One of the first whines out of RealClimate ( a Fenton Communications/ Environmental Media Services production) was that they were “out of context” saying:
“Indeed, even the out-of-context quotes aren’t that exciting, and are even less so in-context.”
That’s typical Gavin putz-speak for “nothing to see here, move along”. His message, coming just a few hours after the release in the wee hours of the morning, and just before 8AM EST on 11/22 suggests that Gavin pulled a Peter Gleick and didn’t actually read the emails before writing a dismissive review of them. Yet it appears that with what has been discovered so far in the 5000 plus emails, the context is quite rich.
Out of context, comes understanding.
Jeff suggested I repost this collection of quotes in the words of climate scientists as discovered in Climategate 2.0 context. He’s done a great job at collecting the relevant context. – Anthony
============================================================
Their words – Guest post by Jeff Id of the Air Vent
They call us skeptics, deniers, fossil fuel funded, contrarians, anti-science, all because we criticize the IPCC, the hockey stick plots, temperature record quality, biased peer review, and the general politicizing that climate science has undergone. Don’t take it from me though, Climategate II explains the same things in the words of the scientists themselves.
In this post, I’ve posted a large number of quotes from the emails and other online sources which I have been gradually gathering for several days now. The consensus duma will say they are out-of-context so if you question that, check the numbers or links next to the comments. It is not possible that they could ALL be out-of-context but there are many statements from climate science which leave me wondering. This post is started out with a quote from noted scientist Dr. Roy Spencer’s blog and it continues on with quotes from the consensus. All of whom are actual climate scientists.
Be sure that there are many more quotes in these emails. I am only one person and the documentation takes time. If there are more to add to the list (there are) just quote the email number and a few sentences below. No need to copy the whole email. Those interested enough will look it up anyway. I didn’t cover the FOIA and peer review issues here but hope to add them to this list in the future.
The IPCC
From the organization statement: http://www.ipcc.ch/organization/organization.shtml
Because of its scientific and intergovernmental nature, the IPCC embodies a unique opportunity to provide rigorous and balanced scientific information to decision makers. By endorsing the IPCC reports, governments acknowledge the authority of their scientific content. The work of the organization is therefore policy-relevant and yet policy-neutral, never policy-prescriptive.
Roy Spencer -on his blog regarding the IPCC
Unfortunately, there is no way to “fix” the IPCC, and there never was. The reason is that its formation over 20 years ago was to support political and energy policy goals, not to search for scientific truth. I know this not only because one of the first IPCC directors told me so, but also because it is the way the IPCC leadership behaves. If you disagree with their interpretation of climate change, you are left out of the IPCC process. They ignore or fight against any evidence which does not support their policy-driven mission, even to the point of pressuring scientific journals not to publish papers which might hurt the IPCC’s efforts.
Hans VonStorch – Wall St Journal Climategate 1.0
What we can now see is a concerted effort to emphasize scientific results that are useful to a political agenda by blocking papers in the purportedly independent review process and skewing the assessments of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
#0714 Phil Jones – on finding authors for the IPCC AR4 report
Getting people we know and trust is vital – hence my comment about the tornadoes group.
#4755 Johnathan Overpeck – Picking what goes into IPCC AR4
The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid what’s included and what is left out. For the IPCC, we need to know what is relevant and useful for assessing recent and future climate change.
#3066 Peter Thorne – IPCC Zero’th order draft
I note that my box on the lapse rates was completely and utterly ignored which may explain to some extent my reaction, but I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run.
#2009 Keith Briffa – writing zero’th order draft of paleo IPCC AR4 chapter.
I find myself in the strange position of being very skeptical of the quality of all present reconstructions, yet sounding like a pro greenhouse zealot here!
#0170 Jones – Looking for hurricane paper to be included in the IPCC AR4
Seems that this potential Nature paper may be worth citing, if it does say that GW is having an effect on TC activity.
#1922 Johnathan Overpeck – on the message for the IPCC paleo section
Need to convince readers that there really has been an increase in knowledge – more evidence. What is it?
#3066 Tim Carter – on what is going into the IPCC. Written to IPCC authors because of amazing THC claims.
Regarding the phrase ‘IPCC position’? Would it be wise to check that McCarthy /Watson have the same understanding as we do.
[and the reply]
[TC] You could try, but it has been tricky getting anyone to make statements about anything. It seems that a few people have a very strong say, and no matter how much talking goes on beforehand, the big decisions are made at the eleventh hour by a select core group.
#4133 Johnathan Overpeck – IPCC review. Doing what is necessary for the IPCC
Synthesis and Implications for Climate change combine ideas from the different time periods – it gives paleoclimate studies more of an unified feel, as if it were a real discipline rather than a bunch of people doing their own time-period thing. That’s necessary for IPCC, and necessary for the outside community to see as well. So I would vote for keeping the general order, but eliminating the overlap and inconsistencies in ways that seem most reasonable.
#0419 Mike Hulme –
I am increasingly unconvinced by the majority of climate impact studies – including some of those I am involved in – and feel we are not really giving the right message to our audiences.
Douglas Maraun Die Klimazweibel blog –
Second, I agree with von Storch, that some climate scientists are alarmist, and even more, some climate scientists are politicised and give scientific results a certain spin to push their political agenda. Yet, as I experienced CRU, the institute was far from being alarmist or streamlined in any way.
NAS panel review of hockeysticks prompted by McIntyre and McKitrick.
#1104 -Heinz Wanner – on reporting his NAS panel critique of Mann to the media.
I just refused to give an exclusive interview to SPIEGEL because I will not cause damage for climate science.
#1656 Douglas Maraun – on how to react to skeptics.
How should we deal with flaws inside the climate community? I think, that “our” reaction on the errors found in Mike Mann’s work were not especially honest.
#3234 Richard Alley
Taking the recent instrumental record and the tree-ring record and joining them yields a dramatic picture, with rather high confidence that recent times are anomalously warm. Taking strictly the tree-ring record and omitting the instrumental record yields a less-dramatic picture and a lower confidence that the recent temperatures are anomalous.
Paleoclimate and hide the decline
#0300
Bo Christiansen – On Hockey stick reconstructions
All methods strongly underestimates the amplitude of low-frequency variability and trends. This means that it is almost impossible to conclude from reconstruction studies that the present period is warmer than any period in the reconstructed period.
Ed Cook #3253
the results of this study will show that we can probably say a fair bit about <100 year extra-tropical NH temperature variability (at least as far as we believe the proxy estimates), but honestly know fuck-all about what the >100 year variability was like with any certainty (i.e. we know with certainty that we know fuck-all).
#4133 Johnathan Overpeck – IPCC review.
what Mike Mann continually fails to understand, and no amount of references will solve, is that there is practically no reliable tropical data for most of the time period, and without knowing the tropical sensitivity, we have no way of knowing how cold (or warm)the globe actually got.
[and later]
Unsatisfying, perhaps, since people will want to know whether 1200 AD was warmer than today, but if the data doesn’t exist, the question can’t yet be answered. A good topic for needed future work.
Rob Wilson – 1583
The palaeo-world has become a much more complex place in the last 10 years and with all the different calibration methods, data processing methods, proxy interpretations – any method that incorporates all forms of uncertainty and error will undoubtedly result in reconstructions with wider error bars than we currently have. These many be more honest, but may not be too helpful for model comparison attribution studies. We need to be careful with the wording I think.
#3234 Richard Alley – on NAS panel and divergence
records, or some other records such as Rosanne’s new ones, show “divergence”, then I believe it casts doubt on the use of joined tree-ring/instrumental records, and I don’t believe that I have yet heard why this interpretation is wrong.
#4758 Tim Osborne – Criticizing other people for doing the same thing
Because how can we be critical of Crowley for throwing out 40-years in the middle of his calibration, when we’re throwing out all post-1960 data ‘cos the MXD has a non-temperature signal in it, and also all pre-1881 or pre-1871 data ‘cos the temperature data may have a non-temperature signal in it! If we write the Holocene forum article then we’ll have to be critical or our paper as well as Crowley’s!
#0497 – Phil Jones UEA – Scientists don’t know the magnitude of past warming.
Even though the tree-ring chronologies used have robust rbar statistics for the whole 1000 years ( ie they lose nothing because core numbers stay high throughout), they have lost low frequency because of standardization. We’ve all tried with RCS/very stiff splines/hardly any detrending to keep this to a minimum, but until we know it is minimal it is still worth mentioning.
#0886 Jan Esper on his own reconstruction – also hidden decline
And the curve will also show that the IPCC curve needs to be improved according to missing long-term declining trends/signals, which were removed (by dendrochronologists!) before Mann merged the local records together.
Tiim Osborne 4007
Also we have applied a completely artificial adjustment to the data after 1960, so they look closer to observed temperatures than the tree-ring data actually were
Tim Osborne #2347
Also, we set all post-1960 values to missing in the MXD data set (due to decline), and the method will infill these, estimating them from the real temperatures – another way of “correcting” for the decline, though may be not defensible!
