Guest post by Christopher Horner, Planet Gore at National Review Online
One thing about “ClimateGate” nagging at the back of my mind is the absence of any discussion by ringleader Phil Jones (or others) of the remarkable, shocking discovery that Jones now claims he had that his precedessor destroyed the raw data in the 1980s.
That is the data that scientists have for years been seeking from Jones under the UK’s freedom of information law. Against numerous such requests he offered equally numerous excuses for refusing access culminating with the September 2009 claim — when it looked like he’d been cornered and had no excuses not to provide it to Prof. Ross McKitrick who met all of his long-stated qualifications — that in fact he’d lost it.
First, it does seem odd that Jones would so firmly and crisply articulate his many, very specific excuses for so many years about why he could not provide something that in fact they had, as he now tells it, lost. His refusals all clearly imply that a belief that he had it.
But where are the emails putting out the word, oh, snap, you guys aren’t gonna believe this?
Among all that has been revealed, there does not appear to be one. Let alone a chain discussing the importance of not at long last actually having the raw, how this loss might relate to the scores of emails they wrote about whether to release the data and how to avoid releasing the data and how they’d rather destroy it (I don’t know, “pretend to have lost it”) than give it to the folks who seem to be on to them.
This seems like a big email, and a chain of discussions that would pervade that which has been revealed. It doesn’t.
To the contrary, we have numerous emails from Jones explaining how turning over the raw data is one option, but he’d much rather destroy it than let the intrepid start pawing over it which could only lead, as he admits in one email, to figuring out what CRU et al did to said raw data in order to come up with their alarming claims.
So there is a reasonable conclusion, and it is not that the data was lost or destroyed twenty years ago.
But who knows, maybe Jones wrote James Hansen at NASA, or Gavin Schmidt — for so long a taxpayer-funded activist for Environmental Media Services’ RealClimate.blog and now implicated as a major player in these emails (Capo number 6 according to this analysis). Those should turn up when the courts help NASA figure out how to come into compliance with their legal obligations and provide me similar data and correspondence that they have been, similarly and by chance, refusing me for over two years.
Christopher C. Horner Senior Fellow Competitive Enterprise Institute 1899 L. St, NW 12th Floor Washington, DC, 20036 +1.202.331.2260 (O)
Author of the newly released: Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed http://www.amazon.com/Red-Hot-Lies-Alarmists-Misinformed/dp/1596985380/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1231180047&sr=8-1
Author of The New York Times Bestselling The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming (and Environmentalism) http://www.amazon.com/Politically-Incorrect-Global-Warming-Environmentalism/dp/1596985011
Go get ’em, Chris!
Seriously, good work. I think many here care less WHAT the raw data show, and more about why we can’t look at it.
Mark
REPLY: No we care more about what the data shows, and the process of making into the HadCRUT temperature product.
If they’d simply dealt with FOIA openly, we’d be having an argument about the data, procedure and process, instead of one about losing/limiting access to data. Seeing what the raw data and the process tells us is of paramount importance. Its coming, but takes time to replicate. – A
And where are the denials of the authenticity of the “hacked” documents. Not one person has come out to say the docs have been fabricated or modified.
Under the ‘with friends like that’ column:
US Creationists back Climategate scientists
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/100018807/us-creationists-back-climategate-scientists/comment-page-1/#comment-100096858
It is a bluff.
His majesty (Jones) decided that FOIA requests were only valid if the person requesting was worthy of recieving the info.
Look. Every country is tight on money. We wasted too much on crude in 2008. Now they can cive the climate data processors time to wait for funding and spend money on greater priorities. The urgency to fund climate science is over. We need cleaner water and air, but trace gases do not matter.
I suspect several have tickets to Copenhagen and are ashamed of makiing an appearance.
Unrelated to this post, but I have a question, the pro-AGW people point to the isotopic composition of the atmosphere to say the source of the extra CO2 is man.
I have a couple of problems with this, but the main one is that they say the CO2 increases would result from oil/coal since the C12/13 ratio is similar to plants and the atmosphere is getting closer to that ratio.
So here are my questions:
1) What is the C12/13 ratio of the ocean – and perhaps more importantly, the various layers/regions of the ocean?
-1a) Has increased sunlight spurred the growth of various algae (or other life), which, when decayed and released into the atmosphere have given a similar isotopic sig?
2) What is the C12/13 ratio from volcanic sources?
3) Wouldn’t many natural sources of C have similar isotopic signatures as plants?
4) Is it possible that the extra CO2 is due to increasing decay of plant matter (perhaps due to forest management and Ag. practices)? That would give the same isotopic signature.
5) I know nuclear testing has increase C14 in the atmosphere – could that, or other, human activities have altered the ratio to show what it shows?
6) How widespread is the UHI effect and could the increased heat increase the CO2 release of decaying plant matter in the surround areas? I think this would be most obvious (and measurable) by looking at highways that go straight through forests (we have a lot of them).
I’m sure I have more questions, but the fact that I have so many questions is one of the main reasons why I’m skeptical of AGW.
Little off topic is there anyone out there who know if we can submit WUWT and Mr. Watts for a Pulitzer?
http://www.pulitzer.org/how_to_enter
Pulitzer Prizes in journalism have been revised, opening the door wider to entries from text-based online-only newspapers and news sites.
If anyone around here deserves it, it’s him.
I would suspect that the data does exist somewhere. Perhaps on a backup tape somewhere?
Reminds me of the lawyer’s dog.
My dog doesn’t bite.
My dog doesn’t have any teeth.
My dog wasn’t there at the time.
My dog’s jaw is broken.
My dog is fenced in.
My dog wears a muzzle.
And, besides, I don’t even own a dog.
Perhaps the raw data is in the unreleased portion of the FOI2009 file.
Time for another miracle!
That data is on tapeor papaer somewhere. Perhaps they no longer have a machine that will read it, but one could be found.
Simple. The dog ate the homework, but he didn’t know the dog ate it until recently. Dogs are sneaky that way. Even though he refused requests to provide the homework, which he didn’t have, but didn’t know he didn’t have, he can’t really be faulted for not providing something he didn’t have, even if he thought he did. That’s clear, isn’t it?
@Andrew
And of course with the Anglican Church also on the side of the Warmists, the Sceptical Order standeth less of a chance than wouldst a snowball in Hell.
Oh, and also, I’ve heard reference to the assumed lack of C14 in oil/coal being used as an excuse for the isotopic change, but, as I said, C14 ratios have been dramatically altered by nuclear testing AND, from what I’ve ready, oil actually does have C14 in it – they just aren’t entirely sure why it hasn’t all decayed.
Blaming his predecessor who, IIRC, is deceased (please correct me if I’m wrong) for deleating the data is absolutely the most cowardly excuse I’ve ever heard.
If Karma exists, Jones has hell to pay…
Okay, what bothers *me* is the use of the word ‘data’ without any analysis of what that data may contain. For example, we all know there are weather stations throughout the world, run by various countries, that were/are accessible to both CRU and NASA. Did they both start with the same base data, did they share both data and basic techniques for adjustments, only varying re UHI for example?
But this is land-based data. What about the SST data (sea surface temperatures) which are also part of the base data and contribute to the temp series over the last 150 years or so. AFAIK, CRU was the keeper/compiler of the SST data from old ship logs, etc., for the early part of the series at least.
What happened to that? The email’s have nothing to say about that either and nobody seems to have asked. The email that even brings it up is the one where a suggestion is made about lowering the SST by 0.15C to get rid of the ‘bump’ in the 40’s.
Was the original SST tossed too in the ’80’s? If so I know of no sure way that can all be recovered.
US Creationists back Climategate scientists
Are you sure it is not a satire? Sure reads like it.
Don’t forget we’re not looking at all the CRU emails, just a ‘selection’. The anonomous collector maybe didn’t think that such an email was worth releasing. After all, it’s obvious that s/he carefully culled these emails and data for release.
So, there just may be an ‘Oh, snap’ email, only we haven’t seen it.
I can’t find the link now, but I thought the reason that McIntyre asked for the data was that he had heard that it had been given to another scientist without question just a month before his request. Maybe somebody else remembers Steve’s post on the subject.
GOOGLE
Results 1 – 10 of about 27,800,000 for climategate. (0.08 seconds)
Results 1 – 10 of about 20,800,000 for climate [definition]. (0.12 seconds)
or reminds me of this one, evan:
Clousaeu sees man, standing next to a dog.
“Does your dog bite?”
“oh no sir, my dog, ee never bites.”
Clousaeu reaches down to pet the dog, which bites him viciously.
“But you said your dog did not bite!!!”
“Oh sir, but zat ees not my dog!!!”
“So there is a reasonable conclusion, and it is not that the data was lost or destroyed twenty years ago.”
Yup. My lawyer brain spotted that right from the start.
“Mark Young (13:43:00) :
Go get ‘em, Chris!
Seriously, good work. I think many here care less WHAT the raw data show, and more about why we can’t look at it.
Mark
REPLY: No we care more about what the data shows, and the process of making into the HadCRUT temperature product.
If they’d simply dealt with FOIA openly, we’d be having an argument about the data, procedure and process, instead of one about losing/limiting access to data. Seeing what the raw data and the process tells us is of paramount importance. Its coming, but takes time to replicate. – A”
Anthony,
I totally agree but in the meantime, EPA rejects Inhofe’s call for delay on finding
He had requested a hearing on what he calls “climategate,” involving scientists’ e-mails. Tim to hit the streets in protest or what?
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=16&articleid=20091203_16_A1_WASHIN159098&allcom=1
Surely even if (big if) the CRU has “lost the data”, the originators of the data (all the contributing stations around the world) would have records of what they supplied to the CRU? They could not all have lost their data too.
Could they? There must be some professional organisations involved somewhere rather than just this bunch of spin doctors.
Is it not possible to reverse engineer the data from the code which has been used to “add value” to the original raw data?
@Andrew
So? The fact that some people you find undesirable support a particular stance doesn’t alter the stance one bit.
The truth is, creationists have been on both sides of the argument. Some see the calls for cutting CO2 as part of the call by God to look after the earth.Some see it for the lie it is. Others see it as a competitor religion. Still others see it as a possible avenue for bringing down “science”.
The sceptic argument is also supported by white nationalists in the US – but at the same time other white nationalist groups support the AGW side. The fact that any particular group you or I find objectionable might support one side or the other is irrelevant, and if people try to smear one side or the other because of “undesirable” associations, then that just proves their argument is weak. If you don’t like a particular group supporting your argument, ignore them· Focus your energy on the facts.
The money we have spent on this could have been spent on Aids Research and feeding the worlds hungry. Stupid Stupid Stupid. That’s the real shame here.
We must expose the rotten core all the way to the top of everyone that has been involved lying to the world.
Thank you whoever you are mr whistle blower and thank you Chris Horner and Anthony Watts for having the guts to stay on top of this. thank you again.
“US Creationists back Climategate scientists “ Andrew
Twas merely a spoof. However, for Christians seeing signs of the end, believing AGW seems a natural mistake to make UNTIL one realizes that CO2 is natural and that curtailing it could kill millions. It also helps to realize that the blame for much of the environmental destruction can be laid squarely at the feet of government backed violation of “Thou shall not steal” via the banking cartels.
Let’s attack the real root of our problems: pseudo-capitalism. Pseudo-science is merely one of its branches.
I still can’t fathom how the data would be lost, even in the 80’s. Most major universities that had computer systems had 9-track tape backups of all the data in case a system restart or reload needed to occur. Usually a second backup was kept off campus in a data storage facility so that no single catastrophic event would wipe out the data. So to loose the data they would have to delete it from the mainframe, loose the backup tape, and loose backup #2.
I realize that it would be a tremendous amount of work but couldn’t the lost data be reconstructed from the original instrument sources (like logs and intermediate data collection points)? Or am I missing the scope of what data was lost?
@ Andrew (13:44:56) :
“Under the ‘with friends like that’ column:
US Creationists back Climategate scientists
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/100018807/us-creationists-back-climategate-scientists/comment-page-1/#comment-”
Hi Andrew. Did you know they have removed the word “gullible” from the dictionary?
According to a READ_ME file in one of the program directories provided, there is a master station list that is updated whenever the database is updated with new temperature data. I am assuming that happens monthly to produce the new CRUT data. That README was last modified in 2004 according to the data stamp on the file. So the idea that they don’t have any idea of what stations were used is bogus.
