UPDATE: A prescient comment from Willis Eschenbach has been added to the body of the story, see below.
There’ an article in Nature Magazine which is an interview with Phil Jones of the CRU regarding his role in Climategate and what has happened in the past year. It seems to be mostly a sappy rehabilitation piece where Dr. Jones gets to play the victim and the reporter is fully sympathetic. Even more troublesome, Dr. Jones seems to have fully rationalized everything that has happened in the past year.
For example, we all vividly remember this email:
From: Michael Mann mann@xxxxx.xxx To: Phil Jones p.jones@xxxxx.xxx Subject: Re: IPCC & FOI Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 08:12:02 -0400 Reply-to: mann@xxxxx.xxx Hi Phil, laughable that CA would claim to have discovered the problem. They would have run off to the Wall Street Journal for an exclusive were that to have been true. I'll contact Gene about this ASAP. His new email is: generwahl@xxxxxx.xxx talk to you later, mike Phil Jones wrote: > >> Mike, > Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? > Keith will do likewise. He's not in at the moment - minor family crisis. > > Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don't > have his new email address. > > We will be getting Caspar to do likewise. > > I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature > paper!! > > Cheers > Phil > > Prof. Phil Jones > Climatic Research Unit Telephone [removed] > School of Environmental Sciences Fax [removed] > University of East Anglia > Norwich Email p.jones@xxxxx.xxx > NR4 7TJ > UK
Look at what he says now about email deletion in the context of the ongoing FOI requests:
“We just thought if they’re going to ask for more, we might as well not have them.”
Regarding the Chinese Weather Station fiasco:
Jones said in a separate interview with Nature2 that he was considering a correction. He now says such a step is unnecessary and that he stands by the claims in the paper. He was on medication during the previous interview, he says, and felt under pressure then to publicly concede that he had made mistakes. He says the description of weather-station
movement “has been completely misinterpreted”.
The set of 84 Chinese stations referred to in the paper were drawn from a larger group of 265, for which the Chinese had location histories. Jones and his colleagues did not claim
that none of the selected stations had moved, only that they picked out ones that had moved the least, he says.
Such shifts do not significantly affect results, Jones says, because there was no general pattern to the station relocation: on average, ones moving to colder places were balanced by ones moving to warmer spots. But the Chinese scientist who supplied the station information has now retired and the authorities there have not released the full station-history data — making it impossible for Jones, he says, to provide the evidence to support the statement.
Okaaaayyyy. I call BS on this, because 20 years later, NCDC’s Dr. Matt Menne developed USHCN2, with a change point detection algorithm in it specifically to detect and correct change points in temperature data resulting from station moves. If station moves “don’t significantly affect results”, why did NCDC dedicate so much time and effort to develop such an algorithm? Either Dr. Jones is in CYA mode, uninformed, or both.
Professor Jones apparently hasn’t learned anything except this:
“I’m a little more guarded about what I say in e-mails now,” he says. “One thing in particular I’m doing is not responding so quickly. I might have got an e-mail in the past and responded with an instant thought in the next 10 to 15 minutes, whereas now I might leave it a day.”
In a time-line of the career of Professor Jones, the November 2010 entry is interesting:
Jones tells Nature he is on the mend, but still fears more e-mails could be released in the future.
“Jones and others connected to the CRU fear the hackers may be sitting on more stolen e-mails, but Jones feels confident the worst is behind him.”
Hmmm…
Here’s the article in Nature Magazine (PDF)
h/t to Shub Niggurath
UPDATE: I’ve added this from comments as it is very germane to the story”
I enjoyed this from the Nature article:
The e-mails also triggered several official investigations, including one by the UK Parliament, which ultimately determined that Jones had not committed any serious offences. Case closed.
As my daughter says, “In your dreams, Dad”.
They were more subtle in their timeline, lying by omission.
2005 Britain introduces the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act, giving critics a legal route to demand data from Jones and the CRU (above).
July 2009 The CRU receives 58 FOI requests in under a week as part of a blog campaign.
Makes it sound like things were going swimmingly, then suddenly the CRU is bombed with FOI requests.
In fact, I made the first request in (IIRC) 2006 for the CRU data. It was turned down. Other requests were made. We got the list of stations but not the data. They claimed there were secrecy agreements. We said OK, show us the agreements. They refused. We filed FOI requests for specific countries, about six countries at a time. That was to avoid any one of them being rejected because they entailed too much work.
That’s how we got to 58 requests in a week. Because they had blown off all of our FOI requests that had gone in one by one.
You don’t want to get 58 FOI requests, Phil?
Try answering the first one. If he had answered my initial FOI request, that would have been it for requests for the data. He could have avoided a host of grief.
Of course, the emails about the IPCC subversion were a different matter. Those are the ones that mysteriously vanished … Phil says he didn’t delete them, but somehow, they’re still gone.
Curiously, I find I feel sorry for him. He was caught in a paradigm shift, where suddenly his scientific work was being used to justify billions of dollars in expenditures. His knowledge and standards of data handling and documentation were insufficient, perhaps even wildly insufficient, to the task. They were fine when it was just him in his office fiddling with the global temperature. But …
For example, when I asked Phil for the data, I assumed it would be like almost every other database of climate information I’d dealt with. It would be in one single block, with the rows representing years and columns for station identification, monthly data, and the like. I thought it would be easy for him to email me that single block of data.
Instead, as the CRU HARRY_READ_ME file showed, there were hundreds and hundreds of individual data files. In addition, there were often identically named files that were for different stations, there was no semblance of version control, and no overall record of what files were, or where they might be located.
I was astounded when I read that. Everybody puts their data in a single block, with perhaps a second block for metadata … everybody but CRU, it seems …
That’s what I mean about how his skills and knowledge weren’t up to the task.
I can’t believe the emails weren’t enough to fire him and take him to law.
“Jones and others connected to the CRU fear the hackers may be sitting on more stolen e-mails, but Jones feels confident the worst is behind him.”
Does this mean we can hope for a Climategate II for Cancun?
The UK Information Officer responsible made it clear that Jones was not prosecuted because of the ridiculously short statute of limitations (6 months) which meant that any bureaucratic delay would allow the miscreants to escape.
They also made it clear that there was prima facae evidence that Jones had broken the FOIA.
It is a bit heart wrenching to watch cognitive dissonance in action. One of the big failings of our scientific education is that scientists are not trained to recognize and deal with self delusion.
British Rubbish
he appeared to be a much better scientist, when he was on medication.
Yeah, I could be sorry for him, but only if he faced reality and accepted that he had bought climate science to an historic low in public perception. He should learn that confession is good for the soul AND rehabilitation!!
Last year he was more honest under pressure, not under medication. Since time has passed he cannot believe he had such a lucky escape, remorse is over once out of the limelight and it’s back to old ways. New miracle junk science for all, happy days.
The first necessary step to tackle a problem is to admit there is a problem. Jones hasn’t got even as far as the first base on rehabilitation.
… on a lighter note, with the knew hairstyle don’t you think he now looks exactly like his namesake and mentor: Corporal Jones of Dad’s Army!
Don’t Panic, Don’t Panic!
They don’t like it up mmm!
Don’t worry Jones, the fuzzy wuzzies** are not coming to get you!
**I lie … Natural variation!
Quote:
Had Jones
broken the spirit of the law? “Not necessarily,
if you’ve deleted them ahead of time,” he
says. “You can’t second guess what’s going to
be requested.”
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
“Jones and others connected to the CRU fear the hackers may be sitting on more stolen e-mails, but Jones feels confident the worst is behind him.”
Hehehehe… So there are more damning e-mails that Jones et al know about and that these could have been stolen together with the published ones but are still up the hackers’ sleeves. It seems that Jones should not only wait for a day before replying to an e-mail. He should wait for a week before replying to a journalist’s question. What’s his IQ? I wonder.
I broke out my tiny violin for Phil. Don’t like your life? Stop living a lie and it will get better. Duh.
The public has figured out the scam whereas Dr. Phil is still in denial.
Who’s “the denier” now?
I enjoyed this from the Nature article:
As my daughter says, “In your dreams, Dad”.
They were more subtle in their timeline, lying by omission.
Makes it sound like things were going swimmingly, then suddenly the CRU is bombed with FOI requests.
In fact, I made the first request in (IIRC) 2006 for the CRU data. It was turned down. Other requests were made. We got the list of stations but not the data. They claimed there were secrecy agreements. We said OK, show us the agreements. They refused. We filed FOI requests for specific countries, about six countries at a time. That was to avoid any one of them being rejected because they entailed too much work.
That’s how we got to 58 requests in a week. Because they had blown off all of our FOI requests that had gone in one by one.