#3234 Richard Alley
Unless the “divergence problem” can be confidently ascribed to some cause that was not active a millennium ago, then the comparison between tree rings from a millennium ago and instrumental records from the last decades does not seem to be justified, and the confidence level in the anomalous nature of the recent warmth is lowered.
I think the best way to sum up all of this is a quote from a guest post at tAV and DieKlimazweibel by Bo Christiansen:
Where does all this lead us? It is very likely that the NH mean temperature has shown much larger past variability than caught by previous reconstructions. We cannot from these reconstructions conclude that the previous 50-year period has been unique in the context of the last 500-1000 years.
Of course we all know that the IPCC reports differently.
Context Discourse that surrounds a language unit and helps to determine its interpretation
Somebody buy Anthony a dictionary.
REPLY: The piece is by Jeff Id, please learn to read attributions before accusing others of interpretive problems – Anthony
A nice, succinct listing of emails showing them in context with relative subject matter. A lot of work, but this was well worth it. The emails selected are very good samples. My hat is off to you!
It will be quite entertaining to see how warmists contort themselves to either ignore, or defend the indefensible in the weeks ahead. A new movement will some day replace this pseudo communist sham, but for now I feel some comfort in knowing that the global warming movement is running out of steam. Its not over yet, but thanks blogs like this, and that heroic supposed ‘hacker’, some pretty heavy body blows have been landed.
The context is given with the email number linked to each quotation.
There are other laudable efforts to put individual email into the context of an exchange.
Every time someone widens and includes more context, the quotes become more damning.
When someone says they are taken out of context, this usually means “I want you to read this within a fictional and more acceptable context (that I may not even bother to provide), rather than the one that’s actually in evidence and that you’ve already got your nose stuck in”.
And so it is with almost every example “refuted” by the participants so far.
With regard to the comment by “ThePowerofX,” the questions raised by this post are not about the meanings of individual words or phrases. The topic is not what the meaning of ‘is’ is. That is not the kind of context being investigated.
The question is whether doubt about published results was widespread among the contributing scientists and remained unresolved while they put forward public statements supporting CAGW. The context that is relevant here takes in claims made and “strategies” suggested by many corresponding scientists over a considerable length of time.
Take a logic course, ThePowerofX.
Context:
– the interrelated conditions in which something exists or occurs : environment, setting
Hey powerofx,
What good is a dictionary if you don’t bother to actually read it or just cherry pick the definition you like. The use of Context is correct. Your just a moron.
Sorry, Anthony, I object to this line, “All of whom are actual climate scientists”
Or maybe just the “scientists” part.
Good compilation. Now if some of the hoi poloi of government would just take the time to read this, we might get somewhere!
Brandon Caswell says:
December 4, 2011 at 9:54 am
Brandon – take powerofx inane response as a sign that Climategate II is getting under the skin of the CAGW cabal. These people are in full damage-control mode. Besides, I’m sure he is one of the many climate commandos working for:
THE CAUSE(tm)
(heh!)
By claiming out -of -context, but not really giving a context to use instead, they are just trying to give the people a chance to dream up a context in their minds. This has been shown to work very well in phsycology, in that if you don’t give details, people will invent details that reaffirm their point of view.
But very few people who have followed climate science for any length of time will be fooled by the context defense. We all know the general context and the general issues involved.
Out of context works better to explain a quote when you were talking about eating, but someone cuts out a bit and presented it as though you were talking about sex. When you are talking about the errors in tree ring divergence and say the data is suspect, no amount of context would clear that unless someone just sent you an email saying, “lets have a contest to see who can act more like a skeptic”.
They just look ridiculous trying to defend their blatant political manuvering.
Nice peice Jeff. Of course it won’t make any difference to the crew at the Durban jamboree. They will carry on in their merry way whatever the evidence put before them, because for them it was never about the climate but about the politics.
I get the squabbles inherent in the climate field – its evident. Even Mann, Jones and company spend considerable time trying to deflect opposition views. However, in the course of human events and that of climate science – climate “change” if you will on all national and international stages is a runaway unstoppable and undiminished event with nothing – no amount of leaked emails, dissenting studies are able to slow this behemoth down. Climate change international conferences race ahead with no mention of leaked “emails” dissenting studies, nor previous world climate history ever playing any part on any national or international body, or news organizations. or even enter the dialogue.
AGW – Anthropogenic Global Warming – meaning human driven global warming. Then exactly what is the percentage of human cause warming? Is it 3% or 4% or what? I still don’t have a definitive answer for the very question at the heart of the debate. If we can’t adequately make that fact clear then how is the guy on the street supposed to understand?
To my knowledge no one on this side has ever claimed there is NO global warming – now I’m not talking about the issues on this site which are brilliant in and of themselves – most understand the raw studies presented here. I’m talking about on the street – we rarely make a case FOR the earth’s historical climate history or of the number of massive and minor climate shifts as very normal in this planet’s history. And it was and is this very lack of earth knowledge for the general public on the street that allowed Mann, Jones and company to fill up the knowledge vacuum by creating their own fictional earth history where they control flow of information. We have yet to produce any earth history of our own – hence we spend all of our time playing within Mann’s and company universe. How can we win playing in another’s fake world? Hopefully some one here can prove me wrong.
ThePowerofX says:
December 4, 2011 at 9:28 am
Context Discourse that surrounds a language unit and helps to determine its interpretation
Somebody buy Anthony a dictionary.
__________________________________
The Warmistra came up with the word not Anthony so take your complaint up with Phil Jones, Mike Mann and the rest of the “Team”
Everybody needs to remember there are over 200,000 additional pieces of context yet to be released, well they have been released, but are hiding behind a wee bit of encryption.
@Brandon Caswell
The use of Context is correct. Your just a moron.
Oh please.”Your” is not the same as “You’re”
The context is clear! It is obvious that they are concerned because they are not sure they are correct and want to keep the cause alive so they pretend they know what is the truth about the climate even when they are uncertain or have lied to make the case for warming by green house gases. When will this cover up make it into the mainstream press? It is time to clearly reveal this hoax to the Ameican public before we spend any more money chasing a conspiracy.
Nice collection Jeff.
I think the reference for the Tim Osborn “completely artificial adjustment” email is incorrect. I believe it is #4005, not #4007.
Cheers.
@Anthony
“putz-speak”
Putz is vulgar in case you didn’t know.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Yiddish_origin
[Using multiple screen names violate site Policy. ~dbs, mod.]
Dave Springer December 4, 2011 at 11:03 am
One is generally safe using the first definition.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/putz
Of course, if other defintions happen to apply as well…well, c’est la vie
Joe says:
December 4, 2011 at 10:56 am
@Brandon Caswell
The use of Context is correct. Your just a moron.
Oh please.”Your” is not the same as “You’re”>>>
Oh Puhleeze! The purpose of language is to communicate. Do you propose that there was a single person who read Brandon’s comment and didn’t know exactly what he meant?
Ths ntpckng abt spllng is jst slly gvn tht wth almst no vwls at all, mst ppl knw xctly wht ths sntnc says.
I asked Anthony to cross post this because I’ve put a lot of time into this collection. If readers find simple quotes from the emails I hope they will take the time to place them in the thread here. Just the number and a few lines. Big emails which require discussion will be discussed in time. There are 5000 emails and a limited attention span for the media — which obviously is reading. The team deserves what they get from this and I’m certainly not letting go of it easily.
ThePowerofX,
I brought up ‘context’ because of the false claim that the emails were out-of-context obviously well before they were read. I did make the attempt to only select emails which were truly contextually accurate taken one at a time. I doubt many of them came from the hacker’s release. However, if you take them as groups as I have placed them, would you concede that the groups give context exactly according to your definition thus supporting Anthony’s sharp titles and remarks?
It seems hard to imagine that the extra quotes saying the same things don’t provide any context.
clarification:
I doubt many of them came from the hacker’s release.
should say
I doubt many of them came from the selection highlighted in the email release.
@ ThePowerofX:
December 4, 2011 at 11:09 am
Are you part of the team as well? Nice try at hijacking the thread. If you want context look at the original emails quoted in the body of the original post. You want Discourse(from Latin discursus, meaning “running to and from”) you came to the correct place. If you want to be back in your echo chamber go to fakeclimate.fake
ThePowerofX says:
December 4, 2011 at 9:28 am
Context Discourse that surrounds a language unit and helps to determine its interpretation
ThePowerofX says:
December 4, 2011 at 11:09 am
Anthony Watts wrote: “The piece is by Jeff Id, please learn to read attributions before accusing others of interpretive problems”
But your annotation reads “He’s done a great job at collecting the relevant context.”
Nice try champ 🙂
It is telling that you dont blink at what the emails are actually saying..but make an orwellian attempt to make a word..into something else.
And exactly how many emails would give the subject matter “context” as a whole.
Is 5000 emails enough “context” for ya.
Not enough..I thought so..
Its better to say silent when baffled …
And once more..
“1/the parts of a written or spoken statement that precede or follow a specific word or passage, usually influencing its meaning or effect: 2.the set of circumstances or facts that surround a particular event, situation, etc.
