Calls from the left for the resignation of Dr. Phil Jones from CRU continue to mount, and they are coming from surprising places.
For the second time this week, George Monbiot called for the resignation of Dr. Jones saying:
But there is no helping it; he has to go, and the longer he leaves it, the worse it will get. He has a few days left in which to make an honourable exit.
I don’t know that an honourable exit is possible at all now, given the revelations of FOIA obstruction. Read Monbiot’s column in the Guardian here. But, if Dr. Jones does decide to resign, or the University asks him to do so, I expect this coming Monday will be his last opportunity to do so per Monbiot’s suggestion.
Maybe as on object lesson for himself in all this, Mr. Monbiot can learn to stop calling people he disagrees with “deniers”. The connotations with “holocaust denier” are distasteful and unnecessary.
Ditto for Richard Littlemore of DeSmog Blog, who could also dispense with the term in language he uses if he wants to bridge the gap. He also, by the way, suggested Dr. Jones resignation saying:
I don’t personally know that Jones has to be sacked, but I have to admit that it would be savvy for him to at least offer to step aside before someone in authority makes a move to give him a push.
As 25 year veteran member of the media myself, and still currently employed in radio, I agree with Mr. Monbiot when he says:
The crisis has been exacerbated by the university’s handling of it, which has been a total trainwreck: a textbook example of how not to respond.
I expect more calls for resignation will follow. Plus, we’ll see investigations being launched.
Trainwreck might not be a descriptive enough word.
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In my Firefighting days this would be called a “Mongolian Cluster —-”
No leadership no direction, and all were complicit….
Moonbat is throwing Jones under the bus……notice he make no reference whatsoever to the real scandal emerging in the Data. He purely concentrates on the e-mails.
Seeing as he has devoted his life to AGW, there is not a cats chance in hell, that he hasn’t seen what is coming out of the Data files.
This is no genuine mea culpa, it’s sacrificing Jones, in the hope that the real dirt can still be ignored.
Anyone that can write this ain’t changed his mind one iota.
The greatest tragedy here is that despite many years of outright fabrication, fraud and deceit on the part of the climate change denial industry, documented in James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore’s brilliant new book Climate Cover-up, it is now the climate scientists who look bad. By comparison to his opponents, Phil Jones is pure as the driven snow
Last week, Friday or Saturday, I said they’d be tossing someone under the bus to save the movement. Leave it to the dingbat to come through in predictable form and call for Jones’ head. The rest of the monkey brigade’s laying low, assuming the positions {hands over eyes, ears, or mouth}.
Two things must happen before the science behind climate studies can be rehabilitated:
1 – Raw data, methods, procedures, computer programs, etc. must be fully transparent and available to all for attempts at replication.
2 – End the phony facade of approved peer-review journals. While skeptics have had studies appear in non-approved journals, they’ve been ignored. This doesn’t disprove them; they still have as much credibility as the so-called peer-reviewed studies (I’ll scratch your back-you scratch mine).
What would a healthy, vibrant climate science arena look like? It should look like a war arena with raging controversy as scientists rip each other’s studies apart, beating each other upside the head until they all gain some sense and one day, start to figure out how all the myriad factors interact and magnify or dampen others and move beyond the pathetically lame anthropogenic forcing that the whole science seems to be stuck on.
I have read Monbiot’s article of Nov 25. Although I find his tone generally distasteful, I must agree that Phil Jones should resign. However, the matter should not end at that: there is now a good case for seeking full disclosure of CRU data, models and correspondence pertaining to their climate models and projections. No doubt, this would lead to the demise of CRU but, with any luck, a more honourable institution may arise – better deserving of public trust.
Its not enough for Jones to resign. CRU and GISS must release all of the information that they have been hiding. I suspect that the Congressional Subpoena will be sufficient to get the GISS material into the public domain.
Even if Phil Jones gets hung out to dry that’s not enough, not nearly enough.
This thing is far bigger than a few disreputable scientists. People like Al Gore planned to make huge sums of money from it. And his cronies in the Democratic party were only too happy to go along, licking their chops over the prospects of increased tax revenue, and more regulations inflicted on the public. These people were either the biggest morons on the planet or they were criminally involved.
Heads need to roll and many of those heads are attached to Democratic politicians.
The cover up will have to be global in scope.
Be on guard about your thermometer, they may “gigger” them at the factory from now on.
Sort of dilute the mecury or some such.
Lies covered in bs.
