For those of you who don’t know of the blog Bishop Hill, let me say that he is a succinct and careful writer who has earned praise from many (including myself and Steve McIntyre) in taking a difficult niche subject such as the Hockey Stick and paleoclimatology and condensed into into a readable form for the layman. He’s also writing a book about it called: The Hockey Stick Illusion
In his latest post, Climate Cuttings 33, he gives a list of interesting issues he’s identified. I’ve reproduced it below for WUWT readers to consider. Be sure to visit his blog and have a look and drop an encouraging word. – Anthony
If you are interested in more on global warming material, check out Caspar and the Jesus Paper and The Yamal Implosion, or check out the forthcoming book.
General reaction seems to be that the CRUgate emails are genuine, but with the caveat that there could be some less reliable stuff slipped in.
In the circumstances, here are some summaries of the CRUgate files. I’ll update these as and when I can. The refs are the email number.
- Phil Jones writes to University of Hull to try to stop sceptic Sonia Boehmer Christiansen using her Hull affiliation. Graham F Haughton of Hull University says its easier to push greenery there now SB-C has retired.(1256765544)
- Michael Mann discusses how to destroy a journal that has published sceptic papers.(1047388489)
- Tim Osborn discusses how data are truncated to stop an apparent cooling trend showing up in the results (0939154709). Analysis of impact here. Wow!
- Phil Jones describes the death of sceptic, John Daly, as “cheering news”.(1075403821)
- Phil Jones encourages colleagues to delete information subject to FoI request.(1212063122)
- Phil Jones says he has use Mann’s “Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series”…to hide the decline”. Real Climate says “hiding” was an unfortunate turn of phrase.(0942777075)
- Letter to The Times from climate scientists was drafted with the help of Greenpeace.(0872202064)
- Mann thinks he will contact BBC’s Richard Black to find out why another BBC journalist was allowed to publish a vaguely sceptical article.(1255352257)
- Kevin Trenberth says they can’t account for the lack of recent warming and that it is a travesty that they can’t.(1255352257)
- Tom Wigley says that Lindzen and Choi’s paper is crap.(1257532857)
- Tom Wigley says that von Storch is partly to blame for sceptic papers getting published at Climate Research. Says he encourages the publication of crap science. Says they should tell publisher that the journal is being used for misinformation. Says that whether this is true or not doesn’t matter. Says they need to get editorial board to resign. Says they need to get rid of von Storch too. (1051190249)
- Ben Santer says (presumably jokingly!) he’s “tempted, very tempted, to beat the crap” out of sceptic Pat Michaels. (1255100876)
- Mann tells Jones that it would be nice to ‘”contain” the putative Medieval Warm Period’. (1054736277)
- Tom Wigley tells Jones that the land warming since 1980 has been twice the ocean warming and that this might be used by sceptics as evidence for urban heat islands.(1257546975)
- Tom Wigley say that Keith Briffa has got himself into a mess over the Yamal chronology (although also says it’s insignificant. Wonders how Briffa explains McIntyre’s sensitivity test on Yamal and how he explains the use of a less-well replicated chronology over a better one. Wonders if he can. Says data withholding issue is hot potato, since many “good” scientists condemn it.(1254756944)
- Briffa is funding Russian dendro Shiyatov, who asks him to send money to personal bank account so as to avoid tax, thereby retaining money for research.(0826209667)
- Kevin Trenberth says climatologists are nowhere near knowing where the energy goes or what the effect of clouds is. Says nowhere balancing the energy budget. Geoengineering is not possible.(1255523796)
- Mann discusses tactics for screening and delaying postings at Real Climate.(1139521913)
- Tom Wigley discusses how to deal with the advent of FoI law in UK. Jones says use IPR argument to hold onto code. Says data is covered by agreements with outsiders and that CRU will be “hiding behind them”.(1106338806)
- Overpeck has no recollection of saying that he wanted to “get rid of the Medieval Warm Period”. Thinks he may have been quoted out of context.(1206628118)
- Mann launches RealClimate to the scientific community.(1102687002)
- Santer complaining about FoI requests from McIntyre. Says he expects support of Lawrence Livermore Lab management. Jones says that once support staff at CRU realised the kind of people the scientists were dealing with they became very supportive. Says the VC [vice chancellor] knows what is going on (in one case).(1228330629)