This READ_ME is:
/documents/cru-code/linux/cruts/_READ_ME.txt and the interesting part is:
So there should be a file with the metadata. Claims that it was all lost in the 80’s seems incorrect.
Mar 30 2004 _READ_ME.txt
hmmm! richard black at bbc:
BBC: Climate e-mail hack ‘will impact on Copenhagen summit’
E-mails hacked from a climate research institute suggest climate change does
not have a human cause, according to Saudi Arabia’s lead climate negotiator.
Mohammad Al-Sabban told BBC News that the issue will have a “huge impact” on
next week’s UN climate summit, with countries unwilling to cut emissions.
…
Saudi Arabia is an influential member of the G77/China bloc which leads the
“developing world” side in many elements of the UN negotiations.
Mr Al-Sabban made clear that he expects it to derail the single biggest
objective of the summit – to agree limitations on greenhouse gas emissions.
“It appears from the details of the scandal that there is no relationship
whatsoever between human activities and climate change,” he told BBC News.
“Climate is changing for thousands of years, but for natural and not
human-induced reasons.
“So, whatever the international community does to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions will have no effect on the climate’s natural variability.” …
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8392611.stm
Great logic with what happened to the raw data.
Keep up the great work and keep the pressure on them !!!
As mentioned before… Jone DOES say in the Climategate emails that he had planned to destroy any data/information rather than actually accede to a FIOA request.
Looking at how the “Team” has handled themselves in the past when they felt threatened, and taking into consideration the tenor of their comments in the Climategate emails…
I’d say he followed through with his threat and intentionally destroyed the information rather than give it up, then blamed his dead predecessor for the “loss”.
Anyone remember when the “mystery man” went behind Peilke’s back and tried to use his NASA label to strongarm Pielke’s bosses into firing him over the Steig/Antarctica thing?
Doc
I for one, care about the data being released. I’m currently learning R so I can see for myself if temps have been rising the way they say they have. Amazing framework btw.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the data really is lost, we do have one email where Jones states that he could easily re-assemble it as most of it is based on GHCN data, which indicates that it was in fact lost.
I’d say that the reason he kept dodging people was because he wanted to avoid the ridicule that would have rained down on him when it became known that the HADCRU temp set could not be replicated, not even by himself.
Had it not been for Climategate, that probably would have been the thing we would have been discussing most, besides the science.
Another thing that is missing from the emails is the communications with journalists and politicians, and others with skin in the game. These people must have been getting loads of emails from outside interests as to how to present/put the best spin on a particular issue, but yet nothing. The longer this whole affair drags on, the deeper this whole AGW meme is going to get buried.
I can imagine two thoughts leading to the overwriting/deleting of the data supplied to CRU.
1. The adjustments we are making are above reproach.
2. The sources of the raw data will remain therefore if we wanted to get it again we could.(And provide other scientists with the locations of that data if we cannot provide them with that data.)
I’d like the situation to be 2 but I’ve a feeling it is 1. If the raw data was not in CRU’s hands why waste so much time not saying this? Yet they took things further by discussing deleting data.(Raw or value added? Either way very much not a good idea) Would intellectual property rights considerations go out the window if CRU had released their value added data and the adjustments they had made? The excuses had to stop eventually.
CRU’s reluctance or inability to provide the raw data means what; their various papers are all based on the value added stuff? Yet by not having the raw data as well we cannot discern what those adjustments were and consider the validity of them, which renders their papers all but worthless from a scientific point. They have assumed and required the scientific community to assume that their value added data is correct.
something tells me we will be reading many more emails and reports in the future. why? the individual who is managing the release knows what they are doing or knows someone who does. think about it…would you know how to segment these emails in such a manner? would you know what to look for? better yet, are there even more clues in the email message(s)?
Folks, this release of “selected” emails and reports is only a primer…kinda like a slow filet mignon prepared “perfectly” for your tastes and a dom Parignon bubblie kinda teaser.
I hereby predict another load will be dumped soon…very soon…that will make us all go “wow” “omg” … and will allow for even more clues…
We shall have to wait and see, eh?????
Holdren is busted in front of congress. His false claims and reports get hammered.
Junk science from the science czar.
roop! forgot to put the word “grilled” after the word “slow”. my bad…
I have an idiot’s question.
To set it up….
Data is hard to kill.
In the Navy years ago, I served aboard a ship that had been sunk in the south Pacific, hauled up, cleaned up, mothballed, “converted” and went back to sea. We had a lot of logbooks for equipment that was no longer aboard the ship. We tried for a long time to get rid of the useless log books. Eventually, we got permission to destroy them, but not until we had made copies of everything in them.
In later years, working with data processing stuff we talked about “moveing” data from one place to another. But me didn’t really.
We moved the service order stuff to paper tape, leaving the paper copiy behind.
We move the toll-call stuff from paper tape to magnetic tape, leaving the paper tape behind.
We moved all that stuff to a data base, leaving the magnetic tapes behind.
And so forth and so ok. (periodic “backups” ignored to keep the argument simple.)
Now the question: How is that the data only existed in one place such that it could in fact be destroyed from the face of the earth/ When unfortunate pictures of youthful exuberance can not?
[REPLY – Yes, it’s obvious. To make HadCRUt v.2 and 3 they had to have the data available in soft copy. ~ Evan]
“”” TheGoodLocust (13:57:08) :
Unrelated to this post, but I have a question, the pro-AGW people point to the isotopic composition of the atmosphere to say the source of the extra CO2 is man.
I have a couple of problems with this, but the main one is that they say the CO2 increases would result from oil/coal since the C12/13 ratio is similar to plants and the atmosphere is getting closer to that ratio. “””
Well the fact that a particular carbon isotope ratio is changing in the atmosphere; merely means that a carbon source with a different isotope ratio is putting carbon in the atmosphere. It doesn’t mean that the increase in atmospheric carbon can be attributed to this new source.
Presumably coal is fossilized plant materials, and so one would expect it to have the same C12/C13 ratio as plants; but it might be devoid of C14 which is a short lived radio-isotope. Cutting and burning forest and other plant materials would also put carbon with a plant signature into the atmosphere; but still you can’t say the increase in carbon is from such a source. If we started burning a fuel that contained some Argon (for whatever reason that might be), then one would expect the atmospheric Argon to show an increase. But that would not be evidence that the carbon increase was due to Argon containing carbon sources.
I have read that there are actually several types of carbon take-up processes in plants depending on the type of plant, and that they exhibit different C12/C13 ratios.
I agree that burning “fossil fules” puts carbon in the atmosphere; so does burning non-fossil fuels, and so does ocean outgassing, and volcanoes, and other earth processes. None of which means that the increase in atmospheric carbon is solely due to burning fossil fuels.
Where is the proof that petroleum is a fossil fuel rather than simply a liquid mineral. Is tar a fossil fuel; are the La Brea Tarpits simply the result of too many mastodons, Sabre toothed tigers, and dire wolves standing in the same place for too long, until they begin devouring themselves; and not just as food.
Archonix;
RE: “The fact that any particular group you or I find objectionable…”
I don’t find them objectionable it is only that I think that they seem to share a common definition of the word ‘theory’.
One has a ‘theory’ that makes no predictions and the other has…
The emails and codes found in the LEAK are, I’m afraid, just a sample of what is taking place between those groups and people. Do any of you believe they did not write anymore emails or codes in between those we have been lucky to sample? I don’t think so. More than anything, those emails, in particular, show their real personalities and disdain for any others that would show real science, but unlucky for them, they were not friends.
I am so sorry that is is so far O/T, but this is from the BBC. What is wrong with this? Am I missing something? Have the warmists been right all along?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/2009/copenhagen/8386319.stm
I know it does not show any correlation with temperatures but….
(BTW I am a skeptic, and I would like to be able to speak to friends about this evidence!)
My representative Candice Miller speaks out on Climategate.
This is the first time in many years when I can say I was actually proud of anyone in Washington. Hooray Candice!!!
This Nature editorial reads like a war manifesto:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7273/pdf/462545a.pdf
…but gives one benefit of “the e-mail theft” which is: “to highlight yet again the harassment that denialists inflict on some climate-change researchers, often in the form of endless, time-consuming demands for information under the US and UK Freedom of Information Acts.”
In order to deal with this problem Nature recommends:
“Governments and institutions need to provide tangible assistance for researchers facing such a burden.”
I wonder what this assistance might entail? Perhaps some assistance in quietly disposing of the raw data?? But seriously, it does seem to be suggesting to help build a bigger barricade – a FOI/media/public relations unit perhaps? I mean, it is outrageous that a nobody like MacIntyre can “harass” the way he has.
Another great quote from Nature editorial is the answer to this claim:
“Denialists often maintain that these changes [in the climate] are just a symptom of natural climate variability.”
The answer is: The models prove otherwise:
“But when climate modellers test this assertion by running their simulations with greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide held fixed, the results bear little resemblance to the observed warming. The strong implication is that increased greenhouse-gas emissions have played an important part in recent warming, meaning that curbing the world’s voracious appetite for carbon is essential.”
How is it come to this? How has it come that we have a the journal at the pinnacle of our peer review tower of authority makes such an obviously circular and grossly over-simplified argument on such a serious matter?
Now really gearing up at Fox.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/12/03/boxer-suggests-leaked-e-mails-represent-criminal-hacker-conspiracy/
Andrew, I am a creationists, I do not back these climate gate scientists. # I. I don’t believe in lying. # 2 I do believe in leaving this earth in better shape when I leave it than it was when I arrived. Nope I very doubt that there was very much investigation into that story. Being a creationist doesn’t make one stupid. It just means that I have a basic belief that this planet and the universe is to complicated to be an accident. You may believe what you wish I will not force you to believe as I do. I just ask that you respect my belief as I respect yours.
Now that being said I very much agree with Mr. Horner that it is very unusual that the excuse “the raw data has been lost” only after they are in a corner and can’t avoid the FOI request any farther.
Keep up the good works Anthony, Steve M., Mr Horner and all those that believe in true scientific method. It is time that the truth come out. Let the chips fall where they may.
Bill Derryberry
Here is my post on some interesting email exchanges where Briffa & Cook challenged Mann on MWP in 2001. Seems his stick was under attack from within as well.
http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/11701
And I noted other reasons why that data could not have been destroyed until after 2008 (posted 11/29):
http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/11630
and here (posted 11/30):
http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/11643
I suggest three inquiries:
1. All documents, programs, and data related to the missing data. (Is this the station list from a certain point in time?) This was basically attempted earlier in a different way, but might be worth asking again under new management. And additional details might be known now for rephrasing the request.
2. All documents related to the claimed deletion of data in the 1980s.
3. All documents related to the deletion of the data/availability page from the CRU web server, where that deletion was recently mentioned.
No, I’m not limiting the questions to emails. If there was data lost in the 1980s that may have been discussed in paper memos, or there may be a list of items (backup tapes) to be destroyed during the move. And there may be non-email records which are relevant, such as READ_ME files and program code.
Chris Horner, keep up the good work!
Andrew (13:44:56), thanks for the link. Funniest thing I’ve read all week!
“But then we discovered that, by tearing the geological charts into strips, highly significant gaps in the fossil record appeared. That was a neat trick, huh?”
ROFL
evanmjones (14:01:06) :
Reminds me of the lawyer’s dog.
“My dog ate the raw data”
Andrew and Cynical Bastard,
Yes, the article linked is satire. There is no “Institute for Scriptural Geology” in Waco, Texas. Maybe in “wacko land,” but not in Texas.
Cheers
Given institutions have to back up their data daily and store it off site, I can’t imagine the raw data doesn’t conveniently exist somewhere.
For comparative purposes – relative importance?
Results 1 – 10 of about 27,600,000 for porn [definition]. (0.22 seconds)
Results 1 – 10 of about 22,300,000 for climategate. (0.19 seconds)
Doesn’t it seem odd to anyone else who ISN’T making statements here? Considering the number of places on the internet where Ian Harris is fingered as the author of the comments in the HARRY_READ_ME file and other incriminating code (just google him) … isn’t it a bit funny that there are NO public statements attributable to him about the matter? You’d think even a “Sorry, wasn’t me, have no idea who you’re talking about”.
From the tone of the comments, I would think Mr. Harris actually has been itching for some time to vent some of his thoughts about this. Does he not welcome a chance to do so? He may hold the survival of the climate scaremongering industry, and the careers of several prominent scarists, in his hands.