BTW Democrats not allowing Christopher Monckton to testify along side Al Gore is as big a crime as Jones trying to silence skeptics.
Food of the year – Fudge.
I also suspect that the various agencies and universities are looking for cover. I suspect you’ll see these guys fired for reasons other than scientific fraud. Jones will go because of FOIA, Mann will go for falsifying the H-index on the committee application, Briffa will go for aiding in tax evasion, Santer will go for making workplace threats (after the Fort Hood thing, there is zero tolerance for threats in the Federal Government). All of these things are easily proven, while scientific fraud is exceedingly difficult to prove. What will Copenhagen look like when all the leaders have been fired from their jobs? Might create some ‘gaps’, in the agenda. Oh well, I guess it will give people more time to eat the nice food.
The left wants this to go away fast. They believe that if Jones steps down soon the scandal will fizzle out before the full impact of the email,s and especially the code, hits.
I hope Jones hangs on for a few weeks, pulling in all the IOU’s he has gathered over the years with the team.
Spenc BC (20:22:44) :
Dear Oh! Lore, what do they imagine the world is thinking right now? They must think the MSM penetration is manageable somehow.
Scope, appointment, visibility, transparency, funding … sheer arrogance? Unbelievable! Moonbat’s got one thing right, their PR is about as much use as a chocolate fire guard.
i understand that PAX OBAMINUS will drop by to wag his head from side to side at the Copenhoax meeting. seems to be unphased by any of the “climategate”
issues.
any word on possible legal recourse— isn’t frightening children a form of child abuse? any lawyers in town ? i don’t recall seeing any comments from “the bar ” on this site
What about scientists calling for his removal from IPCC activities? Not inconsiderable Dr. Hans von Storch :
1. Data must be made public so that “adversaries” may check the analysis. [Now this is the basic prinicple of science]. This must be enforced!
2. Scientists like Mike Mann, Phil Jones and others should no longer participate in the peer-review process or in assessment activities like the IPCC!
http://coast.gkss.de/staff/storch/
Releasing the GISS and CRU information will not improve our understanding of climate, only of the CF job they did of analyzing it. Their analysis *and their data* should be recognized as tainted beyond use and placed in the scientific equivalent of Yucca Mountain, not to be touched by humans ever again.
It’s like a bad Windows install – format the drive and be done with it, don’t select “repair”.
Does anyone doubt that this reaches much farther than just the usual suspects? Why, for an example, was the IPCC strong woman Susan Solomon a recipient in number of the confidential emails that discussed how to refuse FOI requests?
And I suggest you read Pielke Sr’s weblog on Thomas Karl, the head of NCDC, how he used strong arm tactics to supress any criticism of the surface temperature record. And how the leaked emails show Phil Jones congratulating Karl on Pielke’s resignation, Jones suggesting Karl should just ignore Pielke’s criticism.
Phil Jones is in the centre of this affair because it was CRU correspondence that was leaked. If it was GISS do you have any doubts that Hansen, Gavin et co would be in similar situation or worse? And the same for Mann and Penn. Uni goes without saying.
The whole IPCC review process should now be placed in doubt, the tentacles reaching far and wide.
If the Church of CO2 can get away with just the resignation of Jones, this is a battle lost. The target should be the whole house of cards before they manage to re-group.
The term “Climategate” is getting around, yesterday putting into Google brought up 200,000 responses. I tried again about 5 hours ago and it had increased to 880,000. I just tried again a few seconds ago and it is now at 3.7 million results – still wont generate it automatically in Google’s “helpful suggestions” though.
Strange times indeed.
But amongst the ideologically committed the rot of disillusion can spread with amazing speed. See George Orwell on the Spanish civil war.
The mass support which is never quite that committed moves much more slowly which is why this will take its time to play out.
But when you see this kind of dissension from fervent advocates who feel betrayed be sure a split in the movement will happen.
I suspect Monbiot knows that and is trying to avoid it by sacrificing a scapegoat. Show trials serve the same purpose.
The point being that although there are huge vested interests at stake they are very disparate to say the least, and if they cannot be held together, whether by the prospect of profit, power and influence their coalition will dissolve. And those prospects are dwindling rapidly.
The reality is that the hard base of political support is tiny, ideological greenery is no true mass movement but is seen by its many lukewarm supporters as vacuous but worthy: they are against sin you see.
Mere fellow travellers, provided they can purchase redemption for a few pennies they feel happy and virtuous.
