Steve McIntyre has blogged an excellent must read technical explanation about IPCC and the “Trick” on the newly provisioned climateaudit.org now on WordPress.com. He provides the context that CRU says the emails lack. So, I thought this would be a good time to have a look at the word “trick” and how it was used in the leaked CRU emails.
A few days ago, I had an email exchange with NRO’s Planet Gore editor Chris Horner who wondered how often the word “trick” was used in the CRU emails. Of course the instance that everyone remembers is this email from November 16th, 1999:
I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.
The explanation for that use of the word came quickly from CRU director Dr. Phil Jones in his official announcement on November 23rd:
The word ‘trick’ was used here colloquially as in a clever thing to do. It is ludicrous to suggest that it refers to anything untoward.
Well that certainly seems reasonable on the surface. For example, an American colloquialism is “that’ll do the trick”, when a solution to a problem is found. I hadn’t thought much more about it until I was reminded of this again this past week, when Dr. Michael Mann, in an interview with the State College, PA newspaper Centre Daily, defending himself and Dr. Jones about the language used in the emails.
Mann said Jones was using the word “trick” in the sense of “here’s the trick for solving that problem,” not to indicate anything inappropriate.
So if Dr. Jones uses such colloquialisms regularly, it stands to reason that we should find a number of similar instances of the word “trick” in the CRU emails over the decade that the emails spanned. I decided to find out.
I setup a file search program with a simple mission, scan the email folders for all file content with instances of the word “trick” used by itself, excluding other words like “Patrick” that would have “trick” embedded in it. Eight files were returned with that condition:
I was rather surprised that so few files met the condition, so I ran it again to be sure, same result. I took off the quotes to see just how many emails contained some permutation of the letters t r i c k.
The answer was 29 emails out of the 1079 emails in the FOIA2009.zip file:
So that we can all see how often these scientists used the work trick colloquially, and not part of another word, I’m showing the 8 instances of “trick” by itself highlighted in yellow below, plus another instance where “trick” is part of another word “tricky”:
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The CRU emails can be found at http://eastangliaemails.com/ if you care to look at the originals.
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So as you can see, we really have only one instance where Dr. Jones uses the word “trick” in reference to a procedure on data. There are other uses and variations of the word “trick” in other emails, but only this one instance attributed to Jones where he refers to this data issue.
As Dr. Jones put it: The word ‘trick’ was used here colloquially as in a clever thing to do.
Perhaps, but you’d think we’d see it in general use by Dr. Jones in other emails if it was indeed a colloquialism. In the thousand plus emails we have, there’s no other use of the word “trick” by Dr. Jones that I could find related to data truncation or otherwise, though there are other colloquial uses of the word by other authors.
Add the technical proof that Steve McIntyre has done today:
Which shows that CRU did indeed truncate tree ring data, so that the decline is not shown in the IPCC report as shown in the red line above.
And the fact that McIntyre brought this to their attention as an expert reviewer in the IPCC process:
To my knowledge, no one noticed or reported this truncation until my Climate Audit post in 2005 here. The deletion of the decline was repeated in the 2007 Assessment Report First Order and Second Order Drafts, once again without any disclosure. No dendrochronologist recorded any objection in the Review Comments to either draft. As a reviewer of the Second Order Draft, I asked the IPCC in the strongest possible terms to show the decline reported at CA here:
Show the Briffa et al reconstruction through to its end; don’t stop in 1960. Then comment and deal with the “divergence problem” if you need to. Don’t cover up the divergence by truncating this graphic. This was done in IPCC TAR; this was misleading. (Reviewer’s comment ID #: 309-18)]
They refused, stating that this would be “inappropriate”, though a short discussion on the divergence was added – a discussion that was itself never presented to external peer reviewers.
Add all these things up, and I’m ready to say PANTS ON FIRE! regarding Dr. Jones claim of “ It is ludicrous to suggest that it refers to anything untoward.“
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Who is Keenan?
The quote from the email to Phil on Aug 2007 speaks volumes ,
“ We are facing a tricky person and group, and the only way to do it is to follow the procedure to drive them crazy’”
They do not talk about having superior data to win the day. They talk about their established “ procedure to drive them crazy”. Huh? I don’t ever remember that as part of the Scientific Method? IN the best of lights it sounds like orchestrated obfuscation.
