Guest Post by Steven Mosher
All processes are subject to hacking, both from external and internal entities. The IPCC process is no exception, neither is the process of writing for science journals exempt. As recent reports show Pachauri hacked the IPCC processes to make them work against themselves and bend the system to his financial ends. An inside hacker, like Pachauri, can be especially dangerous since he plays a role in structuring the very system that they hack. Not only do they exploit a system they were meant to protect, but they also act in ways to prevent detection of their hacks.
What the recent disclosures about Pachauri show is that the IPCC process is now totally compromised, compromised from the inside. Like a system exploited by a destructive hack, that system may be beyond repair. It’s time to reformat the hard drive and start from scratch, as climate scientist Hulme, spotted 101 times in the Climategate files and closely tied to Pachauri, suggested–perhaps in a moment of clarity after the discovery of the emails:
Just how was the CRU system hacked? And can such hacks be prevented or are they a very part of the nature of authoritarian systems? As discussed in our book “Climategate: The Crutape Letters , now available on Kindle and in Ebook format, the “hacks” were focused on the publication process.
The IPCC reports were intended to be summaries of the science, both what we know and what we don’t know. These summaries were written for policy makers who would use the science and its findings to take action: action to prevent climate change, mitigate it, adapt to it, and to fund new studies where knowledge was uncertain. And action is where the money is. Every hack of the system cashes out into some form of compensation to the hackers: more money for their organizations or more prestige for themselves.
As the mails show the hacking of the CRU process and the scientific process itself was exposed primarily because of the “pressure” put on the hackers by the FIOA process. And as the mails also show, the hackers moved to thwart the FOIA process by corrupting FOIA officers. In fact, the most egregious hack of the system, Jones’s request that people delete mails, came as the direct result of trying to cover up a hack of the process, the hack surrounding the ‘Jesus Paper.’
During the course of writing the account of Climategate, we noticed that Pachauri, was named directly in the files 11 times and he’s mentioned by title in others. Before canvassing those mails it’s key to understand how the hackers worked to subvert the IPCC process and the scientific publishing process. And finally, it’s important to understand that they are planning counter measures that will allow them to continue hacking the system with the upcoming fifth assessment report due in 2013. As Jones indicates in late 2009 ,Pachauri and Thomas [Stocker] an IPCC Co Chair took up the issue of FOIA with the full IPCC. One can’t imagine that they argued for full disclosure or full compliance with disclosure laws. As detailed in this mail Jones’ alerts Stocker, who works at Bern in Switzerland, to measures Holland suggests for the next IPCC report. Jones alerts Stocker to specific comments on Climate Audit, arming him for the next battle.
Tricks of the Trade.
The high level hacks of the IPCC system include the following: changing chronologies, altering the appearance of graphics to tell a different story making up science out of whole cloth , and citing non peered reviewed literature when they could not keep contrarian papers out of the IPCC documents.
The IPCC reports are supposed to be objective summaries of the state of the science and are supposed to reference only works that are published in the peer reviewed science that met specific time deadlines. The deadlines are critical to have a fair and open process, ensuring that papers referenced have, in fact, been published and reviewed by others. Jones, however, finds such procedures to ensure fairness an impediment to his determining what is important.
Hacking the deadlines to get the ‘Jesus paper’ into Chapter 6 of the 4th assessment report of the IPCC was easiest hack to uncover. As the hackers left a paper trail of their activities that exists outside of the climategate mails. The mails, merely confirm what Steve McIntyre had already figured out. The mails of course add some background that strengthens the case, including the hacker’s knowledge that McIntyre was on to their game as well as Jones suggestion to cover up the hack by changing the “received date” on the paper.
By hacking the deadlines of the process, and shoe horning in a paper that would not be fully reviewed and published for over a year, a paper that contains references to another paper published after the fact, the hackers could ensure that lead author Briffa had the ammunition he needed to write the chapter the way Overpeck, his overlord, wanted it written: with a punch line more compelling than the ‘Hockey Stick’, that iconic figure of the global warming religion which “shows” that the current warming is “unprecedented in human history.” This hack is akin to check kiting or akin to planting older fossils with younger fossils as occurred in the Piltdown Man hoax.
To further the promotion of the ‘Hockey Stick’ message the Chapter 6 team also manipulated graphics, “hiding the decline,” even when one reviewer explicitly demanded that they show the graphic as it appeared in the original science. And finally, after keeping one skeptical paper out of the first two drafts of the report, as they had threatened to, the scientists finally resorted to making up facts on the fly.
Those are the user level hacks, but they go deeper. At the IPCC level the hacking is open to scrutiny, and as we see, the journalists following the references in the IPCC document are now finding these user level exploits. The deeper hacks, like a rootkit hack, involve the operating system of science, the science journals themselves. Manipulation of the science at the IPCC level is easy to document, but corrupting the journal process, the process that is supposed to feed the IPCC process with “trusted” information, is tougher to document.
Without the mails which detail how these hacks work, one could imagine that the IPCC could be made “hack proof” merely by adopting more controls and a more open process. The mails, however, indicate that the science publishing process has also been hacked. Editors have been compromised, and the system of peer review has been corrupted. Very simply, one can make the IPCC process as open and transparent as one likes, but as long as it is fed by a corrupt journal process, you will still get garbage science out of the IPCC process. And further, you could reform the journals all you like and the process can still be corrupted by the individual influential researcher who hides his data and his code.
Eleven Mails
The 11 mails mentioning Pachauri by name, only give hints at how the system was worked to his advantage. Reading them now in hindsight is instructive. The first from Rob Stewart to Pachauri in 1998, before Pachuari’s tenure begins, details the process of communicating about IPCC matters. As it notes, all communication should happen within the structures set up so that a traceable chain of evidence can be created. As the Climategate files show, this policy was violated, violated precisely so that the 4th assessment could be shaped in a way not reflective of the underlying science.
In the second mail Pachauri invites Hulme to a conference, initiating a relationship with Hulme that will culminate in Pachauri and Hulme working together to on UEA’s effort to win a government bid on the creation of a climate change center in England, as detailed in the third mail in the stack. That effort results in the founding of the Tyndall Centre, a center named no less than 11 times in the mails.
The interests of Hulme and Pachauri are clear. Use the science arm at CRU to drive conclusions in the IPCC that will drive funding into Tyndall and drive money into TERI, Pachauri’s organization, and CRU. The importance of funding should not be underestimated. Money works to corrupt science, not by changing the answer, but by changing the questions that get asked.
