From Andrew Bolt, my “mate” down under at the Herald Sun, comes this surprise. I’ll have to say, it is to George Monbiot’s credit to do this. I embrace his first statement, because it succinctly sums up the situation:
It’s no use pretending that this isn’t a major blow. The emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging(1). I am now convinced that they are genuine, and I’m dismayed and deeply shaken by them.
– George Monbiot on his personal blog
George seems to realize that, “it’s worse than we thought”.
From Andrew Bolt:
Even George Monbiot, one of the fiercest media propagandists of the warming faith, admits he should have been more sceptical and says the science now needs to be rechecked:
It’s no use pretending that this isn’t a major blow. The emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging. I am now convinced that they are genuine, and I’m dismayed and deeply shaken by them.
Yes, the messages were obtained illegally. Yes, all of us say things in emails that would be excruciating if made public. Yes, some of the comments have been taken out of context. But there are some messages that require no spin to make them look bad. There appears to be evidence here of attempts to prevent scientific data from being released, and even to destroy material that was subject to a freedom of information request.
Worse still, some of the emails suggest efforts to prevent the publication of work by climate sceptics, or to keep it out of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I believe that the head of the unit, Phil Jones, should now resign. Some of the data discussed in the emails should be re-analysed.
Sure, Monbiot claims the fudging of what he extremely optimistically puts as just “three or four” scientists doesn’t knock over the whole global warming edifice, yet…
If even Monbiot, an extremist, can say that much, why cannot the Liberals say far more? And will now the legion of warmist journalists in our own media dare say as Monbiot has so belatedly:
I apologise. I was too trusting of some of those who provided the evidence I championed. I would have been a better journalist if I had investigated their claims more closely.
Scepticism is the essential disposition of our craft, yet too many journalists have abandoned it. Remember: the opposite of sceptical is gullible.
UPDATE: Here’s the screencap from Monbiot’s blog on the Guardian:
Click to see the original.
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Will Dr. Phillip Jones go down alone or be allowed to resign to be ensconced in some secured sinecure?
Or perhaps elevated to PM status if this storm pass away.
Er… Just read Moobat’s “confession” email. Obviously his bogus attempt to debunk skeptics as red-baiting, Maoist hating, whackos.
Well, I accept your apology for the crimes at UEA and Prof Jones. As for your backhanded, less than clever commie-hating skeptic rant, keep up the good work George. We’re keeping a bed for you at Bellvue.
“this about face takes enormous courage.”
No it doesn’t.
He’s just a rat preparing to abandon a sinking ship.
There will be many more doing this soon.
Anybody else like to try to defend Monbiot?
Bring it on!
Why do so many in their comments trying to slam shut an opening door?
This is an opportunity to improve the scientific process. The starting point should be to resolve the conflicts of interest in the IPCC reports. That is the same group of people who write the original articles, are peer-reviewed by that same group. We then have leading figures of this same group (like Dr Keith Briffa) editing the chapters. The strengths are thus emphasized and the weaknesses relegated to bland phrases and footnotes.
The current demarcation between science and non-science is belief in the “consensus” or not. This is the opportune moment for the true scientists to regain their discipline from the propagandists and the ideologues. For those who question and doubt to take precedence over those who defend the status quo. For those who recognize the limits of our current knowledge (but wish to objectively and sincerely extend those boundaries) to take precedence over those dogmatically hold onto the existing “truths” and their pretence of reputation.
At school and at college, whether studying history or economics, I was taught to compare and contrast; to assess both the strengths and the weaknesses of a case; to state the assumptions made; and to look at the orders of magnitude in the data alongside measurement errors.
If the skeptics are sure of their side then they should welcome any chance to open up the debate and the science.
Anthony, his apology is not genuine it is sarcastic. After all he knows the “Truth”.
He would know the “Truth” even if you proved all the AGW stuff was lies!
he’s dithering in the denial and anger stages of coping
Perhaps Monbiot should now apologise for all the crappy names and accusations he’s heaped on “denialists” over the years. Only then will I believe his sincerity is genuine.