The (dutch) minister is bananas?
http://kleinverzet.blogspot.com/2009/12/minister-is-bananas.html
The minister is Bananas!
http://www.dumpert.nl/mediabase/736801/dc0b4468/dzjekkelin_kreemer.html
Leon Brozyna (23:00:11) :
@Wayne Delbeke (22:39:36)
Speaking of tricks, what is happening to the JAXA sea ice graphing these days? DId they change the algorithm again. Ice area significantly dropped for a couple of days, went sideways before starting to climb again. Is it wind and temperature or is it just algorithm issues again.
It appears to have been wind. The remnants of a twist in the jet stream over the Bering Sea can be seen here:
http://squall.sfsu.edu/gif/jetstream_norhem_00.gif
There was quite a strong kink in the jet stream for a few days. During that time the sea ice in the Bering Sea was significantly compressed back in towards the Bering Strait, which was probably the major source of the “loss” of sea ice; it just reduced the extent, probably no melting or other adjustments took place.
I herad they changed the percentage of ice required for it to count in the extent figures.
Is that true?
The problem isnt the word “trick”, the problem is in the phrase “hide the decline”. Why a scientist has to vanish a decline in the graph of his data?
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic
for comparison
I notice from the email from Wang to Jones on the 30th of August 2007 that the Team is so entranced by the hockey stick that they also talk of a “smocky screen” rather than a smoke screen.
The hockeystick is dead. CRU is dead. The sun is dead. Ocean currents are in the cooling phase, starglitters are such that is should be cooling….and yet the november global temperature was one of the highest november temps ever recorded.
Isn’t it time to admit that the earth is indeed warming up ? And if every possible parameter is in the cooling mood….wouldn’t it not time to think that maybe, maybe mankind has some influence on that warming ? If not, then it is certainly time to act durable with fossile energy. No matter how much there is still in stock, the less we consume the longer we have fun of it.
So as you can see, we really have only one instance where Dr. Jones uses the word “trick” in reference to a procedure on data. There are other uses and variations of the word “trick” in other emails, but only this one instance attributed to Jones where he refers to this data issue.
And notice that case is the only one where trick is inside quotes. He is using quotes to denote the colloquialism of a technique, the unquoted versions are when he means a traditional meaning.
Hi!
I think there must be something wrong with this article. Just after the “the trick refers to a scientific method”-controvercy. I searched through the east anglia e-mails at the end of last month. What I found was this:
The word “trick”, or its plural “tricks” showed up 11 times in 10 e-mails.
So you are off by 20% 😉
PS: The PDO Index has been updated with November SST
Trend:
Sep 0.52
Oct 0.27
Nov -0.40
As Joe D’Aleo, CCM of ICECAP states in Fire and Ice (and ENSO)
http://www.intellicast.com/Community/Content.aspx?ref=rss&a=203
“Given the tendency for El Ninos to be brief and weaker in the cold PDO, we might expect an early demise of this one with a return to La Nina perhaps in 2010/11.”
Or at least “ENSO” neutral. That would not be good for California’s drought, which will return with a vengence.
Wayne Delbeke (22:39:36):
Warm Pacific currents have melted quite a bit of recent ice off Alaska. I wonder if any of that El Nino warm water reaches the Bering Strait. Hudson Bay is freezing over now which is causing a jump in total ice cover.
Steele (23:18:06)
If they’re using proxies to hide the decline in the 20th century then they need to use them to show the increase in the MWP, as the divergence would have happened then. They must have worked out a divergence ration by now. Al Gore says millions of evergreens are dying in the American West, as it warms so taking his hypothesis, trees decline during warming periods – yet the hockey team say that trees grow larger with elevated warming and this signal doesn’t show post 1960 and during the MWP. The consensus is a methodological muddle.
There is also “trickery” to look for. In one email they apply this to an opponent. When accusing others, folks will often accuse the “other” of doing what those folks do themselves. This is just a normal human behaviour. You know someone is doing it, because you are, so to think the “other” is not doing it seems unlikely… In this email, right after “trickery”, we see what they do via what they accuse in others. (vis the GHCN data deletion / omission). We also get a nice “roster” of who is on the inside committee via the cc: list.
Oh, and notice that his definition of “standard practices of peer review” is that one of their team gets to be a review… Cheeky.