Wil and changing my name to albertalad from here on in. says:
December 4, 2011 at 10:21 am
Here is my fathers website. Hope it helps.
http://drtimball.com/
Here is his latest interview on the Corbett Report,
http://www.corbettreport.com/interview-421-dr-tim-ball/
“putz”
WoW !!
Unusually harsh language !!
GOOD !
The quotes produced in Id’s post are wonderful. However, do not limit yourself to these. Go to Id’s site and do some exploring for some very rich contexts. He has a post on Briffa that is dynamite. Do not stop there. Go to climateaudit.org, Steve McIntyre’s website. He has made some posts in the last week that contain extended contexts, especially about paleo reconstructions. These posts make a knockdown case against The Team’s claim that they had high confidence in the paleo evidence for the hockey stick and similar graphs.
davidmhoffer says:
December 4, 2011 at 11:28 am
Another excellent post by Mr. D.M. Hoffer.
The powerofZ; If that is the best you can come up with, I am hoping you are not a product of our Uni’s. You reveal more than you realize in your posts.
Thanks to Jeff Id for his efforts. Much appreciated.
Jeff, I think you may have quoted #4755 out of context.
The only reason I know that is because I happened to read that particular email just yesterday.
David Ball says:
Thanks – I’m on that site now. Good stuff there. Stuff folks on the street desperately need.
Peter
How so? Because it seems less nefarious than it sounds when you read the whole thing? I re-read and don’t see anything wrong with the quote. Keep in mind that it would be impossible to read this post if I had copied every email in its entirety. The point of 4755 was to reduce the content of the previous AR4 pass and sell the right message of the IPCC.
If people would like to critique the context, feel free but this isn’t about one email, it is about a large selection. However, if the context of an individual email must be critiqued, please say why it is wrong. I’ll remove it from the group if you convince me.
In the meantime, feel free to add more to the group.
All the quotes taken together provide the context. The scientists are being scientists, but only between themselves, therefore treating the rest of us like second class citizens. They are not sharing the uncertainties with us, because they think they know what is best. The message is the priority.
One problem with doing all this is making the assumption that the rest of us are not as smart and clever.
Why should the tax payer fund you if you are engaging in mass fraud? Thankfully, we are smart enough to answer this one.
I think the two email quotes Jeff listed that are the most powerful are the two by Osborne from #4007 and #2347. (Emphasis added.)
Applying a “completely artificial adjustment” means that the resultants have no relationship at all to what the original data was. It is almost universal among the general public that they trust the numbers that go into the graphs the public sees. After all, these are scientists, and scientists don’t just make up numbers! This quote shows that, after all, this particular gaggle of scientists do, in fact, make up numbers.
This is 100% unbelievable, that scientists would have such balls. They are not only nudging the numbers a bit. When they have a large group of data that they don’t agree with, or that doesn’t agree with them, they don’t even bother pretending to use the data. Instead, they just REMOVE the inconvenient numbers “set all post-1960 values to missing.” This is ERASING the numbers, as if they never existed.
Then, based on the surrounding data (which they deem acceptable), they use one of their algorithms – “the method,” whatever that is – to “infill,” to extrapolate the now “missing” data into large swaths of FAKE data. The fake data is then treated as if it is real. So, they end up with a dataset that is part real and part fraudulent. No wonder Mike Mann doesn’t want to turn over his dataa and methodology to anyone with the capacity to replicate his work. And no wonder Phil Jones “lost his homework” in his now legendary incapacity to record what he did or where he stored his data (alone a reason to consider him a terrible scientist).
“Crap science,” these people call the efforts of those who just want to see what is behind the science they produce.
Crap science, indeed.
Dave Springer says:
December 4, 2011 at 11:03 am
what is truly offensive is that these clowns have been getting away with things a second grader knows are wrong and then they get mad when they are called on it.
Seeking context, I’m still very new to these issues and will appreciate any help here….
I think the email linked below is extremely ‘interesting’ for what it says about the state of Wigley and ‘the science’ just before Kyoto and before MBH98.
i.e., Wigley, at least, is still able to distinguish sharply between the scientific work and the “policy” pronouncements. In terms of the development of these issues, has anyone looked at the motivation and impact for MBH98 with respect to ‘policing’ scientists rather than the public? To what extent did MBH1998 serve to create and enforce a new “consensus” among scientists that was implausible even a year or two before?
I do realize that Wigley did sneer at “skeptics” at the end of this email, and that he was not necessarily opposed to massive govt actions etc. He emphasizes the needs to better understand costs and benefits, competing proposals, etc., and even that theme is toxic to the CAGW activists.
Still, it is interesting to me to see someone central to these controversies able to distinguish clearly (back in 1997 anyway) between the ‘science’ and one’s policy ‘opinions’ about how to respond.
[1997 email]: Tom Wigley blasts 11 climate scientists organizing a pre-Kyoto statement of what he regards as a dubious and “dishonest” linkage of previous IPCC work to a call for “immediate control” of emissions. One can see Wigley responding to what he regards as a politicized and “dishonest” attempt to claim the previous IPCC work had specific policy implications.
088047672
From: Tom Wigley
To: REDACTED, REDACTED, Klaus Hasselmann , Jill Jaeger , REDACTED, REDACTED, REDACTED,
REDACTED, REDACTED, REDACTED
Subject: Re: ATTENTION. Invitation to influence Kyoto.
Date: Tue, 25 Nov 1997 11:52:09 -0700 (MST)
Reply-to: Tom Wigley
Cc: Mike Hulme , REDACTED
Dear Eleven,
I was very disturbed by your recent letter, and your attempt to get
others to endorse it. Not only do I disagree with the content of
this letter, but I also believe that you have severely distorted the
IPCC “view” when you say that “the latest IPCC assessment makes a
convincing economic case for immediate control of emissions.” In contrast
to the one-sided opinion expressed in your letter, IPCC WGIII SAR and TP3
review the literature and the issues in a balanced way presenting
arguments in support of both “immediate control” and the spectrum of more
cost-effective options. It is not IPCC’s role to make “convincing cases”
for any particular policy option; nor does it. However, most IPCC readers
would draw the conclusion that the balance of economic evidence favors the
emissions trajectories given in the WRE paper. This is contrary to your
statement….
…. [more at link]
Jeff,
Here’s the relevant part:
Reading the whole thing, particularly the bolded bits, I believe Overpeck was simply giving Ricardo advice on how to create a short summary from a long paper, whilst retaining its meaning.
Steve Garcia says:
December 4, 2011 at 1:41 pm
Excellent work! Keep it up. People who have trouble seeing “the context” in your post are blind to context or pretending to be.
Regarding the released, but still encrypted e-mails.
The authors, after climategate 1.0 probably t hought that was all there was, so their white-wash investigations were adequate.
Now that there is a second release, which provide a great deal of CONTEXT, they cannot adopt the same tactic as they know there is more to come … and they MUST have some idea what, as they were the authors and recipients of those e-mails.
It may be interesting to watchany investigations (there won’t be any) into this release, or the obvious lies given to the previous investigations. Phil, DID INDEED, delete e-mails.
Following up on my previous comment, it would be interesting if anyone notices “signs of sweating” from any of these miscreants. Not sure what to look for, though. perhaps a shuffling of positional feet. However, I expect continued wagon-circling … they will not believe, as the team is in control… the FOIA agent would not get the secret code out.
Probably got their heads in the “plane crash” position.
For anyone interested, here are some choice quotes from Climategate1.
RealClimate ( a Fenton Communications/ Environmental Media Services production)
Love the attribution. Hope it is maintained to give a regular reminder of the real opportunistic political and financial power seekers behind their pseudo Climate Front blog.
Robert of Ottawa says:
December 4, 2011 at 2:11 pm
Mann has been sweating bullets for months. He and his fellows at the University of Virginia have pulled out all the stops to prevent a release of Mann’s emails while at the University of Virginia.
Good job with this Jeff! Are you acquainted with anyone in the public relations business? This really should be organized into a press release to as many media outlets as possible. It might need a little editorial tightening and should be accompanied by an extensive contact list of significant skeptics who are willing to provide context for the context for the mostly scientifically illiterate journalism community It would be nice if in the massive present day media there were a few folks who could match what Jules Bergman did for science and technology journalism at ABC for over 25yrs, unfortunately nowadays no one is even close. For most of them, even if you provide them with people who have the information the public needs to know, they’re too ignorant or biased to construct the simple questions required to bring that info out.
Despite all that we need to keep the pressure on them, so they can’t just sit back comfortably and regurgitate the Team’s lame excuses, as they have for years.
Peter says:
December 4, 2011 at 2:01 pm
“The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid what’s included and what is left out.”
What part of scientific method do you not understand? There is no “main message” in scientific method. What one does is evaluate the evidence as best as one can, present the evidence fully and its impact for the hypotheses, and let the cards fall where they may.
“Let the cards fall where they may” is that part of scientific method known as objectivity. “Having a main message” is that part of subjectivity that expresses the corruption that pervades the body of The Team’s so-called science.
