How IPCC scientists interfere with publication of inconvenient scientific results
By David H. Douglass, Professor of Physics, University of Rochester, New York, and John R. Christy, Distinguished Professor, Atmospheric Science, University of Alabama at Huntsville
- In this article, reprinted from The American Thinker, two eminent Professors reveal just one of the many seamy stories that emerge from the Climategate emails. A prejudiced journal editor conspires with senior IPCC scientists to delay and discredit a paper by four distinguished scientists demonstrating that a central part of the IPCC’s scientific argument is erroneous.
The Climategate emails from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England have revealed how the normal conventions of the peer-review process appear to have been compromised by a Team of “global warming” scientists, with the willing cooperation of the editor of the International Journal of Climatology, Glenn McGregor.
The Team spent nearly a year preparing and publishing a paper that attempted to rebut a previously published paper in that journal by Douglass, Christy, Pearson and Singer. Our paper, reviewed and accepted in the traditional manner, had shown that the IPCC models that predicted significant “global warming” in fact largely disagreed with the observational data.
We will let the reader judge whether this team effort, revealed in dozens of emails and taking nearly a year, involves inappropriate behavior including (a) unusual cooperation between authors and editor, (b) misstatement of known facts, (c) character assassination, (d) avoidance of traditional scientific give-and-take, (e) using confidential information, (f) misrepresentation (or misunderstanding) of the scientific question posed by us in our paper, (g) withholding data, and more.
The team is a group of a number of climate scientists who frequently collaborate and publish papers which often supports the hypothesis of human-caused global warming. For present purposes, leading members of the Team include Ben Santer, Phil Jones, Timothy Osborn, and Tom Wigley, with lesser roles for several others.
Introduction
We submitted our paper to the International Journal of Climate on 31 May 2007. The paper was accepted four and a half months later, on 11 October. The page-proofs were accepted on 1 November. The paper was published online on 5 December. However, we had to wait very nearly a year after online publication, until 15 November 2008, for publication of the print version of the paper.
Ben Santer and 17 members of the Team subsequently published a paper intended to refute ours. It was submitted to the International Journal of Climate on 25 March 2008. It was revised on 18 July, accepted two days later, published online on 10 October, and published in print on 15 November, little more than a month after online publication.
This story uses various of the Climategate emails and our own personal knowledge of events and issues. References will be made to items in an appendix that are arranged chronologically. Each of the emails has an index number which comes from a compilation at http://www.eastangliaemails.com/index.php
2. The story
Our record of this story begins when Andrew Revkin, a reporter for the New York Times, sent three Team members an email dated 30 Nov 2007, to which he attached the page-proofs of our paper, which we had not sent to him. His email to the Team is dated just one week before the online publication of our paper. The subject of Revkin’s email,
“Sorry to take your time up, but really do need a scrub of Singer/Christy/etc effort”, implies that there had been prior correspondence between Revkin and the Team.
Carl Mears, a Team member, quickly responded with an email dated 4 December 2007 to fellow Team members Jones, Santer, Thorne, Sherwood, Lanzante, Taylor, Seidel, Free and Wentz Santer replies to all of these:
“I’m forwarding this to you in confidence. We all knew that some journal, somewhere, would eventually publish this stuff. Turns out that it was the International Journal of Climatology.”
Santer knew this because he had reviewed and rejected our paper when it had been previously submitted to another journal. Phil Jones, then director of the Climatic Research Unit at East Anglia, and now stood down pending an investigation of the Climategate affair, responded to Santer:
“It sure does! Have read briefly – the surface arguments are wrong. I know editors have difficulty finding reviewers, but letting this one pass is awful – and the International Journal of Climatology was improving.”
This exchange provides the first reference to the International Journal of Climatology.
The next day, 5 December 2007, the day on which our paper appeared on-line, Santer sent a email to Peter Thorne with copies to Carl Mears, Leopold Haimberger, Karl Taylor, Tom Wigley, Phil Jones, Steve Sherwood, John Lanzante, Dian Seidel, Melissa Free, Frank Wentz, and Steve Klein. Santer says:
“Peter, I think you’ve done a nice job in capturing some of my concerns about the Douglass et al. paper… I don’t think it’s a good strategy to submit a response to the Douglass et al. paper to the International Journal of Climatology. As Phil [Jones] pointed out, the Journal has a large backlog, so it might take some time to get a response published. Furthermore, Douglass et al. probably would be given the final word.”