The fourth mail shows some of the TERI organization’s interests and one can see from the articles promoted in their newsletter that the agenda is clearly one of using the threat of climate change to drive a particular developing nation’s agenda.
The fifth Pachauri mail is interesting for a variety of reasons. The mail contains other mails, notably mails from Tom Wigley and Phil Jones who question the appointment of Pachauri, as they apparently believed that Pachauri was put in place by political forces, namely Bush, to serve corporate interests. This typical kneejerk reaction of the Union of Concerned Scientists, who alerted Wigley to the issue, on reflection, is somewhat laughable now. Hulme, as the mail show, defends Pachauri, his Indian partner, in the bid to get the Tyndall center, on rather odd grounds. Simply: Wigley points out that the “bushies” are behind this and Hulme defends Pachauri by arguing that perhaps Watson ,a Brit and the previous IPCC secretariat, has gone too far; and Hulme wonders why an Indian and an engineer should not be considered. Hulme strangely turns a political attack on Pachauri into an attack on his back ground. The defense seems entirely misplaced, unless of course there has been some other communications where these concerns were raised.
So why does Hulme go “racial?” Whatever the reason it’s apparent that discussions about Pachauri’s appointment don’t continue. Hulme played the race card and issue ends there. Perhaps Hulme played the race card so he would not have to explain how having Pachauri “on board” would be beneficial. Hulme’s partner is now in charge of the IPCC; and as Hulme writes, recalling the language of the conference Pachauri invited him to back in 1998, it will be a good thing to have someone in charge who understands that climate change is a North/South issue. It will also be good to have someone in charge who can funnel benefits your way.
The sixth Pachauri mail is from Tom Wigley in 2003. The topic of the mail is the strategy for responding to a single paper by Soon and Baliunas. It’s hard to fathom why a scientist would include the head of the IPCC as well as many other scientists on a mail that lays out the strategy for responding to lone contrarian paper. The Soon and Balinunas paper, did have the notoriety of being a skeptical paper accepted by the peer review science, but it was hardly a crushing blow to “the science.” Still, Wigley lays out for Pachauri, what the goal is. Rebut the paper to make the job of writing the next IPCC report, due years down the road, easier. So, the practices of just letting bad science die, or of letting individual scientists rebut the bad paper as they see fit are brushed aside. Wigley believes that there must be some sort of orchestrated effort to provide the future writers of the IPCC reports with specifically targeted ammunition. Science gets turned to producing papers to make the job of the science summarizers easier.
In the seventh mail in the stack Michael Mann appears to weigh in with his opinion. Included in the mail, is Stephan Schneider. Schneider, whose name appears at least 71 times in the mails, will later prove instrumental in getting the Jesus Paper into Chapter 6 of the 4th Assessment. He is a Trojan horse inside the journal system. But for Schneider, who “knows the drill” , the Jesus paper would never make it into the report. What Schneider and Pachauri see, of course, is that Mann is making the contrarian paper a political issue and David Halpern of the OSFT has been contacted. In the eighth mail, Jim Salinger will add his voice to the choir of those suggesting that the “bad” science be refuted rather than merely ignored. Again, one has to ask what is the head of the IPCC doing on these mails? Why do Mann and Salinger think that he will be remotely interested in the fate of a single paper?
In the ninth Parchuari mail, we see Hulme and Pachauri starting to take advantage of their connection through the Tyndall Centre, and Hulme suggests a joint publishing project. So we have Hulme, who brushed off Wigley and Jones’s political concerns about his partner Pachauri, actively engaging with the head of the IPCC to work on projects that both of their organizations will benefit from.
The 10th mail is interesting for one reason. It provides some rich irony and it shows what men of character do when a publishing process is subverted. The file contains an email from Mann and from Salinger, and both reference the turmoil cause by the Soon paper. Notably Hans Von Storch is reckoned a hero for resigning his editorship at Climate Research over the incident. The journal that he worked for had published the suspect paper, and his response and the response of other editors was resignation. Simply put, those who worked on the IPCC reports took the same stance as Von Storch, they would take their names off the IPCC report. Just as Climate Research erred in publishing the flawed Soon paper, the IPCC process has also published bogus science, even invented science where there was none.
In 2003 that one simple error was enough to get men of character to resign. Authors of the IPCC report would do well to follow their example. The incident bears some striking similarities to what we see today. The Wall Street Journal editorial by Antonio Regalado, is included in the mail from Mann.
“This week, three editors of Climate Research resigned in protest over
the journal’s handling of the review process that approved the study;
among them is Hans von Storch, the journal’s recently appointed
editor in chief. “It was flawed and it shouldn’t have been
published,” he said”
And most importantly, the flawed science found its way into an EPA document much as flawed science has made its way into the IPCC report:
“A reference to Dr. Soon’s paper previously found its way into
revisions suggested by the White House to an EPA report on
environmental quality. According to an internal EPA memorandum
disclosed in June, agency scientists were concerned the version
containing the White House edits “no longer accurately represents
scientific consensus on climate change.” Dr. Mann’s data showing the
hockey-stick temperature curve was deleted. In its place,
administration officials added a reference to Dr. Soon’s paper, which
the EPA memo called “a limited analysis that supports the
administration’s favored message.”
In 2003 the journal Climate Research let through a bad piece of science that challenged the “hockey stick.” That bad science made its way into an EPA document because it favored the administrations view. Clearly this was wrong. And Von Storch took the right action. And now, with the evidence that bad science has made its way into the IPCC report, its time for the responsible parties to follow the fine example of Von Storch.
The 11th mail which mentions Pachauri is important for understanding the events leading up to Phil Jones’ refusal to give data to Warwick Hughes, but its relation to Pachauri is tangential, except for the hint it contains about the kind of rhetoric Pachauri would use to further his cause, an early clue into his character. Buried in a series of editorials about Michael Mann forward by Briffa to Jones, we find the following 2005 gem from Steven Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute:
“Not long ago the IPCC’s chairman, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, compared
eco-skeptic Bjorn Lomborg to Hitler. “What is the difference between Lomborg’s view of humanity and Hitler’s?” Pachauri asked in a Danish newspaper. “If you were to accept Lomborg’s way of thinking, then maybe what Hitler did was the right thing” Lomborg’s sin was merely to follow the consensus practice of economists in applying a discount to present costs for future benefits, and comparing the range of outcomes with other world problems alongside climate change. It is hard to judge what is worse: Pachauri’s appalling judgment in resorting to reductio ad Hitlerum, or his abysmal ignorance of basic economics. In either case, it is hard to have much confidence in the policy advice the IPCC might have.”