Wil and changing my name to albertalad from here on in. says:
December 4, 2011 at 10:21 am
….. We have yet to produce any earth history of our own – hence we spend all of our time playing within Mann’s and company universe. How can we win playing in another’s fake world? Hopefully some one here can prove me wrong.
____________________________________
Actually Lucy Skywalker has done it. http://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/
Probably the best illustration is her great flick graph: http://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Science/Images/ice-HS/noaa_gisp2_icecore_anim_adj.gif
Check on the right hand side for the skeptic blogs under Skeptical Views.
Digging in the Clay for example is by a Geologist. http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/
And at the top you have references: http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/
There is a heck of a lot of information connected to this website. It is really mind boggling when you think about it.
Not exactly criminal, but…
#4758
“I decided”??? Holy crap, Batman!
I can’t help but comment further, though…
Tell me there are actually SOME standards in climatology. A researcher like Osborne can just decide on his own, “I will go this way, not that way.” Huh????!!!
This may be one of the things that we haven’t exactly put our finger on – that each researcher is just making all kinds of independent calls on how to handle each situation. Yes, Mann was/is trying to impose HIS decisions on everyone, but as any CG2.0 reader can see, that was/is going over like a lead balloon.
If they have no standards, every reconstruction or present-day paper they author should be looked at with a fine-toothed comb. (Supposedly, that is what peer-review is all about, but when a core clique which dominates the reviewer population is so mono-minded about humans being the one and only cause, peer-review will fail.) How does anyone else determine if the decisions that author made are valid?
In any new science field, I imagine that it takes time for standards to take hold. But at the same time, the participants should be at least TRYING to get standards started and tested out, not just emailing that, “Oh, BTW, I did this (or that) to the data.”
But I think one of the things that upsets so many of us is that they don’t seem to HAVE any standards, because we expect science to be codified to a high extent, fencing in the researchers, so that they don’t go off like loose cannons, in all directions. Loose cannons would be BAD for the science.
Duh.
Theo Goodwin says:
December 4, 2011 at 2:58 pm
Who said anything about the scientific method?
I’m merely pointing out that we shouldn’t be giving people ammunition to accuse us of quoting things out of context.
Steve Garcia says:
December 4, 2011 at 1:41 pm
Absofreakinlutely! This has been the basis of most folks’ distrust of the AGW meme (by most folk, I mean those who can be bothered to check it out for themselves – which of course means us skeptics!)
It needs to be repeated time and time again – and preferably far and wide so Joe Public can eventually get a grasp of the scam that’s been perpetrated! If the data was there, if the data was correct and IF the data really really showed catastrophic GW – NONE of this skepticism would be happening or necessary!!!
The real (raw) data is unavailable, the actual methods, codes, algorithms are not fully available, but yet the conclusions of there nefarious ‘work’ is forcefully and continuously thrown down our throats! Feck the lot of them I say – they are treating us like sheep and religious sheep at that! Relying on ‘Faith’ in the belief or ‘theory’ has no place in science and certainly no place in defining the life or death situation of billions of people!
OT / Anybody running a book on who will crack first and hang the head and “cry uncle” to try and extricate himself / herself from the poo before they are wiped out completely, scientifically speaking.
i suspect it’s coming and soon!
Joe
“@Brandon Caswell
The use of Context is correct. Your just a moron.
Oh please.”Your” is not the same as “You’re” …”
I agree that my usage of of your was incorrect in that situation. Notice how I didn’t try to claim some lame excuse of why I was still right even though I was exposed to have made an error. But my Dictionary definition of Context was still correct and Powerof X was still wrong. My point still stands that he was a moron.
Steve Garcia;
Tell me there are actually SOME standards in climatology. A researcher like Osborne can just decide on his own, “I will go this way, not that way.” Huh????!!!>>>
OK, I’m telling you there are some standards in climatology. For example:
1. Hide the Decline: If your data shows a decline in temperature instead of an increase, you may discard the “decline” part and replace it with something else. Standard developed by Phil Jones and Michael Mann.
2. Mike’s Nature Trick: If you don’t want people to know that you replaced some of the data with other data, you can do it via a “trick” first used in the journal Nature where you hide where one data set ends and another begins by truncating them in the middle of a spaghetti graph where all the lines cross. Standard proposed and implemented by Michael Mann.
3. The “One Tree” standard. That’s a very complex procedure where you take tree ring data from hundreds of trees and then construct a 1000 year global temperature reconstruction with 50% of the data coming from one tree. In Siberia. Credit for this standard goes to Keith Briffa.
4. Predict that warming will cause catastrophe, and then with much wailing, wringing of hands, and gnashing of teeth, advise that you cannot find where the heat that you believe to be causing the warming actually is in the measurements, and declare it as a “fact” that the heat is missing, and it is a “travesty” that it is missing. Evidence that a catstrophe is not actually going to happen is a travesty, as claimed by Kevin Trenberth.
5. When articles appear showing that the heat that is missing is not in fact missing at all, just escaping to space, the editor of the publishing journal should be forced to resign (despute not being able to cite one specific flaw in the offending paper’s science) and should apologise personally to Kevin Trenberth. Kevin Trenberth is particularly proud of this standard, and has openly bragged about it.
6 When the temperature record shows that it was warmer in the 1930’s than it is now, you may adjust the temperature record until the 1930’s is cooler than it is now. You may do the same with the Medieval Warming Period, in fact, this is not just a standard, but a requirement. Cintributors to this standard include James Hansen, Michael Mann, Phil Jones and many others.
There are many more standards, but I think those are perhaps my favourites. Perhaps others would like to add more?
David Davidovics says:
December 4, 2011 at 9:43 am
It will be quite entertaining to see how warmists contort themselves to either ignore, or defend the indefensible in the weeks ahead…..
_____________________________________
The path has already been set. A quick blurb within the first day saying “nothing to see here move along” (Stolen e-mails and out of context quotes) Followed by the tame media hyping Durban. And to top it off idiotic pieces like that from Black at the BBC with no comments allowed containing very “CONVINCING” solid peer reviewed work based on ACTUAL OBSERVATIONS and not models….
Looks like the team is really going for broke here to get this “Binding Agreement” shoved down the collective throats of the world. It remains to be seen if world leaders decide to commit political suicide or not.
ThePowerofX says:
December 4, 2011 at 11:09 am
Anthony Watts wrote: “The piece is by Jeff Id, please learn to read attributions before accusing others of interpretive problems”
But your annotation reads “He’s done a great job at collecting the relevant context.”
==================================================================
‘ThePowerofX’ … the power of the unknown, or in your case, the power of the unknowing 🙂
Peter,
Thanks for the explanation. I see your point that you could take it that way but you have missed mentioning two things. They weren’t editing a long paper, they were preparing the IPCC draft and trying to figure out what science should be left in or out. The second point is that in order to make the decision they discussed this method:
“The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid what’s included and what is left out. ”
Does that sound political or scientific? Yes a weak argument can be made for context, but if you read the other emails, the context of this quote is clear. There are literally hundreds of ‘weak’ quotes as well as stronger ones which all require discussion for context. So when you see a short quote which has somewhat less damning implications as a stand alone than ‘hide the decline’, perhaps it is reasonable to consider the environment it exists in.
I’m unconvinced that this is out of context at all but am willing to admit that people looking for a weak spot in this post might pick this email.
Jeff Id:
Your compilation is good and useful work. Having checked your exrtracted quotations against their individual source emails, I intend to make use of them. Thankyou.
Richard
Dave Wendt,
The only person I know is Anthony Watts. I would love to see this story (CG2 not just this post) get more play and am willing to help anyone who can get that done. I tried to compile short quotes here which deliver the message of Climategate while attempting to avoid the pitfall of out of context quotes. I also avoided giving my opinions in the middle and let the big dog’s do the talking.
Richard S Courtney
Thanks.
Remember how Phil Jones initially thought the original Climategate was about Yamal. Well blogger Ripper at Climate Audit has highlighted a very interesting mail from Hantemirov, one of the scientists responsible for collecting the Yamal data.
Mail no. 1553 From Keith Briffa to Ian Harris
“copy to a safe place!!and leave original there”
“According to reconsructions most favorable conditions for tree growth have been marked during 5000-1700 BC. At that time position of tree line was far northward of recent one… . Significant shift of the polar tree line to the south have been fixed between 1700 and 1600 BC. …During last 3600 years most of reconstructed indices have been varying not so very significant. Tree line has been shifting within 3-5 km near recent one. Low abundance of trees has been fixed during 1410-1250 BC and 500-350 BC. Relatively high number of trees has been noted during 750-1450 AD. There are no evidences of moving polar timberline to the north during last century…”
http://foia2011.org/index.php?id=1503
This is of course before the CRU team got hold of and ‘tortured’ the data to produce the preferred IPCC results.
And it’s the Yamal data that CRU are determined not to cede to in Steve McIntyre’s FOI requests.
http://climateaudit.org/2011/09/19/appeal-of-ueas-yamal-foi-refusal/
ThePowerofX says:
December 4, 2011 at 9:28 am
=================
Care to explain your comment, I await with bated breath, your elucidation.
re: Hantemirov and Yamal
I’m new to most of this, so maybe it’s a dumb question, but have approaches been made to Hantemirov directly for the data? Is there some reason he’s also not willing to share his data further, such as being under influence of The Team??