You don’t want to get 58 FOI requests, Phil?
Try answering the first one. If he had answered my initial FOI request, that would have been it for requests for the data. He could have avoided a host of grief.
Of course, the emails about the IPCC subversion were a different matter. Those are the ones that mysteriously vanished … Phil says he didn’t delete them, but somehow, they’re still gone.
Curiously, I find I feel sorry for him. He was caught in a paradigm shift, where suddenly his scientific work was being used to justify billions of dollars in expenditures. His knowledge and standards of data handling and documentation were insufficient, perhaps even wildly insufficient, to the task. They were fine when it was just him in his office fiddling with the global temperature. But …
For example, when I asked Phil for the data, I assumed it would be like almost every other database of climate information I’d dealt with. It would be in one single block, with the rows representing years and columns for station identification, monthly data, and the like. I thought it would be easy for him to email me that single block of data.
Instead, as the CRU HARRY_READ_ME file showed, there were hundreds and hundreds of individual data files. In addition, there were often identically named files that were for different stations, there was no semblance of version control, and no overall record of what files were, or where they might be located.
I was astounded when I read that. Everybody puts their data in a single block, with perhaps a second block for metadata … everybody but CRU, it seems …
That’s what I mean about how his skills and knowledge weren’t up to the task.
I am sorry, this man,and Mann, should have been sacked. This action was deplorable and to compound the felony drove government policy to pass acts of parliament which directly led to unnecessary energy price increases and wasteful use of resources building wind farms.
“Nature understands it wasn’t an inside job…”
Translation: ‘Someone at UEA or the police told us’.
Forgive me for being dense, but there are only three people who potentially know the truth, 1. The leaker/hacker, 2. The Police. 3. UEA.
Are we supposed to believe Nature spoke to the leaker/hacker? If not, then either 2 or 3 has leaked confidentiall info.
Is this legal? We’ve been told this is a live criminal investigation. Should UEA or police be leaking to friendly news outlets? Anyone know if I can FOI this, or make a complaint?
The 4th option is that UEA or Phil Jones lied to Nature. But that can’t be true, surely?
Willis:
You have to remember that UEA was a start up 3rd rate university in the 1960s looking for new subjects to study. 3rd rate environmental scientists like Jones latched onto the CRU. Jones was only a data clerk and a very poor one at that, who had no idea about quality control and data handling. He was totally out of his depth as a “climate scientist” and he still shows his lack of ability.
It’s not over yet – this is the lull before the storm…
Yar, she be about to blow hard me mateys, just check Oz on-line full circle of wagons with Ben suuch and such defending Flip Jones and .
The Bund is back in town.
The ponzis are not happy they got caught short.
I am delighted to know that Phil knows that there are more emails to come. Even if they don’t the fact is that Phil has admitted they may be out there.
And yes, there really should be a data dump of the CRU servers.
Even more troublesome, Dr. Jones seems to have fully rationalized everything that has happened in the past year.”
Do you mean post rationalised, Anthony. 🙂
The journalist from the nature article is an ex-guardian hack , in turn the Guardian’s attitude to Jones is to report his words as if they come straight from god and are unquestionable, now you understand why the articles looks like it does. As for Jones views well its clear his really learnt nothing over the last year but who now will actual give much value to his ideas outside of those fully and blindly committed to AGW ? And this, amongst his other troubles, are issue of his very own making.
He was on medication during the previous interview, he says, and felt under pressure then to publicly concede that he had made mistakes.
And then he got his orders from above.
Nature.com article on Jones appears to be blocked for comment. Is it my subscription level or is Nature filtering critical comments? I wanted to highlight this email: Phil Jones, 11 March 2003, 1047474776.txt
“…….even with the instrumental record, the early and late 20th century warmings are only significant locally at between 10 – 20% of grid boxes.”
“Jones and others connected to the CRU fear the hackers may be sitting on more stolen e-mails, but Jones feels confident the worst is behind him.”
If he’s done nothing wrong, what has he got to fear?
If Jones and others fear [alleged] hackers may be sitting on more stolen e-mails what else has Phil got to hide?
Nature believes it wasn’t an inside job. They imply it was an outside job. The third option of incompetence doesn’t appear in their thoughts?
Phil doesn’t look too warm in the picture.
So much lying and fraud going on. Do the governments really think people are so stupid? We have Internet now. Internet SEES ALL, KNOWS ALL, REMEMBERS EVERYTHING. And it is not forgiving. Internet archives will not be kind to jones, gore, pachauri, and their ilk.
Text book case of how the media and those they support always bet on two things: the relative short memory of “the public” and it’s not what’s reported but what’s “repeated”. Until the modern era it worked virtually 100% of the time. With Jones, et al, if not for sites such at this one, Jones would be lining up shortly for a Nobel.
This just goes to show – we are dealing with criminals. A lying, dishonest crook, when caught, will continue to lie. That’s their nature.
And this is where we will fail.
Until people and politicians, start calling for jail sentences for people like Jones, Mann, Hansen, they will continue to lie and deceive because they know they will get away with it. They know they media is in on this fraud, and that the media has as much culpability as them – so the two will cover for each other.
This will only end, when these people face jail sentences, and are offered a “deal” for the first ones that come clean.
If the GOP for example, was to propose jail sentences for the people at the top of AGW hoax, but that there would be an amnesty for those that come clean immediately, you would see them fall like dominoes.
If the AGW scientists were to design a rocket/module designed to land on the moon, basing their designs on physics/science having the same level of reliabilty as their climate science, the rocket would miss the moon by a hundred thousand miles and the module would land on alpha-centauri, or thereabouts.
Classic case of “it’s not me, it’s you” syndrome.
Something new added into our cultural lexicon:
Phil Jones = Global Laughing Stock
Example:
“Dude, you messed up man, You’re gonna be a total Phil Jones tomorrow!”
“One thing in particular I’m doing is not responding so quickly. I might have got an e-mail in the past and responded with an instant thought in the next 10 to 15 minutes, whereas now I might leave it a day.”
That’s how you respond to a girl on Facebook you want to sleep with. Except in this case it is Jones trying to screw the public.
If I remember correctly, the person responsible for the Climategate release specifically said there were more emails. What better time to release them than on the first anniversary of Climategate? And just before Cancun? Fingers crossed….
By the way, when sanity returns to the world, I nominate two people for the Nobel Peace Prize: Steve McIntyre – and the person responsible for the Climategate release. In very different ways, both have made a huge contribution to the future wellbeing of humanity.
Chris
Anthony, you may have been misled by the subtitle of the story. If could just as easily have emphasized the Jones is “unrepentant ” one year later angle. Anyway, this reporter did a good job with the story:
http://www.collide-a-scape.com/2010/11/16/lessons-learned/
On UHI in China the climate emails provide this little tidbit:
From Jones to David Parker, coincidently sent by Jones while in Beijing 18 July 2007
“I’ve been giving some talks here and have more tomorrow. At CMA I’ve found they have a homogenized dataset of 745 stations for the country which they are preapred to give me at some point for inclusion. They have adjusted for all site moves but not for urbanization. It seems that it is almost impossible for sites here to be rural (maybe only 1% of the total). Sites move out of the city at regular intervals as the cities expand. So Beijing has 6-7 site moves since 1951! Also China seems to be the only
country that doesn’t use airport sites. None are located at airports. I’m going to give them my Chinese sites in return so they can do some comparisons. I’ll talk with their person (Mr Li ) more tomorrow.”
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=809&filename=1184779319.txt
Jones must be [snip . . . you know the policy] bricks – he KNOWS there’s other emails – of course he does, he wrote them – the ultimate M. Night Shyalaman twist would be, he is also the leak – Jekyll and Hyde style.
Why would he be afraid of any more emails the hackers might possess? Hmmm……
We knew wot we done weren’t right, so we pre-emptively got rid of the evidence.
Good grief!
