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
So far Roger, all we are seeing is this serpentine location for the AP story via a “hosted news” page. A search of AP.org for “climategate” returns nothing. They just don’t want to step on their warm bodies… er, buddies toes.
I’m gonna check in on “Family Guy” to see if Seth has managed to work Climategate into an episode…
All of the perfidy revealed by these scientists reminds me of a few points Dr. Pielke, jr. made. One thing he shares with his father is being a true scientist. He wrote this back in 2006: http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/do-the-ends-justify-the-means-3921
It’s politics that demand “either you are with me or against me.” It’s science when following the data to transcend the rhetorical politics.
Anthony – the Ed Scott (14:55:39) post above might be worth its own story. Here’s a link to the Copenhagen Post article “Denmark rife with CO2 fraud”
http://www.cphpost.dk/news/national/88-national/47643-denmark-rife-with-co2-fraud.html
“Robin Hood Men In Tights”
Your name is Peter? Peter…Liss?
Do you, Maid Maryanne take…Peter Liss…to be your lawfully wedded husband?
I doooo NOT!!!!!
I talked to a friend who is up on academic politics, though in the US rather than England. His take is that Phil Jones is toast at his current university. I tend to agree, though I have no inside info to support that.
The reasoning is: If the university was going to try to cover for him they wouldn’t have twisted his arm to have him step aside. As a corollary, he wouldn’t have stepped aside unless the university twisted his arm in a major way.
The thing to keep in mind is that the primary real goal of a public institution is to maintain or if at all possible expand the resources it gets from the public. In this case that means maintaining or expanding the grants that the center brings into the university. The continuing presence of Phil Jones would expose any grants coming in to increased scrutiny. A new director might actually be able to increase the inflow. The logic is: The climate research is important. It’s currently a mess due to Phil Jones. Therefore it needs additional resources to clean the mess up and restore it to its preeminent position. In other words, keeping Jones reduces cash coming in. Dumping him may even enhance it if they play their cards right.
Also, the picture I get from the e-mails is of a guy with sharp elbows and a well-developed sense of his own importance. Guys like that are not usually loved by subordinates or peers within their own institutions. Once the perception develops that he has lost power, the knives are likely to come out.
Looking at a sampling of the e-mails, I kind of suspect that the knives have been out for a while. Whoever gathered those e-mails and the code seems to have known where the bodies were buried–what would hurt the most. Maybe a hacker would be able to figure that out. Someone inside would be more likely to be able to. And I had better stop there. Whoever leaked the stuff did the scientific community a huge favor and I wish them well.
If I were Jones I’d seize the welcome opportunity to get administrative nonsense off my plate so I could focus on more important things like research. Let some other dope pilot through the red tape & crusty stagnation. What would be funny would be if he wants the job back later.
The University of East Anglia is to decide “The Terms of Reference” and “The Chair”
These are of vital importance. “The Chair” because “The Chair” can whitewash anything, like the chair of the National academy whitewashing Mann.
The “The Terms of Reference” because these will give an indication of where the “independent review” will be headed.
Will they include – Overstated claims on Global Warming? Violation of the Freedom of Information Act and the Data Protection Act? Seeking to remove journal editers? Get contrary papers not published? Rejecting contrary papers in a highly conspiratorial manner?
Move along. Move along. Nothing to see here.
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-fraud-is-everywhere-suny-albany-and-queens-university-belfast-join-climategate-pjm-exclusive/
With this and the State Penn reivew, maybe this is a “trick” to hide the decliners. Perhaps more at bread and circus instead of roundly repudiating the putative wrong peddled by hockeystickers and plied by politickers.
These seamsters sold and sewed the gossamer threads, spinning yarns and stitching data instead of cloth, or substance. But there is more, this is a 3rd worldview sweatshop. AGWalmart “science” department needs to be dealt with for undercutting any competition, any contribution to the truth.
The AGW CRU’s ship needs to go down with the captain, taking one for the Team doesn’t suffice. No pleading, no platitudes.