Looking at the Pachauri mails in the Climategate files doesn’t provide any new examples of wrongdoing. We don’t need any. What it does do is give a sense of how the men who hacked the climate science operated. How they reasoned, how they strategized and what they viewed as threats and opportunities. If we want to improve the science in climate science and build a trusted system, we need to understand the “black hats.”
Building a trusted system for climate science
With the IPCC’s reputation in tatters, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion of Pachauri’s man at CRU, Hulme. Perhaps the IPCC has run its course. If trust is to be rebuilt in climate science it must start from the bottom up, with the fundamental data and code of climate science. The IPCC process will always be hackable, and so to will the climate science journals. Cleaning up the mess must start at the foundation of science with open access to the data and the code used in climate science.
The notion that science can move forward while individual climate scientists hide data from their critics is antithetical to the dictates of reason. CRU and others have no more excuses. All and any data used in climate science should be published under a Creative Commons like license, free for anyone to view and use. Confidential data should not be used; it is not necessary to the science. Phil Jones should be removed as an advisor to NOAA on data archiving and access. That’s having a black hat hacker in charge of the hardware. The code of climate science should likewise be freely available. In particular, we should press climate science to adopt a GPL license, one that enforces sharing of code. In part GPL is required because on more than one occasion some climate scientists have used the public code of others without re-sharing it. For example, they have used public code, modified it in undocumented ways, and refused to share the derivative work.
At the level of the journals trust can only be rebuilt by changes in people and principles. The list of people who need to go is easy to draw up. More importantly the Journals need to adopt principles of reproducible research. If a reviewer or official “replication” expert cannot recompile the science from source, both data and code, the science needs to be rejected.
Above the journal level at the IPCC level of course Pachauri needs to go. But the risk of him being replaced with a less crude hacker is high. The issue is that trust cannot be blindly placed in people. The entire IPCC process must be opened. We want to watch that process first hand and be eyewitness to every word.
The Hackers
All processes are subject to hacking, both from external and internal entities. The IPCC process is no exception, neither is the process of writing for science journals exempt. As recent reports show Pachauri hacked the IPCC processes to make them work against themselves and bend the system to his financial ends. An inside hacker, like Pachauri, can be especially dangerous since they play a role in structuring the very system that they hack. Not only do they exploit a system they were meant to protect, but they also act in ways to prevent detection of their hacks.
What the recent disclosures about Pachauri show is that the IPCC process is now totally compromised, compromised from the inside. Like a system exploited by a destructive hack, that system may be beyond repair. It’s time to reformat the hard drive and start from scratch, as climate scientist Hulme, spotted 101 times in the Climategate files and closely tied to Pachauri, suggested–perhaps in a moment of clarity after the discovery of the emails:
Just how was the IPCC system hacked? And can such hacks be prevented or are they a very part of the nature of authoritarian systems? As discussed in our book “Climategate: The Crutape Letters , now available on Kindle and in Ebook format, the “hacks” were focused on the publication process.
The IPCC reports where intended to be summaries of the science, both what we know and what we don’t know. These summaries were written for policy makers who would use the science and its findings to take action: action to prevent climate change, mitigate it, adapt to it, and to fund new studies where knowledge was uncertain. And action is where the money is. Every hack of the system cashes out into some form of compensation to the hackers: more money for their organizations or more prestige for themselves.
As the mails show the hacking of the IPCC process and the scientific process itself was exposed primarily because of the “pressure” put on the hackers by the FIOA process. And as the mails also show, the hackers moved to thwart the FOIA process by corrupting FOIA officers. In fact, the most egregious hack of the system, Jones’ request that people delete mails, came as the direct result of trying to cover up a hack of the IPCC process, the hack surrounding the ‘Jesus Paper.’
During the course of writing the account of Climategate, we noticed that Pachauri, was named directly in the files 11 times and he’s mentioned by title in others. Before canvassing those mails it’s key to understand how the hackers worked to subvert the IPCC process and the scientific publishing process. And finally, it’s important to understand that they are planning counter measures that will allow them to continue hacking the system with the upcoming fifth assessment report due in 2013. As Jones indicates in late 2009 ,Pachauri and Thomas [Stocker] an IPCC Co Chair took up the issue of FOIA with the full IPCC. One can’t imagine that they argued for full disclosure or full compliance with disclosure laws. As detailed in this mail Jones’ alerts Stocker, who works at Bern in Switzerland, to measures Holland suggests for the next IPCC report. Jones alerts Stocker to specific comments on Climate Audit, arming him for the next battle.
Tricks of the Trade.
The high level hacks of the IPCC system include the following: changing chronologies, altering the appearance of graphics to tell a different story making up science out of whole cloth , and citing non peered reviewed literature when they could not keep contrarian papers out of the IPCC documents.
The IPPC reports are supposed to be an objective summary of the state of the science and are supposed to reference only works that are published in the peer reviewed science that met specific time deadlines. The deadlines are critical to have a fair and open process, ensuring that papers referenced have, in fact, been published and reviewed by others. Jones, however, finds such procedures to ensure fairness an impediment to him determining what is important.
Hacking the deadlines to get the ‘Jesus paper’ into Chapter 6 of the 4th assessment report of the IPCC was easiest hack to uncover. As the hackers left a paper trial of their activities that exists outside of the climategate mails. The mails, merely confirm what Steve McIntyre had already figured out. The mails of course add some background that strengthens the case, including the hacker’s knowledge that McIntyre was on to their game as well as Jones suggestion to cover up the hack by changing the “received date” on the paper.
By hacking the deadlines of the process, and shoe horning in a paper that would not be fully reviewed and published for over a year, a paper that contains references to another paper published after the fact, the hackers could ensure that lead author Briffa had the ammunition he needed to write the chapter the way Overpeck, his overlord, wanted it written: with a punch line more compelling than the ‘Hockey Stick’, that iconic figure of the global warming religion which “shows” that the current warming is “unprecedented in human history.” This hack is akin to check kiting or akin to planting older fossils with younger fossils as occurred in the Piltdown Man hoax.
To further the promotion of the ‘Hockey Stick’ message the Chapter 6 team also manipulated graphics, “hiding the decline,” even when one reviewer explicitly demanded that they show the graphic as it appeared in the original science. And finally, after keeping one skeptical paper out of the first two drafts of the report, as they had threatened to, the scientists finally resorted to making up facts on the fly.