Look here, chaps ‘n chappesses from the Colonies, we’re not all bad back in Blighty! The reality, as my dear elderly mother used to say, is “the Americans may have many faults (her views not mine) but they certainly know how to wash their dirty linen in public”! Whereas in the UK, it’s not, well cricket actually! We like to lift the rug & brush the [snip . . c’mon now] underneath so everyone keeps smiling, & chin up, stiff upper lip, etc. Professor Phil Jones is 58 so I understand, he’s is probably going to take early retirement at 60, so he has to hang on in there it get his years in for his pension, he is employed by a taxpayer funded organization (for the most part), so all pay & conditions are related to the public sector salary scales to the nearest penny, etc. I am afraid it’s in the British nature, that we feel revulsion & anger at being deceived & betrayed & lied to, regardless of whether it’s done for a noble reason of not, especially by public bodies & representatives, yet we lack the brutal trait to punish the perpetrator as he/she should be, we feel sorry for them for some peculiar reason, it’s just the way we are. (Personally, I think he (& all who have conspired) should be stripped of his position, title, & pension rights for using his position to further a “political” cause by lying – but hey, I am not your typical Briton, I have pride & standards for people in public life) That is why we have Public Inquiries, you know no one will get the blame unless they’re either retired or about to retire on a fat public funded pension, or in Blair’s case, he did only what he “believed was the right” thing, now there is a “get out of jail free” (GOOJF) clause if ever there was one 🙂
“The e-mails also triggered several official investigations, including one by the UK Parliament, which ultimately determined that Jones had not committed any serious offences. Case closed”.
The critical word is “serious”. That impies that Jones had committed offences but that they were either not illegal or they were not sufficiently criminal for a prosecution to be set in motion.
As Dr Goebbels laid down in his propaganda manual, “repeat an untruth suficiently and it becomes truth.”
Reporters with their brains tuned to belief mode must help, too.
I used to have a busy criminal defense practice. I’ve moved on to better things. One observation that I made over and over in the particular, but share in general, is the ability of an offender, once caught, to rehabilitate himself in his own mind. When you visit him in jail on the night of his arrest he’s all contrite and remorseful for what he’s done. Upset that he’s been caught, of course, but still often exhibiting even some relief for the fact that the truth is coming out and perhaps some compassion for his victim. Even eager for some genuine rehabilitation. But as time goes on he usually begins to lose his sense of remorse entirely and rare indeed was the offender who continued over time to accept any moral responsibility for his actions. To the point that, even faced with overwhelming evidence, and often even his own admissions given in the first moments of his arrest or exposure, later on he will begin to sing his innocence and declare himself a victim of some conspiracy or unfair treatment.
This process is even more pronounced for those who, for whatever reason, (usually to accept a favourable bargain from the prosecution) enter an early guilty plea and have the matter resolved. Years later they will meet you (their defense counsel) and accuse you of having surrendered them unwillingly and wrongly to a completely unjust end, since in their current judgment they did nothing wrong and so the punishment they received must have been your fault. If you were to go back and show them their signed confession given under warning and without any promise or favor they would say as we read here that they weren’t thinking straight at the time, but now they understand it better. As they say, the jails are full of “innocent” men.
There is a perceived “benefit” to this self delusion, or it would not take place. It allows offenders to live with themselves in the happy delusion that they are the victims instead of facing and dealing with the nasty reality that they are perpetrators. Of course this sort of justification stands in the way of any change or improvement in their current or future behavior, as the foundation of all improvement is the self recognition of some defect that requires correction. This, in part, explains the strong tendency to re offend. When nothing useful has been learned from the exposure of the offence, the offender is unchanged and decidedly NOT rehabilitated.
“Such shifts do not significantly affect results, Jones says, because there was no general pattern to the station relocation: on average, ones moving to colder places were balanced by ones moving to warmer spots. But the Chinese scientist who supplied the station information has now retired and the authorities there have not released the full station-history data — making it impossible for Jones, he says, to provide the evidence to support the statement.”
The notion that all these moves neatly balanced out the pluses and minuses seems so fundamental to the justification for the original paper that you have to ask, why was it not stressed in the original paper. To suddenly come out with it now, and claim that the supporting evidence is no longer obtainable, is bizarre, and does nothing for his credibility.
Pushing guilt about lifestyle. Heh, the BRICs are guiltless.
============
I don’t consider this Phil Jones to be a scientist, at least not when it comes to climate-related issues.
See, a scientist has data, can produce data, WILL produce data to support his hypotheses. Phil Jones won’t/can’t/didn’t. And neither is his methodology crystal clear, although humanity’s industrialized societal methodologies hang in the balance. It’s all a series of deep, mysterious pronouncements–apparently the unwashed aren’t allowed inspection rights.
He’s an abject failure–either due to complete disorganization, wilful misconduct (see Willis’ post stamped November 16, 2010 at 1:07 am), mental incompetency, or working some nefarious scheme to defraud others while aggrandizing himself.
But for whatever reason, he’s not a scientist. He’s a charlatan of the first order.
And that will be his sad legacy. He’s spent his whole professional life being a non-scientist!
(I hope, I hope, I hope there’s a repetition to Climategate–I’m betting what’s been revealed so far is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg!)
Oh good, I love anniversary presents! OT, but looking at that photo of Jones, is he standing on a roof?
After going thru the inquires and such maybe he believes he’s now invincible.
“Such shifts do not significantly affect results, Jones says”. I see this defence all the time from Warmists – our methods are vindicated because it did not affect the results / pour friends got similar results. They did it with Anthony’s UHI data, they did it with Hockey stick – allegedly vindicated by subsequent studies showing similar results, they did it with lost CRU data adjustments – did not matter because other datasets agree – and we seem to let them get away with this.
If the methodology was wrong, the results are rubbish and they should accept the criticism, repeat the study correctly and learn. There is no vindication or rehabilitation of the badly derived data by claiming others got similar results. The ‘others’ are rarely truly independent (as with Hockey Team) and recalculations are subject to confirmation bias.
“The Real Issue” – it is going to be much worse than we all thought.
http://blogs.shell.com/climatechange/2010/10/the-real-issue/
Is there any news on the Norfolk police’s investigation,last i read was that they had the servers and were trying to find out who leaked the emails.Why has a year nearly passed and no news from the police investigation team? is it still classed as an on going investigation.
On the subject of Jones & CRU fearing another release of further emails,did not some state that only a small % of the file leaked was actually released?the term” more jam tomorrow” comes to mind.Maybe this time the policy makers,and mainstream media will actually act and report to the public what has being going on with public money
spent by these universities and scientists..
Haha it is almost impossible to know who’s deleted what and when. Who’s running their IT department? Haven’t they heard of log files or have they taking the “precaution” of choosing not to log files and file activity? And by the by undeleting files or even more advanced file and data recovery cost all about free-beer these days and are advanced enough to bring back pretty much everything that has ever been on a storage device.
Pardon my ignorance but, where is the outrage and explanation of the “harry read me txt”
I read through each page and it got progressively worse.
It was like reading Harry’s nightmare.
I can’t believe there’s no story. Where did it go?
wuwt?
Mike
The Jones Saga reminds of a quote from B Russell:
“The influence of wishes upon our beliefs is a matter of common knowledge and observation, yet the nature of this influence is generally misconceived. It is customary to suppose that the bulk of our beliefs are derived from some rational ground, and that desire is only an occasional disturbing force. The exact opposite of this would be nearer the truth: the great mass of beliefs by which we are supported in our daily life is merely the bodying forth of desire, corrected here and there, at isolated points, by the rude shock of fact. Man is essentially a dreamer, wakened for a moment by some peculiarly obtrusive element in the outer world, but lapsing again quickly into the happy somnolence of imagination”
Of course Jones rationalized it. He got away with it. So far.
He phonies up relics for the glory of the true faith. Evil vile denialist scum found out and dared raise a ruckus. The faithful were not amused. The AGW promoters were amused even less. They need their relics: The relics are lucrative. The relics keep the masses in line. The relics help maintain the power of AGW. Now Jones is going to brag about it and protect his status by pretending to be a victim of the evil vile denialist scum. So he he shares his sadness and re-emphasizes his strong faith in an official mouthpiece of the faith.
“12 months ago, Phil Jones was a productive, if not particularly outspoken, climate scientist.”
Uhhhh….yeah, right. Whatever you say, Nature…
I suppose now Nature will begin work on rehabbing Ben Santer. Maybe Ben’s taken some Kung Fu lessons so he really kick all the butts that he wanted to kick in those e-mails…
He will never recover from this. He can’t undfudge the numbers and delet e-mails that are now public.
Had he kept cleaner work and complied with FOIA requests, he and only he could have reduced the damage.
booo hooo, feel sorry for me, NOT !
so, when the bully is caught red handed, he is a victim?
Two comments. First, body language in the picture is suggestive. Crossed arms, unsmiling set features, not looking at the camera. All that’s missing is the number across his chest.
Second, I can’t make sense of his explanation about the Chinese weather station data. He asserts that the moves “cancelled out,” because for every station moving to a “hotter” location, there was another that went to a cooler spot. That assertion must rest on data, right down to the history of each location (pre- and post-move), so that the trend in hotter/cooler could be ascertained. That’s how I see it, anyway. If so, he must have the data. If he doesn’t have the data, and instead wants to say “the dog ate it,” then he should stop offering self-justifying stories like this. And the reporter should stop accepting them. I used to think “Nature” was a first-tier publication. Maybe on non-political topics it still is. But on “climate science”? Nope.
