When the CRU emails first made it into news stories, there was immediate reaction from the head of CRU, Dr. Phil Jones over this passage in an email:
From a yahoo.com news story:
In one leaked e-mail, the research center’s director, Phil Jones, writes to colleagues about graphs showing climate statistics over the last millennium. He alludes to a technique used by a fellow scientist to “hide the decline” in recent global temperatures. Some evidence appears to show a halt in a rise of global temperatures from about 1960, but is contradicted by other evidence which appears to show a rise in temperatures is continuing.
Jones wrote that, in compiling new data, he had “just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e., from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline,” according to a leaked e-mail, which the author confirmed was genuine.
Dr. Jones responded.
However, Jones denied manipulating evidence and insisted his comment had been taken out of context. “The word ‘trick’ was used here colloquially, as in a clever thing to do. It is ludicrous to suggest that it refers to anything untoward,” he said in a statement Saturday.
Ok fine, but how Dr. Jones, do you explain this?
There’s a file of code also in the collection of emails and documents from CRU. A commenter named Neal on climate audit writes:
People are talking about the emails being smoking guns but I find the remarks in the code and the code more of a smoking gun. The code is so hacked around to give predetermined results that it shows the bias of the coder. In other words make the code ignore inconvenient data to show what I want it to show. The code after a quick scan is quite a mess. Anyone with any pride would be to ashamed of to let it out public viewing. As examples [of] bias take a look at the following remarks from the MANN code files:
Here’s the code with the comments left by the programmer:
function mkp2correlation,indts,depts,remts,t,filter=filter,refperiod=refperiod,$
datathresh=datathresh
;
; THIS WORKS WITH REMTS BEING A 2D ARRAY (nseries,ntime) OF MULTIPLE TIMESERIES
; WHOSE INFLUENCE IS TO BE REMOVED. UNFORTUNATELY THE IDL5.4 p_correlate
; FAILS WITH >1 SERIES TO HOLD CONSTANT, SO I HAVE TO REMOVE THEIR INFLUENCE
; FROM BOTH INDTS AND DEPTS USING MULTIPLE LINEAR REGRESSION AND THEN USE THE
; USUAL correlate FUNCTION ON THE RESIDUALS.
;
pro maps12,yrstart,doinfill=doinfill
;
; Plots 24 yearly maps of calibrated (PCR-infilled or not) MXD reconstructions
; of growing season temperatures. Uses “corrected” MXD – but shouldn’t usually
; plot past 1960 because these will be artificially adjusted to look closer to
; the real temperatures.
;
and later the same programming comment again in another routine:
; ; Plots (1 at a time) yearly maps of calibrated (PCR-infilled or not) MXD ; reconstructions ; of growing season temperatures. Uses “corrected” MXD – but shouldn’t usually ; plot past 1960 because these will be artificially adjusted to look closer to ; the real temperatures.
You can claim an email you wrote years ago isn’t accurate saying it was “taken out of context”, but a programmer making notes in the code does so that he/she can document what the code is actually doing at that stage, so that anyone who looks at it later can figure out why this function doesn’t plot past 1960. In this case, it is not allowing all of the temperature data to be plotted. Growing season data (summer months when the new tree rings are formed) past 1960 is thrown out because “these will be artificially adjusted to look closer to the real temperatures”, which implies some post processing routine.
Spin that, spin it to the moon if you want. I’ll believe programmer notes over the word of somebody who stands to gain from suggesting there’s nothing “untowards” about it.
Either the data tells the story of nature or it does not. Data that has been “artificially adjusted to look closer to the real temperatures” is false data, yielding a false result.
For more details, see Mike’s Nature Trick
UPDATE: By way of verification….
The source files with the comments that are the topic of this thread are in this folder of the FOI2009.zip file
/documents/osborn-tree6/mann/oldprog
in the files
maps12.pro
maps15.pro
maps24.pro
These first two files are dated 1/18/2000, and the map24 file on 11/10/1999 so it fits timeline-wise with Dr. Jones email where he mentions “Mike’s Nature trick” which is dated 11/16/1999, six days later.
UPDATE2: Commenter Eric at the Climate Audit Mirror site writes:
================
From documents\harris-tree\recon_esper.pro:
; Computes regressions on full, high and low pass Esper et al. (2002) series,
; anomalies against full NH temperatures and other series.