I agree with others that Jones et al have shown a propensity for deletion as mentioned in the leaked emails. I could easily imagine these malefactors deleting loads of pertinent data/correspondence for years. That is how they do science. Talk about a process of elimination!
Candice Miller speaks to congress
I am British, so feel particularly aggrieved that Climate Gate should be unfolding in my country, but of course the US also has a big stake in this.
Can I therefore suggest a course of action that someone here could take in order to get to the bottom of this web of deceit, because it is certain the British Govt will not attempt to.
Few of us can now doubt that there is a political dimension to the AGW debate that has set the agenda for the climate science community. It is no coincidence that the desire of the UK govt to push their socialist agenda under the guise of catastrophic climate change should result in the lavish funding of UK climate research units;
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/10/19/crossing-the-rubicon-an-advert-to-change-hearts-and-minds/#comments
Hadley Centre has had $250 million dollars since 1993 and CRU also tens of millions, including- intriguingly- money from Nato and the US Dept of Energy.
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Ah4XLQCleuUYdFIxMnhMNnlXb2JQcDZUendjUXpWWUE&hl=en
It is not therefore surprising that science with a political dimension will cut corners in order to please their political pay masters, hence the implosion at CRU.
Some concerned British citizens have started an online petition here
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/HADLEY-LEAK/
This is where the US can get actively involved. For reasons best known to our increasingly sinister UK leaders -who seem to believe Orwell’s 1984 is a blueprint for govt and not a work of fiction- they have passed a law allowing the USA to extradite British citizens to the US for activities that are not even a crime in the UK. The law is not reciprocal. We can leave aside the justice of this for another time and place.
The point is that if the US was so minded they could demand the extradition of such people as Keith Briffa and Phil Jones et al to face the legal music in the US courts-CRU have after all been major suppliers of information to the US and have received a great deal of money from your country.
At the least the action would illustrate to the scientific community that the ripples from Climate Gate have spread round the world and people in other countries are as outraged as many in my own (although our Govt and the BBC are observing a fairly steadfast silence on the revelations).
At best it might actually result in some proper legal action being taken that will help to illuminate the whole affair.
So my point is might be appropriate for a US citizen to write a suitably worded request for extradition and put it up on your own US President online petition site? It could then be used as a focal point to gain publicity via blogs, Twitter, You tube and the press, so millions of US citizens can sign it.
http://www.petitiononline.com/petition.html
TonyB
What a twisted mess we weave, when trying to deceive …
It’s not fixable, just keeps getting worse.
Worst problem is our democratic rights are confiscated by Clause 38 of treaty – IPCC/UN appoints COP to rule our governments = Taxation without Representation. Check it out and protest.
http://canbyte.newsvine.com/_news/2009/11/28/3559804-cooking-the-frog-slowly-
In a few years after the email scandal has blown over, the climatologists at the University of East Anglia will ‘find’ the data. They will claim it was still in the old building that they moved out of. They will say “The data was there all along, right where we left it in the old building.”
Computer forensics are the answer. Now that there are criminal investigations underway the coppers should move in and confiscate the computer equipment for forensic analysis as evidence. Do it before they have a chance to whitewash the hard drives, which would probably take forever.
Warwick Hughes published a much better-looking social graph of the climategate emails, in my opinion, at
http://www.warwickhughes.com/agri/crunet.gif
One thing about “ClimateGate” nagging at the back of my mind is the absence of any discussion by ringleader Phil Jones (or others) of the remarkable, shocking discovery that Jones now claims he had that his precedessor destroyed the raw data in the 1980s.
The easy explanation is that Jones did not know the data was lost until recently.
This is further bolstered by the fact they (the CRU) were recently under the gun by an FOI officer and they may have actually gone through some foot work gathering the FOI information into one spot (in fact the hacked files do seem to organized like an FOI request packet) while going through that process it was then discovered that the data was missing.
This is the simplest explanation and I tend to like what Occum has to say on the subject.
Th shredders and multi-pass hard drive erasers at NASA and CRU are working faster than Iranian centrifuges about now.
The best post/comment:
http://borepatch.blogspot.com/2009/11/what-happens-when-you-run-climate.html
They are clearly lying about having thrown out the raw data. They may very well have tossed the paper and magnetic tape records out but that doesn’t mean the data is gone.
It is simply impossible to believe that they can produce the “value added data” and not have the “raw” data in a database table. The only way they couyld run their program against the raw data would be if it was manually transferred into a database table or tables. Those tables would be in the same database as the resulting “value added” data.
If those tables are gone then someone deleted them on purpose and that purpose would not be to save “space”. In a database table, on a hard drive … right …
They would have deleted those the raw data tables because they knew that if they released the raw data and their programs the world would have found them out within days.
Its a long con that is coming unravelled …
Goreacle has surfaced at TimesUK.
Goreacle goes Biblical: “Institute for Scriptural Geology”:
“from strength to strength”.”
“From the Bible, Psalms 84:7 (King James Version):
They go from strength to strength, every one of them in Zion appeareth before God.”
…-
“He also brushed aside questions over the reliability of climate science that have followed the publication last month of leaked e-mails between climate experts.
He claimed that the scientific consensus around climate change “continues to grow from strength to strength”.
He added: “The naysayers are in a sunset phase with a spectacular climax just before they subside from view. This is a race between common sense and unreality.”
…-
“Copenhagen targets not tough enough, says Al Gore”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/copenhagen/article6943447.ece
Posted by: maz2 | December 3, 2009 6:48 PM
Hank Hancock (14:23:34) :
If the original observations that are missing were here today, I’d be busy going through them right now. I need to see how the real records display what was written about in the period 1870 to 1910.
And, my inquiry into the missing data has been met with stone cold silence.
What if…..
What if they didn’t delete the data?
What if there was no “original data” to delete?
What if the whole thing is a complicated fabrication for political purpose.
I mean–do people really believe that trees are thermometers?
Why is there no new news on the current Cycle 24 solar minimum?
Justin,
Here are your answers (I did a quick review of the slideshow):
1. The CO2 graph goes back only 800,000 years (based on ice-core data I believe). However, based on other paleoclimate data (which the BBC ignored), CO2 was much higher in the past (before 800,000 years ago, like millions of years ago) without catastrophic warming. Remember, dinosaurs roamed 300-65 million years ago. Is that data not important too? So, the graph is essentially cherry picking.
2. 20th century temperature trend by Hadcrut is biased towards warming. This is due to urban heat island effect (cities growing around weather stations), other land use changes (converting forests to parking lots), and most likely multiple fudging by Jones and others.
3. The comments that there were cooling periods during the 20th century due to aerosols is pure conjecture. There is no hard evidence of this. The amount of aerosols in the air during the 40’s is only a guess, and their impact on temps is only a guess as well. With regard to aerosols, no one knows their impact, so how can one deduce the impact of CO2 (since aerosols confounds the temp data)?
4. Just because temps rised between 1970 and 2000 (when CO2 was rising) does not mean that CO2 is to blame. Since 1998, temps have dropped (that’s 11 years). How does that square with greenhouse gas theory? It doesn’t, plus no climate model predicted it.
canbyte (15:34:20) :
In the US any treaty signed by the President must be ratified by the Senate with 2/3 majority (67 senators) before it becomes law. Even if a treaty is signed, it does not overrule the US Constitution.
Mark
That the CRU does not have the raw data is immaterial, and not a surprise since they originally acquired it from other sources. What they do have, and need produce, is a list of all the raw data they did use which necessarily includes where they got it. Focus needs to shift to this point since they have an easy out on the raw data storage that many, including me, believe.
Mark
Why can’t the raw data be recovered from the originating met offices? Surely they will have a copy.
“This past January, the Dutch canals again froze, for the first time in 16 years.”
Quiet Sun May Trigger Global Cooling
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,518958,00.html
What do you mean by “raw data”?
Assumptions people. First regarding backups, they are not kept ad infinitum. There is typically a tape rotation, for example, a weeks worth, a monthly, quarterly, annual and maybe prior annual. Most companies/institutions do not have 9,000 backup tapes in contracted off-site storage somewhere (~25 years worth @ 1 tape a day). When they are through whatever defined rotation, the backup tapes are then over-written.
Second, the deletion was described as a conscious decision to get rid of the data beacuse it was no longer needed. If that is the case, it would most likely have been moved to a storage region that was not backed up, if not outright deleted. Contrary to popular belief, some people actually choose to not back up ALL of their data, especially that which is no longer considered mission critical.
Third, there was a post linked here about only 5% of the original station data being deleted from the database based a Jones statement made in 2008. Now not being privy to the database, there just may be original station data and adjusted station data in there. All it would take is a flag on the record to mark something as original data vs. adjusted data in order for you to make that statement truthful. Without access to the actual database, there is no way to know that.
I agree that at some point, there were paper copies of the data, that subsequent versions of the database were made from, but that does not guarantee that they exist today, or even existed a year or two ago. The fact is data, even important data, is lost or destroyed all the time. And people will recreate said data to the best of their ability when necessary, or use whatever proxies they can (like previously scrubbed and adjusted data) in place of raw data.
I think all that “Climategate” has really proved to this point is that
1. Scientists are not always competent with the electronic storage and archival of data. (Most probably are competent.)
2. Scientists are not always competent in creating new statistical techniques, and they themselves know it, and will admit/ridicule each other for it behind closed doors.
3. One scientist (Jones) tried to cover up something that he didn’t want to reveal. (Maybe that some of the original data was destroyed long ago and that today’s data is really a splice of previously adjusted data and raw data. Warning: I have no proof of this.) We don’t know if anyone other than Jones actually deleted any emails. Only that they were asked to and that in the emails released, Mann did not object to it. We can only infer or assume the others may have complied. But they may not have.
4. 99.9% of the emails show tasteless humor, poor judgement, ignorance, back-biting, etc… Nothing that would allow you on the preponderance of evidence to make a convincing case for a vast conspiracy to manufacture global warming. At best, conspiracy to keep skeptics from potentially proving them wrong. And, they may truly feel that they have the world’s best intentions at heart in doing it.
5. People say/write really dumb things when they think no one else will ever see it.
George E. Smith (14:53:34) :
“Where is the proof that petroleum is a fossil fuel rather than simply a liquid mineral. Is tar a fossil fuel; are the La Brea Tarpits simply the result of too many mastodons, Sabre toothed tigers, and dire wolves standing in the same place for too long, until they begin devouring themselves; and not just as food”.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/12/is_there_an_endless_supply_of.html
http://comments.americanthinker.com/read/1/491758.html
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2006/11/abiotic-oil-a-note-from-louis-hissink/
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2008/02/evidence-for-abiogenic-oil-from-a-new-paper-published-in-the-journal-science/
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/09/abiotic-oil-part-3/
http://www.kth.se/aktuellt/1.43372?l=en_uk
http://www.gasresources.net/Introduction.htm
http://www.gasresources.net/toc_Plagiarism.htm
There may be another possible mechanism for the loss of the raw data (among other data), based on what I have seen with another important file from a U.S. source, v2.mean (ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/v2/v2.mean.Z). v2.mean is updated “all the time” to quote Steve McIntyre (http://www.climateaudit.org/?page_id=1686). There does not appear to be any attempt at version control. Consequently, it may be virtually impossible to replicate anything that is published, because the particular version of v2.mean that may have been used probably would no longer be available publicly and may no longer be available or identifiable by NOAA. It would not surprise me that the “master metadata” file and similar/supporting CRU files were kept/updated in the same manner. Thus, whenever a file would have been updated/processed, the original may have been simply overwritten. It looks like part of what Harry may have been doing (see Harry_READ_ME.txt) is, among other things, trying to replicate prior results and failing to do so.
Thus, there may not be an “audit trail” that would permit recreation of exactly what original raw data was used and/or how it may have been changed over the years with additions and/or deletions of stations (see the interesting history of station additions and deletions at http://chiefio.wordpress.com/).
Phil Jones: “Almost all the data we have in the CRU archive is exactly the same as in the GHCN archive … http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/ghcn-monthly/index.php and http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ghcn/ghcngrid.html (1255298593.txt)”.
Justin,
You need to ask a specific question. In that chart, increases in temp *precede* increases in CO2, they do not rise “in step”, this is a long debunked Gore deceit.