Jones deleted these emails, to “simplify his life”, by “not having them”, if they were requested by people “in the future”
This is an explanation, Nature magazine attempts to clumsily put together for Jones – which he denies….but he does
– “want his emails under control”,
– “not have emails which ‘they’ wanted”,
– and did not feel he was breaking the law if emails were deleted “ahead of time”.
It is a mish-mash of excuses and rationalizations.
Jones can simply say – we did not want to give any emails or data to the ‘CA gang’.
Jones can simply say – we did not want to give emails to David Holland.
http://nigguraths.wordpress.com/2010/11/15/the-recovery-of-phil-jones-back-to-the-future/
The CRU and Phil Jones.
The sad thing is he did good work before global warming became the fad. Now the CRU temperature set is becoming a joke. My latest global temp update shows just how far out of whack the CRU data is from the rest of them. There is a cumulative difference of 50 °C since 1985 from the Hadley data at the monthly level.
The past year has clearly not been hard enough on him…
John Kehr
I wonder what would happen if the media just told the truth? Interesting thought.
Well written, Anthony, good you remember the contexts!!
K.R. Frank Lansner
Prof Jones’ big enemy, the one that torments him, is reality. Tough when it collides with your one big theory, your raison d’etre. Delete reality, delete, delete.
John R. Walker says: It’s not over yet – this is the lull before the storm…
Yes, exactly right. Several real investigations are about to get going and they will be run under AMERICANS, who will EXPOSE the truth rather than all the BRITISH inquiries which set out to BURY the truth, DECEIVE the public and declare that the GUILTY were actually INNOCENT all along.
There are three versions of what happened:
1.) The account given by Jones at the time.
2.)The account given by Jones now.
3.)The account of what actually happened.
These three versions don’t match. So yes, this is a brief calm before the Americans start picking apart Jones’ story and digging up the truth – so efficiently buried by the British Establishment.
MARKS & SPENCERS ANNOUNCEMENT:
‘Any semblance to any garment on sale at Marks and Sparks and modelled by
Phil Jones is pure coincidence’
Organization not his forte. Computer database maintenance not his forte. Complying with basic Scientific methodology not his forte. Modelling not his forte.
You see, dressing up in Pseudo science will always make you look……dishevelled.
Gee, what would it take to hack into a network, somehow knowing, of course, that there is a central email archive? I’m guessing it might not too easy.
What seems a lot more likely to me is this:
1) Pesky requests for emails
2) Desire to delete emails, but
3) Fear of losing something important, so
4) Gather emails into archive then delete local copies and
5) Claim the emails have been deleted, which is half true, but
6) Shocking to some decent staff member, who
7) Leaks the email archive
This is what happens when you have old British “light-bearing fellow travelers” in Power in the U.K. They subscribe to the ideas of Big Government control, High Taxation, and Fabian economic theory because it benefits them. Forcing many that Global warming is happening, guns need to be banned, and security cameras on every corner of town are a “good thing”. A GOOD THING for the powers that be. The U.K. or “Old Britain” has been doing this since the old monarchies, and the proletariat have been going along with it as willfully & easily convinced slaves for years. Except for maybe one pausation, that whole Pilgrimage to America thing. It’s really a “Brave New World” of control. In conclusion, I’m not surprised that the UK government did not fire Mr.Jones. One should not find it surprising that Al Gore’s debunked movie is being played in school’s either. These all play into the agenda and propaganda of those who control the U.K. It’s to bad those in the Mid/Low Socioeconomic Status in Great Britain believe Big Government is the solution. The serfs are clueless and stuck in 1st strata political thinking. That’s why these people have been so easily hood-winked by England’s version of the Hegelian Dialectic. 1. Create/Use a Problem 2. Wait for the Reaction by the impulsive dumbed down masses. 3. Have a “convenient solution” already rendered by the “Powers That Be” upon the people who are not questioning their leaders Machiavellian/self-serving true intent.
So he’s a little more guarded in what he says in his emails? He should have talked to Carol Browner of the EPA (who was once listed on Socialist International’s web site), she could have instructed him on how to erase his digital trail.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/dec/24/climate-czar-left-no-electronic-trail/#comments
The saddest thing is that Nature used to have science in it.
Seriously……….he was on medication during his first interview and misspoke?
Of all the cockamammie BS I have ever heard.
Pray tell the malady that afflicted you poor Jones. Pray tell the medication to relieve such malady that would have affected your answers in such a way that you would recant nearly a year later. Does poor Jones have a wittle bitty doctors note to prove his wittle concoction?
Since poor Jones was acting in an official capacity and was giving answers to questions, the magnitude of which could easily add up to ten trillion dollars over the coming years—for Britain alone—is it possible to FOI his medical records to find for certain the truth of this reflection of his?
While we wait, before Cancun, the next “Climate Gate, V.2.1″, we hear J.”Trains” H. singing….
Me and Mr Jones, we got a thing going on
We both know that it´s wrong
But it´s much too strong to let it go now
We meet ev´ry day at the same cafe
Six-thirty I know he´ll be there
Holding hands, making all kinds of plans
While the jukebox plays our favorite song
Me and Mr, Mr Jones, Mr Jones, Mr Jones
We got a thing going on
We both know that it´s wrong
But it´s much too strong to let it go now
We gotta be extra careful
That we don´t build our hopes too high
Cause he´s got her own obligations and so do I
Me, me and Mr, Mr Jones, Mr Jones, Mr Jones
Well, it´s time for us to be leaving
And it hurts so much, it hurts so much inside
And now he´ll go his way, I´ll go mine
But tomorrow we´ll meet at the same place, the same time
Me and Mr Jones, Mr Jones, Mr Jones
🙂
Wasn’t Mann investigated by AMERICANS?
Pitchforks and Pike poles…. it’s the only way.
“Jones and others connected to the CRU fear the hackers may be sitting on more stolen e-mails, but Jones feels confident the worst is behind him.”
Quite the silliest claim of all is that the release of the e-mails was the work of “hackers”. Anybody who refers to the matter in that way is deserving of my utter contempt, unless, of course, they can come up with a meaningful hypothesis of how such hacking could have been achieved bearing in mind the very tight time line.
The whistleblower will probably remain anonymous at least until he or she becomes financially independent. And they will likely miss out on the Nobel prize that is so very richly deserved.
Booooah!!!!! Those bad kids of WUWT are bullying me!
Let’s make a movie. A title? Ah yes…..
Phil Jones and the CRU/UEA Slime Ball Bowl-a-Rama.
A modern day Euriah Heap at work.
Coalsoffire,
“Years later they will meet you (their defense counsel) and accuse you of having surrendered them unwillingly and wrongly to a completely unjust end, since in their current judgment they did nothing wrong and so the punishment they received must have been your fault.”
Be worried then if your former client looks like Robert de Niro and you were planning a trip to Cape Fear.
Wow, Phil seems even more emboldened about flaunting the law! Phil thinks, because he’s “weathered the storm” that he’s impervious to pretty much anything. He’s openly discussing deleting e-mails prior to a FOI request as if it would pass some legal muster? And none of his superiors are batting an eye? Wow, just wow.
A fresh coat of paint doesn’t fix the cracked foundations.
“Jones and others connected to the CRU
fear the hackers may be sitting on more stolen
e-mails,”
Why should he be worried if the emails do not contain additional information that will further implicate Jones in this whole shoddy Business. His comments suggest that their is additional information in his emails which he’s afraid to see released.
And I wonder whether, in the interests of balanced reporting, Nature Magazine will give as much space to an interview with a qualified sceptic scientist. If they don’t then they cannot be considered to be a publication which is truly open minded to the vastly important but so far unresloved subject of AGW
Tried to post the following at Nature : “Page Not Found”
From: Michael Mann mann@xxxxx.xxx
To: Phil Jones p.jones@xxxxx.xxx
Subject: Re: IPCC & FOI
Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 08:12:02 -0400
Reply-to: mann@xxxxx.xxx
Hi Phil,
laughable that CA would claim to have discovered the problem. They would
have run off to the Wall Street Journal for an exclusive were that to
have been true.
I’ll contact Gene about this ASAP. His new email is: generwahl@xxxxxx.xxx
talk to you later,
mike
Phil Jones wrote:
>
>> Mike,
> Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?
> Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis.
>
> Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t
> have his new email address.
>
> We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.
>
> I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature
> paper!!