The most critical point throughout these emails is the goal of preventing us from providing what is considered normal in the peer-reviewed literature: an opportunity to respond to their critique, or as they put it, “be given the final word.” One wonders if there is ever a “final word” in science, as the authors here seem to imply.
The next day, 6 December 2007, Melissa Free responded with a cautious note, evidently because she had presented a paper with Lanzante and Seidel at the American Meteorological Society’s 18th conference on Climate Variability and Change, acknowledging the existence of the discrepancy between observations and models – the basic conclusion of our paper:
“What about the implications of a real model-observation difference for upper-air trends? Is this really so dire?”
Santer responded on 6 December 2007 with his key reason for attacking our paper:
“What is dire is Douglass et al.’s wilful neglect of any observational datasets that do not support their arguments.”
This “wilful neglect” of “observational datasets” refers to the absence of two balloon datasets RAOBCORE v1.3 and v1.4. We had explained in addendum to our paper that these datasets were faulty.
A further email from Jones, dated 6 Dec 2007, discusses options for beating us into print. Wigley, a former head of the Climatic Research Unit, enters the story on 10 Dec 2007 to accuse us of “fraud”, adding that under “normal circumstances” this would “cause him [Professor David Douglass] to lose his job”.
We remind the reader that our paper went through traditional, anonymous peer-review with several revisions to satisfy the reviewers and without communicating outside proper channels with the editor and reviewers.
Tim Osborn, a colleague of Jones at the Climatic Research Unit and a member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Climate, then inserted himself into the process, declaring a bias on the issue. He said that Professor Douglass’ previous papers “appear to have serious problems”.
Santer responded on 12 December 2007 with gratitude for the “heads-up”, again making the claim that our paper had ignored certain balloon datasets, when in fact our paper had not used these datasets because they were known to be faulty.
The same day, an unsigned report appeared on the Team’s propaganda website, RealClimate.org, attacking us especially about not using the RAOBCORE 1.4 balloon dataset.
This prompted us to submit a one-page Addendum to the International Journal of Climatology on 3 January 2008 to explain two issues: first, the reason for not using RAOBCORE 1.4 and secondly, the experimental design to show why using the full spread of model results to compare with observations (as Santer i. would do) would lead to wrong conclusions about the relationship between trends in the upper air temperature vs. the surface. A copy of the addendum may be found at http://www.pas.rochester.edu/~douglass/.)
Osborn wrote to Santer and Jones on 10 January 2008 to discuss the “downside” of the normal comment-reply process in which we should be given an “opportunity to have a response.” He explained that he has contacted the editor of the International Journal of Climatology, Glenn McGregor, to “see what he can do”. According to Osborn, McGregor “promises to do everything he can to achieve a quick turn-around.” He also wrote:
“… (and please treat this in confidence, which is why I emailed to you and Phil only) that he [McGregor] may be able to hold back the hardcopy (i.e. the print/paper version) appearance of Douglass et al., possibly so that any accepted Santer et al. comment could appear alongside it. He [McGregor] also intends to “correct the scientific record” and to identify “in advance reviewers who are both suitable and available”, perhaps including “someone on the email list you’ve been using”. Given the bias of Osborn and McGregor as expressed in the emails, one could wonder what it means to be a “suitable” reviewer of the Santer paper.
Santer responded with his conditions, highlighting his intent to have the “last word”:
“1. Our paper should be regarded as an independent contribution, not as a comment on Douglass et al. … 2. If the International Journal of Climatology agrees to 1, then Douglass et al. should have the opportunity to respond to our contribution, and we should be given the chance to reply. Any response and reply should be published side-by-side, in the same issue of the Journal. I’d be grateful if you and Phil could provide me with some guidance on 1 and 2, and on whether you think we should submit to the Journal. Feel free to forward my email to Glenn McGregor.”
This Osborn email and the response by Santer essentially lay out the publication strategy apparently agreed to by Santer, Jones, Osborn and editor McGregor. Santer accepts Osborn as a conduit and defines the conditions (having the “last word”). This is exactly what he seeks to deny to us, even though it was we who had published the original paper in this sequence in the Journal, and should, under customary academic procedures, have been entitled to have the last word alongside any rebuttal of our paper that the Journal published.
