The mystery of the disappearing climate change info
I’ve blogged about climate science in the US and fears that the Bush administration is covering it up a couple of times now, and last time I linked to Climate Science Watch, a website dedicated to holding public officials accountable for the ways they use climate science data in policymaking and to supporting federal scientists experiencing political interference with their ability to communicate their findings on climate change which was just starting out at the time.
It’s now been going strong for a couple of months, and one recent story of interest is this report that the US State Department’s web page on Climate Change, one of many on a variety of topics on the main site, has recently been inexplicable “retired”. It had linked to numerous informative articles about climate change and climate science, some of which are now archived by Climate Science Watch, but most of which are now inaccessible. Apparently the last article posted concerned the (rather significant) influence of global warming in fuelling the 2005 hurricane season.
The removal of the page seems a bizarre and highly suspect move.
July 12th, 2006 at 12:41 pm
I have been surprised to hear Global Warming denial in Aotearoa/NZ, (admittedly from vested interests expressing fear about extra costs = less competitiveness.)
As a media watcher, I worry about our increasing “take up” of the unadulterated “American (Corporate) view of the World”. Sky Television would be one of the most worring examples of “there is no such thing as a free lunch.”
There are potential problems for a democracy when busy people get only soundbites of information … and the potential is greater when their source of soundbites is “tainted”.
eredwen
July 12th, 2006 at 3:16 pm
You and me both, eredwen.
I’ve made a practice of downloading pages and archiving in my own files when I find things I deem important, simply because of the ephemeral nature of web archiving.
Stuff just vanishes, or looks “different”, when you go back to look for it.
not like I’m a conspiracy theorist or anything…
July 12th, 2006 at 5:46 pm
Downloading pages is a great idea!
However, I keep on putting it off until my filing system is in order …
(Perhaps I’ll take your lead and start the practice NOW… along with sending regular emails to appropriate MPs/Ministers.)
e
July 12th, 2006 at 7:04 pm
Not that there was much on the page before it was retired anyway. Archive.org has:
http://web.archive.org/web/20041012023244/http://usinfo.state.gov/gi/g lobal_issues/climate_change.html
July 12th, 2006 at 7:52 pm
Thanks for that Stuey
Maybe they “retired” it out of embarrasment at the very obvious lack of content … Though, more likely, as a case of “out of sight = out of mind.”
July 13th, 2006 at 10:05 am
Bear in mind that archive page is from 2004.
Google’s cache, however, has another article over the hurricane one
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:LuXX8QWW5y8J:usinfo.state.gov/gi/gl obal_issues/climate_change.html+site:usinfo.state.gov/gi/global_issues /climate_change.html&hl=en&gl=nz&ct=clnk&cd=1
get you own copy before it updates
July 13th, 2006 at 12:04 pm
Hardnews sent out this link today and it is an essential article about climate change.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19131
“Jim Hansen’s piece in the current issue of the New York Review of Books is a work of pinpoint clarity. Hansen, you may recall, is the senior NASA climate scientist who came under heavy manners a little while ago for speaking publicly on the issue, and his review of books by Tim Flannery and Elizabeth Kolbert, plus both the book and movie versions of An Inconvenient Truth is compulsory reading.”
Any Greens in book clubs should consider these books for their next meeting.
Cheers
July 13th, 2006 at 2:11 pm
yeah I take that back, there were lots of articles on the page, and the 2004 archive.org page is unrepresentative. All the stories are still there BTW!
http://usinfo.state.gov/gi/global_issues/climate_change/climate_change _archive.html
July 18th, 2006 at 10:21 am
> “I have been surprised to hear Global Warming denial in Aotearoa/NZ”
That’s odd, because sceptics are continually surprised at the credulity of greens who appear to have a strong emotional commitment to the whole global warming scare.
Take the famous hockeystick chart. Not only was its central claim - that of proving current temperatures unprecedented in 1000 years - rejected by the recent Nation Academy of Science panel, but now a group of proper statisticians has also scrutinised the chart at the behest of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and concluded that ‘Mann et al., misused certain statistical methods in their studies, which inappropriately produce hockey stick shapes in the temperature history…Mann’s work cannot support claim that the 1990s were the warmest decade of the millennium…A social network analysis revealed that the small community of paleoclimate researchers appear to review each other’s work, and reuse many of the same data sets, which calls into question the independence of peer review and temperature reconstructions…It is clear that many of the proxies are re-used in most of the papers…It is not surprising that the papers would obtain similar results and so cannot really claim to be independent verifications.’
Mann’s stalinesque airbrushing of recent significant climate events such as the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period were essential in making any recent warming seem unnatural.
The truth is that rapid and significant climate change has been the norm for the last few hundred years at least and there can be no reason to conclude that the absolutely insignificant contribution of anthropogenic CO2 is making the slightest discernible difference.