It has started – the infighting begins in the court of public opinion.
Climategate: Phil Jones accused of making error of judgment by colleague
Here’s an excerpt:
One of the scientists to whom the emails were addressed, Professor Michael Mann, the Director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University has moved to distance himself from some of the comments in the emails that suggest scientists did not want the IPCC, the UN body charged with monitoring climate change, to consider studies that challenged the view global warming was genuine and man-made.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight, Prof Mann said: “I can’t put myself in the mind of the person who wrote that email and sent it. I in no way endorse what was in that email.”
Prof Mann also said he could not “justify” a request from Prof Jones that he should delete some of his own emails to prevent them from being seen by outsiders.
“I can’t justify the action, I can only speculate that he was feeling so under attack that he made some poor decisions frankly and I think that’s clear.”
Prof Mann then argued however that there was “absolutely no evidence” that he too had manipulated data, while he also said “I don’t believe that any of my colleagues have done that”.
Complete story here at the Telegraph:
Climategate: Phil Jones accused of making error of judgment by colleague
h/t to Kate at SDA
It appears that some nefarious hacker has gotten a screen shot of Mann’s computer in data-shop mode.
http://cbullitt.wordpress.com/2009/12/02/the-michael-mann-non-response/
Of course we don’t have Mann’s email store, but I have to admit from what I’ve seen he comes off better than most of them in being upfront with his colleagues about issues he wishes to raise, and not nearly as consistently catty in his remarks about other colleagues not on the particular chain he was responding to.
That doesn’t make his science any better (or worse), of course.
So … we can expect Prof Mann to release his archive of emails about Climate research over the last 10 years sometime soon, for outsiders to peruse?
Perhaps he’s jumped ship.
MANN OVERBOARD!!
Sorry.
Contact the district attorney in the Penn State U.S. Attorney’s district and ask him or her to convene a grand jury to investigate the matter. Best if you can cite relevant federal statutes.
I’m an aerospace Technical Fellow of Modeling, Simulation and Analysis (MS&A), I’m appalled at the low standards in climatology, and how their shoddy work is–as the WSJ noted–adversely impacting the reputation of all scientists in all fields.
Mann said in the quote that he did not, could not conscience the deletion of emails and data. Yet, as others above posted, the his email response to Jones’ request to pass along his request to delete, Mann made no objection, and seemed to comply, especially w.r.t. passing along the request to delete to colleagues.
If PSU and UEA are allowed to run their own “independent” investigation, then the next time there is a big USA DoD scandal, I expect Boeing and LockMart to be allowed to “independently” investigate themselves, pronounce their innocence, and everyone accept it. Forget about the $600 toilet seats. Forget about the $450 hammers. “We did an in-depth investigation, and Dr Jones and Dr Mann didn’t really do anything wrong, but they are very sorry for being the cause of the turmoil, so let’s all just forget about it all, and go back to giving us $100,000,000 grants, and stop questioning GW and AGW.”
Through channels I offered Sen Inhofe my services as an expert practitioner of data collection, cleaning, mining, simulation and analysis. (If Sen Boxer were interested in more than catching the “hacker” I would offer my services to her side too,) I doubt he will call, but I stand ready to serve.
A blue-ribbonn panel of OUTSIDE experts needs to disassemble the data and code, and determine if accepted standard practices and procedures were followed by these climatologists.
The credibility of PSU and UES are too tarnished for them to investigate anything worse than a plagiarism claim. These data and studies are the basis for Cap-and-Trade styled changes to the world economy, which is already in shambles. Unless OUTSIDE auditors are used, the public will lose respect for science, and what will happen then? Will mob superstition replace science?
Newt Love (my real name)
newtlove.com
It’s not often that a movement is both born and bust in a single generation; I fear for the next. now needed to fill the void.
Ken this movement wasn’t born in this last generation, it is multi generational.
It has roots all the way back in the 1960’s when the scientist that basically put Scripps Oceanographic institute on the map postited the modern version of AGW (see John Colmans piece on ICE CAP). This scientist then moved from Scripps were he met a grad student by the name of Al Gore, as shown in his book Earth in the Balance. Of course this scientist in 1991 announced that he was wrong on AGW but by that time the AGW Bus was picking up steam with the Goracle at the wheel so Al threw him under that Bus.