We were never informed of this process, even though it specifically addressed our paper, nor were we contacted for an explanation on any point raised in these negotiations. Santer’s allegations regarding our paper and his conditions for publication of his response to it were simply accepted by the Journal’s editor. If our results had indeed been so obviously and demonstrably in error, why would anyone have feared a response by us?
The same day, 10 January 2008, Jones told the Team (Wigley, K. Taylor, Lanzante, Mears, Bader, Zwiers, Wentz, Haimberger, Free, MacCracken, Jones, Sherwood, Klein, Solomon, Thorne, Osborn, Schmidt, and Hack) a “secret” he had learned from Osborn: that one of the recipients on the Santer email list was one of the original reviewers of our paper – a reviewer who had not rejected it:
“The problem! The person who said they would leave it to the editor’s discretion is on your email list! I don’t know who it is – Tim does – maybe they have told you? I don’t want to put pressure on Tim. He doesn’t know I’m sending this. It isn’t me by the way – nor Tim! Tim said it was someone who hasn’t contributed to the discussion – which does narrow the possibilities down!”
Does Santer start wondering who the original reviewer is? Does Osborn reveal this part of McGregor’s secret?
Then, on the matter of paying for expensive color plots, Jones adds, “I’m sure I can lean on Glenn [McGregor] to evidently deal with the costs.” Obviously, no such assistance had been offered to us when we had published our original paper.
The final approval of the strategy (Santer’s conditions) to deny us an opportunity to respond in the normal way is acknowledged by Osborn to Santer and Jones on 11 January 2008. Osborn writes that McGregor, as editor is “prepared to treat it as a new submission rather than a comment on Douglass et al.” and “my [McGregor’s] offer of a quick turnaround time etc. still stands.” Osborn also reminds Santer and Jones of the potential impropriety of this situation:
“… the only thing I didn’t want to make more generally known was the suggestion that print publication of Douglass et al. might be delayed… all other aspects of this discussion are unrestricted.”
Santer now informed the Team that the strategy had been agreed to. We were never notified of these machinations, and it is clear that Santer’s story of the situation was never investigated independently. In this long email, the issue of radiosonde errors is discussed, together with the fact that one dataset, RAOBCORE v1.4, is missing from our paper.
To explain briefly, Sakamoto and Christy (accepted in 2008 and published in 2009) looked closely at the ERA-40 Reanlayses on which RAOBCORE v1.3 and v1.4 were based, and demonstrated that a spurious warming shift occurred in 1991 (a problem with a satellite channel: HIRS 11) which was then assimilated into RAOBCORE, producing spurious positive trends in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere.
Sakamoto and Christy had been working on this since 2006 when they had first met, and so were aware of the problems at that time. Later, on 27 May 2008, Sherwood – a member of the Team – comments on this evidence during the deliberations on Santer’s publication, so the Team was aware of the problem too. Even though McGregor had sent Santer our Addendum explaining the RAOBCORE problems as early as 10 April 2008, their published paper contains the statement:
“Although DCPS07 had access to all three RAOBCORE versions, they presented results from v1.2 only.”
Another interesting comment here is that Santer does “not” want to “show the most recent radiosonde [balloon] results” from the Hadley Center and Sherwood’s IUK. In short, he was withholding data that did not support his view, probably because these two datasets, extended out in time, provide even stronger evidence in favor of our conclusion. The final version of Santer’s paper cuts off these datasets in 1999.
Professor Douglass became concerned that McGregor had not responded after receiving the Addendum sent on 3 January 2008. The Professor wrote on 1 April 2008 to ask about the status of the Addendum. On 10 April 2008 McGregor responded that he had had “great difficulty locating your Addendum”, and Douglass responded with the International Journal of Climatology’s file number acknowledging receipt of the Addendum on 3 January, and attached the Addendum again. That very day, McGregor sent the Addendum to Santer to “learn your views.” Santer was afforded the opportunity to comment on our Addendum, but we never heard about it from McGregor again.
On 24 April 2008 McGregor informed Santer that he had received one set of comments and, though he “… would normally wait for all comments to come in before providing them to you, I thought in this case I would give you a head start in your preparation of revisions”.
That day, Santer informed the Team of the situation. Ws there ever any possibility that Santer’s paper could have been rejected, given the many favors already extended to this submission? McGregor now knew, because he had the Addendum, what the main point of our response to Santer et al. might be, yet evidently dropped the Addendum from consideration. At this point, we were unaware of any response by Santer to our Addendum, as we were dealing with the RealClimate.org blog on this matter.