>
> Cheers
> Phil
>
> Prof. Phil Jones
> Climatic Research Unit Telephone [removed]
> School of Environmental Sciences Fax [removed]
> University of East Anglia
> Norwich Email p.jones@xxxxx.xxx
> NR4 7TJ
> UK
Reading the above one can come to only one conclusion the presentation of Dr Jones as a victim is absurd and nauseating.
I am amazed, not surprised, however that anyone who is called out like this cannot
stand and say-“I was wrong.” -like a man. I was an e-mail friend of John Daly.
His memory deserves better….
How about looking at the science itself, instead of individual scientists’ private emails?
http://climateprogress.org/2010/11/15/year-in-climate-science-climategate/#comments
Or maybe you can figure out a way to discredit the 40 or so major studies cited here which indicate a high probability of future catastrophe. Humans have adapted to new information before, and so can WUWT readers, many of whom are quite bright.
“One thing in particular I’m doing is not responding so quickly. I might have got an e-mail in the past and responded with an instant thought in the next 10 to 15 minutes, whereas now I might leave it a day.”
Err…he should try honesty, truth, and efficient email turnaround. Perhaps this will be the CRUs academic motto when it is rehabilitated as a keyboarding skills training center.
Fraud.
R. de Haan says:
November 16, 2010 at 12:22 am
“British Rubbish”
I say! Steady on old chap.
SSam says:
November 16, 2010 at 6:47 am
Pitchforks and Pike poles…. it’s the only way.
========================================
Aye….. and Tar and Feathers. Run th’ buggers outta town on a rail.
Now, why would he be afraid of more emails being leaked? What other secrets are as yet undiscovered?
Thank you, Eric. This hypothesis seems very plausible. The only reason to fear further releases would be Jones or Briffa’s knowledge that the decent staff member did not release everything that had been salted away. It seems unlikely (to me) that the decent staff member would be only partially decent, so I doubt that there will be any more emails released.
Given that the UEA/CRU have incremental backups of ‘3 scientists’ email from the CRU (on USB drives), they could, if they wanted, test this hypothesis.
From Eric:
“Gee, what would it take to hack into a network, somehow knowing, of course, that there is a central email archive? I’m guessing it might not too easy.
What seems a lot more likely to me is this:
1) Pesky requests for emails
2) Desire to delete emails, but
3) Fear of losing something important, so
4) Gather emails into archive then delete local copies and
5) Claim the emails have been deleted, which is half true, but
6) Shocking to some decent staff member, who
7) Leaks the email archive”
Fenton obviously doing the rounds … non-ascribed simultaneous drivel in the Telegraph today. General cast of comments interesting.
I have the perfect remedy for what ails you, Dr. Phil Jones: Go to an AA meeting. It’s full of people just like you who want to put the past behind them.
No proper scientist will believe anything that come out of the CRU again.
Jones has trashed himself and the reputation of UK science with it. That he has the hubris to try and rehabilitate himself in this way is a disgrace. In an earlier age he would have been shut in a room with a bottle of whisky and a loaded pistol.
Her Majesty Prison at Dartmoor.
Looks cold Phil, doesn’t it?
http://i54.tinypic.com/312tumc.jpg
In Re; Rob M Nov. 16 at 12:45 am
Quite to the contrary; if his intent in deleting the emails was to avoid having information subject to FOI requests then that is a clear violation of the law.
Since these emails clearly delineate an attempt to conspire to destroy information subject to FOI in anticipation of such a request, this is felonious behavior.
The fact that the UK is completely unwilling to prosecute (or even admit there is an infraction) on this is ridiculous.
Historians will have a field day with this stuff in 50 years.
Mike Roddy @7:39 a.m.,
Please don’t link to a blog that censors all but heavily alarmist comments. Climate Progress is funded by the Nazi collaborator-judas goat George Soros, who herded his fellow jews into cattle cars by promising them they were being sent to Palestine. Why would any decent person pay any attention to the despicable Joe Romm, who needs Soros payola to keep his blog afloat?
But I’ll see your 40 grant-begging papers, and raise you 800.
Not sure if this is already meantioned here, but the author of the Nature article (David Adam) is responding in the comments:
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2010/11/15/jones-in-nature.html
When the world is crashing down around you… Take a pill. Modern pharmaceuticals will allow you to realize the world is not coming to an end. Now, recant any confessions , you may have made, and blame it on the drugs. If guilty feelings begin to resurface… take another pill and repeat process.
Isn’t modern science wonderful!? GK
I see. So Nature has become Vanity Fair for scientists.
They probably wanted to get this article published before another rare and exciting winter event comes to the Isles.
The reason why Prof Jones is still in place and why the whitewashes were organised by the establishment?
“Greek PM says it at last: carbon taxes are just another way to raise revenue”
“I’ve never actually heard a major politician (let alone a national leader) admit this before: what Mr Papandreou is saying is that carbon taxes would have not have the effect of reducing emissions – because if they did, they would be useless as an additional form of revenue.”
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/janetdaley/100063854/greek-pm-says-it-at-last-carbon-taxes-are-just-another-way-to-raise-revenue/
It is all about tax not temperature
Mike Roddy says:
November 16, 2010 at 7:39 am
How about looking at the science itself, instead of individual scientists’ private emails? “”
Ha.
Because, Mike, the emails reveal that they knew that they had no “science”. They refused requests because they had no “science”. They couldn’t defend their actions because they have no “science”.
This leaves the rest of us to the scraps we have been given. The “individual scientists’ private emails”.
They don’t want to let us see their “science”.
I am betting that there is no there, there. If, on the other hand, you are in possession of some (any at all, even the smallest amount) evidence that mankind’s piffling addition to the total CO2 flux has shifted “global temperatures” in any direction, please reveal it here and not somewhere most of us have been barred from commenting as we refused to just lie down and take a kicking because we refused to drink the kool-aid.
Why was he reinstated at all? Is his stellar worldwide reputation going to bring new business and grants flocking to the CRU? Is his high media profile likely to bring active benefit to UEA? Will Norwich become the new Seattle…global home of cutting-edge data analysis and control?
Or has he got something on Trevor Davies?
The latest article for Cancun Week covers the new scare in town – Ocean Acidification.
http://ourmaninsichuan.wordpress.com/
Pointman
Such shifts do not significantly affect results, Jones says, because there was no general pattern to the station relocation: on average, ones moving to colder places were balanced by ones moving to warmer spots.
But Jones simply doesn’t have the metadata for his UHI study to prove this contention – why no “materials and methods”, if he did the study? – and he doesn’t have the surface station and sea data for his HADCRUT reconstruction, nor any coherent algorithm for what might have been done with any data. So did Jones ever have any “research” or “science”?
@Mike Roddy
Because in ‘climate science ‘ context is very important.
Once upon a time the ‘community’ decreed: ‘We must get rid of the Medieval Warm Period’, and within a short space of time up popped Mikey Mann who produced a paper that purported to do so (though nobody really knows if it does, because not enough information is available to replicate it, and it has since been discredited).
This ‘authoritative’ (and wrong) paper was fully peer-reviewed by fellow climatarians, and they failed to spot the errors – whether for lack of ability , lack of attention or just because they wanted the results to be true. Peer review in climatology is now a meaningless concept…it gives no certainty of any ‘correctness’ other than the author has correctly produced ‘results’ acceptable to the Hockey Team…whose Grand Vizier, plucked from obscurity by a single very very well-timed paper is none other than that Parfait Knight – Mikey Mann!
And as very few authors have published their data or methods in sufficient detail to allow replication, we are asked to take the results on trust – effectively on the word of the cliamtologists c0ncerned.
Yeah right! I expect any independent observer who has read the Climategate e-mails would give a climatologist about as much credibility as I do – something less that I give to lawyers, MPs and Estate Agents.
So for the general observer to be left without any way of determining whether the ‘science’ might be true or just a complete fiction dreamt up to get another attribution under the author’s belt (or worse), then the context remains the only way to make any sort of judgment.
If , for example, some person – let us call him ‘PJ’…writes in an e-mail ‘I have just used a trick to hide the decline’, and a wee while later publishes a paper where no ‘decline’ is apparent, the context of the paper tells us a great deal about how and why ot was written.. and obviously about what was left out or concealed.
You can read a lot of the context of the Climategate e-mails in Mosher and Fuller’s excellent book ‘Climategate – The CRU Tape Letters’. And very very disturbing it is too if you care at all about the quality and integrity of science.
It is generally considered bad form to ‘diss’ a scientist in public – but dissing their work is ok if you can show that its wrong. The trouble is, we have only Phil’s word (and those of his so called peers LOL) for it that his work is correct and therefore as long as the ‘data’ is protected, he is safe!