Vincent Shand (15:10:15),
I agree with most of what you say. But the problem as I see it isn’t the refusal of skeptics to debate. It is the refusal of alarmists to publicly debate their position in a neutral, moderated forum.
The few times alarmists have publicly debated, they lost decisively.
Adding my note to register outrage.
Monbiot is a drama queen, let him enjoy his righteousness: but the politicians who are willing to use this scientific demi-monde in their lust for power really do need to be called to account.
Paul, Thank you for your considered reply.
woodfortrees (Paul Clark) (10:50:49) : Richard (10:09:33): I agree Monbiot wasn’t been sarcastic in his horror and call for resignation; he is no doubt aware of the damage this is doing to the image, if not the fact, of climate science.
And for this (calling for Jones’ resignation), and for the fact that he admits that there appears to be evidence of attempts to prevent scientific data from being released, to destroy material that was subject to a freedom of information request, to prevent the publication of work by climate sceptics, and to keep it out of a report by the IPCC, I take my hat off to Monbiot.
He has proved himself to be an honest man.
Many people here attack him because he is on the opposite side of the fence in believing in AGW, but that is no reason to attack him, if he honestly believes so. An honest man will eventually admit to incontrovertible evidence, whether this be to prove the alarmist AGW hypothesis or otherwise.
You too are on the opposite side of the fence to me but I salute you for your honesty. We can all communicate with each other if we are open and honest. It is slimly, secretive dishonesty that is to be abhorred.
I think I’m also quite clear about what the “trick” applied to. It was way of linking the proxy data (which had known problems after 1960, documented by the authors, presumably for some technical reason – I don’t know why) with the harder data from direct measurement. My understanding (admittedly from RC) is that this was for a specific *illustration* – not a paper, not a dataset. Although this has got all the attention it seems the weakest charge of all, actually. We programmers talk about tricks and magic and even ‘hiding’ all the time; it doesn’t mean it’s fakery.
I couldnt disagree with you more.
1. It is unfortunate that you get your understanding from RC who are part and parcel of “the team”, whose integrity is suspect.
2. “..I’m also quite clear about what the “trick” applied to. It was way of linking the proxy data (which had known problems after 1960, documented by the authors, presumably for some technical reason – I don’t know why)”.
The “problem” was that the proxy data taken for 2,000 years didnt agree with the temperature data after 1981. It didnt agree because whereas the recorded temperatures went up the proxy records showed it going down.
So Phil Jones “..completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline”.
Mike is Michael Mann and Keith is Keith Briffa of Yamal proxy hockey stick fame.
Did it agree with the temperatures of the previous 2,000 years? Well there are no temperature records before 1880 so they are quite safe before that. Of course it may not agree with other proxies showing the various warm periods, little ice-age etc. but then this is the latest peer reviewed data to be trusted above all else.
Of course Michael Mann had said in 2004 on RC “No researchers in this field have ever, to our knowledge, “grafted the thermometer record onto” any reconstrution. It is somewhat disappointing to find this specious claim (which we usually find originating from industry-funded climate disinformation websites) appearing in this forum.”
Hmmm….
My key point here is not to argue that everything at CRU is/was as clean as driven snow – it probably wasn’t – but that I don’t see any direct effect on the core datasets that I’m most concerned with, and it doesn’t really change anything fundamental….
The datasets you deal with only start from 1880 to the present. Thus to say that the present warming is “unprecedented” would be correct if you qualify in the temperature records.
Whether this statement is true for the last 1,000 years, the last 4,000 years or the last 10,000 years is dubious to say the least.
As I pointed out the present warming is only “unprecedented” relative to some history. If previous warmings were in fact warmer than the present then it would not be “unprecedented”, and that is where the apparent dishonesty lies.
Then again you have said woodfortrees (Paul Clark) (08:53:13) : ..As far as the data goes, since I use HADCRUT3 as one of the prime sources on WoodForTrees I’m obviously very concerned about its quality. However I’ve not (yet) seen anything that suggests ..the recent data has been polluted in some way.