Santer was worried about the lack of “urgency” in receiving the remaining reviews and, on 5 May 2008, complained to McGregor. He reminded McGregor that Osborn had agreed to the strategy that the “process would be handled as expeditiously as possible”. McGregor replied that he hoped that the further comments would come within “2 weeks”. The following day, Osborn wrote to McGregor that Santer’s 90-page article was much more than anticipated, implying that Santer was being rather demanding considering how much had been done to aid him. One wonders why it should take 10 months and 90 pages to show that any paper contained a “serious flaw”, and why Santer et al. needed to be protected from a response by us.
A paper by Thorne now appeared in Nature Geosciences which referenced the as-yet-unpublished paper by Santer et al. (including Thorne). On 26 May 2008, Professor Douglass wrote to Thorne asking for a copy and was told the following day that Thorne could not supply the paper because Santer was the lead author author.
Professor Douglass replied that day, repeating his request for a copy of the paper and reminding Thorne of Nature’s publication-ethics policy on the availability of data and materials:
“An inherent principle of publication is that others should be able to replicate and build upon the authors’ published claims. Therefore, a condition of publication in a Nature journal is that authors are required to make materials, data and associated protocols available …”
At the same time Professor Douglass asked Santer for a copy of the paper. Santer responded by saying, “I see no conceivable reason why I should now send you an advance copy of my International Journal of Climatology paper.” From the emails, we now know that the Santer et al. manucsript had not been accepted at this point, even though it had been cited in a Nature Geosciences article. What is very curious is that in the email Santer claims Professor Douglass “… did not have the professional courtesy to provide me with any advance information about your 2007 International Journal of Climate paper …”.
In fact, Santer had been a reviewer of this paper when it had been submitted earlier, so he had in possession of the material (only slightly changed) for at least a year. Additionally, Santer received a copy of the page-proofs of our paper about a week before it even appeared online.
In further email exchanges the following day, 28 May 2008, Santer and his co-authors discussed the uncomfortable situation of having a citation in Nature Geosciences and being unable to provide the paper to the public before “a final decision on the paper has been reached”. Santer stated they should “resubmit our revised manuscript to the Journal as soon as possible”, implying that Professor Douglass’ point about the ethics policies of Nature, which required cited literature to be made available, might put Santer et al. in jeopardy.
On 10 July 2008, Santer wrote to Jones that the two subsequent reviews were in but reviewer 2 was “somewhat crankier”. Santer indicated that McGregor has told him that he will not resend the coming revised manuscript to the “crankier” reviewer. This was another apparent effort by McGregor to accommodate Santer.
Conclusion
On 21 July 2008, Santer heard that his paper had been formally accepted and expressed his sincere gratitude to Osborn for “all your help with the tricky job of brokering the submission of the paper to the International Journal of Climatology”. Osborn responds, “I’m not sure that I did all that much.”
On 10 October 2008, Santer et al’s paper was published on-line. Thirty-six days later Santer et al. appeared in print immediately following our own paper, even though we had waited more than 11 months for our paper to appear in print. The strategy of delaying our paper and not allowing us to have a simultaneous response to Santer et al. published had been achieved.
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The malfeance of this group of “scientists” know no bounds. It really is overdue for University heads to take some action on this.
Carlo (15:29:25) :
The e-mails on http://www.eastangliaemails.com are not reliable, some txt in e-mails are missing.
How do you know?
Slightly off topic, but I wanted to point out a very interesting parallel between the ‘team’ and the greatest scientific scandal in physics which occurred in the last decade.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Hendrik_Sch%C3%B6n
From wiki:
“Department of Physics spokesman Wolfgang Dieterich called the affair the “biggest fraud in physics in the last 50 years” and said that the “credibility of science had been brought into disrepute”.[12] Schön appealed the ruling, but on October 28, 2009 it was upheld by the University.[13][14]”
What did he do?
Created fraudulent experiments that couldn’t be replicated. Notice the similarities:
“In May 2002 Bell Labs set up a committee to investigate with Professor Malcolm Beasley of Stanford University as chair.[4] The committee obtained information from all of Schön’s coauthors, and interviewed the three principal ones (Zhenan Bao, Bertram Batlogg and Christian Kloc). It examined electronic drafts of the disputed papers which included processed numeric data. The committee requested copies of the raw data but found that Schön had kept no laboratory notebooks. His raw-data files had been erased from his computer. According to Schön the files were erased because his computer had limited hard drive space. In addition, all of his experimental samples had been discarded, or damaged beyond repair.[2][4]”
Sound familiar?
