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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” John Ryer (20:09:09) :
Anthony, I absolutely applaud your coverage of this. Nobel prize material.
Instead of resignation, the CRU shouold be called upon to go back to the baseline data, reconstruct their predictions (if they can), and make it available and transparent to all.
This is a far harder path for them then their resignation. It is also professionally correct.”
————————-
Here here! I suspect that this will be the last thing that they will do.
They will squirm and wriggle and maybe ask people to stand down and who knows what else, but open up all the data and method?
If they had nothing to hide, this should have been their first response. IE, if you claim our data/method is suspect, here we’ll do it again and let everyone see exactly how we did it!
Why resist releasing data? why resist moves for an independent inquiry?
It looks very suspect.
As for Monbiot, well, he is only criticising their response, their spin, here. NOT the fact that the data itself is incredibly suspect. He is still stuck in the limited hang-out of “a few emails” and trying desperately to limit this scandal’s fall-out to that.
He is desperate because the code comments and the read me file expose the “inconvenient truth” that Monbiot refuses to touch with a bargepole. This scandal is not just a few massively incriminating emails, it is also the outright admission of scientific fraud.
After reading the explosive Harry_read_me file, there is no way that anyone with a neuron firing can have any confidence in the veracity or dependability of the raw data. It was a total and complete mess.
When it is known (so blindingly obvious) that the CRU has a massive bias in favour of the AGW hypothesis, surely they should take extra measures to be even more open than normal to dispel any charge that their research is skewed by their bias? Instead we see them refusing FOI requests to hide incomprehensibly poor data, cobbled together with admission of invention, “smoothing” meaning hiding declines, and all sorts of dodgy practices to produce a temperature reconstruction that an enormous amount of other “peer-reviewed” science uses as a key assumption.
If this reconstruction is the benchmark by which the computerised climate models are calibrated, it is no wonder they all fail to project future patterns!
When a major and massive bias is inherant in the team, surely that team must seek to dispel any notion that they allowed that bias to manifest itself anywhere in the research process? Hiding the raw code and withholding data do nothing to dispel this notion and instead will reinforce it.
Monbiot’s limited hang-out is a cynical and deliberate attempt at distraction from the inconvenient truth that the science is not sound, reasonable or beyond reproach. In fact it appears to be an almighty fudge that is rigged to fit the hypothesis and as such, undermines the entire AGW argument, possibly fatally.
Monbiot is acting like a car salesman saying, “OK, I admit that the brochure could have been presented better and I am not happy with the printers,” whilst we have had a little accidental glimpse under the bonnet (hood) and we are telling him with alarm and shock that there is no F*ing engine!!!
Amazingly, the headlines at Drudge are still on ClinateGate. Now there are 5 headlines on ClimateGate there at the top of the page.
http://www.drudgereport.com/
One of the headlines links to this :
Scientist in climate change ‘cover-up’ storm told to quit
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1230635/Scientist-climate-change-cover-storm-told-quit.html
So this looks like the game plan : get someone to resign, make them the lone nut, act like the problem is gone, then go back to business as usual in AGW.
As soon as the lone nut is gone then immediately go back to saying every scientific organization in the world that’s worth anything says man is causing climate to change. So action needs to be taken immediately.
Magicjava,
Thanks for the link to your blog. It’s very good and I put it straight away into my favourites.
Oh! This thought just hit me! *ouch!* Have you heard of the Black Sox scandal with the 1919 World Series of baseball?
Mann et. al. – the “Black Sox” of science. I’m thinking black wristbands with their names and Black Sox of Science.
I hereby declare that to be a public domain idea.
If you can make some money off it, be my guest. Donating some of the profits to *real* scientific endeavo(u)rs or some non-lefty charity will create good karma…
CRU is in a tricky situation as is Penn State. If Jones or Mann are outright fired, it makes the institutions look bad. I predict that in a few months you will see a few demotions and/or resignations. The people involved will deny that it has anything to do with Climategate.
That’s essentially what happened at Stanford back in the 1980s in the wake of the indirect cost scandal.