Free the data, free the code, 100%.
tallbloke (11:46:34) said :-
“It’s bloody cold in the UK tonight”
It’s December so a cold snap might be expected. Also it seemed colder because of the mild wet weather we have been having due to AGW. It’s now mild again….
Andy
The bastion is crumbling. 0600hrs GMT BBC radio 4 news reports, as second item, that Phil Jones is stepping down. Not quite there, however, as it is implied that he has done the “honourable” thing whilst the “theft” of data is being investigated.
I’m an aerospace Technical Fellow of Modeling, Simulation and Analysis (MS&A). I help organize international IEEE.org conferences and referee scientific papers. I’m shocked at the low standards that appear to be normal in climatology. Climategate is adversely impacting the credibility of all science and scientists.
With UEA conducting an “independent” review of CRU, I would next expect in the next USA DoD scandal, that Lockheed Martin or Boeing be allowed to perform an “independent” audit of one of the own divisions, and it be happily accepted by the government and the MSM. Did the $600 toilet seat and $500 hammer teach them nothing?
I suggested–through channels–to Sen Inhofe (R-OK), that the climatologists are the SMEs and will battle out the topic, but for the data collection, processing, mining, modeling, simulation and analysis part, UEA and Penn have debauched themselves too much to be trusted to conduct anything close to an independent audit. I proposed that MS&A experts from outside fields, like aerospace, be brought in to evaluate the CRU / Penn work w.r.t. standard practices and procedures used by MS&A practitioners across all industries.
Given the gravity of the accusations, and the world-wide legislation that has been and is being enacted based on the CRU / Penn, et al work, any audit must be done by a blue-ribbon panel of outside MS&A experts that will make a dispassionate and objective assessment. Only that type of group can avoid being accused of protecting the “home team.”
Newt Love (my real name)
newtlove.com
philincalifornia (17:38:03) :
yonason (16:25:22) :
philincalifornia (15:46:43) :
Isn’t there another center in Yorkshire? Better open that one to scrutiny, too, and ASAP.
——————–
Not sure about that, as I’ve lived in the US for 30 years. East Anglia and Exeter are many miles away. Ravetz did most of his work while at the University of Leeds though.
Adapting the four Yorkshiremen to AGW in about 20 years will be most amusing though:
“Polar bears, bloody polar bears, I remember when ……” and so on and so forth.
Tallbloke, yes very blunt indeed. I wonder if Jones and his friends knew they were willingly participating in Post-Normal science, or were they effectively as misled and misguided as the Catlin Crew ??
Roger Knights should know that Exeter is about as close to West Anglia as he’ll find on the map. :o)
There was a press release on the Leeds Uni website a couple of weeks ago about a new ‘climate change centre’ for Yorkshire. Wonder how that’ll play out.
“Linear trendlines? You were lucky, we used to get beaten with those whippy polynomials”
The BBC didn’t publish my first attempt (surprise), so I have had another go:
————————————————————–
I used to attend Jerome Ravetz’ lectures and seminars at Leeds University when I did my degree in Philosophy of Science.
Jerry has great insight but I feel he has allowed Mike Hulme to subvert his message here. This reads as a damage limitation exercise and an apologia for the tree ring circus which has brought properly done science into disrepute.
The government and members of the society of environmental journalists at the BBC have connived with CRU and other biased institutions to propagate the exaggerated data and suppress other peer reviewed science which ‘confuses the message’.
When Truth tries to speak to power, power turns one deaf ear.
http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/2009/nov/homepagenews/CRUupdate
OK, I read most of the text on the above page. Is what CRU says in its statement about the research data being available false? Or is it talking about the doctored data and not the raw data.
Thanks.
– A non-scientist citizen of the US
AS the BBC has had the details of the leaked documents for over a month, I would suggest also that Dr Jones and his crew have also known about about it for a similar time. I cannot imagine that a diligent reporter would not check the facts with them.
I would therefore opine that CRU and others have had ample time to clear the decks before all this blew into the public domain. A FOI request to the BBC for any emails or correspondence between their staff and the CRU over the relevant period might prove quite revealing! Or am I being to sceptical here?
