UPDATE: UEA/CRU has responded!
http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/CRUstatements/guardianstatement
Looks like a homogenized data comparison. h/t to WUWT reader “splice”
==============================
It looks like Doug Keenan has been right all along. He must feel vindicated tonight. See more about Doug’s long road here in an earlier WUWT report.
Excerpts from the Independent and the Guardian
Climategate scientist ‘hid flaws in data’, say sceptics
Professor in leaked email scandal tried to hide fact that numbers he used were wrong
The “climategate” controversy intensified last night when the senior British scientist at its centre, Professor Phil Jones, faced fresh accusations that he attempted to withhold data that could cast doubt on evidence for rising world temperatures.
…
But the new allegations go beyond refusing FOI requests and concern data that Professor Jones and other scientists have used to support a record of recent world temperatures that shows an upward trend.
Climate sceptics have suggested that some of the higher readings may be due not to a warmer atmosphere, but to the so-called “urban heat island effect”, where cities become reservoirs of heat and are warmer than the surrounding countryside, especially during the night hours.
Professor Jones and a colleague, Professor Wei-Chyung Wang of the State University of New York at Albany suggested in an influential 1990 paper in the journal Nature that the urban heat island effect was minimal – and cited as supporting evidence a long series of temperature measurements from Chinese weather stations, half in the countryside and half in cities, supplied by Professor Wei-Chyung. The Nature paper was used as evidence in the most recent report of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
However, it has been reported that when climate sceptics asked for the precise locations of the 84 stations, Professor Jones at first declined to release the details. And when eventually he did release them, it was found that for the ones supposed to be in the countryside, there was no location given.
Climate sceptics have demanded the two professors now withdraw their heat island paper. Professor Wei-Chyung was investigated by his university, but exonerated, but the emails indicate there was also concern among Professor Jones’ s colleagues at UEA, including from Dr Tom Wigley, his predecessor as head of the CRU, about the Chinese weather station data and Professor Jones’s continuing reliance on it.
From The Guardian:
Leaked climate change emails scientist ‘hid’ data flaws
Exclusive: Key study by East Anglia professor Phil Jones was based on suspect figures
By Fred Pearce
Phil Jones, the beleaguered British climate scientist at the centre of the leaked emails controversy, is facing fresh claims that he sought to hide problems in key temperature data on which some of his work was based.
A Guardian investigation of thousands of emails and documents apparently hacked from the University of East Anglia’s climatic research unit has found evidence that a series of measurements from Chinese weather stations were seriously flawed and that documents relating to them could not be produced.
Jones and a collaborator have been accused by a climate change sceptic and researcher of scientific fraud for attempting to suppress data that could cast doubt on a key 1990 study on the effect of cities on warming – a hotly contested issue.
Today the Guardian reveals how Jones withheld the information requested under freedom of information laws. Subsequently a senior colleague told him he feared that Jones’s collaborator, Wei-Chyung Wang of the University at Albany, had “screwed up”.
…
The apparent attempts to cover up problems with temperature data from the Chinese weather stations provide the first link between the email scandal and the UN’s embattled climate science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as a paper based on the measurements was used to bolster IPCC statements about rapid global warming in recent decades.
Wang was cleared of scientific fraud by his university, but new information brought to light today indicates at least one senior colleague had serious concerns about the affair.
It also emerges that documents which Wang claimed would exonerate him and Jones did not exist.
The revelations come at a torrid time for climate science, with the IPPC suffering heavy criticism for its use of information that had not been rigorously checked – in particular a false claim that all Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035 – and UEA having been criticised last week by the deputy information commissioner for refusing valid requests for data under the Freedom of Information Act.
The Guardian has learned that of 105 freedom of information requests to the university concerning the climatic research unit (CRU), which Jones headed up to the end of December, only 10 had been released in full.
The temperature data from the Chinese weather stations measured the warming there over the past half century and appeared in a 1990 paper in the prestigious journal Nature, which was cited by the IPCC’s latest report in 2007.
