environmental reporters had ignored the scientific evidence that would have precluded $4 billion a year in regulatory compliance, he wrote: “Some reporters say privately that it is difficult to write stories that debunk the conventional wisdom of environmental activists, whom the press treats more deferentially than industry spokesmen and other lobbyists.”
Given the whole range of events that have been blamed on "global warming" that seems based on data far too corrupted by politics to be of any use to policy makers, you'd think the call to free the data would be an easy call.
But no, the data will not be released willingly. The global warmers are on a Mission from Gaia (with apologies to Strategypage). Those so-called scientists will tell us how many angels can fit on the head of a pin, and the rest of us can just leave our moral and intellectual betters alone to save us from ourselves.
Free the data!
UPDATE: Free the data!
UPDATE: Free the data!
UPDATE: Free the science!