At any rate, here an unquoted use of trick is to mean corrupting or data deletions. Well, at least we know what Mann means when he uses trick…
Snow-Book:~/Desktop/FOIA/mail chiefio$ cat 1067194064.txt From: "Michael E. Mann" To: Ray Bradley , "Malcolm Hughes" , Mike MacCracken , Steve Schneider , tom crowley , Tom Wigley , Jonathan Overpeck , asocci@cox.net, Michael Oppenheimer , Keith Briffa , Phil Jones , Tim Osborn , Tim_Profeta@lieberman.senate.gov, Ben Santer , Gabi Hegerl , Ellen Mosley-Thompson , "Lonnie G. Thompson" , Kevin Trenberth Subject: CONFIDENTIAL Fwd: Date: Sun, 26 Oct 2003 13:47:44 -0500 Cc: mann@virginia.edu Dear All, This has been passed along to me by someone whose identity will remain in confidence. Who knows what trickery has been pulled or selective use of data made. Its clear that "Energy and Environment" is being run by the baddies--only a shill for industry would have republished the original Soon and Baliunas paper as submitted to "Climate Research" without even editing it. Now apparently they're at it again... My suggested response is: 1) to dismiss this as stunt, appearing in a so-called "journal" which is already known to have defied standard practices of peer-review. It is clear, for example, that nobody we know has been asked to "review" this so-called paper 2) to point out the claim is nonsense since the same basic result has been obtained by numerous other researchers, using different data, elementary compositing techniques, etc. Who knows what sleight of hand the authors of this thing have pulled. Of course, the usual suspects are going to try to peddle this crap. The important thing is to deny that this has any intellectual credibility whatsoever and, if contacted by any media, to dismiss this for the stunt that it is.. Thanks for your help, mike two people have a forthcoming 'Energy & Environment' paper that's being unveiled tomoro (monday) that -- in the words of one Cato / Marshall/ CEI type -- "will claim that Mann arbitrarily ignored paleo data within his own record and substituted other data for missing values that dramatically affected his results. When his exact analysis is rerun with all the data and with no data substitutions, two very large warming spikes will appear that are greater than the 20th century. Personally, I'd offer that this was known by most people who understand Mann's methodology: it can be quite sensitive to the input data in the early centuries. Anyway, there's going to be a lot of noise on this one, and knowing Mann's very thin skin I am afraid he will react strongly, unless he has learned (as I hope he has) from the past...." ______________________________________________________________ Professor Michael E. Mann Department of Environmental Sciences, Clark Hall University of Virginia Charlottesville, VA 22903 _______________________________________________________________________ e-mail: mann@virginia.edu Phone: (434) 924-7770 FAX: (434) 982-2137 [1]http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml References 1. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtmlWhatever any AGW alarmist might say about possible interpretations of “trick”, there is only one way to interpret “hide”.
And “hide” is just what they should be doing now, preceded by a significant period of “running”.
If that list is a comprehensive set of examples of Dr Jones’ language usage, it seems that he uses the word ‘trick’ primarily to describe a course of action which may be considered underhand, but will address a pressing issue.
Perhaps ‘underhand’ is too strong a word – the actions he describes as ‘tricks’ generally seem to be political manoeveurs, taken in response to what he sees as political manoeveuring on the part of his adversaries. The manoeveurs all have the characteristic requirement for secrecy – what this looks most like is a set of e-mails between politicians and their advisers, trying to counter opponent’s political machinations.
The point that comes out of this exchange is that the scientists are not behaving ‘scientifically’ – they are behaving like political flagbearers for a cause. I suppose that no one who has read C P Snow should be surprised at this, but it does point to one major issue which has not been given much prominence: that of balance.
Generally, sceptics have been disturbed by what we see as bad science – incorrect use of statistics, data modification and the like. In theory, the warmists could address these concerns, and still claim that there was a case to answer, because it is still posible that the world has been generally warming between 1970 and 2000. However, a major plank of their argument is that this warming has occurred, and there is no other explanation apart from CO2 increase. We might accept this statement if we believed that the warmists had dispassionately looked for other explanations, but this political attitude indicates strongly that they are interested in pushing their hobby-horse, and completely uninterested in finding any other explanation which may apply.
