@BB do you mean it challenges my ideas on what is right and what is wrong? No it doesn't I'm afraid - fabricating data and calling it evidence is always wrong!

FarleyR, "Fabricating data" - that makes it sound fraudulent, which it would be if they didn't make the method plain. But since the essence of the paper seems to be, "look, here's an incomplete dataset; we've used various methods to fill in the gaps and here's what we get", that sounds as harmless as filling in the colours of a paint-by-numbers painting. The reader can make of it what they will; there is no fraud or misrepresentation involved. Seems to me like it is a slow news week and you need a fix of something to get upset about.

FarleyR
I think the key question is that: if this was a prospectus for an investment of our hard earned cash would we invest? Personally I wouldn't touch a business plan like this with a bargepole; unfortunately the MSM and politicians the world over want to or actually will invest our hard earned cash into schemes based on fairy tales like this.

Sandy

This contrasts with some here who need to reject that which they have not even read because it challenges their ideas reason.

BB,

This is the summary on the front page of the Journal's website:

A complete temperature record for Byrd Station in cental West Antarctica, spanning from 1958 to 2010, establishes West Antarctica as one of the fastest warming regions globally

More of "The science is settled" mantra without a mention of fabricated data! There's nothing innocent in this at all and that the bbc continues to blindly peddle this nonsense is the biggest disappointment of all.

FarleyR
Ignoring 28gate and the dishonesty of some in the MSM for the moment, many at the BBC, other media organisations and the man in the street think "scientists" and "experts” don't have an agenda. I worked with a very clever but naive guy who thought that all research was done by neutral and honest people who never looked for data to backup their theory which they'd thought of before starting the research. What finally convinced him otherwise was the Ancel Keys Seven Nations study which is still controversial even though the study was done in the early1960s up to the 1980s. It uses selected data ignoring that which goes against the theory, and then ignores subsequent data which throws doubt on the already shaky evidence. Despite him finding stuff on the internet to back up the original study the seeds of doubt had been planted and he at least accepted that some might have an agenda before starting research. I'll keep my opinion on Ancel Keys to myself as it is not the subject under discussion here. Interestingly this same person was convinced that not all police/bankers/estate agents/adverts were honest and upright all the time.

Like a lot of things in life, what starts as a simple matter of ignoring the inconvenient or erroneous (millikan's oil drop work for instance), is then taken forward one step at a time by others. So we have Mann using highly selected data, models which include guesses, and so on and so on. So using made up data from unproven models as indisputable fact is not a great leap from the previous situation, it's only when someone actually says can you prove it with real data can some neutral people seen what has happened.

FarleyR, you are winding yourself up about nothing. The public doesn't read Nature Geoscience. The readership were almost certainly aware of the Byrd station data and knew it was incomplete. They are quite capable of understanding the problems with the temperature reconstruction. As for your collective vendetta against the BBC, I'm not in the slightest bit interested.

SandyS

"Evil flourishes when good men do nothing", asEdmund Burke is quoted as having said. It is our duty to make waves even if they are small seemingly insignificant ones here at grass roots level.

I work in a highly specialised branch of finance where my daily business involves hundreds of millions and often billions through the income statement. As you can imagine the burden of proof is always very heavy especially when concerning important concepts such as measurements and proof of completeness and accuracy. The methods the climate clowns employ here mean I wouldn't trust them to do anything that involved real numbers.

So coming from a branch that nearly destroyed the world economy, you are lecturing scientists about the reliability of their work. You've got some cheek, I'd say.

BB,

How very prole of you.
Just like not all climate scientists are subsidy-grabbing alarmist frauds, not all banks and bank employees are bonus-grabbing crooks. I'm a gamekeeper rather than a poacher, which is a role sadly lacking in the world of 'hide the decline'.

But I suppose if you can't play the arguments then play the man!

Martin, no joke, no bitterness, no twist. FarleyR is part of an industry that has caused huge damage; he might say it was just a few bad eggs and he evidently dislikes being tarred by the same brush as them. Yet he is happy to tar the paper's authors, of whom he has no knowledge, with a similarly broad brush.

Seeing as how it was the financial industry which got us from the Dark Ages to 2008,we're currently in a step back caused by that same industry, albeit a large step back; and it's the climatologists who want to put us back in the Dark Ages it's a moot point as to what industry is doing the harm.

BB has his way. discussion of this junk paper has ceased. The dishonesty of Steig and Realclimate is no longer under scrutiny. The incompetence of climate scientists is no longer discussed.

When I first came across BH I was a little shocked that scientists like Mann and Jones could be labelled liars and cheats. Talking with MartinA and the Yin (two people who I find generally well balanced and agreeable) I was almost inclined to believe there might be something in it. But the more I read and found out the more I was aware that the whole sceptic attack is based solely upon accusation; not upon evidence but upon accusations of fraud, corruption, nest feathering, incompetence, and worse (see Delingpole recently). Now I'm not naive enough to think that scientific misconduct does not occur, but the depth and breadth of the alleged malfeasance is so staggering, I find it incredible that any sensible person could buy into it.

The response here to this new paper fits this pattern of condemnation well. The paper goes against sceptic orthodoxy and therefore the authors must be crooked, the data fraudulent, the publishers corrupt etc. It could just be another paper to be digested, accepted or rejected in the course of time. That is the sensible approach, as Mike points out. It should not matter to a true sceptic whether this paper is right or wrong. But you have to reject it as lies and incompetence because that is what you do. And that in itself labels you for what you are.

Diogenes, you haven't read the recent paper, and my guess is you haven't read Steig or even O'Donnell. But go ahead and "discuss" these issues further; I'm sure you've got a lot to contribute.

BTW if any of you are inclined to defend the finance "industry" because some of its members happen to be sceptic friends, then you've almost hit bottom. There's almost nowhere lower to go.

Martin, before you ask again, the answer is, "life".