The rest of it is a general appeal to the authority of the IPCC and a hockey stick graph that has been debunked by the National Academy of Science.
What part of it did you find convincing?
Great point! I too have gone through this stuff, and can confirm there is not a single clue to that disappearance in the 80s.
Now I’m 99.999% percent sure that it is hidden somewhere! Or, that it has been deleted in the last days? It can’t be! If this is true, isn’t there something called crime against humanity?
Ecotretas
Jeff (15:57:36) :
Today they would not delete them to save space because space is cheap. However, in the 1980’s space was expensive, and therefore it is entirely possible that someone might remove the original data once the felt the value-added data had been properly vetted.
Fraud is not a pre-requisite for this to have happened. Only the lack of foresight that someone else might question this data down the road, or that literally a $1 trillion decision might ride on it some day. CAGW was not mainstream at this time, and it was at a time when space was at a premium. In 1980 a 26 MB hard drive cost ~$5K. So eliminating a large file/database actually meant real dollar savings, roughly $200/MB plus the cost of backup storage.
This is where one might find a path to the raw data!
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/35233_Did_Climate_Scientists_Destroy_Data_A-_No.
The Met Office was formed by Captain Robert FitzRoy, who was Captain of The Beagle when it took Charles Darwin to South America and the Galapagos islands. He was quite mad in the end, but an extraordinary Captain, and an outstanding Mapmaker and Surveyor. He made meticulous notes and records of everything he did, and the idea that the Met Office gave the raw weather data to Phil “Cheers” Jones is plain barmy. Access to it or copies yes, but the original stuff gathered over 200 years – no chance.
Getting the government (Met Office) to admit it though might be a different story. Hear the sound of shredders anyone?
MSM doesn’t want to report this story either…even tho it ties in nicely with the climategate fraud!
1 Dec: NASA scientist avoids jail in procurement case
Schoeberl was the chief scientist of Goddard’s earth sciences division, which conducts climate research, and the project scientist for the Aura mission to study the Earth’s ozone layer, air quality and climate. Schoeberl’s position enabled him to guide funds budgeted for the Aura mission.
According to the plea agreement, in mid-2004 Schoeberl began inquiring about ways to direct work to his wife Barbara’s company, Animated Earth, a small business that develops and distributes Earth Today, an exhibit displaying near-real-time earth science data. The couple previously had collaborated on a host of projects and presentations for NASA and court documents indicate that the relationship was well-known at the agency…
Between fiscal 2006 and fiscal 2008, Animated Earth was awarded more than $190,000 in NASA contracts, all without competition, according to data on USASpending.gov, a federal Web site that aggregates date on contract spending…
http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=44150&dcn=todaysnews
No Sunspots for Al Gore and the warmists. The current solar minimum will be extended past its two year run just for you.
AKM (16:17:57) :
“What do you mean by ‘raw data’?”
Here’s a generic sample provided by the NOAA: the B-91 record from a surface station. Often these forms the data is hand written as it’s copied from the mercury thermometer, etc., then signed and dated: click
I recall someone mentioning that certain successive years at stations have mysteriously disappeared from the files or record books. With the raw data missing, there goes the Little Green Footballs attempt to excuse the CRU clique.
“These scientists feel the public doesn’t have a right to know the basis for their climate-change predictions”
http://heliogenic.blogspot.com/2009/12/these-scientists-feel-public-doesnt.html
I haven’t read all comments here but what occurs to me is if the raw data was destroyed 20 years ago then do we presume that Jones and the Team have never seen the raw data?
Given that all sorts of other excuses were used before we were told the raw data was destroyed does that not mean they never even looked for the raw data at any time in the past 20 years! Do they even know what was done to it to produce the amended data?
And who amended the data? Presumably it was done based on assumptions current in the 1980’s and earlier. When exactly was it done?
This is like a historian never bothering to look at the original evidence and documents but instead compiling his own interpretation through the filter of other writings. Scholarship it is not.
With respect to the questions of The Good Locust, I would like to add that most of these questions are anwerable, but I wouldn’t know by whom. The part about
C14 is (I think) especially important though, because it may give us a good idea of how long CO2 persists in the atmosphere. There have been studies (proposed at least), that intended to use C14 and Cesium 137 as markers to locate sediments from 1963 [the peak bomb test fallout year], and possibly (potentially) other things, like tree rings and ice cores. My impression is that the C14 “spike” didn’t last too long.
I suspect that the plant C13/C12 ratio changes with temperature, so it might well change with coal source, for example.
But supposing only 3 percent or so of the CO2 was from burning fossil fuels, how could we tell, from the isotope ratios?
In spite of the Hockey Team’s tribalism, there really might be some truth in some of what they were peddling; I would certainly like to know. The problem is that I think too much of it looks like CRUd, so the temptation is strong, to generalize….
“VITTER, INHOFE ASK NASA IG ABOUT AGENCY’S POSSIBLE OBSTRUCTION OF FOIA REQUESTS”
http://heliogenic.blogspot.com/2009/12/heating-up.html
All of the data that was released was collated to comply with an FOI request and was going to have to be released anyway. NOT! These files were extracted from the servers and purged and were awaiting permission to delete to avoid the FOI request when the whistleblower ftp’d them to Russia. What is in the other 60meg and when is is going to be revealed.
When a major AGW player gives a speech perhaps. Al Gore, did you just cancel and book yourself in for facial plastic surgery disguise operations maybe.
{self snip]
““to highlight yet again the harassment that denialists inflict on some climate-change researchers”
Right. How dare those horrible deniers demand to see the raw data and statistical jiggery-pokery that goes into the released “adjusted” data! Insolent peasants! They aren’t even climatologists!
Loved the interview on Fox Business nightly biz report with two “doubters” and the moderator… not a single AGW advocate in site… “Go get ’em Chris”! indeed!
TheGoodLocust (13:57:08) :
Unrelated to this post, but I have a question, the pro-AGW people point to the isotopic composition of the atmosphere to say the source of the extra CO2 is man.
The CO2 isotope method “has issues”. See:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/02/25/the-trouble-with-c12-c13-ratios/
I have a couple of problems with this, but the main one is that they say the CO2 increases would result from oil/coal since the C12/13 ratio is similar to plants and the atmosphere is getting closer to that ratio.
That is from the “Given these conclusions what assumptions can we draw?” approach to science so favored by the AGW crowd…
Your list of questions is sound. The answers are largely “nobody knows for sure but we can make up a plausible sounding story that makes it look like it must be people… but don’t look too close… because we don’t really know.”
Tipping point tipped, polls get busted
http://joannenova.com.au/2009/12/the-tipping-point-tipped/
Yes, and then you provide the methods of how you manipulated the data and perhaps a graph so we can compare your result with the results we are getting
See how it works?
With all the complaining about the emails taken out of context,
I would think more of you people would have read them.
Jones said in the emails and interviews:
1. he accidently destroyed it recently
2. he would rather destroy it than hand it over
3. some of it was destroyed
4. it was destroyed when they moved
and on and on
How can the man in charge say all these different things had/have happened?
My question is this:
If it was destroyed in 1980 when they moved,
how could Jones make the statement in an email
that he would destroy it before he would hand it over?
Justin wrote:
“I am so sorry that is is so far O/T, but this is from the BBC. What is wrong with this? Am I missing something? Have the warmists been right all along?”
The BBC narrated presentation shows ice age cycles caused by solar system orbital cycles and how CO2 follows along with temperature except suddenly it looks like it doubles from its highest natural level in almost a billion years.
(1) They describe CO2 as amplifying the heating despite the fact that it has varied only from 180ppm to 280ppm and the fact that this fails to cause T runaway instead of mere cycles. What they fail to mention is that methane also tracks the T chart and would be expected to have much greater influence than CO2. O2, N2 and Ar have little greenhouse effects since they are single atoms or dimers that lack a lot of ways to vibrate. CO2 and O3 are a straight line of three atoms and so can vibrate out of that straight line and thus absorb lots of IR radiation. Methane is much more complex and can vibrate in myriad ways to absorb IR like crazy. They don’t mention methane because burning fossil fuels does not release methane but in fact converts any of it to CO2.
(2) Their vertical axis scale makes the eye think CO2 level has suddenly doubled from a big value to a huge value. If you plot CO2 as a % of the atmosphere you’ll get the same graph. If you then set the vertical scale to cover 0% to 100% the eye will see only a horizontal straight line, with no perceptible upturn at the end. CO2 has increased from 0.03% to 0.037%. What ever influence CO2 increase has had on modern T will require upwards of twice as much additional CO2 to cause the same influence again since there is a logarithmic relation involved. What an honest graph would show is that T swings like crazy between ice ages while a pie chart of the composition of the atmosphere stays exactly the same to the eye.
(3) They claim that ice age cycles are amplified by CO2. That’s unlikely since CO2 lags T more than it leads, on by 800 years. It could lag and yet still have an influence, blah, blah, blah…. Fine. But it’s not CO2 they are speaking of that causes excess warming. It’s CO2 causing somewhat higher T and then that higher T being greatly amplified by non-CO2 positive feedbacks. Those positive feedbacks are completely theoretical. Lindzen tried to measure them for real using satellite data. He found negative feedback. He also neglected to explain why he failed to use the updated satellite data that others use. The new version likely results in mere neutral feedback instead of positive. But with no positive feedback, CO2 is a complete joke of a greenhouse gas. CO2 is not unique in any way here. Any warming for any reason is effected by feedbacks. So their argument is that T releases CO2 from cold water, ice, permafrost etc. which then causes a tiny greenhouse increase in T which is then highly amplified by mysterious forces which overwhelm negative feedbacks completely…until the sun cools off a bit and we plunge into another ice age. This is a hand-waving argument that has been hard-coded into their computer models. As hand-waving arguments go it’s a pretty crappy one since it’s much harder on a science-fair level to come up with positive feedback ideas than negative ones.
(4) The eye is very easy to fool with slick presentation and the voice of authority backed up by many scientific societies. The problem here is that those authorities have failed in their duty to discount the voice of skepticism by using actual science. I’m not talking hand-waving arguments in a vacuum (like proofs that CO2 can’t be a greenhouse gas were the earth atmosphere a ball of rubber instead of full of convection currents) but the few skeptical points that pierce to the core of the issue that HAVE NOT BEEN ADDRESSED. Namely that feedback may be neutral or negative instead of positive, that long-running thermometer records fail to show any recent upturn in a natural warming trend of 350 years, that so many non-urban and even many urban temperature stations fail to track the Global Average charts, that Hockey Sticks are almost all broken and without them there would have been no alarm in the first place, and that warming itself and especially CO2 plant fertilization is likely a good instead of bad thing. I’ve left out many I am likely not familiar with. You are making the mistake of allowing a slick presentation to completely cloud your mind away from the very issues that is trying to be debated by serious skeptics. An example of slick presentation is on the new NOAA Climate.gov web site:
http://i46.tinypic.com/2akb9j.jpg
Al Gore made a whole movie that relied on such illusion. Sophisticated instead of simple use of illusion would be very dangerous without the peer-review process to block their use as actual arguments in academia and policy matters! Thank god for peer review.
Excellent point TerrySkinner
If the raw data was destroyed when they moved in 1980,
before Jones was even working there,
what did Jones work from?
I could not have been the raw data, at least according to Jones.
Justin (14:57:34) :…from the BBC. What is wrong with this? Am I missing something? Have the warmists been right all along? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/2009/copenhagen/8386319.stm
Richard Black wriggling IMO. Note he says “800,000 years”, well that just happens to represent the ice core records. IMO there is more bad science here, namely the “consensus” that the ice core CO2 measurements are correct. There are many reasons from the practical issues of drilling, extracting, transporting, storing and testing ice cores, to suspect the levels are too low. Jaworowski has a lot to say about this, and is hated by the orthodoxy.
Syl (14:07:32) : Okay, what bothers *me* is the use of the word ‘data’ without any analysis of what that data may contain.
Well, what bothers me is calling it “data” when as close as you can get is the GHCN product from NCDC / NOAA that is already partly cooked… The “raw” data is nowhere to be found… Maybe the raw dailies are on line somewhere? But Iv’e not found them yet… I suspect they reside at the individual country BOM departments.
For example, we all know there are weather stations throughout the world, run by various countries, that were/are accessible to both CRU and NASA. Did they both start with the same base data, did they share both data and basic techniques for adjustments, only varying re UHI for example?