- Rob Wilson concerned about upsetting Mann in a manuscript. Says he needs to word things diplomatically.(1140554230)
- Briffa says he is sick to death of Mann claiming his reconstruction is tropical because it has a few poorly temp sensitive tropical proxies. Says he should regress these against something else like the “increasing trend of self-opinionated verbiage” he produces. Ed Cook agrees with problems.(1024334440)
- Overpeck tells Team to write emails as if they would be made public. Discussion of what to do with McIntyre finding an error in Kaufman paper. Kaufman’s admits error and wants to correct. Appears interested in Climate Audit findings.(1252164302)
- Jones calls Pielke Snr a prat.(1233249393)
- Santer says he will no longer publish in Royal Met Soc journals if they enforce intermediate data being made available. Jones has complained to head of Royal Met Soc about new editor of Weather [why?data?] and has threatened to resign from RMS.(1237496573)
- Reaction to McIntyre’s 2005 paper in GRL. Mann has challenged GRL editor-in-chief over the publication. Mann is concerned about the connections of the paper’s editor James Saiers with U Virginia [does he mean Pat Michaels?]. Tom Wigley says that if Saiers is a sceptic they should go through official GRL channels to get him ousted. (1106322460) [Note to readers – Saiers was subsequently ousted]
- Later on Mann refers to the leak at GRL being plugged.(1132094873)
- Jones says he’s found a way around releasing AR4 review comments to David Holland.(1210367056)
- Wigley says Keenan’s fraud accusation against Wang is correct. (1188557698)
- Jones calls for Wahl and Ammann to try to change the received date on their alleged refutation of McIntyre [presumably so it can get into AR4](1189722851)
- Mann tells Jones that he is on board and that they are working towards a common goal.(0926010576)
- Mann sends calibration residuals for MBH99 to Osborn. Says they are pretty red, and that they shouldn’t be passed on to others, this being the kind of dirty laundry they don’t want in the hands of those who might distort it.(1059664704)
- Prior to AR3 Briffa talks of pressure to produce a tidy picture of “apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data”. [This appears to be the politics leading the science] Briffa says it was just as warm a thousand years ago.(0938018124)
- Jones says that UK climate organisations are coordinating themselves to resist FoI. They got advice from the Information Commissioner [!](1219239172)
- Mann tells Revkin that McIntyre is not to be trusted.(1254259645)
- Revkin quotes von Storch as saying it is time to toss the Hockey Stick . This back in 2004.(1096382684)
- Funkhouser says he’s pulled every trick up his sleeve to milk his Kyrgistan series. Doesn’t think it’s productive to juggle the chronology statistics any more than he has.(0843161829)
- Wigley discusses fixing an issue with sea surface temperatures in the context of making the results look both warmer but still plausible. (1254108338)
- Jones says he and Kevin will keep some papers out of the next IPCC report.(1089318616)
- Tom Wigley tells Mann that a figure Schmidt put together to refute Monckton is deceptive and that the match it shows of instrumental to model predictions is a fluke. Says there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model output by authors and IPCC.(1255553034)
- Grant Foster putting together a critical comment on a sceptic paper. Asks for help for names of possible reviewers. Jones replies with a list of people, telling Foster they know what to say about the paper and the comment without any prompting.(1249503274)
- David Parker discussing the possibility of changing the reference period for global temperature index. Thinks this shouldn’t be done because it confuses people and because it will make things look less warm.(1105019698)
- Briffa discusses an sceptic article review with Ed Cook. Says that confidentially he needs to put together a case to reject it (1054756929)
- Ben Santer, referring to McIntyre says he hopes Mr “I’m not entirely there in the head” will not be at the AGU.(1233249393)
- Jones tells Mann that he is sending station data. Says that if McIntyre requests it under FoI he will delete it rather than hand it over. Says he will hide behind data protection laws. Says Rutherford screwed up big time by creating an FTP directory for Osborn. Says Wigley worried he will have to release his model code. Also discuss AR4 draft. Mann says paleoclimate chapter will be contentious but that the author team has the right personalities to deal with sceptics.(1107454306)
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Riiight. The confidentiality that ensues when you get your buddies to referee a paper you haven’t even seen yet, but don’t want published because of the author. Wonderful scientific standards that.