Peter says:
December 4, 2011 at 3:15 pm
“Who said anything about the scientific method?
I’m merely pointing out that we shouldn’t be giving people ammunition to accuse us of quoting things out of context.”
The larger context is scientific method. Scientists eat, drink, and breathe scientific method. Scientific method permits no “main message” or any message at all. Scientific method is boring as hell and it is designed that way. If you are talking “main message,” you are not talking science.
I observe that another group that repeatedly needs to claim that incriminating statements are out of context is politicians.
Jeff Id’s essay “Paleoclimate – Rotten to the Core” is about a series of emails among “The Team” who are discussing various familiar issues in paleoclimatology. The context is extensive and clear as a bell. I recommend this essay, found at his website, to everyone interested in this post by Jeff.
Science is about the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. These emails indicate a cynical attitude towards truth, and these emails do not include Mann’s, which I feel are the worst.
I greatly appreciate the comments of people who are less hot-tempered than I am. However the danger lies in becoming as cynical as these so-called scientists. Truth is not a thing to be cynical about, especially when you consider the alternative is to be led by ignorance, which leads to folly, which can lead to death and destruction, if not checked.
These people don’t respect the truth. They needed to be drummed out of the hallowed halls of science. I said that five years ago, two years ago, and again today.
The person who leaked these emails did so at great personal risk, and faces daily danger. He has earned the rage of people who care more for carbon credits than truth, who care more for greed than truth, who care more for power than truth, and who, I fear, would not deem the person who leaked these emails worth a scrap of kindness, compassion and mercy, and instead would do everything possible to destroy him.
In fact, the person who leaked these emails is a modern day Paul Revere. He is risking all he has to alert you, to wake you from your sleep. He is telling you, “Danger is coming! Danger is coming!”
Don’t go back to bed. It’s time to make a stand.
Just been over to RC. Their attempts at damage control remind of one “Frank Drebin” from the Naked Gun movies
Jeff Id
“The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid what’s included and what is left out. ”
I’m unconvinced that this is out of context at all but am willing to admit that people looking for a weak spot in this post might pick this email.>>>
Jeff, it might be the easiest to attack, but this email represents the context perfectly. The CG emails are chalk full of plots to suppress contrary evidence and promote cherry picked data in support of “the cause”. It is evident to all who spend anytime on the subject that the IPCC conclusions were made in advance, and the studies that supported that conclusion promoted above all others even when it was commonly known by “the team” that the studies were deeply flawed or outright wrong.
The “trick” was to “hide the decline”. How is that different from the “trick” to “decide” what the main message is and use that to guide what is “included and what is left out”? This is the common thread throughout the climategate emails. They decided first on the results, and then chose to publish the papers that supported the pre-chosen results while suppressing all papers that contradicted the pre-chosen results.
This email isn’t out of context. It IS the context!
Yep Jeff people looking for a weak spot in this post have picked this email
http://solarcycle24com.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=globalwarming&thread=1863&page=1
How come you didn’t see the proper context of the quote yourself when you presumably read the email?
And more importantly on what basis did you decide to quote the two sentences you did and none of the surrounding ones?
Do you agree that if you had posted this:
“I think the hardest, yet most important part, is to boil the section down to 0.5 pages. In looking over your good outline, sent back on Oct. 17 (my delay is due to fatherdom just after this time), you cover ALOT. The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid what’s included and what is left out. For the IPCC, we need to know what is relevant and useful for assessing recent and future climate change. Moreover, we have to have solid data – not inconclusive information.”
it would have sounded far less scandalous to readers than just posting this:
“The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid what’s included and what is left out. For the IPCC, we need to know what is relevant and useful for assessing recent and future climate change.”
which is a darn sight better than the hacker who just posted this:
“The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid what’s included and what is left out.”
nomnom;
The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guide what’s included and what is left out. For the IPCC, we need to know what is relevant and useful for assessing recent and future climate change. Moreover, we have to have solid data – not inconclusive information.”>>>
How, exactly, does one decide on the main message… and then AFTER that, choose “solid data”? How about discarding inconclusive information, analyzing the solid data, and THEN deciding what message that provides?
Is that was this expanded version of the email says? NO! It says draw your conclusion, then back it up with solid data. Having chosen the “main message” (read “conclusion”) in advance, it becomes a simply matter to decide what data (solid OR inconclusive) may simply be left out in support of the pre-determined “message”.
That’s not science. But, sadly, in this case, it IS context.
I am going for striking off another Overpeck one:
“#1922 Johnathan Overpeck – Need to convince readers that there really has been an increase in knowledge – more evidence. What is it?”
This was in response to Jansen Eystein sending Overpeck some preliminary text that began “The TAR pointed to the “exceptional warmth of the late 20th century, relative to the past 1000 years”. Subsequent evidence reinforces this conclusion.”” (#3456). But Eystein does not back up the “Subsequent evidence” assertion.
So Overpeck replies “what about being more specific (at least a little) about what the “subsequent evidence” is. Is there really anything new that gives us more confidence?” (#3456)
At this point Keith Briffa jumps in with email #1922 talking about various things, but doesn’t provide the “subsequent evidence” Overpeck asked for.
That’s when Overpeck asks again with the quoted text “Would you pls send a new bullet that has your suggested changes below, and that includes something like: Subsequent evidence, including x, y and z, reinforces this conclusion.” Need to convince readers that there really has been an increase in knowledge – more evidence. What is it? The bullet can be longer if needed.”
Quite clearly Overpeck does not know what this evidence is. He’s been told it exists by Eystein and he’s basically asking them to provide it. They need to justify it and convince the reader of it.
nomnom;
OK, now I’m getting upset. I get acerbic when I’m upset. Don’t have a clue if that’s how you spell acerbic, but I think you will get my drift regardless.
Keith Briffa – the message was that tree ring data shows the earth to be warming up. He took hundreds of tree cores, discarded most of them, then used the remaining 12 (yes 12!) to build a reconstruction showing the earth to be warming up. Upon closer inspection, 50% of the data came from ONE tree. That’s what it means to “decide on the main message and use that to guide what’s included and what is left out”
Michael Mann – built a computer program that combs through data and statistically weights hockey shaped series heavier than any other data so that a hockey stick graph is always produced. That’s what it means to “decide on the main message and use that to guide what’s included and what is left out”
Phil Jones and Michael Mann – snipped decades of tree ring data off their reconstructions because it declined right when they were trying to demonstrate an increase. Without saying so, they completed the “trick” to “hide the decline” by truncated the tree ring data that said the opposite of what they wanted and replaced it instead with data that did show what they wanted. This is what it means to “decide on the main message and use that to guid what’s included and what is left out”
Even expanded to its full text, that email IS the context.
nomnom;
I just read my last post, and, sadly, I promised ascerbic and all I delivered was facts and logic that tie back to the original assertion. I must be getting tired, not my best work. How about you try another nonsense argument that completely obscures the context of the climategate emails by trying to pretent that this specific instance of choosing a foregone conclusion, discarding contrary data, and including “solid data” but from one side of the argument only? How many are there in the CG emails that follow that exact approach? dozens? hundreds? How about you go through every one of them and prepare a defense explaining how each of them was really innocent and sincere on a case by case basis? Give it a shot. I’ll sit idly by waiting for you to defend each and every one of them, giggling myself stupid as you do all the work of assembling the evidence to the contrary for me. Then, with my ascerbic wit, I shall demolish each and every one, exposing the awfull truth as I do so, that the “science” was nothing but a charade where the “message” was chosen first, and the data to “prove” it carefully selected afterward.
In the event that you come up with any emails that I cannot debunk in this fashion, I shall declare them out of scope for this discussion as they do not fit my foregone conclusion that I can debunk all of them, and so obviously should not have been cited by you in the first place.
Jeff Skilling would be proud to see his ‘theoretical-value’ accounting has made its way into climate science. Smartest Guys in the Room is a great documentary about Enron produced by members of the media who clearly did their homework. My question is, where the hell are these people now? Too bad there isn’t a corporation involved and an executive to hang at the end of this or there would have been tons more media coverage.
davidmhoffer: “How, exactly, does one decide on the main message… and then AFTER that, choose “solid data”?”
The email doesn’t say the main message is decided before choosing solid data. Ricardo Villalba is the one writing it and in his first draft he’s written too much. Overpeck is effectively telling him to focus on what’s important to get it down to 0.5 pages.
Overpeck is giving Ricardo Villalba advice that to fit a lot of information into a small space (half a page in this case) you need to start by deciding what you are writing (the main message) and then stick to that (ie don’t wade off into unrelated territory).
further down in the email Overpeck elaborates:
“So, the trick is for you to lead us (Dick, Keith, me – maybe Julie – ENSO expert) to produce 0.5 pages of HIGHLY focused and relevant stuff. Can you take another crack at your outline and then tell us what you need? Thanks!”