The use of the word “trick” is quite common in English language, both here in the UK & with you Colonial chaps & chapesses:- Neat trick, nice trick, clever trick, good trick, handy trick, useful trick, favourite trick, cool trick, etc.
English Pocket Oxford Dictionary, 1925 (yes I am so old fashioned but the language is wonderful), definitions for “trick” are as follows:-
“Strategem, piece of guile, way or knack of doing something, habit of doing something, a personal peculiarity of behaviour, piece of unexpected treatment, practical joke (getting closer), out-of-the-way feat eg juggling or dog begging, trick(s) of the trade, petty prevalent dishonesties (even closer), to know a trick or two, to play one/silly/mean/scurvey, to accomplish one’s purpose (gotcha, hook line & sinker), the winning hand in cards. Also, “trickery”, meaning to ” cheat or beguile, belie (too close?) the expectations of, adorn showily, deceitful conduct (woooh! Now that is too much, surely)”. I didn’t define this word, my highly educated & honourable peers of yesteryear did, has it really changed so much over time?
BTW I enjoyed the post on the Greenland (meaning “bounteous land ideal for farming & animal husbandry & growing crops & grapes to make wine-land”, as it was known when first settled, or “F%*k-it’s-freezing-land” as the literal Viking translation would have it when they left it) ice-cores hockey stick. If I had the IT skills I would love to prepare a series of slides for power point to show these extended graphs, initially with no temp or time scale, but to fade them in gradually to emphasize the reallities. Looks like fur hat, coat, & themal underwear time to me!
BBC & Channel 4 doing their darndest to sweep truth, or at least serious questions, under the carpet. C4 News had a Q & A session with UK Climate Propaganda Minister Ed (I know more than you) Millitant yesterday evening. I fess up I didn’t see it all as the local church Christmas Carol Service rehearsals demanded my attendance. It appeared to comprise people who were greenies in business, pro-eco windmills, & a poor woman whose shop was flooded (absolute conclusive proof of CC although she did have a slight question mark in her statement) in the recent downpour in Cumbria. No sceptics or scientists such as Piers Corbyn/Stephen Wilde/Richard Courtney were present it seemed, but I am happy to be corrected. The “move along nothing to see here” re the emails (still stolen not leaked) weren’t mentioned.
If somebody had said to me 30 years ago, that by 2009, in the UK every aspect of society will be controlled by government intervention, every institution will be controlled, including the media & of course the state run public broadcasting institution the BBC, infested & infected by green eco-stalinists, banning every form of dissent from the political mantra & diktat, I would have laughed in their face & called them mad. I wonder who is laughing now?
Apologies for length snip as desired.
AtB
De Rode Willem
oceans giving off heat mean they are cooling -as oceans heat the atmosphere. There’s a delay between heat loss and temperature change. Typically before prolonged cooling, there’s a series of temperature peaks. Incidentally, i’m not convinced the last 10 years were the warmest on record, if the data has been dowgraded from the past and upgraded in the recent period. In a warming world human factors have less influence (if you mean co2) but in a cooling world co2 has more influence, since its more likely to overlap the absorbtion bandwidths. Thats the nature of the regulator. But even that is giving too much importance to co2, as other water vapour has 3 times the bandwidth and overlaps many radiation frequencies.
so no, the human influence doesn’t come into it. If the “airborne fraction of c02 remains constant” that means that it remains no more than 3% of the total co2 content. It is impossible to claim that 370ppm does nothing, but 18ppm has all the warming influence.
Isn’t it time to admit that the earth is indeed warming up ?
If not, then it is certainly time to act durable with fossile energy. No matter how much there is still in stock, the less we consume the longer we have fun of it.
So much compressed stupidity! (The mis-spelling of fossil being a nice touch!)
Firstly, even on this site most people accept that the world has been gradually warming over the last century. It’s what is causing it that is in dispute. But you don’t want to believe that, so you won’t. But that doesn’t make it untrue. The world is warming. Slowly. Big deal.
Secondly, no-one anywhere is doing anything about consumption of fossil fuels. There are loads of “solutions” about CO2 emissions, but that is hardly the same thing. The argument that Copenhagen is a good thing, even if AGW is false doesn’t last a minute of sustained analysis.
Yes, we should reduce fossil fuel use. Yes, we should reduce pollution. I might even be persuaded to spread some wealth from first to third world. But Copenhagen is a crackpot way of achieving that.