OK, if Steve McIntyre or someone else finds a smoking gun .. then fair enough – but I haven’t heard of one yet, and I severely doubt they will.
Paul, differences maybe very subtle but I strongly suspect HADCRUT data. It is not enough to say that temperature graphs look similar. Since satellite records began, it has showed a higher trend than the satellite records. This alone is cause to treat it with suspicion, whether this be deliberate or otherwise.
It would be a stretch to assume any tinkering with the data would be to the extent to cause rapid warming instead of intense cooling, but any tinkering of the data towards your desired result would be a deplorable criminal offence.
Regards – Richard
Temp record for Britain for the last 2 centuries.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ZfSiy2A9mow/Ssh-uh6T_yI/AAAAAAAABcg/V1OpQEmDP4s/s1600-h/351+year+Central+England+Temperature+record.png
“Hmmm, can’t figure out how to present the data. It’s as if nature herself were conspiring against AGW. It’s so frustrating.”
(2 centuries, 18th and 20th – not “last” 2) Sorry. I blame the Foster’s
Desktop Monbiot 😉 http://www.theinternetnowinhandybookform.com/schmapple/desktop_monbiot.html
Gregg E. (19:07:52) :
That’s just obscene.
“Now I’ve heard the the “two decades of cooling” before but thought it was an opinion. Was she right, have some climate models be tortured enough to give this result?”
The prediction of cooling comes from the PDO’s entering a cooling phase.
Richard,
Thanks for that, it’s great to have a reasoned discussion, even though everyone else has no doubt moved on to newer threads (maybe those things are correlated? ;-).
I spent quite a long time looking into this proxy-real “splicing” issue last night, because when I thought about it more, it started to bother me. It clearly is questionable, since the trees may be “peak clipping” the signal during warmer periods – which would of course also mask earlier warmer periods, as you say. Steve McIntyre’s page on this was most helpful:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=529
But this also confirms what I had suspected; which is that all this was known and out in the open several years ago. So I’m not sure the CRU e-mails add much to this story, except that (again) they appear more concerned with image and selling the story than one might wish (more on this below).
On HADCRUT3, I agree my interpretation of “unprecedented” was somewhat limited, I was indeed talking about the real temperature records, not the proxies – partly because that’s what CRU deals in, partly because (until last night, and indeed still) I didn’t know much about proxy data.
But I must just correct the assertion that HADCRUT3 has shown a higher trend than the satellite records. It is indeed higher than UAH, but almost identical to RSS and the other land/ocean series, GISTEMP:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1979/offset:-0.15/mean:12/plot/gistemp/from:1979/offset:-0.24/mean:12/plot/uah/mean:12/plot/rss/mean:12/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1979/offset:-0.15/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1979/offset:-0.24/trend/plot/uah/trend/plot/rss/trend
That’s one reason why I still feel inclined to trust it; also, despite the obvious major internal difficulties in data format and change control they have had, in global monthly for it’s highly aggregated. I’m sure the data difficulties add to the error/noise, but I can’t currently see how they would change the trend to any significant degree.
On the general question of image vs. science. It looks like (on both sides) there has sometimes been more of a concern to present a simply-understood message or advocacy than the real science; not unreasonably, since one is talking about different audiences, and some of the subtlety/uncertainty is inevitably lost at this stage.
The problem comes when it’s the same group doing both the science and the presentation, because there’s no access to the science-group’s interface, and layers get mixed internally (software types will recognise this as a classic layering problem).
It seems to me there’s also an analogy with banking here: in the same way that Glass-Steigel separated merchant and retail banking (the repeal of which is blamed by some for our current mess), perhaps we need to separate the pure data capture and processing (which should also be public) from the presentation/advocacy. I think CRU think of themselves as the former, but have clearly shaded into the latter.
For my own part, I try very hard to remain on the pure data side, and this is probably going to be my only foray into this mire!
