Climate Scientists Face Organized Harassment in U.S.

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I'm not saying it makes me an expert, I'm saying that I did hear that the scientists at Goddard were extremely ticked at scientists in Europe, because their credibility got called into question due to the fact they had used the numbers from European scientists in good faith concerning the simulations.

The gentleman I talked to I believe was involved in the investigation, and he also had security clearance to get past Goddard's security gate.


Anyways if you look at the situation historically, there is ample evidence that the Earth has a history of global warming and global cooling.

If anyone is harrassed and oppressed it is the ACC -deniers-.

They have trouble getting their material placed in reputable scientific journals.

They have to overcome the almost religious bias of the referees.

ruveyn

If he was part of the investigation, then most likely he was one of the people who found that the scientists in question had not, in fact, comitted any actual wrongdoing other than poor use of words in emails that they thought were private.

LKL, I don't think the scientists at Goddard were involved in "creative data recording," it seems they took the numbers they received from other scientists (example those in the UK for instance) in good faith when those numbers had been tampered with.

Climategate was real, there has been a bias in the review boards for journals, however it doesn't take a vast conspiracy when a bunch of individuals with a lack of objectivity and like-minded bias will do. That said, there are probably quite a few scientists that got caught up in this that were not tampering with data, and their credibility got thrown into question due to the ones that decided their desired results were more important than scientific integrity.

'Yasha, that's not what I said. The scientists who /were/ involved in 'climate gate' were investigated by their peers and found to be innocent of wrongdoing; thus, if the person you overheard was one of the people doing the official investigation, then he is most likely one of the people who eventually cleared the 'climate gate' scientists and what you heard was him speaking before he had the facts. The incident was 'real' only in the sense that there was a lot of publicity around an event called, by the right wing, 'climate gate,' in which the private emails of a few atmospheric scientists were hacked, selectively edited, and released in such a was as to make the scientists look as bad as possible.

Bias is extremely difficult to mainitain in science in the face of pressure from other scientists to the contrary. Perestge is gained and careers are made by proving other scientists wrong - the better-entrenched the theory that is knocked down, the more the prestige that is gained. Basically, you're saying that the entire mechanism of scientific progress is failing, and that is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence. Having read more than a few of the (thousands of extant) original studies*, I personally accept without qualm the fact that the global climate is changing, and I accept based on my trust of the atmospheric scientists that I personally know, my understanding of basic physics, and my trust in the scientific method that the cause of global warming is likely anthropogenic forcing.

*Being a biologist, the studies that I have read mostly pertian to the changing ranges of plants and animals based on changing temperatures, or their likelihood of going extinct if they cannot change their ranges; and the changing timing of spring and autumn and the effects that has on animal migration, insect populations,, etc.