Those are the user level hacks, but the hacks go deeper. At the IPPC level, the hacks are open to scrutiny and as we see journalists now following the references in the IPCC document they are finding these user level exploits. The deeper hacks, like a rootkit hack, involve the operating system of science, the science journals themselves. Manipulation of the science at the IPCC level is easy to document, but corrupting the journal process, the process that is supposed to feed the IPCC process with “trusted” information, is tougher to document.
Without the mails which detail how these hacks work, one could imagine that the IPCC could be made “hack proof” merely by adopting more controls and a more open process. The mails, however, indicate that the science publishing process has also been hacked. Editors have been compromised, and the system of peer review has been corrupted. Very simply, one can make the IPCC process as open and transparent as one likes, but as long as it is fed by a corrupt journal process, you will still get garbage science out of the IPCC process. And further, you could reform the journals all you like and the process can still be corrupted by the individual influential researcher who hides his data and his code.
Eleven Mails
The 11 mails mentioning Pachauri by name, only give hints at how the system was worked to his advantage. Reading them now in hindsight is instructive. The first from Rob Stewart to Pachauri in 1998, before Pachuari’s tenure begins, details the process of communicating about IPCC matters. As it notes, all communication should happen within the structures set up so that a traceable chain of evidence can be created. As the Climategate files show, this policy was violated, violated precisely so that the 4th assessment could be shaped in a way not reflected in the underlying science.
In the second mail Pachauri invites Hulme to a conference, initiating a relationship with Hulme that will culminate in Pachauri and Hulme working together to on UEA’s effort to win a government bid on the creation of a climate change center in England, as detailed in the third mail in the stack. That effort results in the founding of the Tyndall Center, a center named no less than 11 times in the mails.
The interests of Hulme and Pachauri are clear. Use the science arm at CRU to drive conclusions in the IPCC that will drive funding into Tyndall and drive money into TERI, Pachauri’s organization, and CRU. The important of funding should not be underestimated. Money works to corrupt science, not by changing the answer, but by changing the questions that get asked.
The fourth mail shows some of the TERI organization’s interests and one can see from the articles promoted in their newsletter that the agenda is clearly one of using the threat of climate change to drive a particular developing nation agenda.
The fifth Pachauri mail is interesting for a variety of reasons. The mail contains other mails, notably mails from Tom Wigley and Phil Jones who question the appointment of Pachauri, as they apparently believed that Pachauri was put in place by political forces, namely Bush, to serve corporate interests. This typical kneejerk reaction of the Union of Concerned Scientists, who alerted Wigley to the issue, on reflection, is somewhat laughable now. Hulme, as the mail show, defends Pachauri, his Indian partner, in the bid to get the Tyndall center, on rather odd grounds. Simply: Wigley points out that the “bushies” are behind this and Hulme defends Pachauri by arguing that perhaps Watson ,a Brit and the previous IPCC secretariat, has gone too far; and Hulme wonders why an Indian and an engineer should not be considered. Hulme strangely turns a political attack on Pachauri into an attack on his back ground. The defense seems entirely misplaced, unless of course there has been some other communications where these concerns were raised.
So why does Hulme go “racial?” Whatever the reason its apparent that discussions about Pachauri’s appointment don’t continue. Hulme played the race card and issue ends there. Perhaps Hulme played the race card so he would not have to explain how having Pachauri “on board” would be beneficial. Hulme’s partner is now in charge of the IPCC; and as Hulme writes, recalling the language of the conference Pachauri invited him to back in 1998, it will be a good thing to have someone in charge who understands that climate change is a North/South issue. It will also be good to have some one in charge who can funnel benefits your way.
The sixth Pachauri mail is from Tom Wigley in 2003. The topic of the mail is the strategy for responding to a single paper by Soon and Baliunas. It’s hard to fathom why a scientist would include the head of the IPCC as well as many other scientists on a mail that lays out the strategy for responding to lone contrarian paper. The Soon and Balinunas paper, did have the notoriety of being a skeptical paper accepted by the peer review science, but it was hardly a crushing blow to “the science.” Still, Wigley lays out for Pachauri, what the goal is. Rebut the paper to make the job of writing the next IPCC report, due years down the road, easier. So, the practices of just letting bad science die, or of letting individual scientists rebut the bad paper as they see fit are brushed aside. Wigley believes that there must be some sort of orchestrated effort to provide the future writers of the IPCC reports with specifically targeted ammunition. Science gets turned to producing papers to make the job of the science summarizers easier.
In the seventh mail in the stack Michael Mann appears to weigh in with his opinion. Included in the mail, is Stephan Schneider. Schneider, whose name appears at least 71 times in the mails, will later prove instrumental in getting the Jesus Paper into Chapter 6 of the 4th Assessment. He is a Trojan horse inside the journal system. But for Schneider, who “knows the drill” , the Jesus paper would never make it into the report. What Schneider and Pachauri see, of course, is that Mann is making the contrarian paper a political issue and David Halpern of the OSFT has been contacted. In the eighth mail, Jim Salinger will add his voice to the choir of those suggesting that the “bad” science be refuted rather than merely ignored. Again, one has to ask what is the head of the IPCC doing on these mails? Why does Mann and Salinger think that he will be remotely interested in the fate of a single paper?
In the ninth Parchuari mail, we see Hulme and Pachauri starting to take advantage of their connection through the Tyndall Center, and Hulme suggests a joint publishing project. So we have Hulme, who brushed off Wigley’s and Jones’ political concerns about his partner Pachauri, actively engaging with the head of the IPCC to work on projects that both of their organizations will benefit from.
The 10th mail is interesting for one reason. It provides some rich irony and it shows what men of character do when a publishing process is subverted. The file contains a mail from Mann and from Salinger, and both reference the turmoil cause by the Soon paper. Notably Hans Von Storch is reckoned a hero for resigning his editorship at Climate Research over the incident. The journal that he worked for had published the suspect paper, and his response and the response of other editors was resignation. Simply put, those who worked on the IPCC reports took the same stance as Von Storch, they would take their names off the IPCC report. Just as Climate Research erred in publishing the flawed Soon paper, the IPCC process has also published bogus science, even invented science where there was none.
In 2003 that one simple error was enough to get a men of character to resign. Author’s of the IPCC report would do well to follow their example. The incident bears some striking similarities to what we see today. The Wall Street Journal editorial by Antonio Regalado, is included in the mail from Mann.