Just thought it was an interesting parallel – and just how prominent it is in the annals of scientific malfeasance now that there’s been some time to digest it.
Re: Dev (17:07:35) :
I’ve just had a look and it appears that some of the emails contain characters beyond the normal ASCII character set (for example the £ sign, accented characters etc) and the PHP they are using to parse and format the emails for display stops as soon as it hits one of these characters.
In your example the next part of the email should be “£5070 and” but the £ sign causes it stop parsing.
There is nothing nefarious about it, just a simple coding bug.
Mapou (15:13:44)
its a case of dishonesty and deceit, i’m afraid and to this end they do conspire to keep up the deceit. The good news is, this is not scientifically valid, and isn’t a sensible peer review process. It is a paranoid process that doesn’t help to understand the various claims of whether we’re cooling or warming. Looking at raw data, then there was never that much a warming trend, or the semblence of one in real terms, so its hardly surprising that the team are playing politics than science over this matter.
if *the team* contrive to publish papers that refute other papers and have them published in advance of the original, – i’m sorry, but this is the attitude of the cunning schoolroom sneak than that of disinterested peer review. The fact that the team are selective to a far greater degree with data sets and adjustments itself gives greater ground for self disqualification by their own terms.
PS Someone give Willis Eschenbach the joint directorship of CRU and GISS
Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Jackson, Clinton, Chu, Holdren et al are still in charge. These people are the team leaders. No one has breached their shell of secrecy , so the agenda continues.
It does all seem so disgraceful.
I doubt any of them will ever really answer any questions about this issue.
Many kudos to the real scientists !!!!
@ur momisugly TerryS (16:41:26) :
[quote] “The information released in the emails is simply the tip of the iceberg, we might never find out what remains hidden beneath.” [/quote]
If we believe Al Gore, all the icebergs will have melted in 5 years so we should find out what is hidden soon enough.
TerryS (17:45:11)
This seems to be so.
In the Jones-Christy correspondence here,
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=544&filename=1120593115.txt
here however is the email in full,
http://www.di2.nu/foia/1120593115.txt
where Jones states “I would like to see the climate change happen, so the science could be proved right, regardless of the consequences.
Talking of climate scientists behaving badly, here’s another one:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/employment/news/article.cfm?c_id=11&objectid=10616915
The decision upheld is, of course, not concerned with the truth of what Salinger said. But it does uphold the decision to sack him based on his advocacy for AGW outside the bounds that even NIWA think reasonable.
I also note that he was on the gravy train with a second high profile job, which I did not know before.
We can always count on Joel Shore…to be full of……TEAM Spirit!
@richard Saumarez
” sorry to say that this isn’t limited to Climate science. I’ve been on the receiving end of this sort of behaviour in medical research. It’s incredibly unpleasant but generally if people are peddling non-science, they get found out in the end.”
That is not a fair comparison. If you expose a hokum cure in medical research you save a few lives. If you expose an ‘adjustment’ in Climate Science you endanger a $300bn industry. Who is going to fight longest and dirtiest to keep you from revealing something…?
I once was a police officer in the state of Florida USA. this has been 30 years ago but I remember that during the extensive schooling we had to attend there were 2 definitions we had to learn and relearn often, understand they didn’t change we were just often reminded of them. I can’t quote them verbatim but will attempt to give a good equivalent.
Theft- 1 (The removal of property belonging to another.)
2 ( The intentional denial of use of ones property by another.)
The question here is 1. is data property and who owns it. (publicly funded data and the publicly funded collection of said data belongs to the public that paid for it. (This is the reason for the Freedom Of Information Acts.)
Fraud- The deliberate manipulation of data, statistics, costs, or consequences for monetary gain, personal gain, or to cause harm financially or physically to another either individual or collectively.
The question is have these activitys been deliberate and have they been for personal or financial gain or to cause harm. the Question of manipulation of data and consequences is apparent. The manipulation of statistics appears to be no longer in question. The costs have yet to be determined. The second question is has harm been done?
In my non scientific trained brain my humble opinion is that it is time for the equivalent of the States Attorney in every jurisdiction to become involved in this. It is my belief that the definition for the accusation of theft has been met several times over. It is also my humble opinion that the definition of fraud has also been met several times over. No longer being current in the law I can only encourage a knowledgeable attorney to get involved.
