From a University of East Anglia Press Release
Professor Phil Jones has today announced that he will stand aside as Director of the Climatic Research Unit until the completion of an independent Review resulting from allegations following the hacking and publication of emails from the Unit.
Professor Jones said: “What is most important is that CRU continues its world leading research with as little interruption and diversion as possible. After a good deal of consideration I have decided that the best way to achieve this is by stepping aside from the Director’s role during the course of the independent review and am grateful to the University for agreeing to this. The Review process will have my full support.”
Vice-Chancellor Professor Edward Acton said: “I have accepted Professor Jones’s offer to stand aside during this period. It is an important step to ensure that CRU can continue to operate normally and the independent review can conduct its work into the allegations.
“We will announce details of the Independent Review, including its terms of reference, timescale and the chair, within days. I am delighted that Professor Peter Liss, FRS, CBE, will become acting director.”
An AP story is here
h/t to Jeff Id of The Air Vent
Jim Watson (12:00:38) :
“3) An entire generation of young children–eager to help “save the planet”–will be growing up in the coming years knowing they were lied to, used and minipulated by adults they trusted”
————–
When I was little I was told: “WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE BECAUSE OF THE HOLE IN THE OZONE LAYER!!!11!!!1”
I’m still pissed about the irresponsible science and eco-alarmism I experienced then and it is, in large part, the reason why I never took any of these jokers for face value to begin with
Stefan P
Very funny.
You will Never get an indepenent enquirery in the UK.
Stephen Brown (15:01:03)
Looks like a career in politics is all that’s left then. And that’s good news?
Wait up, Ed Scott (14:55:39), and I’ll accompany you to the pub.
Ed Scott (14:55:39) :
Ahhhh, so Denmark is “ground zero” of the scam. No wonder they want to meet there, it’s to coordinate their next moves.
The fact they are making arrests sounds promising, as long as it’s big fish, and all the better if that will interfere with the upcoming fixer meeting.
Onion (13:33:55) :
I’m not sure if this deserves its own thread
Mick Hulme, along with Jerome Ravetz have decided to redefine what science is at the BBC website.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8388485.stm
Can we really describe any of this as science? At best, it seems like social studies. They really shouldn’t be describing themselves as scientists at UEA.
I’ve been swapping emails with Jerry Ravetz over the last few days. I used to attend some of his lectures and seminars at Leeds University when I did my degree there.
I urged him to let me take part in this piece, but he had already finalised it with Mike Hulme so it was too late. Ravetz isn’t a UEA scientist, he’s an independent writer attached to Insis at Oxford.
It comes across to me largely as a damage limitation exercise on the part of Mike Hulme, where he makes a couple of nods in the direction of the informed sections of the blogosphere:
# To be validated, knowledge must also be subject to the scrutiny of an extended community of citizens who have legitimate stakes in the significance of what is being claimed
# And to be empowered for use in public deliberation and policy-making, knowledge must be fully exposed to the proliferating new communication media by which such extended peer scrutiny takes place.
There is some contrition for the unethical goings on at CRU, but insufficient disclosure of the extent and nature of the wrongdoing. Mike Hulme is still in denial of climategate to a large extent.
I think Jerry Ravetz is beginning to realise the depth of the scandal, and the true level of damage this has done to science and the public perception of it. I’m going to keep talking to him, because he’s go some real insight. I hope I can help balance up his viewpoint a bit.
Could I kindly request that UK government department DEFRA demands the return of taxpayer monies paid to UEA/CRU for the supply of the Phil Jones random number generator otherwise known as the ‘Weather Generator’ to the UK Climate Projections project
http://ukclimateprojections.defra.gov.uk/content/view/941/522/
“How much did UKCP09 cost?
Producing the Projections cost about £11 million in total, paid out of Defra’s and DECC’s research budgets.”
http://ukcp09.defra.gov.uk/content/view/9/9/
Any science attached to this resource is now valueless given the association with CRU. However, it is useful to know that in my childrens retirement years (2080’s) under a high emmissions scenario, there is a 90 percent probability that the change in mean winter temperature will be plus 5.7 centigrade in London.
http://ukclimateprojections.defra.gov.uk/content/view/1186/527/
If it wasn’t so expensive it would be funny.
P Gosselin (12:06:26) :
Couldn’t yo have waited pushing the button until they were all in the building?
John Stossel is going to cover this topic tonight on The O’Reilly Show, on Fox.
http://stossel.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2009/12/01/oreilly-tonight-climategate/
There are plenty of independents that watch this show. Any pol that thinks this is a non-issue, had better polish up the resume.
tallbloke (15:29:38) :
I hope you succeed!