“This week, three editors of Climate Research resigned in protest over
the journal’s handling of the review process that approved the study;
among them is Hans von Storch, the journal’s recently appointed
editor in chief. “It was flawed and it shouldn’t have been
published,” he said”
And most importantly, the flawed science found its way into an EPA document much as flawed science has made its way into the IPCC report:
“A reference to Dr. Soon’s paper previously found its way into
revisions suggested by the White House to an EPA report on
environmental quality. According to an internal EPA memorandum
disclosed in June, agency scientists were concerned the version
containing the White House edits “no longer accurately represents
scientific consensus on climate change.” Dr. Mann’s data showing the
hockey-stick temperature curve was deleted. In its place,
administration officials added a reference to Dr. Soon’s paper, which
the EPA memo called “a limited analysis that supports the
administration’s favored message.”
In 2003 the journal Climate Research let through a bad piece of science that challenged the “hockey stick.” That bad science made it’s way into an EPA document because it favored the administrations view. Clearly this was wrong. And Von Storch took the right action. And now, with the evidence that bad science has made its way into the IPCC report, its time for the responsible parties to follow the fine example of Von Storch.
The 11th mail which mentions Pachauri is important for understanding the events leading up to Phil Jones’ refusal to give data to Warwick Hughes, but it’s relation to Pachauri is tangential, except for the hint it contains about the kind of rhetoric Pachauri would use to further his cause, an early clue into his character. Buried in a series of editorials about Michael Mann forward by Briffa to Jones, we find the following 2005 gem from Steven Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute:
“Not long ago the IPCC’s chairman, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, compared
eco-skeptic Bjorn Lomborg to Hitler. “What is the difference between Lomborg’s view of humanity and Hitler’s?” Pachauri asked in a Danish newspaper. “If you were to accept Lomborg’s way of thinking, then maybe what Hitler did was the right thing” Lomborg’s sin was merely to follow the consensus practice of economists in applying a discount to present costs for future benefits, and comparing the range of outcomes with other world problems alongside climate change. It is hard to judge what is worse: Pachauri’s appalling judgment in resorting to reductio ad Hitlerum, or his abysmal ignorance of basic economics. In either case, it is hard to have much confidence in the policy advice the IPCC might have.”
Looking at the Pachauri mails in the Climategate files doesn’t provide any new examples of wrong doing. We don’t need any. What it does do is give a sense of how the men who hacked the climate science operated. How they reasoned, how they strategized and what they viewed as threats and opportunities. If we want to improve the science in climate science and build a trusted system, we need to understand the “black hats.”
Building a trusted system for climate science
With the IPCC’s reputation in tatters, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion of Pachauri’s man at CRU, Hulme. Perhaps the IPCC has run its course. If trust is to be rebuilt in climate science it must start from the bottom up, with the fundamental data and code of climate science. The IPCC process will always be hackable, and so to will the climate science journals. Cleaning up the mess must start at the foundation of science with open access to the data and the code used in climate science.
The notion that science can move forward while individual climate scientists hide data from their critics is antithetical to the dictates of reason. CRU and others have no more excuses. All and any data used in climate science should be published under a Creative Commons like license, free for anyone to view and use. Confidential data should not be used; it is not necessary to the science. Phil Jones should be removed as an advisor to NOAA on data archiving and access. That’s having a black hat hacker in charge of the hardware. The code of climate science should likewise be freely available. In particular, we should press climate science to adopt a GPL license, one that enforces sharing of code. In part GPL is required because on more than one occasion some climate scientists have used the public code of others without re–sharing it. For example, they have used public code, modified it in undocumented ways, and refused to share the derivative work.
At the level of the journals trust can only be rebuilt by changes in people and principles. The list of people who need to go is easy to draw up. More importantly the Journals need to adopt principles of reproducible research. If a reviewer or official “replication” expert cannot recompile the science from source, both data and code, the science needs to be rejected.
Above the journal level at the IPCC level of course Pachauri needs to go. But the risk of him being replaced with a less crude hacker is high. The issue is that trust cannot be blindly placed in people. The entire IPCC process must be opened. We want to watch that process first hand and be eyewitness to every word.
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steven mosher (00:11:15) :
… heck it looks like they broke the law to cover up what they did.
This is a serious accusation.
Who is “they?”
What law would that be?
What exactly was “covered up?”
and what is the “did” that is against the law?
Steven,
Just finished CRU Tape Letters – read it in two evenings – couldn’t put it down. Awesome. I found myself reading sections of it again last night; this Climate stuff has me obsessed as I am new to it (couple of weeks BC…little interest…CG growing interest…a bit of web research -> obsession!!). I’m just a humble Mechanical Engineer and not a scientist but I certainly can understand the basics and am astounded the AGW crowd got as far as it did and most disturbing to me is how such a load of bad policy initiatives were/are based on the faulty science. The mainstream media has a lot to answer for. Take Scientific American and Newsweek as examples. They have been not just going along for the ride but amplifying the message. Sad for them that this is a huge breaking story and they are laming-out in a most shameful manner. The Wall Street Journal is the only one making hay on this. I write letters to the editor that are ignored; I have written all my elected officials including President Obama; I tell everyone I know about this. The word needs to get out to stop more damage from AGW foolishness.
Inspector Thompson’s Gazelle (19:34:55
it really is that elementary. really
My learning disability causes me to question someone who clearly does not understand that rising Co2 will not cause runaway warming. It seems to me that the biosphere has BENEFITED from the increase in Co2. Your hatred for humanity is showing.
scienceofdoom (18:42:33) :
“The radiation from a black body at a given temperature is a spectrum of wavelengths.”
Scientists already discovered before the AGW fashion that c02 absorbed around 4-8% of outfoing radiation, with a peak of 15m and shoulders of 2m wide. This streching and bending of its bonds is indeed blackbody radiation, such that doesn’t happen to nitrogen. In temperature terms, it makes no difference however. However, everything at some level on the Planck curve absorbs hear, even nitrogen. The important factor is that objects emit radiation according to their temperature. Earth emits an amount of radiation then air absorbs some of it to some degree.
And climate science is set up to look like science, but it too disproportionately attracted activists who saw it as a breakthrough science where they could leverage its findings to make a difference, along the lines of the campaigns against acid rain and CFCs. These activists got traction during the warm phase in the 80s and 90s and got into top teaching and editorial positions, where they lay down and defend their paradigm, and marginalize dissent.
