Quite a bit different from their November 24th statement, which you can read here. For those that still think Climategate has no significant impact on climate science, this revelation tells another story.
Met Office to re-examine 160 years of climate data
The new analysis of the data will take three years, meaning that the Met Office will not be able to state with absolute confidence the extent of the warming trend until the end of 2012.
The Met Office database is one of three main sources of temperature data analysis on which the UN’s main climate change science body relies for its assessment that global warming is a serious danger to the world. This assessment is the basis for next week’s climate change talks in Copenhagen aimed at cutting CO2 emissions.
The Government is attempting to stop the Met Office from carrying out the re-examination, arguing that it would be seized upon by climate change sceptics.
The Met Office works closely with the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU), which is being investigated after e-mails written by its director, Phil Jones, appeared to show an attempt to manipulate temperature data and block alternative scientific views.
The Met Office’s published data showing a warming trend draws heavily on CRU analysis. CRU supplied all the land temperature data to the Met Office, which added this to its own analysis of sea temperature data.
Since the stolen e-mails were published, the chief executive of the Met Office has written to national meteorological offices in 188 countries asking their permission to release the raw data that they collected from their weather stations.
The Met Office is confident that its analysis will eventually be shown to be correct. However, it says it wants to create a new and fully open method of analysing temperature data.
The development will add to fears that influential sceptics in other countries, including the US and Australia, are using the controversy to put pressure on leaders to resist making ambitious deals for cutting CO2.
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change admitted yesterday that it needed to consider the full implications of the e-mails and whether they cast doubt on any of the evidence for man-made global warming.
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“influential sceptics in other countries” I wonder who that could be?
I applaud the open process though.
1. Since 2007,the BBC has declared that human climate change is settled and sceptics need not be given equal airtime.IT DOESN’T give this caveat before or during news reports on the subject! How can there be ‘openess’ when the major opinion former is still biased! 2 The Government = The Met Office.
“The Met Office plans to re-examine 160 years of temperature data”
Will that temperature be raw data, or adjusted raw data
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/25/uh-oh-raw-data-in-new-zealand-tells-a-different-story-than-the-official-one/
Manipulation of raw data is at the heart of recent claims of corrupt scientific practice in climate science, with CRU’s Phil Jones recently claiming old temperature records collected by his organization were “destroyed” or “lost”, meaning researchers can now only access manipulated data
Mac said: “just looking at some of the older records i could probably easily drop the older temps by a few degrees and blame it on typos and not being able to read the forms. How could anyone expect there to be QC in this process with out 100% transparency.
Perhaps something like reCAPTCHA could rapidly get records re-digitised while retaining a decent level of quality control.
More garbage from the Telegraph .I must stop reading that newspaper until the editors get to grips with the tripe written by Lean and Gray. [sounds like a description of a race horse 🙂 ] this item is preposterous
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6729732/Copenhagen-climate-summit-gloomy-Swede-Svante-Arrhenius-saw-chill-wind-of-change.html
Michael (20:53:32) :
“Those on the inside are reading unreleased e-mails. Me thinks they came across some more seriously damaging crap they are not telling us about. Maybe they alerted BO about this and that being the reason for the delay to Cophenhagen.”
I think ongoing review of backup servers/archives at CRU, PSU, GISS and NASA (and other places) are revealing emails were deleted, recovered those and found, as you say, unrelesed emails. They likely are seeing a much worse picture than we are here at WUWT.
When do we get to see it too? Push, Push.
John
I imagine the Met Office have announced this ‘re-examination’ of 160 years of temperature data because Climategate had begun to cause them huge problems with their commercial interests.
Part of the corrupting factor behind the global warming scam is that the Met Office has moved into selling ‘climate change product’ to international banks, insurers, health providers and government agencies.
The Met Office’s product would be valueless in the marketplace unless the organisation ALSO promoted the idea that ‘man-made climate change’ (ie, AGW) is real. And in order to do this, it must move away from its core purpose of making objective recordings of temperature, towards finding and placing a *meaning* on those recordings – a meaning that has a commercial value.
Once the authenticity of this meaning is convincingly challenged – by an external expert analysis of the data, or by a whistleblower showing the lengths the Met Office and its accomplices have gone to arrive at the meaning – then the organisation’s existing customers will believe they have been cheated – and a huge market of potential customers will evaporate.
The Met Office has already become a laughing-stock with its wildly inaccurate seasonal projections (often turning out to be exactly opposite to the real weather conditions) – the corruption exposed in the Climategate emails (and code) now shows the Met Office’s customer base that the organisation is little better than a used car salesman.