David Falkner;
My question is, where the hell are these people now? Too bad there isn’t a corporation involved and an executive to hang at the end of this or there would have been tons more media coverage.>>>
EXACTLY!
Corporations are inherantly and obviously evil, and hence the members of the media line up in droves to expose them.
But government funded climate scientists are working for the most noble of causes, the greater good for mankind. Hence, they are wrapped in their Cloak of Morality which is impervious to investigation by anyone except paid oil industry lobbyists.
(Unless you actually open your eyes and take a look, in which case the silly bu**ers turn out to be emperors that are stark naked.)
Here is a current MM Wall Street Journal letter taken “out of context:” http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204449804577068211662483248.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLEThirdBucket
The whining is louder than ever, and those nasty old oil companies are back at it again, along with other villains du jour.
nomnom;
The email doesn’t say the main message is decided before choosing solid data.>>>
Oh? It doesn’t? Allow me to quote:
“The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guide what’s included and what is left out.”
Let’s get the order of events straight shall we?
1. Decide on the main message.
2. Use that as a guide to what’s included and what’s left out.
That would be the exact same approach that Briffa took with the “one tree” reconstruction, that Michael Mann took with the hockey stick reconstruction, that Jones and Mann took with the “hide the decline” reconstruction, that Kevin Trenberth took with the “missing heat” which was a “travesty”.
Can you explain why missing heat that would mean catastrophe is not imminent after all should be a “travesty”? Allow me to explain.
The “message” had been decided. Anything that didn’t fit the message was to be left out. So intense was the pressure to produce results that fit the message, that Kevin Trenberth considered it a “travesty” that he could not produce the data to prove the earth was going to warm up and kill billions? How is it that these (EXPLETIVE DELETIVE) pretend scientists got so wrapped up in the “message” that the data showing billions would not die after all was considered a BAD thing?
Allow me to repeat the sentence for you once more time, and this time read it in the context of Briffa’s one tree, Mann’s fake computer program, Jones and Mann’s hide the decline and Trenberth’s travesty:
“The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guide what’s included and what is left out. ”
CONTEXT!
Here’s another POV to try on for size.
There are two choices: either the writer lets errors and “slapdash” grammar and spelling through, and makes the readers (thousands, hundreds, or dozens) do the work of clarifying it, each and every one of them, for themselves — or he/she does it up front, sparing all the others the effort and time and potential confusions.
Which is more efficient and considerate?
davidmhoffer
Perhaps an analogy would help you.
If you were told your comment was too long and needs to be shortened to 4 sentences how would you go about doing that? Would you pick a random set of 4 sentences? I doubt it.
You would surely decide what your main message is and use that to determine which sentences to include.
It’s just good writing practice. No scandal at all.
To be honest I think you are too emotionally involved in this. Now you admit to reading the quote in the “context” of an entirely different email by a different author and on a different subject. I gather that you do this because you want to reach a certain conclusion which you can’t get from the email itself.
Remember here that Overpeck isn’t Briffa. Overpeck isn’t Mann. You shouldn’t just recklessly assume the worst of someone just because of a dislike for someone else entirely.
Brian H;
Which is more efficient and considerate?>>>
Which is more important? Correct spelling or correct facts?
dont like my righting, dont reed it. I get a charje outa peepul who take me to tasc abowt insayne snippets of trivia such as when two uze “it’s” and when to use “its”. I pefer “itz” for both use cases.
Itz my contention that if all anyone can find fault with in my writing is my speling, then itz obvee-us that my fakts have prevayled. Thnks for making my poynte obvee-us, itz much appreshee-ated. Itz a reel pleshur discusssing thees things wit yu.
Anyone who had trouble understanding the above, even for a moment, please advise. Itz my plan to count the nay sayers and see if they represent a substantive portion of the readership, which might well compell me to revise my thoughts in the matter. If indeed, I have under estimated the proportion of readers whom are unable to assimilate the message as intended, I shall reconsider my position.
nomnom;
You would surely decide what your main message is and use that to determine which sentences to include.>>>
No. I would examine the data (all the data) to see what conclusion it supports. I would then summarize what the data says. Get it? Data analysis first? Conclusions second?
nomnom;
To be honest I think you are too emotionally involved in this. Now you admit to reading the quote in the “context” of an entirely different email by a different author and on a different subject. I gather that you do this because you want to reach a certain conclusion which you can’t get from the email itself.>>>
Here is what I got from the email:
1. Decide on the main message.
2. Use that as a guide to what’s included and what’s left out.
How did I get that? Well let’s quote the message ONE MORE TIME:
“The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guide what’s included and what is left out.”
This is the constant and continuous message that is threaded throughout the entire ClimateGate email collection. Conclusions first. Supporting data include. Contrary data discard. You say I can’t judge Overpeck by the actions of Jones, Mann, Briffa and Trenberth? OK, let’s start there. Is that an admission on your part that what Jones, Mann, Briffa and Trenberth did was dishonest, misleading, and unprofessional in the first place? Are you admitting that these men lied to the world? Did they, in fact:
1. Decide on the main message.
2. Use that as a guide to what’s included and what’s left out.
??
nomnom;
To be honest I think you are too emotionally involved in this.>>>
Darn right I’m emotional, and I wish more people would be. The more emails come out, the more it becomes clear that anyone involved with the writing of IPCC AR4 knew damn well it was a sham. With all the bullying, manipulation, and conspiring taking place, how could anyone on the front lines NOT know what was going on?
I’ll allow that Overpeck may possibly be innocent (though I doubt it) in this specific instance. But that he didn’t know what the game was and how it was to be played or face the wrath of “the team”? Sorry, but with as much emotion as I can muster, BULLSH*T.
There were those who protested by resigning, those who just went along, and those who were the bullies and the architects of this facade. Which group did Overpeck belong to? He didn’t resign, so one of the other two. If he wasn’t one of the bullies, then I can only make this observation:
“All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.”
Be he guilty for turning a blind eye, or for being an active participant, he be guilty nonetheless.
Wil and changing my name to albertalad from here on in. says:
“Climate change international conferences race ahead with no mention of leaked “emails” dissenting studies, nor previous world climate history ever playing any part on any national or international body, or news organizations. or even enter the dialogue.”
And each year there is less and less support or “results”. The shear amount of bureaucratic infrastructure is indeed daunting and not going to disappear overnight. But, thanks to what really amounts to a handful of skeptics, progress is being made.
Hope is alive!
1) Carbon trading in USA shut down.
2) Cost of Carbon Credits dropping worldwide.
3) Divergence from models continues unabated and inexplicably. (Long on excuses, short on explanations IMO)
4) Nothing of consequence accomplished @ the last few COP(s), Durban has barely even made the news.
5) Kyoto dying after an embarrassingly ineffective life.
6) Skepticism growing amongst the population at large.
7) WUWT awarded 2011 Bloggie for Best Science Blog!
8) RC still hasn’t learned how not to turn “someone with doubts” into “someone with suspicions”, which usually leads to becoming a skeptic after looking into it for themselves (especially among the scientifically literate).
9) Those that profess to be the most concerned about CAGW still don’t ACT like they’re concerned about CAGW.
10) The entire CAGW meme is imploding thanks to slow but sure actual science being done in incremental steps such as Landsea’s “the overall impact of global warming on hurricanes is currently negligible and likely to remain quite tiny even a century from now” (even though he did have to pay homage to the meme in order to get that published); credibility fiascos like climategate(I&II); and the interdependence of the assertion that carbon dioxide emission reduction must be initiated on each element of the hypothesis i.e.: no action is required to reduce carbon dioxide emissions for “Benign Anthropogenic Global Warming”, “Catastrophic Natural Global Warming”, “Catastrophic Anthropogenic Regional Warming”, or “Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Cooling”.
“For the IPCC, we need to know what is relevant and useful for assessing recent and future climate change. Moreover, we have to have solid data – not inconclusive information.”
At first glance this would seem to put the context of “message” into that of relevancy as opposed to “the cause”, but then “inconclusive” is used instead of irrelevant. Information that is absolutely vital to assessing recent and future climate change could easily be inconclusive as well.
To omit inconclusive information is to assert a level of confidence that could be unwarranted. This to me puts the context of “message” into that of depicting a uniformity of information that isn’t necessarily there, on balance, “for the cause”.
For example, if a cop is writing a report and is asked to leave out “inconclusive” information would that be for the cause of convicting the suspect or for police report brevity?
It amazing how much back-biting goes on with the Climate Overlords, and how little they actually trust each other to stay on message. Should one step off the reservation the calamity that follows is right out of Junior High School. These are the best of the BEST? I think not. Why do they still have jobs funded from the public trough?
For context of IPCC report science summary or policy advocate: e-mail 0875
Raymond S. Bradley is confirming assignments: [emphasis mine]
Below is a list of deadlines, and a quick reminder about the
Chapter 8 contributions, that were agreed to.