By the way, it is my opinion that climate science has been thoroughly corrupted by global warming and all the research dollars which have become available. Probably there have been many decent scientists who were displaced in a Machiavellian race to the bottom.
Monbiot is sick.
He was a founder of the bizarro “Respect Party” – now fronted by George Galloway.
Look for Google images of George Galloway.
Frank Turek, at Townhall, has written a column at Townhall, Science Doesn’t Say Anything—Scientists Do.
I’m astonished at how rapidly these people are turning on each other. I’d have thought there would have been rather more solidarity among them. I’d have thought Monbiot would have waited a while before calling for Jones’ head.
There is more honour among thieves,
I should add that Turek’s column quickly moves from general scientific misbehaviour to a brief account of the buccaneering exploits of the CRU crew to a longer discussion of the evils of the theory of the origin of species by means of natural selection.
It might be worth looking at Wikkipedea’s entry for Climategate. Written solely in terms of a hacking incident, with carefully framed straw-man examples of what it all is supposed to mean.
Fortunately, Wikkipedea is open to editing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climategate
DAvid Warren has an article at Real Clear Politics, The Skeptics Are Vindicated:
‘A computer hacker in England has done the world a service by making available a huge quantity of evidence for the way in which “human-induced global warming” claims have been advanced over the years.’
until mid circulation atmosphere increase [url=http://www.co2offsetresearch.org]scientists space globally[/url] http://www.istr.org
I just posted this at the CE Journal website where Tom Yulsman agrees with Monbiot.
http://www.cejournal.net/?p=2341&cpage=1#comment-5277
The anthropogenic global warming ‘science’ that Tom Yulsman has taken ten years to digest has been supported, driven and informed by the very same people now shown to be behaving improperly and potentially fraudulently.
It’s one great big circle of scientists, journalists, politicians and environmental activists all sitting on each others lap. Jones and the CRU have just been roughly pulled out of the ring. Others, like Monbiot and Yulsman, sensing an imminent collapse have stood up. The rest are falling one by one, still repeating their favourite mantras about peer-review and settled science as they lie sprawling on their arses.
What always puzzled me about AGW is the fact that when you offer an alternate view that is actually good news (ie. we’re not going to be burned to a crisp in an apocalyptic thermageddon) you are treated as an apostate. All we ever wanted and all we ever will want is the truth, unadulterated, unbiased and unspun. And as long as we don’t get it we will keep asking the questions that journalists like Monbiot, Yulsman, Harrabin and Revkin should have been asking all along.
One thing I have never understood about these claims of big oil financing skeptics.
Big oil would love nothing better than increased energy prices. It would be so easy to tack on a few more bucks on each barrel of oil and let the green movement take the credit/blame.
Net result: more profits.
Seriously, if I was CEO of Chevron or Exxon I would be handing out millions to the green groups, hoping they would get cap and trade in place. At the same time, I would be setting up a carbon credit trading group to milk the derivatives part of the scheme. I would also be setting up an alternate energy group to tap into the subsidies from the various governments.
Ah, life would be good.
If the green schemes fail, well, I guess we will just have to keep pumping oil.
Life will still be good.
Pajamamedia has Ian Plimer on Climategate: Alarmism Is Underpinned by Fraud.
(A person writing under the name Ian Plimer, I note, had all of many contributions deleted from the comments section of Monbiot’s defence at the Guardian site.)
It is not the failure of a man, or even a Team. It is a predictable failure of a system, a religious-like system of thought. All the ingredients existed for it to appear: a somewhat hidden religious ideology (Earth as a sentient organism), ideas to fuel it (climate scientists) and the culture of secrecy to hide the inconveniences (anonymous peer-reviewing f.e.). At no time in history such scheme has lead to human advancement (some call it progress), rather the contrary.
Thus there is no point changing a fuse when the entire network is obsolete. A short term victory does not pre-empt a future defeat. What is need to obliterate this kind of system is enforcing openness. Scientists (the real ones) have the duty to define how to reach the transparency level the public deserves. If scientists don’t do it, someone else (politics, medias) will likely achieve it to his own interest.
Bye,
TMTisFree
“What is needed to obliterate this kind of system is enforcing openness.”