; CALIBRATES IT AGAINST THE LAND-ONLY TEMPERATURES NORTH OF 20 N
;
; Specify period over which to compute the regressions (stop in 1960 to avoid
; the decline
;
Note the wording here “avoid the decline” versus “hide the decline” in the famous email.
===============
I’ll give Dr. Jones and CRU the benefit of the doubt, maybe these are not “untowards” issues, but these things scream for rational explanations. Having transparency and being able to replicate all this years ago would have gone a long way towards either correcting problems and/or assuaging concerns.
Sponsored IT training links:
Need help for EX0-101 exam ? We offer self study 642-436 training program for all your 642-974 exam needs.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
John Smith (07:39:24) :
Lol are you guys for real? Whatever this is about, you dont need to understand programming to see climate change. Come to northern Canada and take a look – the north west passage is open people! All the ice melted! It has been closed up with ice for a long [snip] time.
There is no argument against global warming. It is warming. The question is how much do people contribute to it? And do we want to slow it down?
@John Smith (if that is your real name):
Climate change is not evidence that AGW is happening.
You assume climate change is bad and you also assume that the climate is stable without human influence. Neither of these beliefs are based upon facts. Far from it. The earth has had cold periods and warm periods in the distant past and the near past and human activities had nothing to do with those.
History shows it is better to live in a warm period than a cold period. History also shows run-away global warming ASA the IPCC dooms-day scenarios has never happened in the past. The ice core data also shows warming proceeds CO2 increases by centuries, so how is it CO2 is now causing AGW?
Thank you
RE: mjw01 (05:27:59),
I was very puzzled by your “Kool Aid drinkers” reference, I could not think what Ken Kesey had to do with all this. I looked it up so I know better now.
Alex
“”” Jesse (21:24:11) :
. . . bunch of uninformed amateurs try and “debunk” real scientists. Leave the science to the scientists and go back to your day jobs as custodians, wal-mart employees and laborers. “””
Well Jesse, I’m reasonably sure that I could not get a job at Walmart; or MacDonalds for that matter. With a name like mine, I couldn’t even fill out the job application form.
But I do shop at both places. On weekend mornings, I drop by the local Mac for my 38 cent Senior decaf (one cream and one sugar in packets) so I can sit down and wait for the Chinese gang of senior citizens to arrive from their early morning Tai Chi exercises; I bet they all used to work on the railroads; but since I don’t speak Cantonese, I can’t even ask them about that.
Mind you I haven’t shopped at Walmart since about three years ago; when I did my last binge shopping spree there. I remember I bought three pairs of shoes, two in brown for work,for $14 and $17, and I splurged $21 for a black pair for weddings and funerals. The $17 shoes were a ripoff, because after only three years of wearing every other week, the soles have cracked in half, so If it has been raining; when I take my lunch walk to Carl’s Jr, the cracks pump water off the parking lot, and my socks get all wet. So I wear the $14 ones on wet days.
I got three pairs of trousers for work too, and a couple of fake leather belts; I had to cough up $123 for that lot; bunch of damn bloodsuckers those people are; so I wouldn’t even work there if they wanted to hire me.
So I’m kind of glad that I decided 50 years ago to get our of the Nuclear Physics game; because there was too much secrecy; and fall back on my Electronics, and Optics to get me by.
And I have a deal with my wife; she can throw food around in the kitchen as much as she likes; but she has to mop the floor; so I don’t do that deck swab thing you alluded to.
I’d really like to meet some of you real scientists one of these days; but you know how it is; if you want to steal somebody’s water skis and tow ropes, and life jackets; you pretty much have to go to a lake where they congregate, so you can have a better selection.
Maybe Jesse, that is why we haven’t ever crossed paths; we are probably in parallel universes.
During the times that the NW passage has been opened, weather related and Arctic oscillating current (both atmospheric and oceanic) events can easily explain it. It seems the AGW folks are more easily duped by weather than skeptics are.
” I am waiting to see if any of them – even one – says, hmm, maybe I was wrong; maybe these guys have been subverting science. But no. The reaction is one of absolute denial ….”
But the wobbled are going to keep their insecurities to themselves, for the most part. (Although there was one believer who posted on RC a confession of her rattled state, and whose comment was re-posted here.)
the Columbus Dispatch in Columbus, Ohio, put an AP story on the front page of the printed version of the newspaper that I read on my doorstep this morning. Inside the paper, they also publish the bbc story that suggests that the scientists were the victims of some crazy hacker, trying to undermine Copenhagan
The bias of this is amazing, as if there was some type of emotional outburst reactionary response on the part of the reporters of this newspaper, that is so over the top as to merit a review of the individuals responsible for placing this story on page one.