At the same time this scientist made his hypthothesis the modern day Enviro movement started and as been proven by their own words (Yes I mean you Dr. Holdren) they had an agenda to enforce there own views on the world. Howerver back then the Temps were falling so AGW was still in its infancy so they went with AGC. The next Ice Age was comming, we were all going to die and it was man’s fault, yada, yada, yada. I remember the first movie I went to (I was 5 at the time) and they had this short clip before the Diseny Film about how, ironies of ironies, Exxon was helping the Enviro movement stop AGC. Yep your eyes ain’t misleading you The Greens and Exxon in bed! As the years went strolling along and we had another winter worse then the next until it all culminated in the 1977 Blizzard that basically shut down the entire Northeast for a week. After that even was Spock was on the AGC crowd as his ManBearPig series In Search of shows (You can still see the episode on the next Ice Age on You Tube, complete with a temp station on a remote island on the artic circle and an Alarmist scientist). Time famously had articles on this in 1975. Basically just take everything you have heard about AGW and change the W for a C, substitute Cold for Hot so forth and you will get an accurate picture.
Then a funny thing happened on the way to an Icy grave for mankind, The planet started warming up. Darn planet forgot to read Time and watch ManBearPig TV shows. Now the Enviros hadn’t really discovered AGW yet but they did discover the Ozone layer which CFC’s were destroying and if we didn’t do something right now in 10 years we would all fry to death in UV rays. Again the band tuned up and marched off and pass laws that really had no effect on the Ozone hole, but did help clear the smog away and we all didn’t fry in 10 years. Of course just when that was dying is when they found the motherlode of AGW and the Goracle. The rest is history.
All these bus and sledge accidents point to the clue to the ‘hack’. Maybe the password was ‘Rosebud’.
…………….but Mann forwarded Jones’s email to another colleague.
If Mann felt uneasy about deleting emails he should have replied to Jones that wasn’t going to comply and not forward it to another colleague.
Mann like Jones was spreading the message – “delete the emails”.
Finding the truth, and using it are my agenda:
Asking questions, and finding answers to compare, to further evaluate, gives us a gathering of knowledge, to evaluate the hypothesis skeptically, while figuring out better questions, to ask for the next set of trials.
Diversity of thought in additional areas of knowledge, gives a more rounded vision, allowing the formation of more complex answers, and resultant questions, that can present data in a format, that is visual enough that it shows the balancing of several forces at work as they really do.
From a viewpoint of how the assemblage of parts seamlessly fits together, you only have to do is watch the (short but seemingly) endless stream of satellite photos animated and synchronized by 27′.32 days periods, to see the repeating cycles.
To set up five tiled windows, in the first show day one- thru27 sequentially, the as they continue on in the same stream, the cycle of the first 27 days continues anew in window #2, synchronized by Lunar declination to #1. Till they spill over into window #3 stepping in phase with the other two, #4 the same idea gives you the four basic patterns of the Rossby wave 109.3 day cycle, of global circulation, that then repeat but seasonally shifted.
In window #5 then would be the first repeat of window #1 in the same phase of the same pattern, and should look a lot like window #1. As the progression through the total series , proceeds, 6558 days into the five stacks a 6th window opens and the original day #1 in window #1 opens as #1 in window #6. As the series progresses on, real data can be viewed, in the real interactions going on.
This would give you a look into the cyclic pattern that develops from the repetitive interaction of the inner planets and Lunar declination, phase, perigee/ apogee cycles.
By adding a sliding ball, vertically moving up and down a +-30 degree scale bar, on the side of each tile space, that shows the plot of the current Lunar declination for the time of each frame.
By adding another slide bar of +-30 degrees at the top, of each tile you could view each outer planet as we pass them, as color coded discs labeled, J, S,U, N, shifting from left to right as we pass them. this progression of the outer planets can then be seen in the additional surges in ion flux as they go by.
Once the amount of additional angular momentum, and the process of it’s coming and goings clearly seen, it can then be measured, it’s effects calculated, and incorporated into the climate models, giving us a much better picture, of all of the parts of the puzzle.
All of the necessary data is in the archives, and free to use to those that have the where with all, to assemble the real truth, be it inconvenient or not.
For application in Quake sightings, and subsequent formulating hypothesis and developing forecast parameters, you could substitute, or add (if your video resolutions is good enough), intensity quantified dots on the surface of occurring quakes (play with fade out time to see time shifts etc.) and an open circle showing the moving location of the earth/moon center line, to apply this information about the magnetic, tidal and inertial forces at work keeping the mantle warm and churning.
Henry chance (09:38:53) :
Mann is still on his ego trip.