I have never been involved in a case to prove slander but it is also possible that there is a good case for slander by reason of character assassination and misrepresentation of intent.
These people have in my humble opinion committed criminal acts against humanity above criminal acts against their own countries. I am thoroughly disgusted with their activities.
Bill Derryberry
each thread makes me feel angrier anthony, so hope u will indulge me a little here.
science has been so damaged by climategate, it won’t be easy to remedy the situation. once AGW segued into the generic ‘climate change’ seemingly overnight, with all MSM on board, the fix was in. after all, it’s not easy to bring lawsuits arguing against something so obvious and real as ‘climate change’, tho at this stage, lawsuits is the only way to go. to hear media, including BBC presenters, say ‘climate change’ with no qualification, is more than i can bear. no resignations from the media? amazing. revkin’s ‘unrelated’ departure from NYT is a minor consolation prize.
25 Nov: WSJ: US Lawmakers Seek To Unseal Records In Climate Fraud Case
Rep. Walden is also fearful that many of the most exuberant, enthusiastic advocates of cap-and-trade are some of the same major institutional investors that were involved in the housing and commodity markets that failed in the past year.
For example, in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI, a cap-and- trade system in the northeastern states, among those who wanted to buy credits were a raft of investors that aren’t major emitters, including trading units of Barclay’s Plc (BCS), Goldman Sachs (GS), JP Morgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Merrill Lynch, now a unit of Bank of America (BAC), and Morgan Stanley (MS).
Legislators also point to alleged fraud in international emissions-trading markets, where billions of dollars worth of reduction projects have been recognized to be illegitimate
http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/stock-market-news-story.aspx?storyid=200911251628dowjonesdjonline000568&title=us-lawmakers-seek-to-unseal-records-in-climate-fraud-case
7 Dec: Spiegel: Climate Mafia
http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,665594,00.html
16 Nov: Environmental Leader: Mafia tied to wind fraud in Italy
The anti-fraud team also is investigating IVPC’s sales of wind farms to foreign companies, and already has sent requests for documentation to five companies located in the Netherlands and Spain, as well as IVPC’s Italian affiliates in Ireland and the UK, according to the article.
Anti-mafia prosecutors in Sicily also have launched a parallel investigation, reports the Financial Times.
Fraud appears to be an emerging problem in the nascent clean energy sector. Most recently, two clean energy auditors – SGS UK and DNV – were accused of not properly auditing projects in carbon trading markets.
Meanwhile, the UK is dealing with carbon trading credit scams that could cost millions of dollars. In Australia, to prevent bogus carbon offset schemes, federal police agents can now enter company premises and request paperwork to monitor their emissions.
http://www.windaction.org/news/24127
it’s also a pity partisan politics are muddying the debate because the proponents of AGW at copenhagen were as much from the right as from the left, as if there is an iota of difference between them.
meanwhile, young rightwingers freaked out over the offer of an initial $10 billion per year to mitigate the effects of ‘climate change’ for 1.6 billion poor people (wow, $6 per person per year when aussies and others have been warned it will cost each of us in excess of $1,000 per year to pay for this scam).
not that the poor would ever receive their pittance:
25 Nov: BBC: Climate change help for the poor ‘has not materialised’
Large sums promised to developing countries to help them tackle climate change cannot be accounted for, a BBC investigation has found.
Rich countries pledged $410m (£247m) a year in a 2001 declaration – but it is now unclear whether the money was paid.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has accused industrialised countries of failing to keep their promise…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8376009.stm
7 Dec: BBC: ‘30% of carbon offsets’ spent on reducing emissions
Less than 30 pence in every pound spent on some carbon offset schemes goes directly to projects designed to reduce emissions, according to a new report.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8399740.stm
and the leftwing at hopenhagen chants: “we stand with africa”. poor deluded lefties.
meanwhile, in australia, the greens are proclaiming they are ready to help the govt get their emissions trading scheme thru, provided the govt agrees to cut emissions by 25 to 40 percent instead of the govt’s proposed 15 percent. (penny wrong just said no way, greens). ousted opposition leader, malcolm turnbull, who the prime minister calls ‘the member for goldman sachs, continues to demand an ETS and the new opposition leader, tony abbott, would never utter the word ‘climategate’, even if becoming the next PM depended on it!
given the money to be made if the big bankers get their ‘green bubble’ of carbon trading off the ground, we either get used to this post-science era, or we keep fighting. hopefully WUWT is in it for the long haul.