OK, NOAA via NCDC, publish the GHCN data set. This is available in “adjusted” and “unadjusted” forms, but even the unadjusted (that is often called “raw” but is not…) has had some infill, QA “screening”, and limited homginizing done on it.
I’ve got a whole series of articles looking at various ways the GHCN data are “cooked” via thermometer deletions. It’s hideous. About 90% of the thermometers were taken out back and shot in about 1990. (The individual country BOMs may still have the data, but it does not make it into GHCN…) The deletions focus excessively on cold region thermometers.
Why does this matter? The “CRU email” says they could “recreate the data” from GHCN as it was substantially identicle. OK, so HadCRUt is just GHCN repackaged and we know that GHCN is cooked via deletions.
So what about GIStemp? It takes in GHCN.
Hmm…. the three agree and all are based on GHCN with cold thermometers removed recently but left in the respective products baseline time periods…
What a surprise…
So these three all agree because they all have the same biased input.
Per SST: Since GIStemp looks to Hadley CRUt for that, it’s all on them.
One hopes their data center has a paranoid admin who keeps a ‘decade ending’ set of tapes forever…
Copenhagen summit: Denmark rushes in laws to stop carbon trading scam
Climate change summit host embarrassed as criminals make most of lax laws to pocket VAT on emissions trading
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/03/copenhagen-summit-carbon-trading-scam
The AGW crowd says the Medieval Warmth Period was local,
Hockey Sticks and Hidden Data:
http://joannenova.com.au/2009/12/fraudulent-hockey-sticks-and-hidden-data/
Idiots guide to ClimateGate:
http://heliogenic.blogspot.com/2009/12/idiots-guide-to-climategate.html
I still think they might have bundled these specific incriminating emails themselves and got them out of sight, deleted from local computers, in case the FOI actually demanded them. Afraid to destroy them entirely, loaded them somewhere the mole could access.
Who would miss these letters and files in the masses they must have. That’s why whole threads are included.
I’d like to see what’s left.
When this all started I imagine they never dreamed this was going to become such a runaway train. Possibly the backup tapes and papers were so unwieldy they did just toss them, thinking they would never need them. Such outdated technology is a nightmare to deal with.
Like trying to turn a hobby into a business and realizing you have no records of your expenditures over 15 years.
It wouldn’t even surprise me if someone besides Hansen was so against the Copenhagen plan that they threw themselves in front of the train to stop it.
“Postmodernism has crossed into the hard sciences”
http://heliogenic.blogspot.com/2009/12/postmodernism-has-crossed-into-hard.html
One of the clearest emails on what is going on with adjusting the records is the exchange between Tom Wigley and Phil Jones about adjusting the upcoming HadSST3 record by 0.15C to get rid of the pesky rise in sea surface temperatures up until 1944 and then the decline afterward (HadSST3 will replace the currently used HadSST2).
http://www.di2.nu/foia/1254147614.txt
This email was dated Sept. 28th, 2009. The email mentions John (J.J.) Kennedy who is the lead author on the revised HadSST3 (used to work at CRU and is now at the UK Met Office).
Well it seems the fix was already in. Not only are they adjusting the post-1944 SSTs by (looks like more than) 0.15C but they are are also adjusting down the pre-1944 data (1935 to 1944) by about 0.1C.
This is important because 70% of the Earth’ surface is ocean and if they adjusting the 1940s warm period away, it will start to look like a climate model output now rather than natural variability that the 1940s El Ninos caused. They are also adjusting SSTs up starting in about 2000.
Here is the draft chart of HadSST3 – the top chart – the green line – while the old HadSST2 is the red line.
http://img524.imageshack.us/img524/1205/hadsst3.png
And this was found in this draft paper from the WHO from September 2009.
https://abstracts.congrex.com/scripts/jmevent/abstracts/FCXNL-09A02a-1662927-1-Rayneretal_OceanObs09_draft4.pdf
12 Days, 3 Networks and No Mention of ClimateGate Scandal
http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2009/20091202135822.aspx
Tony B (another one) (14:22:03) :
Surely even if (big if) the CRU has “lost the data”, the originators of the data (all the contributing stations around the world) would have records of what they supplied to the CRU? They could not all have lost their data too.
While one would hope, there was recently news that the Australian BOM was re-imagining it’s data records to be more in compliance with the AGW thesis. (No, I don’t remember the link or exact wordings, but it made my blood cold. One need not “improve” data. The data just are. )
Could they? There must be some professional organisations involved somewhere rather than just this bunch of spin doctors.
Climate Professional Organizations. Now there’s an oxymoron for you…
We know that CRU are toast. We know that Hansen is an AGW zealous advocate and that GIStemp is toast. We know that NCDC produces a strongly biased data set in GHCN.
So exactly what “global organization” are you thinking of?
Is it not possible to reverse engineer the data from the code which has been used to “add value” to the original raw data?
No.
Take 10 numbers. Average them. Now recreate the original numbers from that average.
The process is not exactly the same for doing ofsets and adjustements, but this illustrates the point that there are many ‘one way functions’ in math…
You can only be a virgin once.
The Wall Street Journal:
Climategate: Science Is Dying
Science is on the credibility bubble.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107104574572091993737848.html
Holdren convicts us of planeticide
The IPCC is what, only 90%, 95% certain in their AGW belief? Well, Obama’s science advisor John Holdren has that beat:
“Human activity is “beyond any reasonable doubt” the primary cause of warming temperatures, Mr. Holdren said.”
“Obama Science Adviser Urges Climate Action Amid Uproar”
http://heliogenic.blogspot.com/2009/12/holdren-convicts-us-of-planeticide.html
Ron de Haan (17:13:12) :
“Postmodernism has crossed into the hard sciences”
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf
After reading this “climate science” seems more based on a common misconception than science.
It isn’t a hard science at all, it’s the equivalent of Chemistry for Nurses.
Can’t believe I’m about to try to explain this as my first ever wuwt post, but here goes:
This is what is important about the CRU “original data”
Although the real original data came from other sources (which undoubtedly have it archived), it’s mere existence elsewhere isn’t much help for reconstructing the CRU global temperature.
If you are going to give the average global temperature, it is important that your measurement locations are a sufficient and unbiased sample of the earth’s surface.
So a “grid” is drawn over the world’s surface, and where there is continuous high quality temperature data within a square of the grid, we’re rockin’. Where there is a square without a good measurement station what do you do?, well you use statistical techniques to appropriately infer what the temperature would be from adjacent or similar squares.
A lot of the sphere is covered by ocean, and for a lot of the ocean where measurements have been done they have not been at continuously fixed points, but as and when ships passed through. So the sea data and land data is not apples-to-apples, but again with appropriate statistical tools one can make them compatible.
So here’s the problem. We could get all the data from the Met office, but we don’t know which stations in that haystack make up the subset used by the CRU. And for squares where more than one station’s data might have been combined into a mean or average, we don’t know what formula they used. And for squares without a station, we don’t know what technique they used to surmise the correct value or what stations they used in the calculations.
And for some odd reason you wacky skeptics here don’t trust the statistical chops of the climate researchers, so they are very keen to double check the whole process above.
Here’s the math breakdown on the Global warming models. Maybe Anthony can get this chap to write a column.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/11/the_mathematics_of_global_warm.html
embarrassing!
Copenhagen summit: Denmark rushes in laws to stop carbon trading scamClimate change summit host embarrassed as criminals make most of lax laws to pocket VAT on emissions trading
The news is an embarrassment for the European ETS and for carbon trading generally, which is attracting a growing number of critics…..
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/03/copenhagen-summit-carbon-trading-scam
Is not the ‘raw’ data still out there?…ie at the local weather stations across the planet? It can still be compiled, no? Let’s start this from scratch, and then any alteration to the data set can be more openly debated and science moves forward to try and prove the method or not….real science ya know.
meteorologist
The Constitution also says stuff about the Cabinet and how its members are subject to Senate review.
The current administration has announced that “Czars” will do the Cabinet work, and any treat the Pres. signs will be implemented without Senate review.
The Living Constitution has died (been killed).
Al Gore to you.
It is my thermostat keep your hands off it.
That is all.
Al
The is $3.4 billion we can save here immediately. Thank You Climategate.
“Rockefeller is a longtime champion of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies. Earlier this year, he helped secure $3.4 billion for the Fossil Energy Research and Development programs, including CCS research, in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. ”
http://rockefeller.senate.gov/press/record.cfm?id=317677
The claim they not only lost the data but also the metadata which the program readme files show to be false, at least until 2004.
As a teacher, your post is a bit difficult to read without me wanting to mark it up with a red pen. It is in need of editing. Run-on and sentence fragments just about drove me crazy.
That said, I totally agree with the underlying gist of the post.
Justin (14:57:34) :…from the BBC. What is wrong with this? Am I missing something? Have the warmists been right all along? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/2009/copenhagen/8386319.stm
No – that is just the same old junk sciencethat his been banded about over a million times. There is a 600 to 1000 year lag between CO2 increases and Temperature increases…and guess what…..TEMPERATURE goes up FIRST.
Most likely explanation is that warmer oceans release CO2 in to the atmosphere (although it takes a while to warm the oceans due to their colossal heat capacity)
It is obvious that the data must currently exist in CRU records (or else how did they calculate HadCRUt2 & 3?) unless they very recently deleted them.
And, yes, it’s surprising this has not been more prominently mentioned.
BTW, on Google I get:
9,800,000 for “global warming”
21,600,000 for “climate change”
28,200,000 for climategate
279,000 for “climate gate” (same for “climate-gate”)
So climategate clearly beats the main topic name.
A new BBC blog on the announcement of the Climategate inquiry. Responses aren’t blocked, amazing.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2009/12/breaking-news-cru-enquiry-anno.shtml
5. People say/write really dumb things when they think no one else will ever see it.
Yes, because when people think no-one else will see it, they tend to tell the truth. They tend to drop their political/social mask and reveal themselves more fully.
We are not talking about the normal range of “dumb things” here. Bitching about the boss, or inappropriate jokes, or gossip, or irrelevant stuff.
The e-mails show people discussing their work with other people in unguarded moments. People who do not need to be lied to. People who they need to get on-side in order to do something that might not look too good in public view.
The idea that what is discussed in the e-mails is not a look into what the warmers think is ridiculous.
Is there a single thing in the e-mails that was not alleged before the leak? They are damaging precisely because they expose what was always suspected, but too hard to prove.
I just read every comment at Little Green Footballs.
Charles didn’t understand the data issue for a long while (he was trying to claim that nothing was wrong since NOAA still had raw data – HA!), but he eventually got schooled and stopped commenting.
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/35233_Did_Climate_Scientists_Destroy_Data_A-_No
@Justin
You might like this graphic:
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/PageMill_Images/image277.gif
(I know the “warmists” don’t)
From:
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html
Mark T (16:12:58) : “In the US any treaty signed by the President must be ratified by the Senate with 2/3 majority (67 senators) before it becomes law. Even if a treaty is signed, it does not overrule the US Constitution.”
Quoting from Article VI: “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the (Constitution or Laws)of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.” [bold parentheses by me]
Note that any treaty would clearly take precedence over state laws. That is bad enough, but there is a controversy about whether my parentheses are implied or not. Liberals claim the Constitution is overruled by treaties.
There is a principle in most legal systems that signatures obtained by fraud are void, which would certainly be the case with the Copenhagen Treaty. Convincing the Übergovernment of the IPCC COP that this is so might be problematic.
It is my opinion that signature of the Copenhagen Treaty, with or without the revelations of Climategate, would constitute an act of treason.
I concur. The probability of total loss of data files in the 80s is near zero. It struck me as highly improbable when I first saw the report. I was a system manager, computer auditor and consultant in that period. Data files then, mostly tape, were typically retained as grandfather, father, son versions in order to recover from fairly common update processing errors or tape drive failures which made part of the file unreadable. Academic departments were, typically, even more redundant than business IT groups because of looser cost constraints. “Loss” at any point, 80s, 90s, or 00s, would have had to be deliberate to be complete.
In my opinion, it all comes down to this:
If the “raw data*” supported their claims we would have seen said data by now. For , if that were the case, they would have guarded those data with their very lives.
We ain’t seen, ’cause the data don’t. And the data may have paid with their lives.
Now I think on it, joshua corning’s comment about Occum applies here.