If he had any good judgement, he would keep quiet. This endeavor on his part may backfire. He also will find Jones may counter attack him. Mann needs to take a time out and go to Siberia and look at some tree rings on a field trip.
I would suggest that this time of year in Siberia he might want some warmer tree rings. Maybe time to throw a few on the fire.
Maybe the password was ‘Rosebud’.
As long as you grease the runners of the sled with astroglide.
Regarding Santer et al’s “hacker” claim, and stressing how this was a criminal act, this morning on NPR’s Marketplace Morning Report Stephen Beard took it a step further to say that “Climate-change skeptics hacked into computer records…”.
The implication seems to be that this is all a deliberate, well-timed, and “desperate” attempt by skeptics to try to undermine COP15. In short, IT’S A CONSPIRACY!
Beard goes on to say that the BBC quoted “a senior Saudi official saying this will have a huge impact on the Copenhagen conference. Every country under pressure, he says, to curb its emissions could now seize on these e-mails and say why should we damage our economy when there is still, apparently, serious doubt about climate change.”
He concludes by saying “there is plenty of other evidence that climate change is man-made”, but “this does seem to surface” next week in Copenhagen, a strange way of saying that it will certainly be an issue there. Apparently Beard and Eaton will both be there, and reporting from there.
Well Mann has thrown Jones under the bus but I wonder if he’s seen Zombie Land?
Rule# 2 Double Tap…. Don’t be stingy with your ammo and make sure the zombie is truly dead, otherwise the zombie may get up and bite you….
I wonder how long it will take before Jones rolls over and starts nailing Mann…
this is what Mann does best: intimidate and screw up people! but so does Phil J, so we’re in for a great show, once they come out in public.
I don’t thing it will be long before Mann joins Jones in the sin-bin. Good thing too as these men are dangerous with hockey sticks, which can be lethal weapons in the wrong hands.
@ur momisugly Benjamin D. Santer, Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison,
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
You’re wrong about the UEA CRU/GISS/IPCC leak. The problem the cabal has with the emails, programs, data and other documents contained in the package is that there is sufficient material to get plenty of context, and the main take from them is that you and the other IPCC consensus scientists are very poor at real science.
The document shows you have all lost three things vital to any scientist – scepticism, respect for the truth and the courage to accept when your wrong and move on. Every statistical trick, exaggerated alarmist graph, and biased peer review proclaims you all as worthless puppets of the politicians who pay your wage. Each paper produced without the raw data, and each FOIA request refused shows how just how scared you all are that the figures don’t add up.
Come on, be brave and tell us sceptics here why global average temperature has stayed flat for the last 10 years when CO2 has risen c5% – we’ve had two very weak hurricane seasons – the Arctic ice is recovering – the Antartic ice is growing – Greenland still isn’t green – the modelled equatorial atmospheric hotspot has not been found.
Our climate is a deterministic chaotic system and behaves like a homoeostatic system (the more energy you put in, the more gets pushes out). Change is the normal for our climate at all time scales and man’s tiny 1% or so of total GHG’s has no effect – turbulence and boundary effects are the main drivers, which means climate will always be unpredictable beyond short time scales.
To sum up, the hypothesis of CAGW caused by increased levels of CO2 is falsified – panic and political macjinations not required.
Some honest answers please Mr. Benjamin D. Santer, lets have no more IPCC scares and media spin. Truth and self respect are worth far more than personal gain.
Richard Holle (05:04:21) :
“Finding the truth, and using it are my agenda:
Asking questions, and finding answers to compare, to further evaluate, gives us a gathering of knowledge, to evaluate the hypothesis skeptically, while figuring out better questions, to ask for the next set of trials.”
Reply: Couldn’t agree more with you. Science is all about facts and the truth – it is not about belief and defending entrenched and untenable hypotheses to the last Mann, as is happening with CAGW.
Only from real knowledge can wisdom ensue. The unbiased observer is the most import element in scientific discovery, and the ability to examine things from different points of view is a rare attribute only gifted to few.
I find your work interesting. as you try to find mechanisms to explain apparent correlations to events and rhythms in our wider climate ‘exosphere’. If we don’t look at all the factors that could effect our chaotic climate system, we will never find the truth.
It’s very interesting that Piers Corbyn, of Weather Action, hinted that he used similar methods to you to give long-range weather forecasts. I think it would be worth your time to contact him, if you haven’t already done so?
Predicting the climate is very important to the development of humanity. If we know the direction events are going, we have the time to adapt and prepare.
Good look on your quest for knowledge.