Yet again, the whole issue is about the data, the calcs, the method and the results all being openly available for ‘proper’ independent review – but is that ever going to happen? I think not, at least not on the scale required to result in prosecutions. More likely, Jones, Mann, et al are all keeping their heads down in the hope that time passes quickly and various discovered errors can be quietly corrected before any requirement for attribution is needed!
BCBill says:
November 16, 2010 at 12:13 am
It is a bit heart wrenching to watch cognitive dissonance in action. One of the big failings of our scientific education is that scientists are not trained to recognize and deal with self delusion.
__
Now that’s an interesting idea. How would we do that?
Yes, I heard this on Radio 5 Live yesterday afternoon.
Dellingpole skewers another piece apparently behind the pay-wall that’s now the Times.
Fenton have been busy boys. You’d have thought they’d have ventured an elbow before dropping poor old Phil in the bath though. Maybe these PR wollas aren’t up to speed on the missing heat problem.
He’s backpedaling against the tide at this point and it’s humorous to watch.
What’s really revealing is that he sounds like feels his previous work is still relevant after all that’s come out. It will be very interesting to read his next paper, to see if he internalized anything.
I would look forward to more email revelations but I suspect there are none whatever Jones says. The whistleblower fired his ammo and in the end it didn’t bring Jones down. The political class cleared him and he can go back to his alarmist theories justifying more tax on average Joe. If something fresh emerges, I would be delighted but don’t hold your breath.
Just like to second Alan The Brits view…….one has to understand the British culture. Whilst we may say publicly that he is a fine fellow and the ‘establishment’ has done nothing wrong, the reality, as we all understand here in Blighty, is that the whole CRU/AGW thing is a laughing stock. We just don’t like to say so…esp to you colonials.
And I kinda feel sorry for him too, he got carried away with his own importance, his uterences were used by snake oil salesman to push an agenda he had no idea about (tax revenue and business profit) leaving him hoist by his own petard. And when the money men have decided they can’t milk it any more, the finger will be pointed at him as the one responsible for the ‘unfounded alarm’. The similarity to David Kelly is amazing, another guy who shouted wolf, then when the axeman came, tried to pretend there was not really a wolf and he never really said that there was. I hope Jones copes better with the realisation of his actions better than poor Kelly did, both ordinary guys with ordinary failings that were stuffed by the establishment.
Of course…Phil could be the leaker? And turn out to be an honourable man yet…?
Mike Roddy says:
November 16, 2010 at 7:39 am
“How about looking at the science itself, instead of individual scientists’ private emails?
http://climateprogress.org/2010/11/15/year-in-climate-science-climategate/#comments
Or maybe you can figure out a way to discredit the 40 or so major studies cited here which indicate a high probability of future catastrophe.”
I will see your 40 appeals to authority, and raise you 760.
http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html
♫ Mr. Jones and me tell each other fairy tales… ♫
– Counting Crows
Mike Roddy demonstrates that the CO2 obsession of AGW is corrosive to IQ.
Not one e-mail released was ‘private’, Mikey.
Think about it if you can.
If you cannot tell the difference between ‘personal’ and what was leaked, then have the %CO2 of your blood level checked stat.
Also… My prediction for the year is complete and will be posted tomorrow. 2010 will not be the hottest year. It still might be for the UAH, but for the CRU, Hadley it isn’t going to be. RSS is still a toss up, but I still think that 1998 will remain the top dog.
If the AMO drops off anytime soon it could be decades before 1998 loses the title. If anything else happens it could even be longer. The Earth is really dumping energy into space fast right now.
John Kehr
What did they do about 1945 that was so bad?
I get from the e-mail that it was “front page news” bad & they know it.
DaveE.
Robinson says: Wasn’t Mann investigated by AMERICANS?
…No, he wasn’t “investigated” at all. He was asked some irrelevant questions by people who were either his friends and colleagues, or had a vested interest in not exposing Mann’s scientific deceit.
The REAL investigations will soon get under way, and this time Mann won’t get away with his usual blustering and absurd assertions, and he will have to produce actual evidence for everything he claims to be the truth.
Phil Jones has done for climate science what Dick Turpin did for highwayman.
I don’t feel sorry for Jones, he used dishonesty to cover for bias and lack of skill. I feel sorry for the rest of us who have paid billions for this crap and continue to do so. Doesn’t it even bother him that his refusal to share data and methods means that what he is doing is not science at all ?
In addition, the delusion that what they are doing is science makes it harder to train any future scientists to a decent standard. This self deluding junk has spread into supposedly professional scientific organizations resulting in rediculously anti science public statements like that of the APS recently. Or the steaming load of anti scientific rubbish from Art Hobson in “The Physics Teacher” this month.
http://tpt.aapt.org/
For those who do not know (and wiki leaves out) Dick Turpin not only asked his victims (male) to “stand and deliver” but to “bend over and deliver” as well. UK readers will be aware of wiki’s omission.
‘I want to be remembered for the science’ says Phil ‘Climategate’ Jones to chorus of titters
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100063829/i-want-to-remembered-for-the-science-says-phil-climategate-jones-to-chorus-of-titters/
He may well be
http://www.unmuseum.org/piltdown.htm
Piltdown: The Man that Never Was
A note to commenters:
Replying to Mike Roddy is a waste of time, he’s an incorrigibly drive by commenter and has no interest in anything we have to say, unless he can get some snark mileage from it.
He’s one of the lost, best to simply ignore him.
This article and discussion reminds of the song and, especially, the refrain in the song, Ballad of a Thin Man, by Bob Dylan:
Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?
Not Republicans.
The end of popular science
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/11/end-of-popular-science.html
ZT says:
November 16, 2010 at 7:52 am
The shoe hasn’t dropped yet, as the ‘internal leaker’ is doing one of the following:
1.) Making sure that certain climatologists walk a straight line
2.) Is writing a book or has a book deal
3.) Is out to see who is dumb or arrogant enough to go out on a rotten limb
4.) Has certain people permanently indebted.
5.) Is presently taking a break from obedience training the Climatologists.
6.) Is deriving intense pleasure from making certain people squirm over the uncertainly of how much he knows.
It could even be that the ‘leaker’ is a foreign agent engaged in ‘outing’ the Climatologists.
What would make the Warmist Climatologist the most nervous?
That someone has it in for them, and the suspense is deadly.
Since you excercise full editorial control on this website and obviously “snip” commenters not following your guidlines, you must approve of the comments above were Jones is being defamed.
This puts you in direct firing line of any actin taken by UEA. Good Luck!
A full copy of this post is available to any requesting it!
[Please read the site Policy. Comments belong to the commentators, not the moderators, who are unpaid volunteers. Each has his/her own style. Moderation is therefore somewhat subjective. ~dbs, mod.]
Back to his old self, bless him.
Yes, it seems a real possibility to me that there is more waiting to be released. The e-mails released initially were not a wholesale dump, but a select few over a time period. Other e-mails referred to were not found. This indicates that the cracker/leaker had some understanding of the situation they were poking into. If it was a true internet white-knight cracker, then he/she likely wasn’t limited in what was obtainable, and could very likely have “acquired” copies of other team members e-mail boxes around the same time frame. If it was simply an insider leaker, then it’s more likely we wont see any more releases.
Insider leakers, btw, would likely not have been so knowledgeable on covering their tracks for this long. The leaker hasn’t been revealed yet a year later. That may be because no one has put funds towards tracking them down, but it’s more likely that the person was simply internet-saavy enough to cover their trail.
So, imo, it’s likely that the leaker/cracker was indeed some form of ‘white-knight’ who wanted to release information that they felt needed to come out. To me that means there’s likely more out there waiting to be released. I could continue speculating but I think I would just be polluting the board.
Jones is small fry in the AGW scam. We all know that the Americans – Hollywood – are the main AGW drivers.
The Hockey Stick Mann and Al Gore are the lead players, and they are free to roam and to continue pushing the inconvenient truth.
So please, until you cowboys do a proper roundup and get your own outlaws behind bars, tried, and strung-up, leave the subjects of Her Royal Highness alone.
Some “massaging” makes rehab easier. 🙂
A commenter at Bishop Hill’s blog calling himself ‘dave adam’ says he is the author of the Nature Magazine interview of Jones. He says he has a very reliable source who told him the UEA/CRU emails were hacked.
‘dave adam’ says, “On the ‘nature understands’ thing about the CRU hack — I understand that is annoying, but I was told something that has been discovered and clearly indicates an outside hack from a very reliable source, but to say what it was would almost certainly give them away. Is there still a public interest in reporting it? I think so ”
david
Nov 16, 2010 at 10:39 AM | david adam
John
R. de Haan says:
November 16, 2010 at 11:54 am
Funnily the signature is totally inclined to the LEFT ! 🙂
I certainly do hope so. If it’s anything worse than Climategate I heads must roll.
