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.