Printed journals, and their necessarily associated gatekeepers, ought to go. They should be given a subsidy to enable them to operate online. There should still be a privileged role for editors and peer-reviewing experts, and a lot of filtering and critiqueing by them. Articles that get a lot of thumbs-down could be flagged and graded unfavorably, and placed in some sort of online Coventry. (On a separate tab, or something.)
But this necessary elitist preponderance shouldn’t extend to their ability to effectively exclude / mute / utterly marginalize mavericks and non-credentialed outsiders. There should be a place at the table, somewhere, for them.
PS: It doesn’t matter that this greater openness will degrade the average quality of the discussion, and that a lot of second-rate stuff will see the light of day. That’s a small price to pay to avoid faddish hi-jackings of science like CAWGery.
Presumably there is some sort of “teeth” in the Freedom of Information Act? What should they do when people try to cirmcunavigate the law? At the very least the University should be fined heavily. Otherwise what is to stop people just refusing to cooperate with the Act?
Jones, I would assume, has a large role to play in the upcoming Punch-and-Judy show in Copenhagen. Can he possibly do his song-and-dance under the current cloud? But wouldn’t a pre-Copenhagen resignation be equally embarrassing for the jolly CRU?
Oh, happy day!
Getting rid of Jones might not be as easy for UEA as it appears. Unless granting structures have changed, much of the money received for climate research may be directly attached to Jones, not the UEA. If Jones goes, so goes the money.
I worked decades ago with a world class researcher who brought bags of money to the school, but it was his, not the school’s. Drove the dept head crazy, because my boss wouldn’t do things the way the head wanted, but in the end, my guy was funding half the dept’s grad students.
Whether Jones is fired or not, whether or not MSM makes more of this, whether or not politicians will now question the science, one thing seems certain. Never again will it be acceptable to refer to skeptics as deniers. And never again can the Gore’s of this world proclaim loudly “the science is settled.”
At the very least, all those scientists skeptical of the man made greenhouse dogma can now take heart. There has in recent years been a trickle coming over from the warmists camp. Now I hear the distant sounds of the coming flood.
Articles that get a lot of thumbs-down could be flagged and graded unfavorably, and placed in some sort of online Coventry.
There is no need for that: it is a matter of time for “deficient” science (published or not) to be corrected (and forgotten): the vast majority of scientists is doing good work.
More importantly, the peer-reviewing process should be reversed as follow:
1/ the peers should be known to the submitter who can either accept or reject them (to avoid the paper being judged only by name. The balance is the time and work it takes for a scientist to resubmit to another [less appealing] journal);
2/ the peers have to accept to release their comments publicly (as a mean to avoid buddy-buddy) to publication (online) together with the paper if accepted, and on request from anyone if rejected;
3/ the peers must be provided all the data, codes and whatever is necessary to be able to evaluate the plausibility of the submitter’s work (and failure to do so enables a prompt rejection with notice);
4/ if the work has been done using tax-money, the paper has to be available freely online with the comments.
Other rules could possibly be enacted.
Bye,
TMTisFree
Correction: the first sentence of the above comment is a quote from Roger Knights (03:38:09).
Anthony
I think the AGW group will try to downplay this latest incident as being an isolated affair invovling just a few scientists .Unfortunately the CRU/climategate is only one of many such past incidences like the GISS /US temperature errors and many adjustments ,the Gore presentation errors and data exaggerations, the extent of arctic ice loss, the bristlecone pine proxy hockey stick temperature manipulation, the Yamal tree ring proxy manipuation , NZ temperature manipulation and the list goes on . The AGW science seems to be one of data manipulation, gross exaggeration and unscientific study techniques. Transparency, one of the cornerstones of science and is non existent. The biggest and most fundamental failure being that the science turned out to be flawed. The temperatures went down when the co2 went up .To realize that that the world powers are about make monumental decisions affecting the environmental and financial health of the entire globe on such corrupted science is mind boggling. The entire IPCC group should be replaced and all data re-examined by independent scientists not appointed or working through the UN.
Do we have a list of the major past wrong doings by the AGW group? It would be useful to demonstrate that this was a regular pattern of misdeeds over a long period and not just an isolated event.?