Climate change sceptics asked the UEA, via FOI requests, for location data for the 84 weather stations in eastern China, half of which were urban and half rural.
The history of where the weather stations were sited was crucial to Jones and Wang’s 1990 study, as it concluded the rising temperatures recorded in China were the result of global climate changes rather the warming effects of expanding cities.
The IPCC’s 2007 report used the study to justify the claim that “any urban-related trend” in global temperatures was small. Jones was one of two “coordinating lead authors” for the relevant chapter.
The leaked emails from the CRU reveal that the former director of the unit, Tom Wigley, harboured grave doubts about the cover-up of the shortcomings in Jones and Wang’s work. Wigley was in charge of CRU when the original paper was published. “Were you taking W-CW [Wang] on trust?” he asked Jones. He continued: “Why, why, why did you and W-CW not simply say this right at the start?”
Read the complete report at the Guardian here
See also this story from the Guardian:
• How the location of weather stations in China undermines data
As I’ve been saying for a long time, the dodgy surface data is the key and UHI is a real issue. The Menne et al 2010 preemptive strike against my surfacestations work (using my own early data they purloined) shows just how desperate NCDC’s Tom Karl is becoming.
What I find most interesting though is that Phil Jones appeared to have a crisis of conscience, because in 2007 he authored a paper that appeared in JGR without much notice (but known now thanks to Warwick Hughes).
The paper is titled: Urbanization effects in large-scale temperature records, with an emphasis on China
In it, Jones identifies an urban warming signal in China of 0.1 degrees C per decade. Or, if you prefer, 1 degree C per century. Not negligible by any means. Here is the abstract:
Global surface temperature trends, based on land and marine data, show warming of about 0.8°C over the last 100 years. This rate of warming is sometimes questioned because of the existence of well-known Urban Heat Islands (UHIs). We show examples of the UHIs at London and Vienna, where city center sites are warmer than surrounding rural locations. Both of these UHIs however do not contribute to warming trends over the 20th century because the influences of the cities on surface temperatures have not changed over this time. In the main part of the paper, for China, we compare a new homogenized station data set with gridded temperature products and attempt to assess possible urban influences using sea surface temperature (SST) data sets for the area east of the Chinese mainland. We show that all the land-based data sets for China agree exceptionally well and that their residual warming compared to the SST series since 1951 is relatively small compared to the large-scale warming. Urban-related warming over China is shown to be about 0.1°C decade−1 over the period 1951–2004, with true climatic warming accounting for 0.81°C over this period.
Even though Jones tries to minimize the UHI effect elsewhere, saying the UHI trends don’t contribute to warming in London and Vienna, what is notable about the paper is that Jones has been minimizing the UHI issues for years and now does an about face on China.
It was almost as if Jones was trying to appease his own conscience by publishing a paper that supported a UHI effect in China.
But then we see in his comments about my praise of the paper and WUWT commenters as a “load of plonkers”
http://eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=965&filename=1237474374.txt
From: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Gavin Schmidt <gschmidt@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, “Michael E. Mann” <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: FYI
Date: Thu Mar 19 10:52:54 2009
Gavin, Mike,
See the link below! Don’t alert anyone up to this for a while. See if they figure it out for themselves.
I’ve sent this to the Chief Exec of the RMS, who said he was considering changing data policy with the RMS journals. He’s away till next week. I just wanted him to see what a load of plonkers he’s dealing with! I’m hoping someone will pick this up and put it somewhere more prominently.
The responses are even worse than you get on CA. I’ve written up the London paper for the RMS journal Weather, but having trouble with their new editor. He’s coming up with the same naive comments that these responders are. He can’t understand
that London has a UHI of X, but that X has got no bigger since 1900.
I’m away all next week.
Cheers
Phil
“Phil Jones, the director of the Hadley Climate Center in the UK.”
—
Thomas C. Peterson, Ph.D.
NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center
151 Patton Avenue
Asheville, NC 28801
Voice: +1-828-271-4287
Fax: +1-828-271-4876
Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090
School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784
University of East Anglia
Norwich Email p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
NR4 7TJ
UK
Too funny. “X” got no bigger since 1900.
We’ll see when this all gets sorted out who is a “load of plonkers” and who isn’t.
Notice how Phil Jones uses two different time bases?
0.1C/decade for UHI compared to 0.81C for the period for GW? The period being 55 years.
Using the same time base, UHI becomes 0.55C compared to 0.81C.
He wrote it specifically that way to minimize UHI, but how can you minimize 0.55C out of 0.81C?
So when will summons be issued to those involved in this conspiracy? The evidence is now overwhelming.
Um, Dr. Jones, in many other parts of the world, X has gotten much larger. It’s a largely a function of the growth of runways and increasing economic development in areas surrounding airports. London may have stopped growing but it’s hardly representative of the rest of the planet. This plonker would like to know what kind of crack you are smoking.
Now let me take this in: This is Fred Pearce (of New Scientist anti-deniers fame) taking a journalistic lead with an investigative piece in the Guardian that drawing into question the station data that is the basis of the very first question of the whole dispute, vis: Is the world really warming? And in doing so he is vindicating what the vilified sceptics were saying all along. Wow, folks, have I got that right?
REPLY: Yes that’s right, and you know what else is amazing? The Guardian authors emailed me this afternoon to make sure I knew about this story. I’ve never been given a tip from the Guardian staff before, evar. – Anthony
When you’ve lost the Gruadian…
Quite a feeding frenzy going on in the UK press. It looks like they are doing nothing more than trolling old CA and WUWT posts (and Dr. North’s EU Referendum), adding a few on-the-record quotes, and calling it the latest blockbuster story. I guess we should be glad that this story has finally gotten legs, but the blatant cribbing without attribution is annoying. Where were they the last three years?
With all the UK press going after this (from the Times to the Guardian), Jones must be close to being toast.
And, if this story is good enough for The Guardian, I wonder if the US press will feel safe enough to start reporting on this.
I have to make the point that this is the same pattern with Briffa in hide the decline.
After the initial offense, a contradictory remark/paper buys credibility. I’ve remarked many times about how briffa will put absolutely paper killing comments in the middle of a paper followed by extraordinary conclusions.
Plausible deniability.
Ah yes … the building with the WSR-98D on top …
.
.
Just reading the “Crutape Letters”-nothing surprises me with this crowd.When oh, When is the US Media ever waken to this farce…
I was in China for a month last year, teaching in Hangzhou.
The area I was in was green fields 5 years ago; now it has 14 universities, all concrete and steel.
The Mother of all Urban Heat Islands.
“It was almost as if Jones was trying to appease his own conscience…”
It was CYA
Great news!
As the climate scandal unfolds, a lot more filth may be revealed.
Scientists have become instruments of propaganda for those who control grant funds.
The very foundations of astronomy, astrophysics, climatology, cosmology, nuclear, particle and solar science have been weakened by ~50 years of deceit and data manipulation.
What a sad state of affairs for science!
What a sad state of affairs for world government!
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Emeritus Professor of
Nuclear & Space Science
Former NASA PI for Apollo
[snip – a bit OTT]
I currently live in Shanghai and the change here, over the last few decades, is enormous. The old houses have been pulled down and replaced by huge apartment blocks. These towers have an air conditioner or 3 for each apartment, where the old houses had very little heating. Everyone of those condensers is pumping out heat. I would sure love to see the records for Shanghai and find the location of the measurements are taken.
Ladies & Gentlemen of the Jury of Independent Thinkers, do you find the accused Dr Jones guilty of crimes against the integrity of Science?
Well commenters? What is your verdict?
If guilty should leniency be applied to his sentence or extra harshness?
Has he shown any remorse? Has he given apologies?
Has he justified himself in any sincere terms (other than hubris)?