* data is plural
Justin (14:57:34): What is wrong with this? Am I missing something? Have the warmists been right all along?
The ice core measurements have issues. But even so, I do not doubt that CO2 levels are up and that man is the prime reason.
On the other hand, I maintain that CO2 levels don’t matter worth half a damn.
Chris Horner on Hannity on FNC right now
These so called scientists(to me they are hoaxers) have substituted computer models for real experimentations and real science and have fumbled through model after model until they came up with something that had no relation to reality and good science. And, of all things, they now have lost them and the data or whatever. “Greenwash” will probably happen though. Alas!
On the topic of ‘lost’ data I find it very easy to accept that original records and the files they were transposed to may have been lost but not that this could not be admitted nor that they cannot be reproduced, There may be no budget for such work, but there could be. I would be amazed if computer code had not vanished as well, making it impossible to run an exact recreation. That’s just how it was and maybe still is. The commercial software world would likely have been no different in that respect back in those days.
Old papers from early climate science have, presumably, been mostly superceded by more recent work. It would be important to verify that work if the results were still being referenced as fact by newer work. (or papers that refer to previous work that cite even older work without indepenedent verfication.
So the worst case scenario is that people go back to the ‘lost’ work, re-do it (now there are trilion dollar policy decisions associated with it that did not exist back in the day) and correctly document and archive things as they go. Given the improved technologies available thanks to the large quantities of CO2 expended over the years the entire process should take much less effort than it did first time(s) round.
No doubt many of the original participants are still around at the moment sothere is a good chance that much of what was done will be at least partly remembered as things progress.
In the overall scheme of things it should not cost much not take too long.
My guess is that there is no need to do it at all and that the work should fall oout of the research carried out much more recently anyway. In which case why are people referring to old papers and not new papers for which the checks should be much easier to perform without the danger of source data or code being ‘lost’ inexplicably.
It would also be much less confusing for all involved if the mass of cross related and self referencing papers, peer reviewed or otherwise, was reduced to a managable number.
My unpolished thoughts, for what they are worth.
evan (18:32:49) :
“CO2 levels are up and that man is the prime reason”
I’m not so sure. As Big Al inadvertantly showed us in “AIT,” the Vostok core, as generally interpreted, suggests that CO2 follows T by `800 years. MWP was 800 years ago. Why is not the last 200 year CO2 gradual increase (280-380 ppm) not a natural, if not examined or understood, process?
E.M.Smith (17:04:44) : The “raw” data is nowhere to be found… Maybe the raw dailies are on line somewhere? But Iv’e not found them yet…
E.M. – I tracked the U.S. raw data from the B91 forms (mentioned above) to CLIMOD. The compiled data is available from the Regional Climate Centers for a fee. Unfortunately, to do a full U.S. analysis, you would have to “visit” each Center (6?) to get all the raw data. It is probably only useful for doing regional studies.
BTW, I have verified that it is raw by comparing it to B91 forms. Missing data indicates also that it is truely raw.
I am not sure either, but I have seen the carbon exchange diagrams and it makes sense. About half of what man puts out is absorbed; the other half accumulates (with both the output and absorption expanding). It seems to have been dropping before man got involved in the act (over the multi-million year term).
Regardless, it is all academic if CO2 has little effect.
Is it possible that COtwo is a trace gas whose concentration can vary widely and wildly in response to plant-animal balances without being enough to influence anything?
“it is all academic if CO2 has little effect”
Yeah. Even most Gaia cycle realists don’t know that CO2 has an inverse logarithmic impact on IR intercept. I suspect that the AGW acolytes know it, but bury it.
No one denies the authenticity of the documents, yet the MSM propaganda machine is still chruning out this:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091204/ap_on_sc/sci_climate_adapting
The Associated Press is putting a full-court press and is on the offensive. No attention paid to the scandal, whatsoever.
Just sick.
TheGoodLocust (14:06:10) :
Maybe the oil is younger than we think?
The WashExaminer has the story of another corrupt climate scientist
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/Former-NASA-climate-scientist-pleads-guilty-to-contract-fraud-8613137-78268862.html
“A former top climate scientist (Mark Schoeberl) who had become of one the scientific world’s most cited authorities on the human effect on Earth’s atmosphere was sentenced to probation Tuesday after pleading guilty to steering lucrative no-bid contracts to his wife’s company……”
Me thinks, the Hockey Stick needs to be enshrined as the enigmatic symbol of scientific greed.
Visualizing the East Anglia Climate Research Unit Leaked Email Network:
From
:http://www.examiner.com/x-28973-Essex-County-Conservative-Examiner~y2009m12d3-NASA-may-be-Americas-CRU
The analysis to which Horner refers, the one referring to Gavin Schmidt as a “major player,” is a network analysis provided by Daniel Katz and Michael J. Bommarito II at Computational Legal Studies. These two men used the e-mails as a database and drew a vast network of connections based on frequency of mention as From, To, or (Blind) Carbon Copy. They then prepared a dynamic analysis, showing the state of the network over the period covered in the archive, in the form of a video embedded below:
We still don’t know who compiled the archive that was released, and their selection criteria. That the emails that Horner wants are not in the released archive is not sufficient proof that such emails do not exist.
Nor do we know when Jones came to the realization CRU didn’t have the raw data somewhere –he’s obviously been working from the “value added” data for a long time.
Still, having said that, there is rather a pungent aroma from the fact that Jones says in these emails that he’d rather destroy that data then turn it over. . . and lo and behold it comes up missing.
Enough of an aroma that Dr. Jones should be required to testify under oath on the matter of what happened to that data, and when he realized it.
Second that; along with Steve McIntyre and CA!
AJStrata (15:04:58) – You found some recent temperature data, but why do you assume it is based upon raw data? What you found could have been created from the “value-added” data rather than raw data, couldn’t it?
wonder if CRU will post a monthly temp anomaly for November.
In this video is a good explanation why data sets are contaminated.
An Inconvenient Truth – Solar Minimum – Global Cooling
Remember the Saudi’s asking for compensation if CO2 emission reduction left them with all that precious oil?
Well, Saudi Arabia will put ClimateGate on the Copenhagen agenda and it will derail the planned treaty.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/12/climategate_will_derail_copenh.html
Palin just dropped the entire topic in a Facebook Post
This will turn up the heat, and blare the trumpets!!!!!!! Prepare for 20 million hits on this blog over the weekend.
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=188540473434&id=24718773587&ref=nf
Mr. President: Boycott Copenhagen; Investigate Your Climate Change “Experts”Share
Today (12/3/09) at 7:17pm
The president’s decision to attend the international climate conference in Copenhagen needs to be reconsidered in light of the unfolding Climategate scandal. The leaked e-mails involved in Climategate expose the unscientific behavior of leading climate scientists who deliberately destroyed records to block information requests, manipulated data to “hide the decline” in global temperatures, and conspired to silence the critics of man-made global warming. I support Senator James Inhofe’s call for a full investigation into this scandal. Because it involves many of the same personalities and entities behind the Copenhagen conference, Climategate calls into question many of the proposals being pushed there, including anything that would lead to a cap and tax plan.
Policy should be based on sound science, not snake oil. I took a stand against such snake oil science when I sued the federal government over its decision to list the polar bear as an endangered species despite the fact that the polar bear population has increased. I’ve never denied the reality of climate change; in fact, I was the first governor to create a subcabinet position to deal specifically with the issue. I saw the impact of changing weather patterns firsthand while serving as governor of our only Arctic state. But while we recognize the effects of changing water levels, erosion patterns, and glacial ice melt, we cannot primarily blame man’s activities for the earth’s cyclical weather changes. The drastic economic measures being pushed by dogmatic environmentalists won’t change the weather, but will dramatically change our economy for the worse.
Policy decisions require real science and real solutions, not junk science and doomsday scare tactics pushed by an environmental priesthood that capitalizes on the public’s worry and makes them feel that owning an SUV is a “sin” against the planet. In his inaugural address, President Obama declared his intention to “restore science to its rightful place.” Boycotting Copenhagen while this scandal is thoroughly investigated would send a strong message that the United States government will not be a party to fraudulent scientific practices. Saying no to Copenhagen and cap and tax are first steps in “restoring science to its rightful place.”
– Sarah Palin
Did my comment get eaten?
Sarah Palin just put ClimateGate front and center on Facebook Post
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=188540473434&id=24718773587&ref=nf
Anthony
How much of what the Team put up last week at http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/#Climate_data_raw
is truly raw, and not pre-massaged?
REPLY: I don’t know about the others that much, but the ones that matter the most for this discussion:
# GHCN v.2 (Global Historical Climate Network: weather station records from around the world, temperature and precipitation)
# USHCN US. Historical Climate Network (v.1 and v.2)
Are not “raw” at all. Each has gone through a variety of adjustments for TOBS, SHAP, FILNET, for USHCN V.1 USHCN V.2 and GHCN V.2 also have adjustments done.
see here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/05/13/ushcn-version-2-prelims-expectations-and-tests/
GHCN V.2 gets the same adjustments as UHCN V.2, all done by NOAA/NCDC after raw data transcription from observer B91 printed forms.
So the answer is, for the surface temperature record, no truly raw data has been presented on the links Gavin provided.
-Anthony
L Bowser (16:33:51) : Today they would not delete them to save space because space is cheap. However, in the 1980’s space was expensive, and therefore it is entirely possible that someone might remove the original data once the felt the value-added data had been properly vetted.
Nice try…
“Tape is Cheap” was the mantra then. IIRC it was $9 per 170 MB “round tape” at 6250 bpi. So for about $9 to $20 they could store all the data and the code as well. (I know this because I did that kind of work at that time.)
Fraud is not a pre-requisite for this to have happened.
Quite true. Your choices are:
1) Fraud. Evil intent. Malicious activity.
2) Stupidity. Good intent coupled with incompetence.
Happy choosing …
Only the lack of foresight that someone else might question this data down the road, or that literally a $1 trillion decision might ride on it some day.
Nope. When “doing science” you never never never take pages out of your lab book. Drummed into my head in about 1970 in Chem class in high school. Missing pages got you flunked. Yes: “F” Flunk Fail Tossed on the trash heap of history.
Now if I were a “Climate Scientist” I’d have 2 round tapes with the raw data. One set in my office. One in a vault. The IT department can have more, but I’m going to make sure MY WORK does not get an “F” from missing pages in my lab book… Well worth $18 to me. Can’t speak to them…
So, per Mr. McGuire’s rules: UEA, CRU, Jones, and all the rest get an “F”, they have no paper to present, all their work is burned, and we can start over. NO exceptions.
Just read some of Monbiots recent lunatic ramblings. Sure, he thinks the “hacked emails” are a problem. Probably, only sets the Cause back a little. I couldn’t help thinking about the irony of his continued ramblings about Tony Blair being a mass murderer, when the program he’s championing will kill off literally billions of people, if carried to the conclusion he and these others are championing…
If the raw/real data was destroyed in 1980’s then that means that it was massaged with 80’s knowledge at start.
I wonder how many cosmetic massages it went up on until now.
I think I know who the whistle blower is. The key is the Sherlock-Holmesian idea of the dog that did not bark in the night. In this case, that non-barking dog is the programmer who wrote all those well-publicized notes about how bad the CRU data is. That programmer has not come forward. Why such reluctance? Because he is the mole?
Further inspection shows that the reluctant programmer had the scientific knowledge, skeptical motivation, technical know-how, and intimate familiarity with CRU to put together the well-packaged FOI file. I suggest he is the hero.
[REPLY – That seems to be the standing suspicion: Ian Harris did it with the flash drive in the conservatory. ~ Evan]
That’s such a great story you had about overcoming the obstacles you faced to become a broadcaster! Thanks for the site.
K.C.D
http://thewritingsofkcd.wordpress.com/
As we all must know, I am not a credentialed scientist.
However, I do have, down stairs, some 7-trk 256 BPI, and some 9-trk 6250 BPI tapes (cost me around $11 I think, that contain stuff that I thought important enough to keep.
I haven’t seen a tape drive that will read them in 30 or more years.
Point being–keep the tapes is easy. Finding a way to read them is hard.
(I could read the 7-trk tapes if I can find a can of Magnasee…..)
L Bowser wrote:
“4. 99.9% of the emails show tasteless humor, poor judgement, ignorance, back-biting, etc… Nothing that would allow you on the preponderance of evidence to make a convincing case for a vast conspiracy to manufacture global warming.”