But asking them to sacrifice jobs and their standard of living is like ordering mercenary troops to fight to the death: they don’t and won’t.
And as Monbiot also seems to appreciate those who live by the sword die by it. The MSM may have played along and still is for the moment, but if it senses a change in the wind it can turn with terrifying speed. Ask any so called celebrity. The MSM sells news and opinion and the story of AGW fraud will sell even better than the awful warnings it once generated: that’s stale news now.
So watch closely as the ground shifts, the politicians shuffle, business and investors run for cover, and the Green movement moves onto environmental damage or some such other chimera. All in slow motion for your delight.
If it had not been so costly the whole farce would have been highly amusing.
Kindest Regards
He may succeed or not
when the cheerleaders in the media call for change in the ranks of those they support
ON the NIWA werbsite:
“NIWA confirms temperature rise
Home › Our Science › Climate › Climate – News › NIWA confirms temperature rise
Warming over New Zealand through the past century is unequivocal.
Combining Temperature Data from Multiple Sites in Wellington
NIWA’s analysis of measured temperatures uses internationally accepted techniques, including making adjustments for changes such as movement of measurement sites. For example, in Wellington, early temperature measurements were made near sea level, but in 1928 the measurement site was moved from Thorndon (3 metres above sea level) to Kelburn (125 m above sea level). The Kelburn site is on average 0.8°C cooler than Thorndon, because of the extra height above sea level.”
I would like to see the temperature records of Kelburn and Thorndon. 0.8 seems huge. And how do you get a difference of 1.9C anyway? Seems extraordinary
debreuil (21:08:32) :
“In the frenzy of the past few days, the most vital issue is being overshadowed: we face enormous challenges ahead if we are to continue to live on this planet.”
Phil Jones
Wow, I didn’t even know kicking them off was an option.
NOM!
Spenc BC (20:22:44) :
“This should work. Talk about unrepentant!
http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/2009/nov/homepagenews/CRUupdate”
1. They keep on talking about “stolen data” – i.e. a hacker attack. Has anybody in the UK asked the police if this robbery has been reported? I it under investigation? If anybody know a tame crime journalist, they might be able to get past the Police PR people.
2. If it was a hacker attack then UEA should be REALLY worried.
You see, once hackers have actually gained access to a network, the don’t have time to wander around selecting interesting stuff and juicy emails. They just grab everything they can, as fast as they can, to analyze later. So if it was a hacker, we can expect more information to be released in a week or so, when the excitement starts to wane.
3. If the file was left on an open server, they might claim that it was stolen, but others might claim that it was placed their for public consumption – grey area I think.
4. If it was an inside job by a disaffected employee, then the whistle has been blown, and I think there are protections under UK law for that. Also whistleblowers tend to get a lot more sympathy than the organization they work for. Hence UEA’s focus on point 1.
5. Whether it was stolen or not is a red herring – it does not detract from the seriousness of the admissions in the emails. I am not a lawyer, but I believe that evidence is evidence irrespective of how it was obtained, although if it were stolen, then there may be other indictments involved.
This whole thing goes right to the top – everybody’s credibility is shot – including whoever teaches (or fails to teach) the scientific method and professional ethics to student climatologists.
Methinks these Professors profess too much.
Is Denier more related to Holocaust Denier than say Warmist is to Racist, or Facist?
It is an argument of the non-greenhouse-theorist movement I don’t get. The term “holocaust” in “holocaust denier” surely is the key, not the “denier” bit. I could be a denier of many things, or has the word “denier” ceased to exist on its own without subliminal reference to the holocaust? What word can I use for people who deny other things nowadays if denier has been scrapped?
“and the Green movement moves onto environmental damage or some such other chimera. ”
And they should never have left it for the whispers and promises of politicians and snake oil vendors who seek only to line thier pockets.
Wake up Green Movement: Go back to the Superfund-type cleanups and getting toxic wasted dumping into rivers and oceans under control. If you cling to these phonies they will drag you down with them. Breathing clean air and drinking clean water has wide support.
When the current practices in science get cleaned up, I expect links to the following to be included with every published paper:
1. the raw data,
2. peer reviewer comments and responses,
3. all mathematical adjustments and assumptions, and their basis, and
4. equipment descriptions.
And most important of all, I am sick and tired of having fees required for the general public (and students) to see anything more than the abstracts.
Something doesn’t smell quite right in theses calls for Phil Jones to resign.