I bet Al is sorry to have invented the Internet 🙂
Phil Clarke (14:41:17) :
“I am sorry, but that is simply wrong. Copyright of the mails belonged to the University if they contained intellectual property or with the authors if not. I have worked for a UK University…”
this may be the way you handled your own emails.
but i am sure you would not have deleted emails that contain information about a crime in russia. you wouldn’t have deleted emails that contain the intention to sabotage FOI requests, and you wouldn’t have deleted emails from mr. jones with the request to delete them. or would you ?
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/technology/Good+climate+news+alarmists/2252439/story.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/6634282/Lord-Lawson-calls-for-public-inquiry-into-UEA-global-warming-data-manipulation.html
Barry R. (20:49:11) :
As a result, they found it easy to accept what they considered a harmless little lie: That the science of global warming was settled.
Problem is that they didn’t just accept a “harmless little lie” — they actively used it as a weapon to silence dissent, to intimidate active and potential dissenters, to besmirch good people’s reputations, and — as implied in several of the e-mails — to have people dismissed from their jobs.
Much of the infrastructure for monitoring climate has been allowed to decay while these guys sat at their computers and played games with their computer models and gamed the peer review system.
Ain’t *that* the truth. Quirkily enough, it reminded me of the Dem ward-heelers in New Orleans who diverted funding for upkeep of the levees to the purchase of a statue of one of their own in honor of his efforts to obtain additional Federal funding for maintaining the levees…
Looks as though the Times is just starting to get on board via the comments column http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6927598.ece
Last week an apparent hacker obtained access to their computers and published in the blogosphere part of their internal e-mail traffic. And the CRU has conceded that the at least some of the published e-mails are genuine.
Astonishingly, what appears, at least at first blush, to have emerged is that (a) the scientists have been manipulating the raw temperature figures to show a relentlessly rising global warming trend; (b) they have consistently refused outsiders access to the raw data; (c) the scientists have been trying to avoid freedom of information requests; and (d) they have been discussing ways to prevent papers by dissenting scientists being published in learned journals.
There may be a perfectly innocent explanation. But what is clear is that the integrity of the scientific evidence on which not merely the British Government, but other countries, too, through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, claim to base far-reaching and hugely expensive policy decisions, has been called into question. And the reputation of British science has been seriously tarnished. A high-level independent inquiry must be set up without delay.
It is against all this background that I am announcing today the launch of a new high-powered all-party (and non-party) think-tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (www.thegwpf.org), which I hope may mark a turning-point in the political and public debate on the important issue of global warming policy. At the very least, open and reasoned debate on this issue cannot be anything but healthy. The absence of debate between political parties at the present time makes our contribution all the more necessary.
Lord Lawson of Blaby was Chancellor of the Exchequer 1983-89. He will be speaking at an Institute of Economic Affairs debate on climate change at the Institute of Directors in London today
geronimo (04:46:38) :
“I don’t think it will be on British news channels, it’s not really a story unless you’re a sceptic, and even if you were it’s illegal to use stolen e-mails in the media….”
The scandal of MP’s expenses is still a huge story in the UK. And it all came about because the Daily Telegraph were given leaked data. This didn’t stop them from splashing it across the front pages.
Ironically, there’s been no mention of this recent leak in the printed editions of the Telegraph, at least so far. Not too surprising, as they’ve been staunchly pro-AGW. However, recently their coverage of climate change has been a bit more balanced. They recently printed quotes by Viscount Monckton. So, who knows….
