I Thought So
In the brouhaha over the e-mails, I caught an indication that some of the problems surrounding the discussion of the data archive, specifically regarding Freedom of Information requests, seem to be complaints that East Anglia held the archives, but didn’t own the data, so fulfilling the requests was a huge headache for all involved.
This BBC story confirms my assumption:
Meanwhile, the Met Office said it would publish all the data from weather stations worldwide, which it said proved climate change was caused by humans.
Its database is a main source of analysis for the IPCC.
It has written to 188 countries for permission to publish the material, dating back 160 years from more than 1,000 weather stations.
John Mitchell, head of climate science at the Met Office, said the evidence for man-made global warming was overwhelming – and the data would show that.
The various countries that collected the data own it, not East Anglia or the UK Met Office, and you would have to process individual copyright requests with each of them to give a copy to anyone. This isn’t just a matter of copying it to some CDs and shipping it out. The US policy of making such records openly available is not all that common in the world, just ask anyone who needed records from other countries for their thesis, or those doing family genealogies – other countries expect to be paid for their data if they agree to release it to you.
4 comments
just ask anyone who needed records from other countries for their thesis, or those doing family genealogies –
yep, i’ve got a cousin who traveled to the land of some distant ancestor’s origin in order to work on the family genealogy.
.-= last blog ..My inner cryptobiologist lol’d at this one =-.
In most cases you get to read records in an office with an official staring at you to ensure that you don’t mar anything. People have no idea how rare copy machines are in some European countries, even today.
In most cases you get to read records in an office with an official staring at you to ensure that you don’t mar anything.
that’s about how it was described to me.
People have no idea how rare copy machines are in some European countries, even today.
you can count me among the clueless on this one, i have no idea either, and would have thought copiers to be ubiquitous had i been asked. i’ve also been told that the bright light associated with copying ages already fragile old documents and that you couldn’t xerox a lot of things even if a copier were available.
.-= last blog ..My inner cryptobiologist lol’d at this one =-.
Most of the records for the Swiss roots of my family were in bound ledgers in churches and town halls, so there was zero chance, even if a copier had been available, of putting one of those flat on the copier. The cousin who did most of the work used up a lot of film photographing things, when it was permitted.