December 2, 2009 5:00 AM
Fallout Over “ClimateGate” Data Leak Grows
Posted by Declan McCullagh
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/12/02/taking_liberties/entry5860171.shtml
Interesting that McCullagh’s the only one I’ve seen who’s calling them “leaked.”
tallbloke (23:38:16) :
“There was a press release on the Leeds Uni website a couple of weeks ago about a new ‘climate change centre’ for Yorkshire.”
Ohhhh, dear.
So, Leeds is IN Yorkshire? In Mass it’s in Hampshire county.
looked it up, and got:
“An innovative new £50 million research centre will be meeting the global challenge of climate change by harnessing the expertise and research power of Yorkshire universities, including Leeds.”, where the heading reads “Centre for low carbon futures” Is that the one?
What, you had whippy polynomials?! You don’t know how lucky you were.
The BBC should be ashamed of their biassed reporting. They slavishly report the warmist agenda and one just wonders how much longer they will persist in hushing this one up
RE: Bonnie (01:29:30) :
http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/2009/nov/homepagenews/CRUupdate
OK, I read most of the text on the above page. Is what CRU says in its statement about the research data being available false? Or is it talking about the doctored data and not the raw data.
_____________________
Absolutely not. The raw data was “lost” if you believe them, and as far as the value-added (doctored) data goes…
If you actually look at the e-mails (and there are summaries available that speak to this much better than I can) there is a pattern of stonewalling the FOIA requests to not releasing anything, to pointing to already available data from GISS but not revealing what subset was used to produce the CRU records, to now claiming that some of the data used is subject to NDA’s with the organizations/countries that produced the data. Under no circumstances, even now, can anyone other than CRU recreate their record… and that’s assuming even they can do it
The Read Me Harry file indicates, among many other problems, that portions of their program would produce inconsistent results from one run to another, and that it was even capable of having sections crash without the user ever being notified that there was an error/issue behind the scenes
Any implication that the CRU temperature records were formed out in the open for all to see is at its face, false
I’ve just caught an item on the local BBC TV news (Norfolk) about the leak. They showed some comments on a blog – which I think was this one – but then cut to some pro-AGW woman in London, who tried to brush over the emails as if they were a minor inconvenience! A start, I suppose…..
yonason (08:58:24) :
tallbloke (23:38:16) :
“There was a press release on the Leeds Uni website a couple of weeks ago about a new ‘climate change centre’ for Yorkshire.”
Ohhhh, dear.
So, Leeds is IN Yorkshire? In Mass it’s in Hampshire county.
looked it up, and got:
“An innovative new £50 million research centre will be meeting the global challenge of climate change by harnessing the expertise and research power of Yorkshire universities, including Leeds.”, where the heading reads “Centre for low carbon futures” Is that the one?
What, you had whippy polynomials?! You don’t know how lucky you were.
No wonder you yanks are always utterly lost when you come over here.
Yes, that’s the one. Leeds is one of the universities which has a chunk of NCAS http://www.ncas.ac.uk/ research going on in it’s dept of earth sciences.
When I were a lad, we’d have ter hold us breath, dive ter t’bottom of t’lake, turn t’mud upside down, and graph t’sediments before breakfast.
OK, I read most of the text on the above page. Is what CRU says in its statement about the research data being available false? Or is it talking about the doctored data and not the raw data.
They clearly imply it is the raw data. But only imply. And by “available” they may mean not “available from CRU”, but only from the original sources (which would make it MUCH harder to gather).
They are not specific and it sounds kind of weasly to me.
We did get the NZ raw data — from NZ. (And we also know the results!)
As predicted yesterday, Professor Phil Jones has been arrested.
From the Mail…
Professor in climate change scandal helps police with inquiries while researchers call for him to be banned
2nd December 2009
The scientist at the heart of the climate change email scandal was today interviewed by police about the scandal.