Climatology thus has an embedded, “do-something” (activist) anti-anthro bias, like Women’s Studies, due to the type of people it attracts and the indoctrination they in turn mete out. It’s not a “science” like most other hard sciences. It’s more like psychology after it became dominated by behaviorists, or sociology dominated by social activists. And because it’s more an observational than an experimental science, it’s easier for partisans to avoid falsification. This recruitment bias explains much of the consensus in organized clime.
PS: I can’t prove the above, but a sociology grad student could do so by surveying students in three subjects — geology, climatology, and environmental studies — about their political and social attitudes. I bet the second group’s profile would look more like the third’s than the first’s.
GAZELLE:
davidmhoffer: Yes, someone did in fact claim the earth’s not a greenhouse, thus the response. >
The comment was a suggestion that references were being mixed. That said, the earth is not in fact a greenhouse. It has no cieling that blocks convection 100% at a given point, it has no walls that insulate it from the atmosphere beside it, nor wind currents that remove or add humidity to it. CO2 retains energy via one of several processes that warm a greenhouse. That does not make earth a greenhouse.
GAZELLE
The climate sensitivity, without long term feedbacks, is pretty confidently established at about 3C, from at least 1979.
Arguments without specific references are meaningless. I can prove that the moon landing was fake by showing that mosquitos exist. If they can’t get rid of mosquitos, how could they possibly get go to the moon? Your statement says climate sensitivity is established. By who? at about 3 C. based on what energy changes?
Leo G
your nice tie in to the amazon story from the ipcc regarding the forest turning into savanahh by using the lion/gazalle metaphor was just spot on! if you don’t mind, i am going to use that to help explain the CO2 forcing to my kids (18 and 16 LOL!). So nice when difficult science can be explained so succintly
Feel free to use as long as you keep in mind that it is a huge over simplification. One of my favourite quotes from Einstein is that “Complex difficult problems have simple, easy to understand, WRONG answers!” I was trying to make a specific point to Gazelle. For teen agers, I tend to relate it to cars:
Suppose you are on a road trip driving down the highway at 60 MPH. You notice you are almost out of gas. You might not make it to the next gas station. The obvious solution is to go faster so that you get there sooner, before you run out of gas.
Problem is, that wind resistance goes up with the square of the speed. So go 10% faster and wind resistance goes up 21%. Fuel economy goes down accordingly. The faster you go, the worse it gets. If you keep on accelerating, you will get to a point where the wind resistance rises to match the total horsepower of the engine, and it is now physicaly impossible to accelerate any more. If you accelerate slowly, wind resistance picks up slowly. If you floor it, wind resistance picks up quickly. The faster you go, the farther from the gas station you are when you run out.
Energy input to the planet is like gas feeding your engine. A certain amount gets you a certain speed. Earth’s radiance is like wind resistance. Except it goes up by power of 4, not 2. (Convert to Kelvin scale for that, not Celsius). So what ever speed you are going, the distance from the gas pedal to the floor is how much extra gas you can pump in. The total extra energy you have available from CO2 capture is like the distance between the gas pedal and the floor. Once its floored, there ain’t no more. And as anyone who has driven cars really fast knows, the increase in speed you get from the first half of the gas pedal is WAY less than the increase in speed you get from the last half. CO2 suffers from the exact same decline in effect at it increases in concentration.
Steven Mosher, if you don’t like the HadCRUT data, you are aware of the existence and essential similarity of of the NCDC GHCN and the NASA GISSTEMP data right? And that HadCRUT actually gives a warming rate that is more conservative (i.e. slightly LESS) than GISSTEMP?
I’m all for complete open-ness of data and methods, and maybe CRU really SHOULD have been more open with all theirs, and maybe they really DO need to reform their data policies. But to jump to conspiracy theories and presumptions about who meant what in email messages over the last decade, as “proof” of this or that intent, is simply foolish.
davidmhoffer:
J.Peden (20:29:35) says: “Earth is not a greenhouse, Inspector. ”
That’s your idea of an allusion to “mixed references”?. As for your contentions, the greenhouse comparison is called an ANALOGY david! Nobody’s claiming there are glass panes up in the sky keeping the heat in. The idea is that GHGs are operationally similar IN THEIR HEAT EFFECT, to a greenhouse.
Climate Sensitivity at ~3C ?: Charney et al., NAS report, 1979:
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12181
and fuller history of the topic at:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm
Vincent: You need to read Mann et al, 2008 and Mann et al 2009, amongst others. The MWP was NOT global. And even if it were. so what? We know full well that other processes besides GHG forcing can warm the entire globe, so the denial of that fact proves nothing.
Uh oh, here come the diatribes against Mike Mann! From those who love to scream “ad hom” of course.
David Ball (06:41:19) says:
“My learning disability causes me to question someone who clearly does not understand that rising Co2 will not cause runaway warming. It seems to me that the biosphere has BENEFITED from the increase in Co2. Your hatred for humanity is showing.”
Really now? First, we weren’t talking about “runaway warming” (we could I suppose, but let’s try to follow one idea at a time). As for the benefits of CO2 increase–do you have expertise in that area? Or references to the literature regarding the balance of evidence of the positive vs negative effects of higher [CO2}?
Your hatred for evidence-based discourse, and ability to jump to foolish conclusions, is showing.
p.s.
Mann et al, 2009:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/326/5957/1256
Mann et al 2008:
http://www.pnas.org/content/105/36/13252.full?sid=6ccab757-7589-470b-b54c-4314d4e91137
“But no, on the MWP as a CO2 source. The stable isotope signature of the atmosphere, points directly to fossil fuel burning as the main cause of the CO2 rise since 1800. Plus the MWP was not a global phenomenon.”
So if I make a statement of this sort below, how wrong would I be? I am here, assuming you would allow me latitude is saying that I cannot be completely wrong.
“A certain proportion of the rise in atmospheric CO2 could be attributable to the climatic conditions that prevailed approximately a millenium ago”.
I also note that you support your argument by negating the existance of a medieval warm period. Does that imply that you believe that Michael’s Mann’s hockey stick graph is an accurate representation of temperatures in the recent climatologic past?
Thanks
Anand
Inspector Thompson’s Gazelle (20:46:11) :
J. Peden: Then why is the earth’s temperature not what you get from a simple Stefan-Boltzman calculation, i.e. basically frozen everywhere? As for terms, what is it about “greenhouse” you don’t get?
Well, Pilgrim, does the Stefan-Boltzman calculation work in that thar “greenhouse” you still won’t show me so’s I can find them “greenhouse gases”? I’ma takin’ your word for it, Pardner, that it might could not work very well thar neither and I don’t like to be a’led on one of them Wild Goose Chases very much. So, Pardner, thisin’ is youin’ last chancin’ for me. Whar’s that thar “greenhouse” you keep a-wantin’ me to find so’s I can see them gasses in their natural habitat, as god above apparently intended?