I agree with some implications of the above, namely that the lost data and fudged data isn’t all that important–i.e., that it wasn’t data manipulation that manufactured global warming. The globe has definitely been warming. This is the position that Pielke Sr. took the other day too. (And I think that half of the awkwardly phrased comments have innocent or semi-innocent explanations, or anyway aren’t as bad as they seem on the surface.)
As for the preponderance of evidence, we only have e-mails from a few players, so we don’t yet know how vast the conspiracy was. I’m hoping that subpoenas and discovery proceedings in lawsuits will bring more evidence to the surface. Ultimately, the trail of breadcrumbs may lead to the ringleading vegetarian overlords. 😉
But the “conspiracy” angle is a bit of a strawman. For one thing, it implies a conscious decision to deceive, when what was really going on was something less Luciferian and more subtle: confirmation bias, groupthink pressures, saving face, an ingrained partisanship and lack of disinterestedness, etc.
What emerges is that, to some extent, peer review has been compromised, the consensus has been engineered, the make-up of the literature has been affected by arm-twisting, politicking has had an effect on the membership of and the documents produced by the IPCC and the NAS, FOI requests have been dodged, FOI oversight officers have been manipulated, etc.
That stuff isn’t enough to discredit the consensus, but it’s enough to cast a big shadow of doubt on it. Given what we’re being asked to spend on mitigation, a greater degree of certainty in it is required, and a more disinterested overseer of the debate is needed than the IPCC and the current scientific gatekeeperhood. We can’t accept the fruit of such a poisoned tree, even if it can’t be proven to be tainted as well.
We need a two-year time-out while this mess is sorted out.
OK, let’s go on from here –
A couple of suggestions:
1. A full, complete, unbiased and fair investigation of ALL (sorry I’ll tone it down!) academic and governmental (including the UN) organizations speaking to the climate issue (pro and con). Investigation panel make up to be determined – but must be balanced between pro and con.
2. A rehab of the global land weather station net. – If you don’t like Anthony Watts “volunteer” report – then spend a couple million sending trained individuals out – It’d still be a cheap fix. But my buck’s with Anthony.
3. Stop all news releases from NASA, Greenpeace, Heritage, etc and all advertising about Global Warming.
4. Al Gore put under a gag order, and barred from producing any media on Carbon or global warming.
5. A five year moratorium on laws dealing with climate change-including government environmental agency edicts.
6. All data gathered so far is public (world public) domain.
7. Take a half billion dollars and divide it up between institutions for climate research – provided that all emails, data developed, programs, etc is once again available to the public in a central location for review (No hyperspace bypasses please).
8. Any scientist found guilty of intentional fraud shall be fired.
You can refine these to your heart’s content and probably many have better ideas, but this is something to chew on.
Mike
Here is another one…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1232884/Arnold-Schwarzenegger-unveils-dramatic-climate-change-map-shows-flooded-San-Francisco-future.html
What are the term limits for governors in California? Hopefully he won’t be back.
I’m a dumbo when it comes to computers, so I wonder if Jones knows what was taken from his comp?Is it possible that the leaker had it in for Jones,and pinched everything from his computer(by hacking), but only released what he or she thought would lead to his dismissal? I wonder how in-depth the investigation will be? Will they try to find what he has deleted from his computer, or will they be happy to accept his word on what there is, knowing that there could be more in the leaker’s possession. Does Jones know exactly what was taken? I would like to think of him knowing that there is more out there somewhere. I believe if they think there is more, they will fire him, not wanting stuff to turn up later and embarrass them.
Roger Knights (20:44:10) :
I agree with some implications of the above, namely that the lost data and fudged data isn’t all that important
If they destroyed the original B91 observers forms (or equivalent), I consider that to be a crime.
I have queried about a station listed as having been in existence, but with no records, and I am not getting even a reply.
It’s going to be difficult enough starting over and verifying everything.
It’s going to be even worse due to missing raw data.
Missing 41 years off the back end of a 140 yr station record makes my eyes beet red with anger.
Correction:
I have queried about a station observer listed as having taken readings, but with no records, and I am not getting even a reply.
There is an axiom in Composition that one should read first what he wants others to see; I figured out what Chris meant but the syntax is taxing.
It seems so simple, the earth is heated either from above or below — or a combination of both.
The first challenge is to decide which, not how much.
Pamela Gray (17:49:06) :
“As a teacher, your post is a bit difficult to read without me wanting to mark it up with a red pen. It is in need of editing. Run-on and sentence fragments just about drove me crazy. That said, I totally agree with the underlying gist of the post.”
It is written in attorney-speak. I have seen sentences in contracts that are literally one page long. And run-on sentences amuck (like mine!).
So, taken in context, I actually enjoyed the post and the way it was written. Especially this quote:
“Those should turn up when the courts help NASA figure out how to come into compliance with their legal obligations and provide me similar data and correspondence that they have been, similarly and by chance, refusing me for over two years.”
Har har har. Sick ’em, Chris.
Chris (a different one)
Norfolk, VA
Larry Sheldon (20:43:25) :
“Point being–keep the tapes is easy. Finding a way to read them is hard.”
I have a Commodore 64 computer somewhere that uses 5 1/4″ floppy disks.
The 5 1/4″ disk was used in the late 70’s Apple II machines and later in the early 80’s at higher capacity (720Mb and 1.2Mb HD), and the media is still available today.
The recording industry uses tape. And as you might well be aware, remastered albums are continually on the market. The recently remastered Beatles albums come to mind.
If the data were archived on tape, it should still be available today.
RBateman: “Missing 41 years off the back end of a 140 yr station record makes my eyes beet red with anger.”
Not just beet red, bro. There’s lightning bolts coming out. I can see them from here.
This whole scam makes me want to puke on one hand, but mostly it just makes me want to implode with anger (either fusion or fission) not sure.
GRRRRRR!
Take it to the streets.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Rex Murphy commenting on Climategate on the CBC’s the “National” tonight. A must watch as there has been little mention of it on the MSM. Rex has always questioned the doctrine. Go Rex !!
From Climategate Document Database at htt://www.climate-gate.org/search.php :-email 1075403821.txt notifies Phil Jones of the death of John L Daly. Jones comment to Michael Mann:-“Mike, in an odd way this is cheering news”. To see why Jones was so glad, visit http:/john-daly.com/ges/surftmp/surftemp.htm to see John’s article on What’s Wrong With The Surface Record. A great explanation of how Global Mean Temperature is estimated and how errors can and did occur. I don’t know whether it would help some of your knowledgable posters or not, but John also gives links to several Stevenson Screen sites used and details of one in his home State at Low Head in Northern Tasmania, Australia clearly shows how UNIPCC scientists made errors because of lack of local knowledge. His link in that article to his work on the still visible 1841 survey benchmark chiselled into rock on the Isle of the Dead, Port Arthur, Tasmania by Antarctic explorer, Sir James Clark Ross to indicate zero point or the mean level of the sea, is also of great interest.
“* data is plural”
Grammatici certant
Re: David A. Reyes (21:07:39) :
Here is another one…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1232884/Arnold-Schwarzenegger-unveils-dramatic-climate-change-map-shows-flooded-San-Francisco-future.html
What are the term limits for governors in California? Hopefully he won’t be back.
He is out in 2010.
Another country down before Copenhagen.
“Prentice said, citing provincial legislation that sets a C$15 per metric ton price on carbon and its plans to spend C$2 billion on carbon-capturing technologies.”
It’s the carbon capturing industries money that is at stake right now!
Canada Won’t Set Climate Targets Before U.S., Prentice Says
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=akHjYEUfq4.U&pos=9
David A. Reyes (21:07:39) says:
There are term limits, and although he got in half-way through Gray Davis’ first term because of the recall election, I believe he has indicated he won’t be back 🙂
The document “HARRY_READ_ME.txt” appears to discussing the problems of merging the earlier data set with new data. This, according to a header in the file, covered the period 2006 to 2009.
On the CRU web site there is someone referred to “Mr Ian ‘Harry’ Harris” whose tasks include programming. Could he be the ‘Harry’?
UN body probes climate e-mail row
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8394483.stm
Will the lame stream media finally report on climategate now?
Many commenters are asking why not go back to the original observation records to retrieve the original raw surface air temperature observations?
In the United States, for one example, the Federal records retention period for the WBAN Form 10 paper records and their synoptic surface weather observations was limited to 5 years. Other weather station products such as forecasts and charts were limited to a records retention cycle of 14 days. Skew-T analysis charts and other products were limited to a 6 month retention cycle. Upon the expiration of the records retention cycle, the records were either transferred to another organization for further handling, or they were destroyed at the local organization. Paper form records of surface weather observations are generally transfered for further handling. Ultimately, the NCDC (National Climatic Data Center) has been charged with the responsibility for archiving Weather Bureau, Air Force, Navy, and other data for purposes of “climate” studies.
The NCDC makes the archived surface weather observations obtained from the digital data communications networks and from records forms in a variety of datasets, which readers can research on the NCDC Website. See also:
Two of the datasets at the center of the AGW controversies are Dataset 9100: Global Historical Climatology Network and Dataset 6900: U.S. Historical Climatological Network – Daily Temperature, Precipitation, Snow Depth, Sunshine and Cloud Data. Their usefulness has been compromised by the adjustments to the raw observational data which are at the heart of past and current controversies.
Other datasets such as the ASOS and AWOS automatic observational records have their own controversies regarding observational errors in whole degress Celsius and questions about adjustments to the data in analysis products.
One of the few NCDC products which appears to point to the original paper records is:
From the main pages of this morning’s (4th Dec) BBC website……..
“UN body probes climate e-mail row”
“The United Nations panel on climate change is to probe claims UK scientists manipulated global warming data to boost the argument that it is man-made.
The organisation’s chairman Dr Rajendra Pachauri told BBC Radio 4’s The Report programme the claims were serious and he wants them investigated.
“We will certainly go into the whole lot and then we will take a position on it,” he said.
“We certainly don’t want to brush anything under the carpet. This is a serious issue and we will look into it in detail.” ”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8394483.stm
Maybe they are waiting for public interest to be evidenced via phone, snail-mail (and e-mail?) … anybody in the 202 area code/or with nation-wide cellular plan make a few phone calls?
.
.
Whoever perpetrated the feat of extracting and then promulgating that immense wad of incriminating evidence should *not* be prosecuted (though the Authorities surely won’t relent, as their turf has been transgressed).
He/she/it deserves a commemoratory plaque, if not a great bronze statue. Preferably located outside the CRU building….!
I suggest establishing a fund for such plaque/statue/whatever.
Put me down for $50.00 in soon-to-decline spondulix!
The more I research CCS, the more I see it’s mostly about taking money from you and me to pay for it and making a select few very rich.
California utilities push for solar, wind and carbon-capture projects
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2009/12/solar-power-in-space.html
Henry chance (13:48:20) “The urgency to fund climate science is over.”
Careful here.
Put aside all the GHG nonsense and just think of the costs of natural weather & climate. The effects ripple through the entire economy.
Oh, here’s another CCS story. Now I know why some of the the Aussie greedy freaks wanted a carbon tax so bad.
Global CCS Institute To Launch A$50 Million Funding Round Monday
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/200912032223DOWJONESDJONLINE000759_FORTUNE5.htm
Lets understand this…. “Ian Harris did it in the conservatory”, then if he wanted to remain anonomous, he goofed up.
I think the name “Harry read me” might have been changed if the Ian as the whistleblower (WB) didn’t want to be revealed. ergo, i doubt Ian was the man.
As noted before, it might have been stupidity, but i would expect if the WB had the data for a month+, then it might be worth editing one file name to save your skin.
The person(s) hasnt been revealed, and they are investigating internally. If it was Harry, one might expect Harry to already be under some .. investigation. The CRU crowd and UK Police probably reads the blogs, as we do get some insights, and publish them on the web. If we fingered the name as amatuer detectives, then you might think they would too.
My suspicion, its someone else, and they have more data to be held ‘ransom’ and if they get taken, then there is some kind of ‘release this’ instruction for a trusted person or a semi-automated script program. They might even have the raw data that was ‘lost’ and they have been building a treasure trove of other stuff.
If the moving story with ‘lost cabinets’ was true, then who was the moving company, and who worked for them in that time frame?
The initial posting was ambigious, but there is some underlying seething frustration in that writing.