John
Hmmm, what does the Guardian have up its sleeve? Why are they so, so, so journalistic all of a sudden? The um, skeptic in me is well, skeptical.
This feels like a day for the history books (at least for our friends across the big pond in the U.K.):
That bastion of U.K. AGW political-correctness the GUARDIAN has now joined the Telegraph, Times, and Independent in a Fleet Street chorus; and is actually publishing real news about ClimateGate and its progeny ?!?!
Who would’a thunk it. . . .
Can we say ”tipping point” ??…
Now: What I wanna know is:
Why is the U.S. MSM still largely missing in action (other than FoxNews, of course) ?? Have they no shame ??….
I was surprised how long it has taken for Doug Keenan case to be picked up by analysts of the East Anglia data trove. His story ranks right up there with the “hide the decline” and the Nature trick. The Crutape letters clearly showed the fix was in against him, and without the emails he still would be without justice. Mr. Keenan is a perfect example of how corrupt Universities have become. He had legitimate concerns about the nature of research, but because he was the quintessential outsider he was stiff-armed and told to get lost.
When the Michael Mann results are presented by Penn State, remember his case.
The Guardian!!! Wow. If the numpties at The Guardian are finally turning there is hope for everyone.
Mr Moonbat! Any response?
Even the Guardian is covering this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/01/leaked-emails-climate-jones-chinese
You know the line: One bad paper. A few bad scientists. Nothing to see here. It will get sorted and all will be well with the science.
Holy heat sink, batman…. er, uh, Anthony! You were just commenting a day or two ago about how these stories suddenly get their legs. Could it really be happening? The last few weeks have been one revelation after another.
I’ve written up the London paper for the RMS journal Weather, but having trouble with their new editor. He’s coming up with the same naive comments that these responders are.
Earth to Phil Jones……..earth to Phil Jones.
Climategate
Pachaurigate
TERIgate
Disastergate
Glaciergate
Amazongate
Bootgate
and now … Chinagate.
Perhaps we’re reaching a tipping point, where the lamestream media will suddenly notice the feeding frenzy from Fleet Street and will want to join in on the fun, reporting on Climategate and all the ensuing mini-gate spin-offs. NBC’s green peacock may become endangered. Perhaps CBS will try to redeem itself and do an in-depth “follow the money” investigation on all the billions of dollars in grants that have given us this huge gated science community. Should be good for at least an hour of science shame.
BernieL (20:30:17) :
My thoughts exactly, two investigative pieces in the Guardian by Fred Pearce ! good on him. I see better reporting coming out of the UK than here in Australia and in the US. The reporting tone seems to suggest that this issue has legs and has a long way to travel. I can imagine lengthy editorial meetings at New Scientist deciding on how to to save face over this.
Andy Scrase (20:41:49) :
I was in China for a month last year, teaching in Hangzhou.
The area I was in was green fields 5 years ago; now it has 14 universities, all concrete and steel.
This is fantastic progress! And I agree, UHI!
China is growing so aggressively that it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that it will be the most powerful Nation very soon. This aggressive growth by China should be a smelling salts for America!
I can hear in the background REM singing the post climategate redo of their ’80s old hit song- “Its the end of their world as they knew it. . . ”
John
REPLY: Yes that’s right, and you know what else is amazing? The Guardian authors emailed me this afternoon to make sure I knew about this story. I’ve never been given a tip from the Guardian staff before, evar. – Anthony
What in the!
You think they wanted to see it as a post here?
What is going on??
John Whitman (20:54:17): Ladies & Gentlemen of the Jury of Independent Thinkers, do you find the accused Dr Jones guilty of crimes against the integrity of Science?
The crime is fraud, and Jones is an accomplice, not the ringleader. Follow the ill-gotten gains.
This is so shameful.
Almost two months and ten days after the fateful weekend when members of the general public read Tom Wigley’s plaintive cry of “Why, why why” (1241415427.txt), we have a newspaper in the country of origin of this enormous scandal, writing furtively about it. And attempting to take credit for as a fresh ‘investigation’.