SteveSadlov (15:02:15) :
“Why not just fire the [snip] outright? What’s with this temporary BS?”
This [snip] shook hand with Prince Charles and he can pull the rug from under a lot of influential people.
Maybe Guantanamo is an option?
“This report tells us that “New evidence suggests sea levels could rise by 1.4m (by the end of the century) which would be a potential disaster for some countries.””
Ah yes, the new magic of climate science. If it cools, that’s evidence of future warming to come. If it warms, that’s evidence of warming. If it doesn’t do much, then that’s evidence it’s about to warm.
You almost have to admire them. Almost.
I wish it were true. My dentist tells me I must be grinding my teeth in my sleep. I tell him, “No. I listen to NPR.”
Search NPR “Jones”, and it’s mostly Norah, but the radio news report I heard from NPR about Phil’s decampment was followed by a “this just in”- alarmist reminder from dozens (or was it “hundreds”?) of scientists warning about the shrinking Antarctic icecap and four feet of sea rise in the near future. Four feet, NPR reminds us, calls for massive ark-building. Their online story, meanwhile, cites
Was it my misreading, or is Davies heading the investigation? It would seem that might not be too wise. Davies is a defender.
As long as the climate-funded reports keep pouring in, NPR can keep on playing fungoes with them.
tallbloke (15:29:38) :
Isn’t Ravetz the guy who invented Post-Normal Science – also known as lying to the public about, and fabricating the data for social reasons ?? How could he be critical of the motley Cru – isn’t it a perfect fit for his invention ??
(From one blunt Yorkshireman to another)
[snip]
First time posting a youtube video so I hope this works! Only 297 hits so far but brillant!
[REPLY – The good news is that your post worked. The bad news is that it has been decided that video is over the line (we got deluged with it). Sorry ’bout that. ~ Evan]
Zipper dee doo daa zipper dee day.
Best news I’ve had since the cat died!
philincalifornia (15:46:43) :
tallbloke (15:29:38) :
Isn’t Ravetz the guy who invented Post-Normal Science – also known as lying to the public about, and fabricating the data for social reasons ?? How could he be critical of the motley Cru – isn’t it a perfect fit for his invention ??
(From one blunt Yorkshireman to another)
That’s the geezer. I think though that post-normal science (PNS) is something which is used and abused by both sides. I think of it more as an insight into the true state of affairs than a method by which one group pulls the wool over the eyes of another.
Ravetz says on his website:
“We argue that the quality-assurance of scientific inputs into policy processes requires an ‘extended peer community’, including all the stakeholders in an issue. This new peer community can also deploy ‘extended facts’, including local and personal experience, as well as investigative journalism and leaked sources. So Post-Normal Science is inevitably political, and involves a new extension of legitimacy and power; but we felt it appropriate to launch it on this philosophical foundation.”
If he put the ‘leaked sources’ bit up there before climategate broke, it’s quite prescient. He said to me that he thinks WUWT “is a great PNS site”, so it seems he sees the irony in the sceptics hoisting the concept of an instutionally delivered PNS on it’s own petard.
I said to him, “OK, I’ve got my extended facts and my leaked documents, get me to the policy debating table.”
We’ll see how democratic PNS is intended to be I guess.
Phil Jones is down. Let’s see who else is fond of lying with statistics.
“Applying the correction in real time in the future will mean that we will always be slightly changing approximately the last 15 years data – because of the filter end effects. Best would seem to be to maintain the present version we have and apply this variance correction every few years ( eg the IPCC cycle !).” – Phil Jones, former director of the CRU (http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=116&filename=929044085.txt).
Grant Foster (Tamino) appears in 18 Climategate e-mails. His is also fond of “filter end effects”.
Awaiting moderation on Grant’s site is my finally valid destruction (http://i49.tinypic.com/24cfeas.jpg) of his “filter end effects” Hockey Stick that tortures the longest thermometer record into supporting AGW:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/04/28/central-england-temperature/
NikFromNYC // December 1, 2009 at 7:10 am | Reply
I don’t need homework to BELIEVE MY EYES: the raw data plot does not support his claim. His smoothing doesn’t follow the peaks except at the ends. I have done more homework and with a bit of help from John Ray I have reproduced Tamino’s work from raw data. The two graphs used to prove his point show the opposite of what honest analysis shows. Not knowing how the black box works didn’t stop me from using sample data to see how setting the big knob on top to its lowest setting effects its behavior:
http://antigreen.blogspot.com/2009/11/central-england-temperature-series-very.html
Using Savitzky-Golay smoothing of higher order confirms my point since the filter then follows peaks in the middle instead of hides them:
http://i48.tinypic.com/28jkvnm.jpg
Print the raw data plot and ask a kid to trace it with a big red marker to see if he comes up with a Hockey Stick. I can’t. Can you?!