Two plain clothes officers arrived in an unmarked car in the afternoon and took Professor Phil Jones to Norfolk Police”s headquarters in nearby Wymondham to give a statement. Sources said the interview concerned the theft of emails from the university and alleged death threats since the contents of the emails were released, adding he was being treated as a “victim of crime” rather than a suspect in any criminal investigation. Detective Superintendent Julian Gregory added: “He is one of the people assisting police with their inquiries.”
A spokeswoman for the University of East Anglia refused to comment and said Professor Jones would not be adding to a statement he released on Tuesday. The professor refused to comment at his detached home in Wicklewood, a few miles outside Norwich.
Meanwhile, researchers are calling for Professor Jones to be banned from contributing to agenda-setting United Nations reports. Eduardo Zorita, an expert in European climate trends, said that future reports from the UN”s International Panel of Climate Change would lack credibility if Professor Jones was involved in their compilation.
As director of the University of East Anglia”s prestigious Climatic Research Unit, the professor has provided temperature data key to previous reports used by governments around the world when setting climate change policy. Dr Zorita also said that the content of thousands of emails and documents stolen from the University of East Anglia”s computer system and published on the internet confirmed that some global warming research was riddled with “machination, conspiracies and collusion”. He and colleague Hans von Storch were mentioned in more than 30 documents, with one email referring to Professor von Storch as “frankly an odd individual”.
Other emails have been seized on by climate change skeptics as evidence that researchers have been manipulating raw data and discussing ways of evading Freedom on Information requests. In one of the most damaging emails, Professor Jones seems to suggest using a “trick” to massage years of temperature data to “hide the decline”. In another, he appears to respond to news of the death of climate skeptic John Daly with the words “in an odd way this is cheering news!” Others show British researchers apparently dismissing the work of scientists challenging the global warming orthodoxy as “crap” and a top American climatologist admitting it was a “travesty” that scientists could not account for the lack of global warming in recent years.
Dr Zorita, of the Institute for Coastal Research in Geesthacht in northern Germany, is an expert in climate change over the past 1,000 years and contributed to the most recent IPCC report. He said that he was aware that his call for Professor Jones and others who wrote controversial emails to be banned from contributing to future reports could harm his career, but “the scientific assessments in which they may take part are not credible any more”. He said: “I can confirm what has been written in other places: research in some areas of climate science has been and is full of machination, conspiracies and collusion, as any reader can interpret from the CRU files. The scientific debate has been in many instances hijacked to advance other agendas.” The researcher added although he does not believe that man-made climate is a hoax, he and other researchers have been bullied and subtly blackmailed to fit in the scientific mainstream. “In this atmosphere, PhD students are often tempted to tweak their data so as to fit the “politically correct picture”,” he said. “Some, or many, issues about climate change are still not well known. Policy makers should be aware of these attempts to hide these uncertainties under a unified picture.”
The comments come in the wake of Professor Jones”s decision to stand down from his university work while an independent investigation is carried out. The professor said that he “absolutely” stands by the science produced by the center – and that suggestions of a conspiracy to boost the evidence for man-made global warming were “complete rubbish”.
Issues to be probed include data security and whether the university responded to Freedom of Information requests. However, the university was tonight unable to confirm if the data that appears to have been manipulated will be reanalyzed.
Environmental chemist Professor Peter Liss will become acting director and further details of the review will be released “within days”. Professor von Storch, director of the Institute of Coastal research, said: “This is a brave act on the side of Phil Jones and may be the only way to restore his authority as an excellent scientist. What is left for Phil Jones to do is to restrain from doing review work for journals, and, of course, he should stay away from the IPCC and similar assessment exercises.” He added that the investigation should be led by a non-Briton and include input from climate change skeptics.
Dr Benny Peiser, director of the British-based Global Warming Policy Foundation, said: “What is important is that the university comes clean on this and they don”t fudge the inquiry. We need total transparency on this. If they try to set up some kind of whitewash panel which an inquiry that does not have the total trust of the public it will make matters worse. We have called for a High Court judge to chair the inquiry just to make sure that trust is restored.”