The BBC has started to wake up to this story (or, perhaps and far more likely, can no longer strive to conceal it). Newsnight tonight had a rather bizarre and uninformative slugging match between Watson in the red corner (UEA prof of some sort) and Murano in the blue corner (AGW-sceptic politico). The BBC have come in on the ground floor, haven’t really taken their coats off yet, and were using the academic to put forward the original CRU spin/spiel that there’s nothing wrong with the science, that the CRU and its cohorts are good guys really and that a few emails with phrases like “hide the decline” or reams of odium academicum calling for the screwing of any critics are of no import (!!**Don’t mention the code**!!).
I suppose we have to be glad that the outfit whose motto is “Nation shall speak truth to nation”, or some such, have finally found the bottle to even discuss the issue, let alone inform the narcoleptic nation who are paying both for them and for the CRU. Sadly they are far too far up the posterior of the UK government to be disinterested reporters (as was exactly the case too with our MPs’ expenses scandal) and the “discussion” was prefaced by the usual spectacled “science” reporter with her laptop showing lots of clips of hurricanes, big waves, deserts etc; the usual pathetic fallacy (I await correction on my probable misuse of this concept).
That said though, the story is now finally getting out of the blogs and into the MSM – but there’s no room for complacency here; the polticians are the ones who count and they are (at least in the UK) in absolute denial of the seriousness of the evidence. We are still heretics who can be ignored or abused. Let’s not stop now, there may well be a new crusade to silence this – it happened after the shock of the failure of Jesus to return at the Millennium, it can happen again. A reading of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds helps to put all this into its real context.
Perhaps my last post was too previous. Newsnight are now running “out of control earth” clips, floods, kids dying, meteorites hurtling into the ground, forest fires, Mayan calendars, disintegration of the planet – all under the banner of an arts report on current environmental-catastrophe-NOW! movies. Q: “Why are we so drawn to these images of destruction” A:”We have no sense of hope in the future” followed by a guy (movie critic or similar) saying that we *are facing unprecedented crisis in his analysis of the movies. Sheesh.
Richard Lawson
Glad to be of help.
Did you see Newsnight this evening? I have e-mailed the following to Anthony for his info:
Hi, Anthony,
“Just watched this current affairs programme on BBC TV. It featured a piece on climate change with interviews by a Professor Watson of UEA (a colleague of Phil Jones) and Paul Manoca (may have got the name wrong but he is a leading skeptic in the US).
Anyway he gave Watson such a torrid time that at one point Watson snapped at him. ‘Shut up a minute!’ At the end of the interview, Watson said, ‘What an a****le!’ before the camera and sound faded on him!!
There was a hurried, but not too convincing apology from the presenter some minutes later.
What this said to me was that the AGW lobby KNOWS it is losing the argument and is getting desperate to know what to do about it.
I expect (and hope) this incident will find its way onto Youtube. I expect (and anticipate) it will be edited out of the BBC iPlayer transmissions.
Here you are: the UK’s official view from the PM. This sceptic rubbish, it’s all flat earthers and loonies don’t you know?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/6729833/Gordon-Brown-climate-change-sceptics-are-flat-earthers.html
RichieP – went to the telegraph article re: Gordon Brown. Wish there was a comments section but couldn’t find one. Brown is the dunce who sold a large chunk of UK gold at bargain basement prices when he was chancellor of the exchequer. I don’t give him much credit for having insight or foresight. The man is a menace. He’s proposing satellite tracking of the world’s citizens to monitor their energy use.
He that hideth the decline, shall fall down it.
@andersm
If you’ve ever read Guido Fawkes’ political blog (if you’re not UK based you probably haven’t/wouldn’t), you’ll know that he has a Curse of Jonah (Brown) meme. If Guido is right (and he tends to be far more reliable than almost anything you read in the MSM) then the thermomaniacs, a nice neologism coined by Simon Heffer in the DT today, are done for. Everything this man touches turns to rubble. And it’s absolutely no surprise that ZanuLabour want to have the entire globe on CCTV. Here in UK we are already the most spied upon people in the world and it’s all to ensure that we behave ourselves like Brown and his crypto-Stalinist cohorts want us to – we are all regarded as guilty even before we’ve done anything. Today, Abingdon shopping centre; tomorrow, the world! And AGW is the perfect scare vehicle to achieve it, far better than Osama Bin Laden, because you can milk masses of tax out of it too. They are not going to give up easily and they will resort, on the basis of the evidence we have in the UK, to every oppressive means to win.