Not one of the 280 comments mentioned the term “end effect”. Computers were not very fast in 1964 so Savitzky and Golay at Perkin-Elmer who makes spectrometers had to figure out a way to smooth noisy spectra without much computing power. Their paper became one of the top sited of all time. From David I. Wilson’s “The Black Art of Smoothing”: “The SG filters suffer from end effects, but requires minimal storage.”
Overwhelming evidence may support AGW, but honest analysis shows that the longest running thermometer record does not.
The new director Peter Liss is a coauthor of “An Introduction to Environmental Chemistry: Second Edition (2003),” which was translated into Japanese in 2005, is a good textbook for starters and treats global issues in a fairly un-biased manner.
Michael at (14:43:34)
The warmists would love to paint sceptics as being all right-wing, anti-Semetic conspiracy nuts.
Congratulations! You’ve just handed them a great big steaming pile of ammunition.
Lots of new people are here because of the evidence. The evidence. if anything, is going to bring down the AGW edifice, not the slandering of a whole race.
You’ve just made anyone here who is Jewish, or anyone who doesn’t want to associate with people posting anti-Jewish rantings, think twice about sceptics. With “friends” like you…
Maybe we are celebrating too early.
Lets look at it from Jones’ point of view – Stick it out in the face of mounting evidence of manipulation, possible fraud and public outcry? or move into damage control mode, which is what his stepping down is.
Already he is generating some sympathy even here. (Invariant (11:56:30) :
By all means, this is good news, but let us show that we also have a warm and human side here at WUWT – we all do mistakes! tallbloke (12:11:12) : We don’t all behave unethically though.
Lets not forget that this is the guy who prevented others from publishing, got editors removed, refused to give data, destroyed data, manipulated the data all towards perpetuating the greatest fraud in history.
Let us not forget HE DID NOT DO THIS ALONE!
He is not the only guilty person.
Despite massive blackout and pooh poohing by the world media, he has been brought down, (for the moment), by the humble citizens of the blogosphere.
Let us not stop to crow at the retreating enemy. There is still much to be done. Jones is not the only person exposed by the emails. He is not the only member of the cosy “peer reviewing” clique.
There is criminality involved. Can any law-savvy person comment on this? Have criminal cases been brought to bear on him and others?
jonk (13:58:43) :
“A victory, but a small one. I’m afraid that this will be all that comes from this scandal. I’m probably just being cynical, but the media is still trying to bury this story and they figure this will appease some people and make the story fade. I even checked google news for this story and it didn’t show up on the main news page. The suggestion fill in for had no auto suggest for “phil jones” no matter how many letters you put in.
The MSM is just sitting with their fingers in their ears chanting LA LA LA hoping for enough time to get the Compenhagen treaty done and Cap and Tax passed. We’re not reaching enough people to be effictive and, while I should be happy, I’m just getting more depressed. I guess feeling powerless to stop the insanity does that to you :(”
I think you are too pessimistic.
This will not stop. Investigations are undertaken and we are all watching.
forget about MSM, we don’t need them.
Fox does the job.
Also look at Australia where MSM ignored the entire scam.
Internet caused a political switch on the subject and now 80% of the Australians are opposing the EPS (C&P).
The big public already new Global Warming was a scam.
They only needed a single sentence about the fraud to consolidate their opinion.
Besides that, I have discussed the subject with many people with a warmist signature.
They now say “you have been right all the way, AGW is a scam.
Our problem is the political establishment that has isolated it’s self.
Isolation is a major strength when you want to push through political decisions, but a huge disadvantage when the outside world knows what’s happening on the inside.
Think Hitler making strategic military decisions and his advisers did not tell him the truth. He lost major battles on Russian soil because of that.
The moment will come when the public gets angry and hit the street in really big numbers.
That is their biggest scare and they will be served.
retrieve my post pleease
I say Steve McIntyre helped UEA enormously by showing it that the UEA graph no doubt obtained from CRU still hid the extent of the Briffa tree ring decline, which was then going to implicate UEA in the cover-up – unless they were to force Jones to step down stat, showing also that UEA knew it was being taken for a ride by CRU.
When is NOAA going to be forced to step down for apparently deleting the post-1960 Briffa data as though it didn’t exist at all?
tallbloke (16:05:21) :
He said to me that he thinks WUWT “is a great PNS site”, so it seems he sees the irony in the sceptics hoisting the concept of an instutionally delivered PNS on it’s own petard.
_________________________
I hope he lives long enough to see the irony of thinking that WUWT is a great PNS site.
Enjoy the pre-normal snow !!!