In any case, if you want to green the world then you should argue that on its merits. Not smuggle it in via some scare story.
E.M.Smith (02:05:33)
yes. Surely the scientific method is to look at other explanations and methods, than just dismissing them as “not part of the cause”. Balunias stated that balloons and satellites showed no warming in the atmosphere (which is true). It became untrue when they decided to change the satellite data in line with global warming ideology. They had a difficult time with the dicvergence between satellites and surface records. The fix was to reconcile satellites with *adjusted* surface measurements
addendum: The trick was to reconcile satellite measurements with *adjusted* surface measurements
To me there are three key questions here.
1. Does this TRICK distort the interpretation of data i.e. what would the opinions of expert reviewers be on the claims made using the ‘transformed’ data vs the ‘real’ data?
2. Now we have the capability for global wide monitoring of temperature using satellites, should we not just simply put this proxy research to bed, given the levels of controversy involved and the need to manipulate the raw data to get ‘meaningful’ results? Or is the historical analysis of proxies still key to resolving the debate??
3. If you knock out all the tree ring proxy data from the evidence base, what does this do to the warmist AGW argument? Is it key, useful additional stuff or a minor addendum?
Question three is the one all skeptics must face honestly. If it is a minor addendum, then there is a legitimate argument that skeptics are attacking a tiny point of weakness for their own purposes. IF it is the only point of weakness.
If, on the other hand, this is but one calumny amongst many, including weather site inconsistency, arbitrary weather site data ‘adjustment’, rebalancing weather site datasets in favour of those with UHI fingerprints, computer models designed to predict warming, lack of evidence to confirm amplification of seeohtwo greenhouse effect by other greenhouses gases, lack of factoring in of cloud effects into modelling, long-term denial of solar and oceanic effects on climate until recent admissions etc etc etc, then the argument is an important part, but only a part, in demolishing the false case of the warmers.
It is now in ‘fight to the death stage’ though. Be in no doubt, if the warmists win, the skeptic voices will be crushed. Those folks don’t do democracy. They do royal courts. And it’s not based on scientific excellence that you work your way into the King’s presence……
Land of Oz threatened by giant iceberg.
Got a reply for my complaint lodged against CRU and emails from Defra..finaly.
UEA e-mails
On 3 October 2008 the Prime Minister announced the creation of a new Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). The new department brings together much of Defra’s previous climate change responsibilities with the energy component from what was at the time the Department for Business Enterprise & Regulatory Reform, to focus on solving the challenges of climate change and energy supply. Defra is currently responding to letters on these issues on behalf of DECC.
Thank you for your e-mail dated 24 November to Hilary Benn about the recent UEA e-mails incident. I have been asked to reply.
We do not find credible any suggestions that emails stolen from the University of East Anglia show that scientists set out to deceive the world about temperature rises, and thus that climate change is overstated.
We welcome the University of East Anglia’s Independent Review on this specific incident, which was announced by the University on 3 December 2009 and will report next spring. However, we remain confident in the robustness of CRU temperature analyses, which is closely corroborated by two entirely independent data analyses of the instrumental record. The increase in Earth’s surface temperature is not disputed by any recognised climate experts. Its effects are also visible in declining Arctic sea ice, retreating glaciers, and rising sea levels, among other impacts.
The UEA temperature analyses have been peer reviewed in many scientific papers over the last twenty years. They have also been assessed by the IPCC in its last three reports. This month the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued a statement which supports this in detail.
A firm, broad foundation of scientific evidence indicates that the impacts of climate change will be more severe if we allow warming to continue unchecked. Also, economic analysis shows us that investing in a low-carbon society now will protect us from incurring much greater costs from the impacts of climate change in future.
By keeping warming to 2°C, we have the best opportunity to avoid the most severe impacts of climate change. But doing so requires us to take action now. Failing to take action, in full knowledge of the risks invoked for our future health, well-being and economic success would be wholly irresponsible.
I hope this is helpful.
Yours sincerely,
Julian Steele
Customer Contact Unit
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)
De Rode Willem (01:18:24) :
‘Isn’t it time to admit that the earth is indeed warming up ?’
Let me ask you a question.
Isn’t it time that Griss, NASA, and CRU become totally transparent?