Climategate Update 4: CRU Records Worthless

Today we learn that East Anglia's CRU, the world's leading institutuion for "climate science," dumped the raw data for their climate record of temperatures over the past 150 odd years. This from the Times:

Scientists at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years. . . .

The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building. . . .

It is difficult to imagine any scientist destroying raw data, irrespective of storage space. That said, one could take this as mere sloppiness tantamount to incompetence on the part of the CRU, but deleting raw data seems to happen with some frequency at that institution. This from Watts Up With That:

Flashback to April 18th…

Dear Tom,

I find it hard to believe that the British Antarctic Survey would permit the deletion of relevant files for two recent publications or that there aren’t any backups for the deleted data on institutional servers. Would you mind inquiring for me? In the mean time, would you please send me the PP format files that you refer to here for the monthly sea ice data for the 20th century models discussed in your GRL article and the 21st century models referred to in your JGR article.

Regards, Steve McIntyre

Then in July… “Unprecedented” Data Purge At CRU

On Monday, July 27, 2009, as reported in a prior thread, CRU deleted three files pertaining to station data from their public directory ftp.cru.uea.ac.uk/. The next day, on July 28, Phil Jones deleted data from his public file – see screenshot with timestemp in post here, leaving online a variety of files from the 1990s as shown in the following screenshot taken on July 28, 2009.

This just all seems too much. How much of all this raw data jettisoning is mere gross incompetence and how much is deliberate remains to be seen. What is clear is that CRU data for which no raw data exists and all studies since that have relied upon such CRU data have zero reliablity at the moment. Tigerhawk sums up the ramifications:

So, basically we are being asked to restructure the entire economy of the planet on the say-so of a few "scientists" whose work cannot be verified or even reconstructed. Is there any intellectually honest person who thinks that is a good idea?

Prior Posts:

Climategate and Surrealism

More Climategate Fallout

Climategate Update 3