“…is facing fresh claims that he sought to hide problems in key temperature data …”
“A Guardian investigation of thousands of emails and documents…”
“Today the Guardian reveals how Jones withheld the information…”
Anthony,
That now makes you the MSM, at least in the UK.
I think that mean congratulations.
John
REPLY: I’m the MSM? eeeeewwww!
Love the way the newspapers are trying to claim as a “scoop” widley known information that they could have printed months or in some cases years ago.
I wonder if the Guardian’s next “scoop” will be that the earth is round or that man walked on the moon.
I’m no expert on these things, but when I was reviewing the “Wang Affair” Box in the just released version of the ClimateGate timeline (http://joannenova.com.au/2010/01/finally-the-new-revised-and-edited-climategate-timeline/)
I was confused about an e-mail by Jones I found from 18.Jul.2007
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=809&filename=1184779319.txt
Jones talks about his 1986 paper to Geoff Jenkins and says he removes stations with UHI: “David [Parker] is essentially right. In 1986 we rejected [for UHI] 38 (if my memory from 1986) is correct!”
But then in his 1990 paper he takes the position with Wang that UHI is not a factor in temperatures.
How could he conclude this in a 1990 paper if based on the above e-mail he says he removes stations which have UHI. On the one hand in 1986 he knows UHI affects the temperature but on the other hand in 1990 he concludes its a non-issue.
Since I’m hardly an expert on these matters and in no position to make a judgment on this since it may have a stupidly simple explanation.
Attention, SUNY Albany!
Your window of opportunity to unilaterally fix this situation is rapidly closing.
Save the reputation of the university now and come clean before it’s too late.
Think about it. What if Penn State decides to take disciplinary action against Mann? Then, Penn State seems like a respectable university and SUNY Albany is left out in the cold.
This is how things will be remembered:
Penn State – takes action against scientific fraud being perpetrated
SUNY Albany – helps cover up scientific fraud being perpetrated
Oops clicked send without finishing the last sentence properly. It should read:
Since I’m hardly an expert on these matters and in no position to make a judgment on this since it may have a stupidly simple explanation, I didn’t mention this on the timeline but I am really curious about this seemingly contradictory position by Jones.
Douglas DC (20:39:40) :
Just reading the “Crutape Letters”-nothing surprises me with this crowd.When oh, When is the US Media ever waken to this farce…
Who knows? MSNBC is not banging down the door.
So..
Does this mean I should stop looking into the links between Carbon Trading and the Scott Trust and its principal interest holders?
I’m sort of done with: Reed Elsevier, Risk Management Solutions, Halcrow Consulting, RAND Corporation, the CRU and the BBC.
So who should be next?
That email is a proof that Gavin Schmidt is part of the manipulation and should as well be investigated… but so far he seems to enjoy a sort of immunity… why?
Just to clarify that list:
They all have links to Carbon Trading and they all either provided fraudulent input to, or published fraudulent output from the IPCC, and are not listed as being direct funders of the CRU. The direct funders are easy.
I was very interested in all the China stuff when I read the examination of the CRU emails by a statistician (which now seems to have vanished online). Phil Jones seemed very anxious to go after those who had questioned the data – and viciously so – rather than make any serious enquiry of Wang.
Leon – don’t forget Dr Landsea and ‘hurricane-gate’ even though it’s such old news:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/18/pachauri-used-corporate-teri-email-account-to-conduct-official-ipcc-business/
As for London, having lived there for about 25 years (btwn 1968 and 1996) I can only say that everyone knows London is always a good deal warmer than anywhere else in Britian; that if leaving London in winter, you take your woolies and fur boots (which you don’t need much in town) and that snow hardly ever settles, except perhaps on Hampstead Heath. London is huge, and full of people and traffic, and overheated buildings where the lights burn all night. Go figure
Maybe we need to be asking different questions in the light of ALL these revelations:
Many parts of the AR4 are being debunked, but some scientists are now claiming this doesn’t “materially” change anything. I wonder if one were to take the AR4 document and color code or line out the offending parts including conclusions drawn from proven false or unsubtanciated – non peer reviewed material, how much of the report would be “materially” left? Any percentage greater than say 10% would prove to be a further PR embarrassment to the IPCC.
