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
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