I think the Jones photo was designed to show his toughness and resilience, but it’s kind of hard to look tough in a knit sweater with elbow patches. Just sayin’. The delusion continues. Carry on.
If a second miracle were to occur, would it be appropriate to build a small shrine at UEA?
Where the general public could give thanks for their deliverance from the terrible mental affliction that is climatology and its army in human form – The Climatologists….
Mr (I refuse to give him the Dr or Prof honorific any more) claims that “on average, ones moving to colder places were balanced by ones moving to warmer spots.
If I have my feet in the refrigerator and my head in the stove, on average, I will be feeling pretty comfortable.
This is the level of his ‘science’ that the politicians are listening to.
This sounds more like a relapse then a rehabilitation for Jones.
He reminds me of the alcoholic who says ‘ it’s okay I’ll just have a few social drinks’
Jones complains about Google saying that “People will potentially get the misinformation first”. Wasn’t that the precise job of William Connolley? Google “global warming” and the first hit is wikipedia. His hypothesis is correct on that one.
walt man says:
November 16, 2010 at 12:24 pm
……… you must approve of the comments above were Jones is being defamed.
This puts you in direct firing line of any actin taken by UEA. Good Luck!
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Please put my name on the list of people approving of the content on this thread. By the way, it isn’t defamation to simply reprint and repeat what was wrote and stated, exposing obvious criminal behavior and intent.
James Sexton
Whoops! I am getting my Jones interviews mixed up;
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/8136088/Climategate-scientist-insists-sceptics-will-accept-global-warming-when-Arctic-ice-melts.html
Jones & Mann are certainly getting out & about of late.
Anthony say
——–
Okaaaayyyy. I call BS on this, because 20 years later, NCDC’s Dr. Matt Menne developed USHCN2, with a change point detection algorithm in it specifically to detect and correct change points in temperature data resulting from station moves. If station moves “don’t significantly affect results”, why did NCDC dedicate so much time and effort to develop such an algorithm?
———–
We’ll I can make a suggestion.
Writing Data Analysis software is subject to 90:10 rule. 10% of the code will get 90% of the quality required.
If I decide to check my assumptions by adding some extra algorithms I am likely to get a small improvement in accuracy but which will not significantly affect the conclusions.
It seems likely this happened here, so based on the information you provided the reasoning is flawed. The important test is to do the sums, turn off the algorithm, do the sums again, see if the change matters.
Phil Jones
Liar, liar pants on fire. :o)
How do they set up pics of him looking into the distance, looking sad. I mean you’d have to specifically pose for these.
James Sexton says: November 16, 2010 at 2:00 pm
Obviously, as a starting point those who post defamatory comments are the true defamers but as the editors/publishers/broadcasters of a blog, the blogger is risking liability for their comments. As a result ….Now after the inteim decision in Kaschke v Gray & Anor (‘the Labourhome decision’ [2010] EWHC 690 (QB) (29 March 2010), we have yet more evidence that bloggers can be liable for comments posted on the websites they control.
http://elleeseymour.com/2010/04/11/what-bloggers-need-to-know-about-defamation/
If a Network host is notified of a blog that is defaming, and they do not remove the page – are they liable? Or, are they “innocent bystanders”?
The failure of a network host to remove a defamatory blog promptly when notified leaves it in real danger of losing its statutory defence of ’secondary responsibility’ under section 1 of the Defamation Act 1996 and the Electronic Commerce (E.C. Directive) Regulations 2002 (SI 2002/2013 as implemented).
http://www.weblaw.co.uk/articles/blogs-the-legal-issues/
For example, the limitation period for bringing an action for defamation is 12 months from the date of publication, although a fresh cause of action arises each time the defamatory statement is republished. However, where a defamatory statement is published online and maintained in an archive, the republication is deemed to occur each time a reader accesses the article. Potentially, therefore, the limitation period for online publications is ongoing [see Loutchansky v Times Newspapers [2001]).’
…
Hurst says: ‘If companies don’t monitor their forums and just respond to complaints they may have a defence of innocent dissemination. Under section 1 of the Defamation Act, a website operator may have a defence if it did not publish the defamatory statement itself and did not know that its website was facilitating the publication of a defamatory statement from one of its users.
‘Retailers, for example, may want to monitor the discussions on their websites to maintain their integrity and ensure users are not causing any damage to the brand. But by monitoring, website operators are unlikely to be able to rely on the section 1 defence, as they would struggle to show they were not aware that it was facilitating publication.’
http://www.lawgazette.co.uk/features/how-internet-has-changed-role-media-lawyers
Be aware that repeating a statement makes you liable for it. It is no defense to libel that one was merely repeating the statements of another—this is the repetition rule. In addition, the republication rule means you can be liable for damages for all foreseeable republications by others who repeat it. This stems from the fact that every of a libel is a new libel, and each publisher is answerable for his act to the same extent as if it originated with him.
Once the Claimant has proved the above, the burden shifts to the Defendant to establish one of 3 primary defenses:
• Truth (justification)
• Fair Comment (honest opinion based on true facts)
• Privilege.
If the Defendant cannot make out a defense, the Claimant will succeed and the defamatory statement, if written becomes a Libel, and if oral, a Slander. The Claimant is then entitled as of right, to an award of general damages without need for proof of damage because it is presumed that some damage will flow from the invasion of the right to reputation.
The real defense is privilege. The others are too onerous.
http://mbites.com/2008/04/18/libel_and_defamation_law_for_bloggers/
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As the final quote says as a defendant you must PROVE your innocence!
Note that my former post puts WordPress and Watts on notice of defamatory posting
walt man,
Time for you to go away with your impotent threats. Unlike the UK, in the U.S.A. we still have freedom of speech.
I don’t much care for Obama, but he did the right thing here.
That means you, walt man.
All of us have done things which we wish we’d never done and hope no one would find out whether in the public/professional or private spheres of our life.
All of us are equally capable of rationalising away what we did.
I vaguely recall something a sage said some two thousand years ago about casting stones.
you all realize this is the second request to mann to delete documents that may relate to Hollands request…..
Post coming, in’s in the inbox at WUWT
Out of interest, I recently sent an email to the police force local to the UEA (that’s the Norfolk Constabulary), asking how the investigation was coming along. After a little prompting, I got the following response (which appears to be a press release, because of the “Note to Editors” near the end):-
Apologies for delay in responding to your queries but here is our latest comment on the enquiry. Thanks.
Following the publication of e-mails and other data prior to the COP15 Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009, the Norfolk Constabulary investigation into the data breach at the University of East Anglia continues.
With the many different lines of enquiry that officers identified, the workload has varied with specialist investigators/law enforcement partners used when needed.
Commenting on the investigation, Senior Investigating Officer (SIO), Detective Superintendent Julian Gregory said:
“This has been a complex investigation, undertaken in a global context and requiring detailed and time consuming lines of enquiry. Due to the sensitivity of the investigation it has not been possible to share details of enquiries with the media and the public and it would be inappropriate for us to comment any further at this time.”
Note to Editors
It is acknowledged that interest in this case continues, given that the enquiry has now been running for approximately a year and that there is a desire for us to publish further detail. However, the circumstances of the case do not lend themselves to public comment at this time due to the sensitivities of the investigation and this is unlikely to change in the near future.
It would appear that they are having a certain amount of difficulty finding any evidence of hacking whatsoever, which doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.
Jeremy says:
November 16, 2010 at 12:47 pm
Insider leakers, btw, would likely not have been so knowledgeable on covering their tracks for this long. The leaker hasn’t been revealed yet a year later. That may be because no one has put funds towards tracking them down, but it’s more likely that the person was simply internet-saavy enough to cover their trail.
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I disagree, Jeremy. I believe it much more likely to be an inside job due to the comparative ease of an inside vs outside attack. I could be wrong, of course.
Can anyone verify the networking conditions at UEA? I’d love to play ‘what if’. I seriously doubt Jones pokes away at a dumb WYSE terminal that feeds commands to a mainframe in this day and age. I find it much more likely to believe he uses a Windows laptop/workstation to connect to UEA resources.
If he uses a Windows laptop/workstation or not, it’s still very likely he’s communicating to an Exchange server or other centralized email server for email, and copying data to a shared file server.
The servers will be backed up and written to tape on a scheduled rotation. (Yes, I know he says he lost data, but that was way back then.) Typically, a server is backed up fully once per week with daily incremental backups. Tapes are rotated off-site once per month and retained for up to a year. This is true in a Windows or Unix environment and means the server administrators, network administrators, and backup operators all had access to the emails and home directories.