How many errors, material and otherwise, does it usually take for a “scientific paper” to be rejected by the peer review process? Would AR4 as it stands now be rejected by a peer review based on what has been found so far? Shouldn’t AR4 be subject to the same standards as any paper it purports to be based upon since it represents itself to be a compendium of studies like the one claiming falsely some years back there was a consensus of studies supporting AGW, i.e. The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change (Oreskes 2004)? http://www.skepticalscience.com/naomi-oreskes-consensus-on-global-warming.htm
The above process would provide a bullseye on the remaining material for scientists to “subject” to scrutiny to verify it’s validity. I’m not saying every part of AR4 is false but you know how people like to conflate or engage in false correlations.
While it is very surprising to see the Guardian publish anything against the church of AGW, the fact that Fred “Glaciergate” Pearce is the author of “Leaked climate change emails scientist ‘hid’ data flaws” is truly shocking. Fred Pearce has been a true AGW believer and has written a piece entitled “How the ‘climategate’ scandal is bogus and based on climate sceptics’ lies” also on 1/02/10. What’s up with that? Has Fred snapped?
OT and I don’t have a link, but in an earlier post I mentioned two teenagers were charge with starting bush fires in Victoria, Australia in 2009 The details are; Two teenagers, 14 and 15, started the bush fire in Bendigo, Victoria, killing 1 person and destroying 65 houses. 135 counts of vandalism/arson have been recorded.
And I recall back then, the fires were more evidence of AGW.
Et tu, Guardianus?
But can anyone provide the list of the relevant stations, so I might have some idea what those stations are and are they actually affected by UHI.
BTW, we will soon run out of the gates, so we might need to think of tax using it or use less of it. 😛
Sam (21:49:16) :
You’re right — forgot about hurricangate — so here’s another -gate added to their gated community:
Climategate
Pachaurigate
TERIgate
Hurricanegate
Disastergate
Glaciergate
Amazongate
NGOgate
Bootgate
Chinagate
The IPCC gated community has so many gates it’s like swiss cheese — it’s leaking all over the place. And I’ve added NGOgate to cover the likes of WWF, Greenpeace, & NWF and their “peer-reviewed” fluff pieces used to inflate the IPCC reports references.
Now we know the lamestream media’s out to lunch on this in the U.S., but where are the late night comics? They chould have a field day with this one, especially with all those billions in grant (tax) monies involved.
I have now read 2 versions of the Fred Pierce Guardian story. In the more recent 2nd version, he states that none of the irregularities around the 1990 paper ‘undermine the case that humans are causing climate change.’ In a version online a couple hours ago, he went on at greater length saying in spite of all of this, there is no doubt that global warming still exists, everyone agrees about that, etc. So it seems in both cases, he’s saying none of the abuse matters anyway. The Guardian makes itself look good for a minute, then takes it all back.
Oliver K. Manuel (20:48:56) :
All the billions wasted on Climate Capers, and now NASA Space gets it’s Moon & Mars missions scuttled. Why should manned space missions have to pay for what others squandered?
i really do hope Jones et al get the hard cover book thrown at them.
” Pete (20:50:39) :
[snip – a bit OTT]”
Fair enough A. but I could not get the thought out of my head 😉
I have to give you your due every once in a while, Anthony, so you can keep up the good work and not get discouraged by the dufuses in the alarmist camp. Great work uncovering that Jones paper (along with the guy who gave you the tip). Once again, Jones’s finagling has been uncovered and will hopefully have serious consequences for him.