One more thing: Both the complaints about, and attempts to avoid, the “hassle” of FOI and ‘Harry’s nightmares in data control smack to me of the same things: underfunding and haste. This stuff is so critical it should be done slowly, carefully and in public, as most science is; as it is it seems to rest on the shoulders of a very small group under almost intolerable pressure for quick results, but very aware of the global significance of what they do. Not a place I would want to be, personally…
For all the guys saying we should be kinder to Monibot and offer an olive branch..
..er..no. We in the UK have to put up with him, we have to read his witterings all the time, so I think, overseas cousins, we may be more sceptical of him than you are?
You can tell the character of a man by the company he keeps. Monibot works for the Guardian, nuff said. Just about everything that is wrong in the world can be found in the writings of papers like the Guardian and the Independant in the UK. Self serving narcistic and naive.
If he qualifies his ‘apology’ without the smarm then I’ll review my position…
Oo-er. I feel a typo coming on.
MONOBOTI or The Sound of One Buttock Talking (pace the Buddhists)
It must be the effect of listening to his ranting for so long (I actually met him once; an enlightening experience).
But he has been known to admit an error, if completely backed into a corner.
Were the 90s really warmer than the 40s, or were the data tweaked? Can’t get away from that question.
Speaking of outspoken environmentalists, David Bellamy was on Australia’s A Current Affair tonight (timely given we are set to pass the ETS legislation tomorrow):
http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-au&brand=ninemsn&tab=m164&mediaid=277675&from=39&vid=92DA8DB5-B08B-4EC2-893B-6A3DCB0D19ED&playlist=videoByTag:mk:en-AU:vs:0:tag:aunews_auaca:ns:MSNVideo_Top_Cat:ps:10:sd:-1:ind:1:ff:8A
/salute Prof Bellamy. Got to respect his pragmatic environmental approach.
I was amazed that Mann held on to an academic post after M&M, Wegman and everyone had finished with him after MBH. I’ll be even more amazed if Jones survives professionally. The emails tell a clear tale of intellectual dishonesty, which puts a dagger at the heart of academia. It doesn’t matter how good the ends might be, that is no justification for perverting the means
woodfortrees (Paul Clark) (01:53:19) : A reasoned arguement. Thank you
The emails confirm that CRU data is not theirs to distribute so FOI requests for this should not be actioned.
The emails also confirm that those involved believe that their data shows AGW to be a fact.
Also confirmed is the hassle each FOI request caused. One emails says CRU have had greater than 100 requests (the McIntyre campaign of a few months ago). They also state that they believe that even if they fulfill one request then others are piggybacked – data – then software – then information – and of course every email sent/received (why?). One researcher claims to have spent 6 months debunking a particular published report to the detriment of original research, and wanted nothing to do with supporting FOI requests for yet more time.
I also believe that there is some truth in the often stated – “give them the raw data and let them replicate the results independently”. Surely raw data + independant replication is better than replication using methods being tested.
There are 2 US generated temperature databases (raw and modified) on line that provide most of CRU data. CRU data is not owned by CRU and therefore not freely available. What is wrong with using the available data?
It seems to me the reason the US data is no good is that FOI disruption of researchers will not be accomplished by its use!
The Harry notes are odd but what is he dealing with – if it is data from the national weather centres then it is not surprising that he has problems handling each different format.
I don’t accept Monbiot’s apology for the following reasons.
1. He has been the chief purveyor of using Holocaust language against catastrophy skeptics
2. He has led the charge against energy companies and been a fuel to the fire of many anarchist and communist groups who oppose our freedoms
3. Together with the closet Islamist and terrorist sympathiser George Galloway, Monbiot formed the Respect Party which has become Britain’s Marxist-Islamist party whose aim is to subvert and end democracy and capitalism
4. His apology is basically his way of covering his ass
5. He supports the idea of a global government, which simply cannot be accountable or democratic because of its potential and scope for authoritarian power and corruption
Al Gore’s Holy Hologram (05:07:04) :
So, you are saying that he’s constitutionally incapable of a sincere apology, and any appearance of same can’t possibly be what it seems?
Yeah, as I’ve alluded to above, I’m good with that. Hopefully more people will be now, because of your excellent summary.