Chapter 8 contributions:
IPCC related list of boxes/myths:
· Medieval warm period is warmer than late 20th century. (Hughes)
· 20th century is a rebound from the Little Ice Age (Bradley)
· Solar forcing is responsible for warming in recent decades (Bradley)
· Rates of change in the past are just as fast as recent decades
(Alverson)
· Climate is not sensitive to greenhouse gas forcing (Raynaud)
· Paleo-proxies do not support the instrumental period (Briffa)
· Biota can adapt to ongoing and projected rates of change (and
continue to support Humans) (Whitlock)
· Humans will benefit from global warming (Pedersen)
· The next ice age is on its way (duration of the holocene) (Labeyrie)
· We dont need to worry about surprises (Overpeck)
· Sea level will drop due to ice sheet thickening (Labeyrie)
· Human society is not vulnerable to future environmental changes
(Messerli)
· Technology will solve all potential problems (Overpeck)
· Human societies have not been influenced by environmental
variability (Oldfield)
@billy says:
All the quotes taken together provide the context. The scientists are being scientists, but only between themselves, therefore treating the rest of us like second class citizens.
+++++++
Actually they are behaving like priests who are having pangs of Doubt about their Cause. Some have even lost their faith but carry on to keep up appearances. The attitude towards the ignorant lesser mortals is that of a self-appointed clergy who have arrogated unto themselves the power to sentence people to heaven or hell. Yes, the context is priestcraft.
@Crispin in Waterloo
Yes a good ‘meme’ to circulate would be “High Priests of climate science” — I continually sense that I’m confronting ‘religious’ thinking as I read these emails and the various public comments of supposed scientists associated with the IPCC etc.
John West says:
December 4, 2011 at 10:42 pm
“For the IPCC, we need to know what is relevant and useful for assessing recent and future climate change. Moreover, we have to have solid data – not inconclusive information.”
Exactly, if “inconlusive data” is what exists, you cannot eliminate unless you have a clear political message to convey and that, as opposed to science, is your goal.
Jeff very good list and I thank you for the time and effort you have spent on it.
Your reply here to an out of context e-mail claim in the comments was well considered.
Interestingly, I have tried to look for one instance of an email in the past put up by the “team” which demonstrates where it was out of context. You get the blanket reply “out of context” but no empirical evidence of a specific e-mail. “Hide the decline” was the most celebrated one which was clearly in context when you read “The hockey stick illusion”.
Keep it going shambusters eventually the MSM will catch on.
Well organised and punchy selections Jeff Id. Lot of work there. What I’m really enjoying about reading all the Climategate 2.0 analysis on the gazillion hits truth guerillas sites (e.g., WUWT, CA, CR, etc) is the knowledge that this is being read and digested by senior policy makers in 1st world governments (I’m certain they are). Keep it up guys, put your soul power to the karmic wheel and rid the world of this vile strain of psuedo science so that real issues such as increasing food production to feed the world, cheap, reliable energy land degredation, health of waterways and coastal waters, etc, can get the prominence and funding they deserve.
regards from Australia, the land with politicians like Julia Gillard who are so stupid and gullible that they never checked the other side of the story before committing $$$ billions.
@names of albertalad
About making a climate history of the Earth, that’s going on for about two centuries, when Louis Aggasiz invented the ice ages, long before the thermageddon hype and there are probably loads of old pre-hype publications about climate, you just need to search for it.
Spencer Weart is trying to explain how the “global warming” was discovered in a very comprehensive but utterly flawed work. The main problem is with the interpretation of the paleo ‘proxies’; pollen and macrofossils may give some idea about the local climate of the past but when it comes to interpretation of temperature dependent isotope ratios, tree ring growth and ratios of chemicals, the affirming the consequent fallacy kicks in: when it snows the streets are white. The streets are white, hence it is snowing. We may be interpreting things totally wrong.
Consequently if beetles and mammoths are found in high arctic Siberia during the period we call the last glacial maximum (see ref) with ice all over north America and Scandinavia, we should understand that we know nothing, we are still on square one.
Ref: http://epic.awi.de/9052/1/Hub2004a.pdf
page 7 fig 6.
When the autopsy of this delusion is made by historians and blame is apportioned, the greatest share will be assigned to sins of omission: to the scientific community, which failed to speak up, and to the politicians who failed to give the other side a hearing.
They just wanted to be on the side that was winning, and that would be a vote-winner among the gullible. (And that sounded caring, and that enlarged the role of the government and that proved the need for governmental intervention on a global scale.) That’s what their compass is sensitive to, not to what’s true. AFTER the hot air balloon collapses, THEN they’ll start asking the warmist scientists the probing questions they should have asked at the start. Too late.
nomnom says:
December 4, 2011 at 6:24 pm
I wonder how you know what the proper context is?
First if we assume that deciding the message is simply understanding what all of the data is saying and then compiling it into a more succinct form you can get a condensed version. On reading the email the first time when they were released, I actually passed this one over based on exactly what nomnom and Peter are saying.
After reading further, a second interpretation seems viable. If the conclusions in the field are widespread and that is what makes the references and chapter too broad you might pick the papers you agree with and get rid of the papers you don’t.
I think that having no other information, both are valid interpretations. Of course there is nothing wrong with Overpeck choosing what goes in, that is why I wrote Overpeck picking what goes in. However, there is more information in this email. Chapter 6 is the paleo-climate chapter. We know from the science (and the rest of the emails – some quoted above) that paleoclmate is all over the place for results. So if the results are all over the place, yet the message Overpeck and friends believe in is clear, is it possible that they would exclude that which doesn’t agree with the team? Maybe even likely?
Why did I put it back in after initially rejecting it? Because the rest of this particular email discusses discrepancies in conclusions from the paleo record and how to deal with them.
Is it a smoking gun? Not really, but it is an interesting look into how the IPCC process proceeds. Taken alone, it shows a lot of opportunity for manipulation of conclusions and some of the thought process in how to reach them.
I think this table helps sum up the difference between sceptics and alarmists:
Sceptics Alarmists
Amount of Annual Funding: Very little // Huge
Funding by ‘Big Oil’: None, or almost none. // Substantial
Conflicts of Interest: None // Enormous
Economic cost: None // Gigantic
Credibility: Growing // Falling
Political Agenda: None // Huge
Political Leaning: Centre Right // Left, but with Benefits
Technical Papers’ Reviews: By peers // By pals
Contempt for Public: None // Repeatedly Demonstrated
Leaders’ Carbon Footprint: None/Very Little // Huge
Leaders’ Salaries/Fees: Low // Very high
Leaders’ Lifestyles: Modest // Often Very Lavish
Distortion of Data: Unknown/rare // Common Practice
‘Cherry Picking’ of Data: Rare // Common Practice
Conflicting Data Attitude: Discuss // Destroy/Ridicule
Support by Greenpeace: None // Very Strong
Willingness to Debate: Always Willing // Blanket Refusal
I think that’s enough for now – anyone disagree?
[Formatting tabs lost by WordPress. Robt]
It is easy enough, of course, to vilify climate scientists. But I would suggest that it is the politicisation of climate science, and the manoeuvrings of powerful vested interests, that has corrupted it – not that the climate scientists are inherently inferior, per se, to scientists in other disciplines. Had other disciplines experienced the misfortune of becoming the focus of an intense policy debate, I am sure that many scientists in those disciplines, too, would also have fallen over themselves to become propagandists for one ideological position or another.
Version 2 I think this table helps sum up the difference beween sceptics and alarmists:
Sceptics……………………………………Alarmists
Amount of Annual Funding: Very Little…………………………………..Huge
Funding by ‘Big Oil’: ………………..None, or almost none. …………………Substantial
Conflicts of Interest: ………………..None …………………………………………Enormous
Economic cost: ……………………….None………………………………………….Gigantic
Credibility: ……………………………..Growing………………………………………Falling
Political Agenda: …………………….None ………………………………………….Huge
Political Leaning: ……………………Centre Right ………………………………..Left, but with Benefits
Technical Papers’ Reviews:………By peers………………………………………By pals
Contempt for Public: ……………….None ………………………………………….Repeatedly Demonstrated
Leaders’ Carbon Footprint:……….None/Very Little …………………………..Huge
Leaders’ Salaries/Fees:……………Low…………………………………………….Very high
Leaders’ Lifestyles: …………………Modest ………………………………………Often Very Lavish
Distortion of Data: …………………..Unknown/rare ……………………………..Common Practice
‘Cherry Picking’ of Data: ………….Rare……………………………………………Common Practice
Conflicting Data Attitude: ………..Discuss ……………………………………….Destroy/Ridicule
Support by Greenpeace:…………None …………………………………………..Very Strong
Willingness to Debate: ……………Always Willing ………………………………Blanket Refusal
I think that’s enough for now – anyone disagree?
http://www.apegga.com/members/Publications/peggs/Web11_02/kyoto_pt.htm
In 2002 I was asked by my professional association (APEGGA) to write an article for our journal. I enlisted Dr. Sallie Baliunas, Harvard U. Astrophysicist, and Dr. Tim Patterson, Carleton U. Paleoclimatologist, as co-authors. The Pembina Institute was asked to write the opposing opinion.