July 2009: Rolling Stone: Matt Taibbi: The Great American Bubble Machine
BUBBLE #6 Global Warming
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/29127316/the_great_american_bubble_machine/1
“reply:
From your past correspondence on the subject of peer review, publicly available here:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/OMB/inforeg/2003iq/33.pdf”
Joel Shore’s sense of urgency about the integrity of the peer review process is noted, particularly the point of one group of stakeholders against another, and the possible conflict of interests thereof.
If the divergence between models and data on the surface – upper air relation stands, then the models need adjusting than the data. There is a dubious adjustment made for so called atmospheric drift of satellites. If satellites drift, they lose velocity, and in losing velocity move closer to the surface where they record higher temperatures than they should. These are udjusted upwards when in fact they should be adjusted downwards. It seems Schmidt has no understanding of satellite physics.
Peter (18:04:40) :
Use the word blockquote instead of quote, and use angle brackets (gt., lt.) instead of square brackets, and your quotes will work.
Mark
PaulH (17:26:17) :
You should always have found it difficult to believe anything coming from the UN. Their sole purpose is to implement a single world government based on a socialist model. I recommend http://www.unisevil.com for more light reading on the subject.
First, believe in the concept of individual rights… then everything else makes sense.
Mark
A recent post on DeepClimate about the Wegman Report got me thinking.
DeepClimate discovered that some parts, for example the explanation of the importance and use of tree ring proxies, was “lifted” from another source. That’s uncool, tacky. Unethical, but, also, not particularly germane to the report’s thrust, does not negate the report’s conclusions, in particular, that the climate science peer-review process is, at least, inbred and that climate scientists need more cross-disciplinary mathematical expertise in their work. (I also believe that Mann made some apology/correction to his “hockey stick” as a result of the Wegman Report, but I understand nothing about this.)
I would be interested in reading two overviews of the chronology of climate science, dating back, say, to the 1970’s, done by both skeptics and believers in AGW. If science is to build on prior science, should not all interested individuals have access to everything upon which peer-reviewed and published papers are based, including the selected data and models?
I envision only a couple of pages, with head-to-head comments by the “other” side appended to each – but written for the intelligent lay community. Allowed comments being like “direct hits” instead of diversionary and distracting sideways slings.
In the 1970’s, I believe, persons attempting to understand the world’s oceans, and others studying the atmosphere were called oceanographers and meteorologists and atmospheric scientists. Mostly, scientists focused on a narrow swath, like the biology of the ocean, or a study of its currents. Air-sea interactions were very complex, nuanced mysteries, I thought.
When was “climate science” invented as a discipline, separate from previous earth sciences? What are the course requirements, what universities confer degrees in “climate science,” instead of, or alongside, traditional earth sciences? How much math, statistics, and physics are required for a “climate science” degree?
Below is a succinct explanation of the difference between science and engineering and why we should open our confusing “settled science” about climate to qualified engineers:
http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/12/21/the_perverse_economics_of_climate_modeling_97559.html
Who were the first persons to attempt to do long-range, climate predictions? When? What were the predictions? In the 1970’s some folk were predicting a new Ice Age. The source most often referenced is a Newsweek article, which is derided by the AGW community as not authoritative, or peer-reviewed. I find it hard to believe that, one week, Newsweek went over the top and reported something completely without any scientific basis whatsoever. So, what was the genesis of that article? Who did the research and what became of them and their work? When did the consensus view shift from global ice to problematic warming?
When did the IPCC issue its first report and how have its predictions borne out over time? How does the IPCC build upon its earlier predictions with each new report? What is the IPCC overall predictive track record?
I am confused, and there appears to be controversy whether the last decade was the warmest in history (excluding 1934, possibly…?), is getting somewhat warmer, or is cooling. I’ve seen a U-Tube video of a ten year old and his father doing an analysis of US temperature data outside of urban centers which is a flat line, and read about cherry-picked data and temperature sensors mounted atop buildings beside air conditioning units. Why is the temperature record — from just the past ten years! — so controversial, more complicated than a junior high school science project, binary list of do’s and don’ts? Why isn’t satellite data incorporated more into contemporary analyses of global temperatures?
In the past months I have read DeepClimate, ClimateProgress and RealClimate on the AGW side of the aisle.