The purpose of ‘re-examining’ its temperature records is to reinforce the predetermined ‘meaning’ it has placed on them and thereby attempt to rescue its disastrous foray into the commercial world. A disaster not only for the Met Office – but also for the people of Great Britain who have been cheated out of a reliable national weather-forecasting service by the corruption of greed for money and political power.
tallbloke (01:57:41) :
LOL – very good!
So if I understand this right, in three years’ time we may have some data to enable (real) scientists to START investigating the pattern of global temperatures and possible causes of any fluctuations. It’s not quite what the guys at Copenhagen are basing their work on, is it
No Bob 🙂 read the announcement. They are going to find how much global warming there is.
Two words for CRU:
OPEN SOURCE
Meanwhile, today is the 255th of 2009 with no sunspots, 766th since 2004.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Just thinking back to the emails – IIRC they all appeared to be harvested from Phil Jones mail account.
If there was a thorough search under the FOI request, surely they’d be stuff from Ian Harris and others too. Is the leaker wanting to focus attention just on those who appear to have orchestrated this [protecting the little guys] or is there more to come?
I’m assuming that the software experts at UEA will know what files were copied if it was an inside job?
Foxes do not check henhouses.
Independent audit.
BBC Newsnight – ‘Asshole’ edition. Interesting viewing:
http://www.the-daily-politics.com/2009/12/climategate-newsnight-4th-dec-2009.html
Watson (assisted by the BBC interviewer) Vs Morano
IMHO there were two assholes on that program and neither were American!
E.M.Smith (00:55:11) :
> Bohemond (20:33:33) : Of course, that means that the warmmongers will have GISS as their only principal dataset. Now if we can shine some sunlight into that roach-nest….
> And The Smith said: “Let there be light!” :
> http://chiefio.wordpress.com/gistemp/
Thank you for all your work – I’m sorry I haven’t been able to help.
Richard B,
The BBC is reporting that the story is true, that they are writing to 180 countries for permission to release the raw data. Nothing about re-evaluating the data though. Once they release it, it will be re-evaluated, no matter what.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8396696.stm
Perhaps the three years will give some of us in countries other than the US to do an assessment of the weather stations involved along the lines of the surface stations project you are in the middle of in the US. Imagine a distributed effort around the globe! It would enable the raw data to be used properly and give a much better idea of its true utility.
Vincent (04:16:01) :
> E. M. Smith,
>> “But I could be wrong… So just tell me the SI units for this physics concept”
> Watts per metre squared I believe.
That was a joke, referring as much to the concept as the bogus values the AGW community have used.
The units are dependent on how the forcing/feedbacks are applied. A good retort would have been that the concept is dimensionless, sort of like pi or e and the value is just a coefficient (or function) in some partial differential equation.
Thank you for costing the uk probably £500,000 +
But not only that, looking at the rabid comments above (“if it doesn’t say what I want it to say then I will not believe it”), the investigation will be worthless!
Martin Brumby (03:39:38) :
“No, we still have a huge mountain to climb. Remember, it isn’t the science that is driving this. And AGW is way, way, way too big to fail.”
I think it has already failed. Just give it 6 months for the politicians to save face and a new bunch of scientist to be lined up to work on the next ploy.
Always remember, the bigger they are the harder they fall :-))
Hey Bill… you don’t seem to mind spending BILLIONS on science based in crummy data.
He [Gordon Brown] said: “With only days to go before Copenhagen we mustn’t be distracted by the behind-the-times, anti-science, flat-earth climate sceptics. We know the science. We know what we must do.”
Well there you have it. Emperors new clothes anyone?
Still not clear on what exactly the MO is proposing to examine or release. The issue is the HadCRUT data, is this what they intend to release? All of it?
Judging from the news coverage here this is all seen as a bit of a formality. The MO release “some” data in order to “prove” Global Warming and we all just shut up and get with the program. It looks like those expecting some kind of new era of transparent science will have to wait.
Was surprised to find a story like this one – it’s happening way faster than expected. Welcome to the reality of the great carbon scam. Conveniently forgotten as the thieves assemble in Denmark to divide up the swag. Perhaps the WHO could investigate some real and measurable “climate” deaths for a change. Won’t hold my breath though.
E.M.Smith (00:21:34) :
What you describe is good business practice; unfortunately government agencies don’t seem to like good practice. Re your point 8: in the UK there are salt mines where any and everything can be stored for a nominal price.
bill (05:47:22) :
To whom are you addressing that?
The people who expect studies that are used by international planning organizations to be accurate, or the people who’ve been paid to assemble and analyze the data and screwed it up so badly that it has to be redone?
Why would the analysis of the data take three years?
What is there to analyze?
Either the MET has the data they have complied, or they don’t.
Just release what they have right now.
It might, however, take three years for them to fudge it all.
Editor of the right-wing Spectator takes on geezer from lefty London School of Economics. Watch him become ‘hysterical’:
Fraser Nelson takes on Bob Ward.