Here is what Pembina said about context:
The only reliable approach is a review of the full body of research published in the peer-reviewed international scientific literature. Only such a process can allow each individual study and opinion to be placed in context, and a fully balanced picture of the current state of scientific knowledge to be arrived at. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, comprising the world’s most respected climate researchers, was set up by the world’s governments precisely for this purpose. In 2001, the work of the IPCC was endorsed by the U.S. National Academy of Science plus 17 other national science academies. The latter, in a joint statement in the journal Science, went further and urged governments to implement the Kyoto Protocol.
________________________________________________________________
The Climategate 1.0 and more recently the Climategate 2.0 emails make abundantly clear that the global warming movement (acolytes call it “the Cause”) is controlled by a cabal closely related to the IPCC that routinely practised scientific misrepresentation, academic intimidation, and criminal avoidance of FOI requests.
A trillion dollars has been squandered globally on the global warming scam, with no real supporting scientific evidence.
Here is what we predicted in our APEGGA article of 2002:
Kyoto has many fatal flaws, any one of which should cause this treaty to be scrapped.
1. Climate science does not support the theory of catastrophic human-made global warming – the alleged warming crisis does not exist.
2. Kyoto focuses primarily on reducing CO2, a relatively harmless gas, and does nothing to control real air pollution like NOx, SO2, and particulates, or serious pollutants in water and soil.
3. Kyoto wastes enormous resources that are urgently needed to solve real environmental and social problems that exist today. For example, the money spent on Kyoto in one year would provide clean drinking water and sanitation for all the people of the developing world in perpetuity.
4. Kyoto will destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs and damage the Canadian economy – the U.S., Canada’s biggest trading partner, will not ratify Kyoto, and developing countries are exempt.
5. Kyoto will actually hurt the global environment – it will cause energy-intensive industries to move to exempted developing countries that do not control even the worst forms of pollution.
6. Kyoto’s CO2 credit trading scheme punishes the most energy efficient countries and rewards the most wasteful. Due to the strange rules of Kyoto, Canada will pay the former Soviet Union billions of dollars per year for CO2 credits.
7. Kyoto will be ineffective – even assuming the overstated pro-Kyoto science is correct, Kyoto will reduce projected warming insignificantly, and it would take as many as 40 such treaties to stop alleged global warming.
8. The ultimate agenda of pro-Kyoto advocates is to eliminate fossil fuels, but this would result in a catastrophic shortfall in global energy supply – the wasteful, inefficient energy solutions proposed by Kyoto advocates simply cannot replace fossil fuels.
Reviewing all our eight points, I would suggest that our predictive track record is infinitely better than that of the IPCC and the global warming movement.
It is notable that all the dire predictions of the IPCC have failed to materialize – despite increased combustion of fossil fuels, there has been no significant global warming for about a decade.
I submit that most reasonable people will ultimately accept our first point:
“Climate science does not support the theory of catastrophic human-made global warming – the alleged warming crisis does not exist.”
Some of our other predictions did not fully materialize in Canada, because our country did not adopt all the lunacies of the Kyoto Protocol, but those countries that did so, particularly the UK and Western Europe, have experienced all these downsides of global warming mania.
Best wishes to all for the Holidays.
In a letter to the editor published in today’s Wall Street Journal, Michael Mann says his work is widely accepted, been verified and validated many times and his critics keep repeating old, debunked and invalid criticism of his work.
He also claims the emails are stolen and the hackers who stole them should be brought to justice. And yes, he calls skeptics deniers.
Climate Contrarians Ignore Overwhelming Evidence:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204449804577068211662483248.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLEThirdBucket
~More Soylent Green!
No need for press coverage. The PC-Progressive media is working with the PC-Progressive “scientists” in this operation.
When exposed, covert influence operators adopt the very effective tactic: Admit Nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter-accusations.
All that’s needed is a grand jury investigation of the massive fraud evident in the emails.
Just as PSU is now being investigated by unaffiliated professionals as regards its covered-up “investigation” of its perverted football coach, soon it will be investigated for its cover-up in its Mann “investigation.” Then Mann and company’s emails will be read “in-context.”
In the meantime, an insider’s point of view would be very helpful to the coming investigation.
Here’s details on research grant fraud issues, and a professional: http://howtoreportfraud.com/examples-of-federal-fraud/grant-fraud
dusgrammatòfòbia, dysgrammatòppòbia
from Answer.com fear of bad grammar.
More difficult is to determine the difference between net picking and being a watchman.
Well, this is what is indisputable to date –
Global temperature is rising, global temperature is declining.
Global sea level is rising, global sea level is declining.
Arctic and antarctic ice is rising, arctic and antarctic ice is declining.
Cases of severe weather are increasing, cases of severe weather are declining.
Etc, etc.
The one constant – The US Government Accounting Office (GAO) reports that federal climate spending has increased from $4.6 billion in 2003 to $8.8 billion in 2010 (a total of $106.7 billion over that period). This doesn’t include $79 billion more spent for climate change technology research, tax breaks for “green energy”, foreign aid to help other countries address “climate problems”; another $16.1 billion since 1993 in federal revenue losses due to green energy subsidies; or still another $26 billion earmarked for climate change programs and related activities in the 2009 “Stimulus Bill”. source – Forbes
Label me a sceptic if you must, but that seems like a great deal of money and quite a long time to get from square one to square one.
And the steganograhig key, only as MIME devices backup file.
Maube they did not know?
The key:
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?search=+______________________________________________________________
Regarding:
#4133 Johnathan Overpeck – IPCC review.
“what Mike Mann continually fails to understand, and no amount of references will solve, is that there is practically no reliable tropical data for most of the time period, and without knowing the tropical sensitivity, we have no way of knowing how cold (or warm)the globe actually got.”
I have a question about this. Has the Sargasso sea sediment cores been somehow discounted as not being accurate?
“The Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period in the Sargasso Sea”
Lloyd D. Keigwin
Science
New Series, Vol. 274, No. 5292 (Nov. 29, 1996), pp. 1504-1508
(article consists of 5 pages)
Published by: American Association for the Advancement of Science
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2892219
Peter wrote – “Reading the whole thing, particularly the bolded bits, I believe Overpeck was simply giving Ricardo advice on how to create a short summary from a long paper, whilst retaining its meaning.”
You have his words right in front of you and you can’t see it. Here is a hint: “inconclusive” is a valid scientific finding. Asking only for the conclusive studies is simply asking for the papers that draw a firm conclusion which, in the field of climate alarmism, are all coming from the “settled science” wing.
This is precisely why AR4 wound up jam packed full of WWF and Sierra Club “studies” that told us CONCLUSIVELY that the Himalayan Glaciers would melt, that the Brazilian Rain Forests would dry up, etc. etc.
In short, he asked for bull crap and he got bull crap.
Keith G says:
December 5, 2011 at 5:15 am
I would really like to think you may be correct – but it’s a bit of a long shot to simply dismiss the crap science as a form of deep politicisation. Sure, I can imagine many scientists ‘twisting’ words within conclusions to propagate more funding – but this is still outright deception and fraud, is it not?
If it’s a purely political or ideological motivation that drives the continuous psuedoscience production and mantra – then it is just as bad anyway – as such people cannot be called scientists. As a general rule science isn’t usually run by an agenda, it’s run only by findings, operating on the null hypothesis, and re-iterating the scientific method until one has a reasonably sound and well proven basic theory capable of withstanding almost every scientific attack imaginable.
I think there is a massive difference between a little ‘ear bending’ and ‘lobbying’ for funds compared to downright misrepresentation of (not so well documented or non-existant!) facts!
I suppose we will know who was pulling the strings when the various team members retire – those in luxury penthouses or ranches with CIA men on guard outside will likely have been offered and will require protection by their political masters….mind you, I can see them needing that protection very soon in any case! LOL
Taking your point a step further – surely, a responsible human being (even the most basic scientific nerd!) would wish to be absolutely sure his work was correct given the intense policy debate – leaving ideological differences aside – I don’t believe ANY real scientist likes to be WRONG !! thats based on something called professionalism – something clearly lacking if the CG1 and CG2 emails are anything to go on?
I bet Anonymous could crack FOIA.zip
As Huxley said, “Reason comes running, eager to ratify”
Darren
That will only happen if the alarmists want it cracked – anonymous, Assange and co are all broadly on favour of the CAGW meme as it fits their self-image as greens and their prejudice towards what they deludedly think is a conspiracy by big oil and the far right against all nice people.
wrt: Kev-in-Uk says:
December 5, 2011 at 1:19 pm
My post was not an apology for the actions of individual ‘scientists’. Merely a minor comment on the corrupting influence of politics on the normal processes of science. It was also intended as a reminder that other disciplines are not immune from this kind of crass distortion and, in consequence, it is always the behaviour of individual scientists that matters most. It has always been (and will always be) the responsibility of each and every one of us that we act with the utmost propriety – if only so that we can lie straight in bed at night.
This is a key post but it is crying out for date stamps.
If the quotes are to be put in context, then it is extremely important that they be put in historical context first.
So that we may know who said what to whom and when.
dmh;
It’s not me, specifically, you’re imposing on. It’s all of the thousands of readers of the blog.
I repeat that your content is generally superb.