Chris
Before going too far down the road saying all this politicized science must have broken some law, etc., you should contemplate how scientists and engineers who work for large companies in the private sector are well aware that directors and supervisors would prefer one sort of data-set, or one type of result, over another, and how there are always helpful employees with good engineering and science credentials who are happy to support this preference (the “party line”, if you will). Time and again you will find little tolerance for information that points to flaws in past technical decisions or current technical policies (you see, there’s always some important person or group of people responsible for those decisions and policies). If climate change played out the same way this sort of thing routinely plays out in large private companies, it wouldn’t be discredited until the evidence against it became impossible to deny — say the world’s average temperature falling 10 degrees over the next 5 years — or the refusal to face reality began to hurt the bottom line badly enough to effect the CEO’s bonus! Really, as soon as scientists, engineers, and so on become players in how large amounts of money are allocated, it’s silly to expect dispassionate analysis about the merits of the technical and scientific issues under discussion. In the private sector, fortunately, people can waste time and effort any way they please without affecting most of the rest of us. When the same sort of self-interested science takes hold in the public sector, however, it’s much less tolerable, for obvious reasons. For one thing, the public thinks it’s paying for science, not lobbying disguised as science. I’m sure if you dug into NASA emails, and the emails at the top levels of the defense-industrial complex, you would see the same sort of East-Anglia nastiness at play — probably worse, in fact, since those areas of government supported science and engineering have been in operation for many more decades. Always remember, the more expensive an experiment has been to perform, the less likely it is to be declared a failure (and for that matter, when experiments produce “successes” or “failures” as opposed to just results, objectivity has been lost.)
“How certain did the science have to be before it was rational to turn society upside down? Now we could have had a rational debate about that, but things took a different course. A section of the political spectrum, both in and out of science, decided that there wasn’t really a downside to turning society upside down.”
Word!
*********************
D. Ch. (08:32:23) :
Before going too far down the road saying all this politicized science must have broken some law, etc., you should contemplate how scientists and engineers who work for large companies in the private sector are well aware that directors and supervisors would prefer one sort of data-set, or one type of result, over another, and how there are always helpful employees with good engineering and science credentials who are happy to support this preference (the “party line”, if you will).
***********************
I disagree. Research at most companies is aimed at improved or new products. If the research scientist in a corporation bends data to suit the “party line” then a failed product probably will result. IOW, the marketplace will judge if the results of the research passes muster or not. Unfortunately, in the case of the climate scientists, there is no market place in which to test the results. To make matters worse, even peers can’t replicate results due to the use (or alledged use) of confidential data. Confidential data has no place in government funded research or even research published in a journal. If the raw data isn’t made available, we have to take on faith whatever these clowns say and that is not science. So your analogy fails the smell test.
D.Ch (08:32:23)
Completely correct but the standard really is and must be different for the public sector.
Private sector enterprises are encouraged to rise or fall on the basis of their risk taking. If they get it wrong they pay and usually fail then disappear.
The public sector is supposed to provide an impartial service to the taxpayer. In return they get much greater security of employment and superb pension provision.
What has happened here is that a small clique has hijacked public resources and dealt with them as though they were in command of their own private Company. They grabbed all the upside and failed to accept the downside which. in combination, is a gross abuse of their positions.
Not only that, they then suborned all their unfortunate employees to their personal cause and ruthlessly used their position and power within large publicly funded institutions to turn elected representatives to their purpose.
Any disagreement was crushed and the entire public sector scientific endeavour irredeeemably corrupted.
It’s not just theft on their part. It’s far worse.
Just a personal opinion.
Phil Clarke, 13:24:56:
Some seem to have lost sight of the fact that there were personal and private communications, some even marked CONFIDENTIAL, that have been distributed after an illegal act. You don’t ameliorate one crime by committing another.
I, for one, noticed how many of those documents were marked ‘CONFIDENTIAL.’ Those were usually emails from Jones, passing on information and emails that had been sent to him ‘confidentially,’ and HE was violating trust and privacy by sharing them in the first place.
I’m not a scientist, and the biggest take away I have gotten from the CRU emails I’ve read is a more personal one- Phil Jones is a person that I would never trust with anything I expected to remain private. He’s chattier than my granny.
And while there is good evidence that Jones and company were committing a crime in denying legal FOI requests and sending each other hasty and urgent requests that other emails be deleted (which is also, btw, evidence that they understood perfectly well that they did not have an expectation of ‘privacy’ for those emails), there isn’t any evidence that the CRU leakage was a crime. It may have simply been incompetence.
The public data these people keep scheming to keep away from the public needs to be forcefully obtained by legal action on the clear grounds they may very well destroy it, as Jones has said he would. If they have already destroyed it, they need to be prosecuted as criminals.
With hundreds of billions, even trillions at stake in this issue, would you expect Climategate to be what it appears to be?