CCS technology is just plain stupid. The biosphere loves CO2.
NICE work if you can get it; don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it …
Hey – I didn’t invent a gullible public! Don’t blame me if your brethren
are easily sold snake oil; figure it’s a ‘cheap lesson’ in a life-track (for them) to eventual wisdom. One needs to have their fiscal finger burned a few times to realize who *isn’t* their friend (and I’ll gladly take the 10 or 20% off the top while doing so!)
KIDDING, just kidding …
.
.
RE: JimInIndy (18:26:02) :
“I concur. The probability of total loss of data files in the 80s is near zero. It struck me as highly improbable when I first saw the report.”
Face it… this ranks right up there with “The dog ate my homework.”
Science is dead.
Jim,
I’m going to tell Alex Jones about this CCS angle, he’ll ride the topic for all it’s worth.
hi anthony,
finaly climategate makes the news and newspapers over here in Holland. Today a newsarticle in de Telegraaf says: Climateclown needs to go to pianolesson. Thats according to PVV parlement member De Mos. VVD member Nepperus is baffeld and dissapointed in KNMI who sees no importance in the leaked climategate emails and feel sorry for Jones..
Some dudes wrote up a paper showing a correlation between historical climate data and war casualties in Africa, and claiming this proved that many more war deaths in Africa would follow from Global Warming. And… this got published in PNAS.
Details here:
http://spinstrangenesscharm.wordpress.com/2009/12/04/the-elephant-and-global-warming/
Regarding CRU’s assertion that they did not keep the raw data, I can only say that stranger things have happened. NASA recorded over the original Apollo moon landing tapes.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article6717221.ece
Appropriate quote from that article: “We should have had a historian running around saying ‘I don’t care if you want to use the tapes for something else, we’ve got to keep them’.”
Regarding reading some of the old tape formats, where there’s a will, there’s a way as described in this earlier post:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/31/using-old-nasa-imagery-to-look-at-antarctic-ice-in-the-1960s/
I read and I cannot remember where,
a scientist who had asked via FOI, got a reply saying thye had lost the data as it was destroyed when they moved locations…and this was WEEKS ago!
well before the shite hit the blades.
he was justifiably angry, and was venting at the obfuscation , as he did not believe they had, that it was a
lie to stop people seeing and re checking….
iCRU? went on to say it didnt matter- as they had their compiled data or something to that effect.
it was a blog page, I really am racking my brains.
I thought unbelievable myself at the time..as who? ever moves a big science dept to a Smaller lab?
and the real original data should STILL be wherever it was amassed anyway. just a bastard to have to go get it all again. more delay.
Indeed see NCDC dataset id C00144…
I have been a scientist for 20 years. In my experience bad science isn’t the very rare exception but almost the norm. Sloppy work, poor experimental design, incorrect technique, uncalibrated equipment and incorrect statistical analysis are normal. Even outright creation of results without performing experiments occurs.
Scientists know there is no real danger of being caught cheating because it is rare to exactly repeat other peoples experiments (analytical chemistry is a notable exception) . Those who are caught out usually just blame faulty equipment or the technique of those attempting to repeat the experiment.
I once provided technical advice on a chemical analysis method used by a very large company.The method was very tedious and used very toxic chemicals. I explained to the Technical Manager that the method could not possibly work because they had incorrectly altered the approved method. He replied that his technicians were already getting excellent results. I told him the only way they could have got “correct” results by using an incorrect method was by making them up. He just went into angry denial and refused to discuss it further.
In the mid 1990s CSIRO the Australian Government’s premier research agency performed a study. They randomly selected 700 papers from 150 randomly selected journals and performed a statistical analysis of the results. It was found that the conclusions of 94% of the papers were statistically meaningless (mostly due to small sample sizes).
Regarding old media–I still have a PC (operable, not currently up) that has a 5 1/4 drive.
8 iunch is tougher.
A year or so ago, I was slightly involved in (successful, it appears) attempts to get an old Ampex video recdorder running to read some old thought-lost tapes from the moon missions.
I have not seen a 11 inch NARTB hub machine ib years, and not at 256 BPI, 7 trk.
The whitewash has started!
I have just found out that the man appointed to head the inquiry into Jones et al. at the UEA, Sir Muir Russell; is part of the green energy rack.. (sorry, industry) in Scotland. He was supposed to be someone completely independent. If that is possible.
See http://www.greenjobs.com/Public/newsitems/news00685.htm
Mike–an alternative plan.
Don’t spend anoter dime anywhere on “climate change” for two years.
Walk out side (with any instruments of your choice) every few hours.
Note (record) any interesting observations.
Repeat. This time try making predictions as to what the interesting observations will in the near future be.
Repeat, developing hypotheses to be tested as to why predictions were or were not correct.
Repeat, testing the hypotheses, and perhaps adjust them.
And so on.
Document in indelible media every fact or hypothesis and test results.
200 comments. And it is now several items deep. I’ll have to spend some time catching up on the news.
But there is one really good thing coming (to me personally) out of all of this.
The part of my library where the Ayn Rand and similar books are is getting dusted for the first time in years.
Now the Alan Sokal section is.
“Mike–an alternative plan.
Don’t spend anoter dime anywhere on “climate change” for two years.
Walk out side (with any instruments of your choice) every few hours.
Note (record) any interesting observations.
Repeat. This time try making predictions as to what the interesting observations will in the near future be.
Repeat, developing hypotheses to be tested as to why predictions were or were not correct.
Repeat, testing the hypotheses, and perhaps adjust them.
And so on.
Document in indelible media every fact or hypothesis and test results.”
Sorry- that’s a completely invalid approach. Don’t you know that no-one is qualified to do that sort of thing unless they know the Climatologist Club Handshake and possess a Secret Climatologist Decoder Ring?
D. Patterson (06:21:21) :
edriley (03:21:19) :
where there’s a will, there’s a way
Indeed see NCDC dataset id C00144…
A Surface Weather Observations is a historical manuscript collection of records archived at the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). This data file contains original manuscript records of raw meteorological data collected by 1st order and 2nd order station located in the U.S., U.S. Pacific Islands, U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and by military weather stations located worldwide. Temperature, precipitation, pressure, wind, visibility and cloud data are covered from 1872 to the present. Observed parameters and number of daily observations varies among military and second order stations. Hourly and/or 3-hourly data and summary of the day data that are entered on these manuscript records are also available on file as DSI-3280 (C00215) and DSI-3210 (C00314). In addition, these data are published as Local Climatological Data, DSI-3715 (C00128).
Did you notice it costs big $$$. To obtain the original data covering 100 years monthly for all stations would cost tens of thousands. Pretty big impediment there.
ozspeaksup:
Is this what you were thinking of?
http://camirror.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/willis-eschenbachs-foi-request/
“We cannot produce a simple list with this format and with the information you described in your note of 14 April. Firstly, we do not have a list consisting solely of the sites we currently use. Our list is larger, as it includes data not used due to incomplete reference periods, for example. Additionally, even if we were able to create such a list we would not be able to link the sites with sources of data. The station database has evolved over time and the Climate Research Unit was not able to keep multiple versions of it as stations were added, amended and deleted. This was a consequence of a lack of data storage in the 1980s and early 1990s compared to what we have at our disposal currently. It is also likely that quite a few stations consist of a mixture of sources.”
As Jones FOIA lackey pointed out in responses, the original data does still exist. . . in the repository of the various NWS (national weather services).
If Jones successor really wishes to make amends for this period of travesty of the principles of science, CRU will make the effort to go around and reacquire that data, securing at the same time the necessary agreements to make it all public so that all researchers may use it as a common resource.
If the AGW issue is as important and urgent as claimed, I see no reason to think it should be all that hard for CRU to do, nor that any NWS would refuse them.
How much data are we talking about? Here’s my back of the envelope calculation:
Back in 1984 an IBM magnetic tape cartridge was 4″ x 5″ x 1″ and stored 200 MB.
According to Gavin Schmidt of RealClimate, 95% of the adjusted CRU data or its equivalent is available at http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/ .
I’ve been to that site and based on the various download pages, that data plus various software programs is 100 MB tops. Now maybe there was additional metadata and other source materials with the raw data but surely those wouldn’t have gone over 100 MB.
In other words the original data would easily have fit on one 200 MB cartridge. Throw in a couple of backups and the original data wouldn’t have taken up more room than a decent hardback dictionary.
Or perhaps in those endarkened days, the data was uncompressed. So call it a shoe box worth of cartridges.
I just don’t believe the CRU scientists idly lost or threw out that data while housecleaning or moving to a new building.
Comments or corrections?
Ron’s 22:02:21 comment rings true. If the only data set now available is “value-added” data that has gone through some preprocessing phase, why did the HARRY_READ_ME guy spend three recent years going half out of his wits trying to make sense out of chaotic directory structures and inconsistent data formats? How could anyone, when modifying the original raw numbers, fail to normalize the data in other ways so as to organize it into a coherent, accessible form? I honestly don’t get it.
Of course, which is why I mentioned the dataset.
I’ve been trying for years to learn precisely what happened to the paper forms we forwarded to NCDC, but I’ve always been diverted to the NCDC dataset catalog you see online without enough information to determine what really happened to those forms. I am now informed some of the paper forms, I don’t know to what extent, have been destroyed by neglect and/or discarding. It is unclear the extent of which raw surface weather observations of air temperatures remain available in completely unadjusted and unedited formats. Based on the verbal reports I’m presently receiving, the situation is highly dubious at best. We already know the air temperatures in the historical climate networks have been compromised by adjustmetns which likely cannot be undone to restore the raw observation values. So far, it isn’t looking much better for the great majority of the other datasets. The story is still unfolding, so we’ll have to see what develops….
Larry Sheldon (06:46:31) :
I still have some Shugart 8-inch FDD out in the garage. Don’t know if they still work or not.
Looks like the MET still has the data anyway.
If so, then “Jones FOIA lackey” is deceiving the public. At least some lesser or greater part of the original paper records were destroyed and damaged in the repositories where they were archived. The digital datasets have with distressing frequency been adjusted, making the original values unretrievable from the dataset. It will require a detailed investigation to determine the extent to which unadjusted and unedited raw surface weather air temperatures can be retrieved.
chemist (06:41:38),
You referred to a CSIRO study which
Could you supply a reference for that? I am interested in applying a similar analysis to modern educational papers, particularly since the use of APA style of citations means that any paraphrase of a cited work requires no page numbers (thereby adding great difficulty to the checking of that work’s accuracy and applicability).
If you deplore the fudging of data and the poor arguments of some scientists, you probably won’t be impressed by the loose thinking, sweeping conclusions from extremely small samples, and outright idiocy of many educational theorists.
I don’t remember seeing this mentioned anywhere—
Is there enough information still in the system to back out the distortions and recover the original inputs?
Or was it all one-way, or logically random, distortions?
Stop fretting about reading old media.
A cache of tapes storing the ORIGINAL broadcasts from the Lunar Landings, showing ultra-high-resolution photographs of the activity, still exists.
Volunteers have cobbled together parts from old tape machines and managed to read the tapes. See Sky and Telescope magazine for details.
Just put out an APB. Some hobbyist has a garage full of these old beasts.
As for paper, we now have optical scanners.
Punch tape? Punch cards? I really don’t care.
If we can scan an old palimpsest and recover a lost treatise from Archimedes, we can find whatever we want to find.
By the way, wasn’t the Surface Stations project done by volunteers?
Huxley suggests the original data cold have been put on one 200MByte cartridge.
Unless there was a system for the 4000+ weather stations to write their data first onto that single cartridge, that would not be _original_ data. It would be a copy of it.
I shut down Canadian Blue Lemons a few months ago because I thought the work was done by weight of fact. And now that it seems that the sins and sinners are revealed, it might be more important than ever to keep ploughing through the freezing nonsense that continues to dominate the news casts (although the worm is on its back and suffering).
The first time I took on the evil establishment our advisor said when you get your foot on their throat you push down, long and hard.
The data are still out there.
Jones, or whomever, might have destroyed the data they had.
But, those data are still around. The CRU reports their sources.
Do it again. Publish them. Show the gaps.
I have worked on hundreds of statistical time series, and plugging is the only way to fill gaps in data, based on the knowledge of the plugger. Doing this I was always ready to explain my plug and the degree of variance that might be expected.
Demand that Jones reproduce his data.
If they were available then – they are available now.