Note: The web version front page talks about local news instead and one can find the climate articles in the US/World section
Please consider posting a respectful and fact based comment at the newspaper’s website:
http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/national_world/index.html
thank you – Chez
Say ChasMod, looks like some improperly commented software deglitched me there, and half of my post got duplicated half a page up there.
Do be a good chap and expunge that first one with fewer tree rings.
Thanks a lot .
[It already had been done. ~dbs, mod.]
Jesse (21:24:11) : “This is what happens when a bunch of uninformed amateurs try and “debunk” real scientists. Leave the science to the scientists and go back to your day jobs as custodians, wal-mart employees and laborers.”
What these researchers failed to measure or predict with their models was the sudden expansion of the blogosphere, thanks to all that hot air created by their pontifications about the new religion. Anyone detect “clericalism” in the above statement?
Here come the “real” thinkers, the “real” statisticians, the “real” creatives, the “real” inventors, the “real” questioners, haha, Here Comes Everybody!
Among the few religious catechists and inquisitors embedded at RC, everyone else showed up too. What a gold mine of talent in the free thinking, unpaid world!
How incredulous they must have been when WUWT won the Best Science Blog of 2008.
“”” Jesse (21:24:11) :
. . . bunch of uninformed amateurs try and “debunk” real scientists. Leave the science to the scientists and go back to your day jobs as custodians, wal-mart employees and laborers. “””
I am perhaps mistaken, but the George E. Smith of these parts, who spoke just above of Mickey D’s and Wal-Mart, appears to be the same George E. Smith who will shortly be traveling to Stockholm to pick up the Nobel Prize for Physics.
But he has too much class to mention it. Think on that for a minute.
@ur momisuglyPingo (07:26:25) :
The gloves are off @ur momisugly the BBC Blogs. Paul Hudson posted some links, so now the mods have reliased that the punters may as well be able to do the same…. 🙂
Just be glad these bozo’s aren’t programming flight control software for commercial airliners. 🙂
From Harry_read_me.TXT
—-
19. Here is a little puzzle. If the latest precipitation database file
contained a fatal data error (see 17. above), then surely it has been
altered since Tim last used it to produce the precipitation grids? But
if that’s the case, why is it dated so early?
—-
Has some data been changed after-the-fact and time stamps purposefully altered?
Did “Tim” use the right data to produce the grids?
I’d not trust this code to accurately reconcile my checkbook…
This UK lobbying organisation has just reported the CRU to our Information Commissioner
http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/campaign/2009/11/cru-emails-reveal-inconvenient-truths-about-foi.html
Here’s the only “moderating voice” critique of the code section I have been able to find, at realclimate:
“One question about the comments in code posted earlier.“but shouldn’t usually plot past 1960 because these will be artificially adjusted to look closer to the real temperatures.” Could you explain what exactly “will be artificially adjusted to look closer to the real temperatures” means.
[Response: It depends what their timeseries had in it. If it was the proxy record until 1960 and then the observed temperatures after, plotting it past 1960 would make it look artificially like the real temperatures. But they said to not do that. – gavin]”
*****************
I could understand if the comment read “shouldn’t plot past 1960 because that would cause an artifical adjustment that only appeared to look closer to the real temperatures”.
If I read Gavin right though, he claims they said not to do “that” – not to plot past 1960.
The way I read the comment is that it identifies two subordinate procedures to a larger reconstruction, the second one (presumably in another file) in which dates after 1960 will be artificially adjusted.
Programmers, am I way off base?
1. The correct phrase is “try TO”, not “try and”.
2. wal-mart should be capitalized, not sure about the hyphenation.
3. Depending on regional influence, you will probably find you still need a comma before the last item in a list, ie. “WalMart employees, and laborers”
Luckily, the real amateurs appear to be the ones running the AGW circus. I would wager that the majority of readers here, myself included, could code circles around these clowns… and likely not using Fortran, either.
See what I did there? I used the phrase “AGW circus”, then made a clown joke. How amateur is that?
Oh yeah, at first I thought you were saying “uniformed”, but I’ve never had a job that involved a uniform (unless you consider a suit and tie to be a uniform, which technically it might be). Unfortunately for your hypothesis, I am a very informed professional programmer, which is why I am interested in seeing just how bad this train wreck will get.