Inspector, I just had me an idea iffin’ y’all want to know more about them “greenhouse gasses” in their natural habitat, even iffin’ y’all still won’t show me their secret ‘ecosystem’, is what I think them scientists with thar scientific hats call ’em. Why don’t y’all play with them gasses a little bit in that thar “greenhouse” an’ see what they-all do? You’ve got ’em naturally trapped thar, don’t y’all?
Inspector Thompson’s Gazelle (23:07:13) :
Mr Inspector, you seem quite angry. I can understand that.
Here we are, disputing the concencus of 2500 Scientists.
Not to mention, some even disagrees with some number coming from the IPCC.
Most of your claims have already been discussed in many posts here already.The train has left the station, so to speak.
Therefore, maybe you can go through some older posts, and check what’s been discussed?
I do have links to some stuff I found interesting doing just that.
Like this one on “The greenhouse” effect;
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf
I also found lots of interesting stuff here;
http://www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/222_Exchange.pdf
Lindzen says the increase of CO2 lately is indisputable,
and yet, I was rather disturbed after reading this paper here;
http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/180_years_accurate_Co2_Chemical_Methods.pdf
Is it wrong? I dont know, but I hope they did’nt distort the data before plotting. If its correct…. CO2 levels are indeed disputable.
Lots of interesting stuff.
Yes, I know. Peer review…. Lindzen about smoking….2500 Scientists…..
Gazelle:
As for your contentions, the greenhouse comparison is called an ANALOGY david!>
Got it. When someone says its not a greenhouse, they are an idiot. When someoen explains WHY its not a greenhouse you change your tune and insist its just an analogy. In the face of every refutation of your argument, you just change what it was that you were claiming in the first place and then draw the same conclusion from it. Are you assembling a track record to accompany your job application to the IPCC?
Inspector Thompson’s Gazelle (09:08:18) :
There is a very good reason the alarmist crowd doesn’t want to talk about runaway global warming [or more specifically: CO2=CAGW, the hypothesis that is the basis for the entire scare]: there is no empirical evidence showing that an increase in that tiny trace gas will cause runaway global warming. That is the reason that the debate has devolved to red herring arguments, intended to take the spotlight off of that failed hypothesis.
In the extremely small concentrations being discussed, carbon dioxide is entirely beneficial. It does not cause anything more than negligible warming, which can be entirely disregarded for all practical purposes, and it significantly enhances plant growth: click1, click2
Also, CO2 rises as a result of increasing temperature: click. The cause and effect relationship between CO2 and temperature show that CO2 irises as a result of rising temperature, not vice versa.
Since there is no measurable evidence that CO2 can cause runaway global warming — or any warming for that matter [which was the original reason given for spending immense amounts of capital and reversing technological progress], then that money should be left in the hands of the taxpaying public, except for the amount necessary to support other areas of science that have been starved of funding due to the AGW scare.
Oh and Gazelle….
If your conention is that the climate is highly sensitive to small changes in energy input, and at the same time you want to claim that the MWP was limited to Europe, can you explain what kept the energy confined to Europe for a few centuries? If the climate is highly sensitive, then that extra energy in Europe should have gone zooming around the planet. If it didn’t, that would imply a highly insensitive climate. So either the MWP was local to Europe and proves that the climate is insensitive on a massive scale and we need not panic about minor CO2 changes, or we conclude that if the climate is highly sensitive, the MWP must have been global.
don’t you just hate it when your own argument is evidence that you are wrong?
Dear Mr Gazelle,
I’m disappointed. Is that the best argument that the MWP was not global you can muster – that I should read Mann? I was expecting more of a fight, but you just seem to have given up.
Anyway, if you’ll permit me, I’ve listed a few papers representing every continent, which very definately disagree with Mann:
Lamy, F., Hebbeln, D., Röhl, U. and Wefer, G. 2001. Holocene rainfall variability in southern Chile: a marine record of latitudinal shifts of the Southern Westerlies.
Sterken, M., Sabbe, K., Chepstow-Lusty, A., Frogley, M., Vanhoutte, K., Verleyen, E., Cundy, A. and Vyverman, W. 2006. Hydrological and land-use changes in the Cuzco region (Cordillera Oriental, South East Peru) during the last 1200 years: a diatom-based reconstruction.
Causey, D., Corbett, D.G., Lefèvre, C., West, D.L., Savinetsky, A.B., Kiseleva, N.K. and Khassanov, B.F. 2005. The palaeoenvironment of humans and marine birds of the Aleutian Islands: three millennia of change
MacDonald, G.M., Kremenetski, K.V. and Beilman, D.W. 2008. Climate change and the northern Russian treeline zone
Eden, D.N and Page, M.J. 1998. Palaeoclimatic implications of a storm erosion record from late Holocene lake sediments, North Island, New Zealand
Castellano, E., Becagli, S., Hansson, M., Hutterli, M., Petit, J.R., Rampino, M.R., Severi, M., Steffensen, J.P., Traversi, R. and Udisti, R. 2005. Holocene volcanic history as recorded in the sulfate stratigraphy of the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica Dome C (EDC96) ice core.
You then say to me, “And even if it were [global], so what? We know full well that other processes besides GHG forcing can warm the entire globe, so the denial of that fact proves nothing.”
Permit me to interpret your logic. Conceding that the MWP might be global after all, you try and downplay its significance by saying that other processes besides GHG forcing can warm the entire globe. And I retort, “why yes it can, isn’t this what skeptics have been saying all along?”
Then you infer from this sudden insight that this “proves nothing”. Well, that entirely depends on what it is you are trying to prove. If it is the fact that the climate moves in natural cycles, then you are correct – it proves nothing. But if you are trying to prove the hypothesis that only man made GHG’s can be responsible for most of the current warming, and it is then shown that the globe was in fact warmer in the middle ages, then you are not able to falsify the null hypothesis – that current warming is due mostly to natural variation.
I think you will find this is exactly why the alarmists have fought like demons to keep the hockey stick alive, for no less a reason than the belief in a stable climate is one of the four pillars of the AGW hypothesis. That is exactly why the MWP is described as “putative.”
BTW, when can you post the reference for your 3C temp rise for CO2 doubling without feedbacks, that has been established since 1979?
Moderator, my last post disappeared. Has it gone in the spam filter?
