Email correspondence has no value as a means of assessing the correctness of research findings
In December 2016, Donald Trump's transition team asked the US Department of Energy (DOE) for a list of its employees who had previously been involved in calculating the hidden costs of Carbon pollution or participated in meetings that discussed the issue. The request was rejected by the ministry, but when such a request comes from a new administration headed by it Tweet on TwitterThat the idea of global warming is nothing but a Chinese hoax sounds like the beginning of a political witch hunt.
And if so, this is not the first time. In 2009, during the public storm known as Climate-Gate, "skeptics" who doubt climate change published e-mail correspondence that they claim indicates that scientists have skewed data and prevented the publication of critical articles (researchers who have examined the issue have proven that these claims are baseless). In 2010, the Republican Attorney General of Virginia attempted to obtain records related to the work of [climate scientist] Michael Mann From the University of the State of Pennsylvania, and this, based on the baseless assumption that he also skewed research data.
And in 2015, a member of the US House of Representatives lamar smith From Texas [also among the deniers of global warming] claimed that scientists at the American Meteorological Service (NOAA) falsified global temperature data and opened an investigation against them. BArticle published by the group of scientists, led by Tom Carl, it is argued that the estimates of global warming since 1998 do not reflect the rapid increase that has actually occurred in the rate of global warming since the beginning of the 21st century. And therefore, the claim about "Pause” in the warming process is not correct.
Smith demanded access to the discussions and comments exchanged between the scientists by email, hoping to find evidence of fraud. The scientists provided the data and research methods used to verify their conclusions, but refused to turn over the email correspondence. And unfortunately, often, experts raise arguments against positions or opinions that they themselves hold, since skepticism is a key element in scientific thinking, so in their e-mail correspondence you can find a lot of material out of context, which may create a wrong impression.
To verify or disprove any claim, it must be examined in the light of observations and reproduced in an experiment. Often, we have to research in directions that lead to a dead end to reach the right answer and more than once, we have to use an outside observer to spot the mistakes in the research we are conducting. For this reason, the scientific community usually does not accept a research finding and does not give it final approval until it has been independently verified by another group of scientists.
Article which we published in January in the journal Science Advances describes an experiment we conducted with the aim of reproducing the work of Carl and his colleagues. We evaluated the findings of the research conducted by the team led by comparing three different methods of recording ocean temperatures in recent years, which we produced based on data collected by buoys, satellites and buoys Argon for measuring in the depths of the sea. From these data it appears that NOAA's current documentation is likely more accurate than any other documentation of sea surface temperature in the last two decades, and it has at least a partial answer to the criticism of NOAA's original study.
We will set aside a few weeks for checking the data and producing the documentation, in our free time (although we will set aside much more time for preparing the findings for publication). Compared to the long months that Smith and his legal team spent investigating the NOAA scientists and considering their fees, which are tens of times higher than those of employed scientists and funded by taxpayers' money, it seems that the effort invested in the campaign against the scientists was unjustified in terms of cost-effectiveness - even if it would have produced results scientifically significant, and this was not in his power to do. The moves taken by Smith send a disturbing message that the experts must produce results that match the political narratives and not results that accurately reflect reality.
In weighing the data, the evidence supports NOAA's recent documentation. Does this mean there has never been a slowdown or pause in global warming? This is another question that is still controversial in the scientific community. But what is required to find what the rate of global warming has been over the past two decades is Experimental reconstruction and not a political investigation. And according to the established evidence we have, NOAA was right.
More on the subject on the science website
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When an issue becomes political both sides become interested.
Avik - there is no problem in knowing the truth, it is simply on the side of science and not on the side of those with vested interests.
Everything is true, President T. Corresponds with the Baraitan faction, those who put their trust in the sky and don't let the facts confuse them. And the good news is yet to come
It's a shame that it turns from a scientific topic into a political one.
And so we will never know the truth.
It's a shame that it turns from a scientific topic into a political one.
And so we will never know the truth.