If I had an employee writing or even using code like I’ve seen here to justify cAGW alarmism (ie. ModelE), they would be out.
Interesting. To restate the obvious, these guys appear to have been spinning modern era data. One must still assume that parts of the historical and paleo climate record were unadjusted, and thus still useful for climate reconstruction. Now is the time for the deconstruction crew to go to work. What did they do to what part of the record and when… and what was the untampered-with result they were obfuscating?
Next step: a new view toward the efficacy of tree rings. Remember, it was the people, not the tree rings that lied.
From Roger Sowell (23:43:35) :
Quote: 1. Viking settlements in Greenland – proof positive it was warmer back then – even though CO2 was fairly low without Exxon and Shell pumping out CO2 from those evil refineries. If CO2 causes warming, then absence of CO2 must cause cooling. Cannot have a valid control system otherwise.
Roger you are just showing your ignorance. This Greenland statement is an example of regional climate NOT global climate. On the other hand 10 trees in the Yamal Peninsula of Russia is proof positive of GLOBAL climate!
Don’t worry, I don’t get it either. Of course I am just a guy stocking hammers at the Home depot, not one of those smart climate scientist jetting of to Bali!
Robinson (08:24:49) :
You’re absolutely right but maybe (just maybe though) the agenda might be different under new management soon. One can only hope, have you a better idea?
Thanks to debreuil (04:25:44) : and Spartacus (06:17:59) : for bringing this to our attention.
; Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!
;
yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)*5.+1904]
valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,-0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,$
2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor
if n_elements(yrloc) ne n_elements(valadj) then message,’Oooops!’
;
yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,timey)
;
;filter_cru,5.,/nan,tsin=yyy+yearlyadj,tslow=tslow
;oplot,timey,tslow,thick=5,color=20
This may be the real smoking gun. It appears that Briffa just made up numbers to add to the dendro measurements to give the result he wanted. These were not weights, but temperature values added to the raw measurements, see the ‘yyy+yearlyadj’ in the code. Not only did he add temperature to eliminate the post-1960 decline (the ‘trick’), but subtracted it from measurements around the 1930s to eliminate the warm period there.
If the models and data prove or even suggest global warming then they should just release them. It is that simple.
The post recognizes that it will take time to analyze the dump. The emails’ significance will only be understood when the whole is understood.
But the OS timestamps indicate with the archive’s size, that this-whether damning or exonerating, or some combination-is a reliable snapshot of the IPCC climate science effort.
And this we already knew to be a corrupt morass. It is unlikely that what we have is the worst that might have survived normal housekeeping.
Limbaugh is discussing it right now…
The real ‘deniers’ are the ‘Warmists’ !
In case anyone wants to start from scratch, almost all world weather records can be accessed in minutes from Mathematica 7 (no I don’t work for them). They have a database that keeps updated to within hours (I downloaded Siberian stations with values from just 1 hr previously local time to test this). One would need to deal with data gaps somehow, and station moves, but the data is not “lost” and I bet the Mathematica database has more stations than Hadly uses.
Some more extracts from the HARRY_READ_ME.txt.
Where is the documenatation to explain all this?
.
.
…have just located a ‘cld’ directory in **** New’s disk, containing over 2000 files. Most however are binary and undocumented.
.
.
Unbelievable – even here the conventions have not been followed. It’s botch after botch after botch.
.
.
The option (like all the anomdtb options) is totally undocumented so we’ll never know what we lost.
.
.
Right, time to stop pussyfooting around the niceties of ***’s labyrinthine software suites – let’s have a go at producing CRU TS 3.0! since failing to do that will be the definitive failure of the entire project.
.
.
..on examination the US database record is a poor copy of the main database one, it has more missing data and so forth. By 1870 they have diverged, so in this case it’s probably OK.. but what about the others?
.
.
Oh GOD if I could start this project again and actually argue the case for junking the inherited program suite!!
.
.
Then got a mail from PJ to say we shouldn’t be excluding stations inside 8km anyway – yet that’s in IJC – Mitchell & Jones 2005! So there you go.
.
.
Wrote ‘makedtr.for’ to tackle the thorny problem of the tmin and tmax databases not being kept in step.
Sounds familiar, if worrying. Am I the first person to attempt
to get the CRU databases in working order?!!