ClimateProgress reports today that a new, independent study by the British Met Office in conjunction with the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting has – so quickly? – determined that prior HadleyCRU global warming predictions have been more conservative than the data and analysis now indicates and includes a terrifying, new hockey stick graph of warming from 1860 to the uptick present. The problem, of course, is that I have no confidence in the independence of this analysis and wouldn’t know if the graph were upside-down. (I am, however, impressed with the rapidity of this analysis and am left wondering why, if so easy and fast, this data cannot be analyzed by independent statistical experts and engineers.
(There are often dismissive references from within the climate science community about the importance of trusting only peer-reviewed articles written by those with the appropriate academic degrees, the only ones entitled to have opinions on matters pertaining to climate. There is a modest, thin, little-known book by the late, great Jane Jacobs, an intellectual gadfly of great proportion, titled Dark Age Ahead – a subject not ungermane to matters at hand. There are three chapters of particular note: Credentialing Versus Educating, Science Abandoned, and Self-Policing Subverted. The entire book is an easy yet compelling read. Look it up. Read it.)
I also read WattsUpWithThat, The Air Vent, and, of course, ClimateAudit. Frankly, I find them more closely aligned with facts, with science and with numbers. Somehow, I feel that if Steve McIntyre woke up one morning with a realization that Michael Mann’s hockey stick was accurate – and McIntyre could prove it – he would. And Watts and JeffId would applaud. I like that.
I am sending this request to all six mentioned blogs – somewhere! I hope it’s not snipped, can be addressed in a constructive way.
PS: I cannot find the “bulletin board” upon which to post on ClimateAudit and do not wish to interrupt a technical thread. Hope McI sees this, if appropriate.
Minor Nit:
Thorne could not supply the paper because Santer was the lead author author.
Unless cheering at the theatre, the redoubled “author” is most likely not intended 😉
Per the basic article:
They let no angle go un-worked, do they? even down to the manipulation of subtleties of timing and what’s a response or a “new” submission.
I think the “peer review” process needs a complete revamp. I’d start with canning the “single blind” review process. Make it absolutely public who is doing the review. Any bias in selection of reviewers will be visible. “Stacking the deck” that much harder.
I’d even go so far as to say it ought to be a “blog” process. “Journal of Foo” can have accounts for anyone with a Ph.D in “foo”. The base article is put up as a ‘private’ article only visible to those with accounts. They make comments with names visible to all others with accounts (i.e. all Ph.Ds in the field). When ‘issues’ settle, a copy of the (revised) article is put up in the ‘public’ area. Need to work out some process that prevents a ‘dog pile’ on an article from preventing publication (i.e. fixed time to comment or ‘nobody can veto but the author’ – I’d make it Editor, but the editor seems complicit in this case…) but it isn’t that hard to come up with something that would work.
At any rate, the sheer bias and manipulation shown by The Team with the collusion of the Editor is very troubling.
Joel Shore (15:47:41) :
Of course, missing from this whole discussion is any objective assessment of whether the Douglass et al. paper suffered from such a blatant error that it should have never made it through the peer-review process in the first place. Who is to blame the editors for trying to redeem their journal from the embarrassment of publishing such an erroneous piece of work?
————
Hey Joel, why don’t you spend some time helping the Nature editors redeem their journal from the embarrassment of Steig et al. The [snipping] front cover could be a serious problem.
Welcome back by the way. If I might steal from a well known quote, it’s been miserable without you here Joel, almost as miserable as having you here.
How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done!
– Shakespeare, King John: Act IV, Scene II
It seems that every man has a price. I think The Team set theirs too low, considering the apparent damage to their names and careers. A shame for them to sink to folly, dragging all around them down in turn. Swinehood hath no remedy (Sidney Lanier).
philincalifornia (18:50:50),
By my count, during his absence six posters have commented on Joel Shore’s abrupt disappearance when the East Anglia emails were leaked. Now he’s back, spreading chaff to distract from the fraud, collusion and incompetence exposed by the emails and code. IMHO, they’re all birds of a feather.
@richard Saumarez (17:05:20) :
” It’s incredibly unpleasant but generally if people are peddling non-science, they get found out in the end.”
I couldn’t agree more. But sometimes it takes a long time and in the meantime a lot of harm is done.
Reading the above letter slowly, this is OUTRAGEOUS, UNSCIENTIFIC behavior by the ‘The Team’ warmists!
dilbert, best comic ever