Reply: Please try and refrain from these kinds of comments. If your comment went into the spam filter it will be fished out in due course. Nothing is changed by your making this comment except extraneous words appearing on this page. This causes a whole bunch of verbiage which has nothing to do with this thread being written and read for no apparent purpose. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum. ~ ctm
REPLY: I knew Lorem Ipsum, and you’re no Lorem Ipsum! -A
Inspector Thompson’s Gazelle (09:00:57) :
“Steven Mosher, if you don’t like the HadCRUT data, you are aware of the existence and essential similarity of of the NCDC GHCN and the NASA GISSTEMP data right? And that HadCRUT actually gives a warming rate that is more conservative (i.e. slightly LESS) than GISSTEMP?”
Gosh, inspector! Thanks for that info. Maybe you should google me and see what I know about GHCN.. (hint hint, free the code, see 2007 climateaudit, RC, or you can google me on nightlights and gisstemp.. here lemme help
http://climateaudit.org/2008/02/23/googling-the-lights-fantastic/
or maybe some of the ca thread where I slogged through nasa code, i dunno.
Now to you:
1. I never said I dont like hadcrut data. I said I asked for hadcrut data and CRU said.
A. it was all in GHCN (false)
B. 2% wasnt in GHCN and was confidential. (false)
C. They couldnt really tell me how much of it was confidential since they
lost the agreements ( True)
D. They couldnt give me the data because I wasnt an academic (FALSE)
E. the couldnt give it to me becuase of conditions put on them
in agreements which they lost (who knows)
F. They know they gave it to other guys, but that was a mistake they
could not repeat without international relations being damaged (FALSE)
G. They know they left a version of the data(2003) on the web by mistake,
but that didnt mean the data wasnt super secret.
H. Oops, they lost some of the data anyways.(true)
So, I’m neither HAPPY or UNHAPPY with the CRU data. My emotional state has nothing to do with the question. very simply they cannot tell a consistent story about what data they had, what data they have, where they got it, who they gave it to. Its a mess. Provenance is a word you should look up. You do not know that the data CRU uses is
essentially similar to the data used by GISS or NOAA. What you have
is their WORD. ” we get most of our data from GHCN” Well, do they?
how would you check that? you would ask them for their copy of the data
and then you would go to GHCN and get the data yourself. then you would
compare the two. Yup, same data. Or Nope, they borked it up.
Now, GISS says the same thing. They say: we get our data from GHCN.
and they name the file. GISS also give me the code. So I can do the following
I can download the GHCN data and I can look at the nasa code and actualy se that they download the RIGHT DATA. and I can check that their code does not BORK UP THE INPUT. Now why is this important. This is important
because IN THE PAST giss DID BORK UP THE INPUT. thats’ hansens y2K problem. doh. you must be new here.
So basically we do not KNOW that cru use essentially the same data.
you’ve READ THAT, but you have not verified that. and you cant verify that without access to the code and data. But lets stipulate that they use “essentially” the same data. There remain two questions:
1. How do they process that data.
2. Is the data they process raw data or has it been adjusted.
#1. The reason why I request code is because all three agencies ( CRU,GISS,NOAA) process the data differently. From “creating” reference stations by combining scribal versions, to handling the artic differently, to average grids that span both ocean and land differently.. lots of differences.
Do they matter? I dunno, Phil Jones in the mails is highly critical of GISS.
I dunno the IPCC uses CRU. I dunno all the paleo work uses CRU. It would seem logical that these differences either matter or they dont. If they dont matter then what is the point of having three agencies process the same data to come up with three slightly different answers? Ahhh the false appearence of independent lines of evidence. Finally, GISS treats UHI differently than CRU. CRU dont even adjust for it. So if you compare the gridded temp for the US from CRU with that from GISS the difference is on the order of .5C
#2. Is GHCN raw? what version does each agency use?
you see you have to start at the top of the chain. GISS,CRU,NOAA
all point at the GHCN database (plus extra bits) So we start by actually seeing if they got the data they claim to have gotten.They we look at how they processed it. THEN we take the next step down the rabbit hole
and look at the GHCN data. What do we see? not raw data, but processed data. That means we have more auditing to do all the way back to the paper forms.
And yes I am quite aware that Hadcru is cooler. Do you know why?
The problem is this. The IPCC wants to use Hadcru. Their choice not mine.
That line of evidence needs to be defended. Gimme the data and code.
If you would rather everyone use GISS, fine. I got a whole different set of questions there. Let me put it simply for you.
1. Its is warming.
2. All three indices claim to use essentially the same data
3. All three process that data differently.
4. All three have roughly the same answer.
Unfortunately, none of those “facts” has any logical bearing whatsoever
on the question that I am asking. What is the best estimate of the warming seen in the thermometer record? Is it .6C warmer? .65C? .57C? and
what is our confidence in that.
You continue:
“I’m all for complete open-ness of data and methods, and maybe CRU really SHOULD have been more open with all theirs, and maybe they really DO need to reform their data policies. But to jump to conspiracy theories and presumptions about who meant what in email messages over the last decade, as “proof” of this or that intent, is simply foolish.”
Why the weasel words? Look in 2007 I did an analysis of US temperatures
using USHCN data. The exact Same dataset used by NASA. I selected a different sample of stations than Hansen did. Guess what? I showed a cooling trend. I actually did. It was easy. Unfortunately I lost the computer it was on. So, should you believe me? If they will not share the data and the code, ITS NOT SCIENCE. its hearsay. If two other guys tell me the same story sort of kind of, ITS STILL NOT SCIENCE.
In any case After reading the mails I would suggest that you write Mann and tell him that its silly to believe in conspiracies.
Mr Gazelle:
It so happens, fortitiously, that Nature has come out with a paper that addresses CO2 sensitivity of the climate.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7280/pdf/nature08769.pdf (behind pay wall, but readers can view the abstract).
The citation is:
Frank et al. Ensemble reconstruction constraints on the global carbon cycle sensitivity to climate. Nature 463, 527-530 (28 January 2010)
The first sentence in the first paragraph in this paper is:
“Approximately 40% of the uncertainty related to projected warming of the twenty-first century stems from the unknown behaviour of the carbon cycle, which is an important component of the global climate system.”
Does this mean that there are research groups which believe there are these ‘uncertainties’? If so, how many such scientists are there, and are they influential, currently, in climate science?
Regards
Anand
Here’s what I think you have in mind:
Mosha please let go of Mr Gazelle now, he is tapping the canvass (feverishly).