Copying data on the network for an admin is of course trivial. If the off-site backup tapes aren’t encrypted then copying the data there is trivial. Restoring a backup tape to a new server is trivial.
My assumption has always been that Jones said something demeaning to an admin, and they burned him.
Copying data off the local network/servers would not require hiding their tracks at all as admins would have had legitimate access to everyone’s data. Certainly the account used for the backup service is an administrator on all servers and the credentials for this account would be known to at least some of the admins. An admin could use this account to login to any server and copy any data at any time. And certainly there is a local administrator account on each laptop/workstation for support purposes, and these credentials would have been known by all the support staff.
Universities are typically ‘open’ with regards to network security policy. For these reasons, I suspect it was an inside job and likely not traceable. Outside attacks are possible too, although less likely.
I work professionally as a network security engineer, so perhaps I am seeing it through my jaundiced eye, but I have to say I’ve seen all sorts of private data that users thought I couldn’t. And that’s without even trying.
Remember, this all came from a directory titled ‘foia request’ which would have been an attractive target for an inquisitive admin and not at all likely to reside on the centralized mail server accessible from the Internet, but rather in a personal directory on an internal file server.
I would expect getting Jones’ password would be fairly straight forward if one wanted, and if that was the avenue taken. He doesn’t seem very savvy to me. If I was a helpdesker or admin at UEA and wanted his password I would simply wait for him to call for help (if I got impatient I would do something to make him call). Once he calls, I would go to his office and begin stating all the commands he should enter, network settings to check, directories to switch to, rename this or that file, etc. until he was obviously flustered. Then I’d helpfully offer to ‘fix the problem’ for him while he was at lunch, I would just need him to give me his password…
Alternatively, just dump the password and shadow files in a Unix environment, or the SAM/ntds.dit database in a Windows environment and run them through John the Ripper. John cracks passwords such as ‘banana01’ in seconds.
It’s too easy to get the data as an admin.
To get the data remotely, there would have had to be an exploitable vulnerability in an Internet facing server (mail, ftp, web, etc.) that when comprised gave the necessary privileges on the server to determine the network configuration.
Then network recon would need to be performed (DNS dump, ping sweep, etc) to determine a likely target internal server (meaning the server would have to be accessible from the compromised host and named in such a way to make it an attractive target).
Then the target internal server would have to itself also have an exploitable vulnerability that was susceptible to exploitation by the credentials leveraged on the Internet facing server and exploitable over the protocols allowed for communications between the Internet facing server and the internal server (admin credentials are typically different on Internet servers in a protected DMZ network and internal servers). Next, that internal server would have to have the data the hacker was after, or the hacker would have to hop again.
Finally, a network path out would have to be permitted back to the server the hacker used to dump the files on, which means that the firewall would have had to permit the second targeted server outbound, which is not always permissible. An internal file server simply has no need to dump files out on the Internet, so by default they can’t…so now you’re talking about possibly also hacking the firewall to rewrite the permit rules and hacking the switches/routers to add your intended destination as a route out the Internet firewall.
Whew! And that’s just the 30,000 foot view.
An insider attack seems more likely to me.
Liberals tend to believe everyone else is as unethical and rationalizing as themselves. They are wrong, and they have no clue how they are wrong.
It is unfortunate for Phil Jones people can read ClimateGate emails and understand for themselves.
I much prefer:
“You really sCRUed that up.”
or
“You’re totally sCRUed man!”
Bob Kutz says:
November 16, 2010 at 8:16 am
“Quite to the contrary; if his intent in deleting the emails was to avoid having information subject to FOI requests then that is a clear violation of the law. ”
What exactly are you contrary-ing??
I quoted the fellow and the line of exclamation marks under the quote is my ‘struck speechless’ response;nothing to dispute there.
Mr waltman, if I may be so bold as to ask you to front me some major cash so I can go after DepropagandaBlog with your guilty until proven innocent (isn’t it supposed to be the other way around?) logic, cause they laid out some doozies about a guy I happen to know.
redetin says:
November 16, 2010 at 4:59 am
“The Real Issue” – it is going to be much worse than we all thought.
http://blogs.shell.com/climatechange/2010/10/the-real-issue/ …
David Hone, Shell Oil advisor: “The most recent inter-glacial peak was the Eemian, about 130,000 years ago, which saw both CO2 levels and temperature peak at the top end of the inter-glacial range, but with the CO2 level far below the current 390 ppm. There is good evidence that the sea level in this period topped out at some 7 metres above current levels, before plunging 135 metres as glaciation took hold in the northern hemisphere. ”
—-
I agree that the consequences of natural cycles of the current Ice Age between interglacial warming periods and glaciation periods are going to be much worse than we thought, but access the link provided that produces the above quote, and ask yourself a simple question. Assuming everything in that quote is scientifically accurate, what is more compelling? A very gradual sea level rise during a warm, productive, climate period? Or the utter decimation of life as we know it when the glaciation returns for another 100,000 years and the sea level declines about 400 feet because of all the miles high ice on the northern hemisphere?
I have other issues with the scientific basis of other statements of the linked blog, but this comment hits my major concern of his spin. Gradual sea level rise of 5 mm/year over 1500 years vs. the climatic destruction of northern hemisphere civilization because of yet another period of glaciation.
Pick your poison: celebrate warmth or celebrate cold.
The author wants to scare us about potentially higher sea levels in 1500 or more years, but what follows? A period of glaciation that lasts for 100,000 years. Also, what if the abrupt climate shift occurs before 1500 years from now. The scenario of glaciation becomes a lot more personal.
LOL @ walt man
Really? That’s the best you can come up with? Empty, hollow, vague threats?
Apparently you really are clueless about what you are up against…
As part of an FOI request can one legitimately request a forensic examination of a Universities communications system such that emails deleted by a particular staff member, or by several staff, can be resurrected? Are there any knowledgable people out there who can or would answer this question?
Such action probably should have been undertaken by the UK police, even if there were only contracted to find the source of the leak.
galileonardo, I thought the same thing. I’m no expert, but it occurred to me that when your strongest remaining claim on being any sort of scientist is the fact that you wear elbow patches on your sweater, it’s really to give it up.
Phil is a pathetic little man with delusions of grandeur (or even adequacy).
Somebody’s taxes are paying his salary. Awful isn’t it?
walt man says:
November 16, 2010 at 3:35 pm
James Sexton says: November 16, 2010 at 2:00 pm
“Obviously, as a starting point those who post defamatory comments are the true defamers….blah, blah, blather, blather…….”
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‘Apologies for delay in responding’ but I was shooting pool last night. Sadly, I missed the humor you posted. “On notice”? Are you kidding me? I would, and likely any other skeptic, would relish an opportunity try this in a real court of law. Further, while I’m not entirely clear on the letter of the law in the U.K., I presume defamation laws read similar to the ones here in the States. It is difficult for me to see defamation in reproducing statements made by certain parties and then pointing out the clear violation of law which these people were engaged. So, sis, I would ask you again, please include my name in any defamation complaint. Heck, I’d probably even pay for the plane trip to England just to witness British justice and even participate. Please show all the people reading this blog that your threats were more than idle.
In other words, sis, bring it!
Since humans are stupid, we’ll keep building right up against the receding waterline, grateful for the newfound land as the glaciers destroy Canada, the upper US, Russia, Northern Europe, etc. Then in a hundred thousand years, when the glaciers retreat and the seas return, scientists of the time will blame humans once again.
“I vaguely recall something a sage said some two thousand years ago about casting stones.”
Chris1958,
That Sage also told the person who was supposed to be the recipient of those stones, to: “Go, and sin no more.”
I hope you aren’t forgetting that part.
Andrew
Maybe all that was needed here were some I.T. professionals and an office manager – people who do not do research and do not pretend to – just collect, collate, secure, and archive in a competent manner.
A couple of my favourite quotes from the Climategate/Global Warming fiasco:
“Faking up data here is very time-consuming”
– Mike HULME to Tom WIGLEY – Mon, 9 Feb 1998
“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill … All these dangers are caused by human intervention and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy, then, is humanity itself.”
– Alexander KING, Bertrand SCHNEIDER – founder and secretary, respectively, of the Club of Rome – The First Global Revolution, pp.104-105
Global Government is the motive.
Mike Roddy says:
November 16, 2010 at 7:39 am
How about looking at the science itself, instead of individual scientists’ private emails? “”
Science starts with data. Determining what data has been minipulated or hidden is part of the science.
The emails were not private. The emails were prepared by government funded workers using machines that were at least partially government funded and they concerned publicly funded work.