There were 1003 emails, Word documents, .pdf files, Powerpoint presentations, and Fortran source code for the climate models. The latter may prove the smoking-est gun, in fact, the code is commented with some pretty damning stuff. The ‘trick’ email is just the tip of the iceburg, too. There’s quite a few other dirty ones in there. Check it out before you say too much.
Honey Pot?
I’m speculating, though there is some evidence to suggest some plausibility to a hypothesis. The files were likely leaked, or set up as a honeypot.
In IT security, a honeypot is a network or data which appears attractive but is meant to entrap intruders. In spycraft (and politics) this concept can be nested. The leaked or hacked information is good information salted with fake information, to later be revealed as bogus. The proverbial turd in the punch bowl. It’s genius.
Who is the victim>?
Honeypots are never set up by the victim. That would mean that the CRU is not the victim, but rather the perpetrator.
The banal content of most of the emails would appear to make the corpus genuine. A few bogus emails salted in could later be proven to be faked, putting the entire collection into question, discrediting the “hacker” and everyone else using this information.
Cui Bono?
The corporate oligarchy is using AGW and nearly everthing green as a tool for economic and social control. They’re clever and will stop at nothing. It’s what they do, and they’re good at it, that why they’re them and you are you.
Then again, I may be wrong about my hypothesis. Maybe the CRU is just like most other groups of scientists; vain, greedy, and quick to supress conflicting views. Has history taught us nothing?
So were the AR4 emails part of the file ? The ones that Jones was actually worried about. I may have misssed them sorry.
Wall Street Journal Opinion section.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704888404574547730924988354.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_opinion
It is gaining ground!
I’m reading through these emails and I just can’t figure out what all the hoopla is about – just looks like scientists exchanging emails. Maybe somebody who has never participated in the scientific process and doesn’t understand how scientific communities work might misunderstand occasional phrases…but you really have to WANT to believe malicious interpretations of these emails in order for it to make any sense.
REPLY: Without knowing this history, it’s just like you walked into a room where a conversation had been going on for 15 years and somebody hands you a pad with a bunch of notes of that conversation. It wouldn’t make sense to you at first. Learn the history and the context and the light bulb will go on for you. Feel free to ask questions here, readers will help you out. – Anthony
The best one I’ve seen is Mann to Jones #1256735067
“As we all know, this isn’t about truth at all, its about plausibly
deniable accusations…”
Does data really need to be defended at CRU like this that one would use ‘plausibly deniable’ rather than just respond to McKintyre with here is the data and here is the routines used to interpret. It screams fear and lack of confidence in their work.
“p.s. be a bit careful about what information you send to Andy and what emails you copy him in on. He’s not as predictable as we’d like”
Secrecy is warranted in say the Manhattan Project, not climate change…
My 2c.
Reading all this material without thorough knowledge of the context is very tricky. Many comments seem to have been taken out of context. You are interpreting their meaning according to what you want to believe. This is all nonsense. Our impact on our planet is undenniable and we should be discussing how to protect it, not inventing absurd complots.
Guille,
For someone who is not up to speed on the subject [the basic hypothesis says that an increase in carbon dioxide will cause runaway global warming and climate catastrophe], your last sentence makes clear that the promotion of this extremely dubious hypothesis 24/7/365 has an effect on the population.
No one here is against ‘protecting’ the planet, so stop that please. The truth is that CO2 is a harmless minor trace gas that is required for life on Earth to exist. The fact that CO2 has been demonized by a clique that has been granted literally tens of millions of dollars, and which fights tooth and nail to keep any views of skeptical scientists completely censored, shows their motivation.
For an easy to understand account of the same people who wrote the leaked emails, see here.
That will put the problem into context.
Your doing a great job guys ,I hope you give a response to the bulldust announced by garret on the news and csiro that the last decade is the hottest ever recorded ,perhaps ask for the data to be checked ,some good news Lord monckton is coming over soon to clarify things and let the public know about this con ,the greatest fraud in history . We would be very gratefull if you can do some corrections and
additions in the paper for Dendrochronologia. We did not quite
understand what we have to do on missing rings? Just enumerate
years when missing rings occur? there are lots more emails that show very suspect things like this .Garret must be called out on his new lies .