Congrats!!!! It is a vindication. Your work wasn’t only right, it was very useful. In my estimation, yours and CA’s contribution to the well being of the planet(along with many others) is immeasurable. I know I won’t wake up tomorrow seeing retractions in all, or any, of MSM, but, it won’t go away if we keep up the fight!!! Thank you.
Jones says of London and Vienna:
>>>Both of these UHIs however do not contribute to warming
>>>trends over the 20th century because the influences of the
>>>cities on surface temperatures have not changed over this time.
How so?
Firstly, London has grown considerably in the last century. The population has increased, from about 5m in 1900 to about 7m in 1990.
http://data.london.gov.uk/datastore/package/historic-census-population
Secondly, the density has increased dramatically, as this graphic shows. More people per square meter, more heat.
http://spatialanalysis.co.uk/2010/01/12/london-population-density-1801-2001/
Thirdly, the amount of energy each person used has probably doubled or trebled. The amount of energy we feed into London, be that oil, gas or electricity, must have a bearing on the resultant temperature. (UHI temperature increase is not simply the result of buildings capturing incident light better than fields and being drier).
.
How many strikes do these boys get?
BTW “Our Elected Elite” want to Back Door the “CO2 Cap And Tax” through the up coming”Energy Bill”.
No increased UHI in London since 1900? Hmmm … I suppose it depends on what you define as “London”.
What is generally thought of as the centre of the city (roughly Aldgate in the east, Kensington in the west, Clerkenwell in the north and the river to the south) was pretty densely built on by 1900 but even there the road network is now far more extensive.
Going east, west, north or south of the centre by even a mile or two, the amount of development since 1900 is very substantial.
Of perhaps more importance is that population in the centre has increased enormously, particularly through the conversion of single-occupancy houses into flats. My road consists of about 100 five-storey houses built in around 1880. Until the 1970s it was rare for any of them to be other than single houses. Now very few remain as single dwellings, the vast majority have been split into at least three flats with a fair number now comprising five flats, one per floor.
If and insofar as UHI is affected not just by buildings and road surfaces but also by population it is not credible to suggest there has been no change since 1900. If and insofar as it is affected by motor vehicles, any such suggestion is simply absurd.
Leon Brozyna (22:20:31) :
Sam (21:49:16) :
Climategate
Pachaurigate
TERIgate
Hurricanegate
Disastergate
Glaciergate
Amazongate
NGOgate
Bootgate
Chinagate
What about MaldiveGate?
http://www.climatechangefacts.info/ClimateChangeDocuments/NilsAxelMornerinterview.pdf
This appears to be fraud.
Ralph, “Thirdly, the amount of energy each person used has probably doubled or trebled.” Not wishing to be a wet blanket, but……you just made their argument. More people, more people’s desire for the niceties as the ages progress(air conditioning and the like). More people= more requirement for energy. Energy = CO2 emissions. Weird how things just never stay static. OMG, it is all our fault!!!!!(sarc off)
REPLY: Yes that’s right, and you know what else is amazing? The Guardian authors emailed me this afternoon to make sure I knew about this story. I’ve never been given a tip from the Guardian staff before, evar. – Anthony
It’s the power of your massive reach. With millions of visitors every month and all of the MSM monitoring and/or getting WUWT sent to them you’re now one of their major sources and distributors.
As the rest of the establishment catches up you’ll grow in relevency to a point where some guy named Joe blows all of his gasgets. Enjoy.
Poor Fred….
They are, apparently, very slow readers over at the Guardian. First they have to pretend the climategate emails were fake, then stolen, then they had to read them very, very slowly, to find out what we’ve all know since before Christmas. If they keep reading they will be even more shocked and they will have to write even more articles damning the AGW clique and its works.
Should be fun. I have beer, I have popcorn…
Wow. Just wow.
Honestly, how much more of this is needed to justify the commencement of legal proceedings, both civil and criminal?
Struck dumb I am…. Th’ Guardian is doing investigative reporting!
Well I commend them for that. Better late than never I ‘spose.
Step by step its all happening and picking up pace. The further this goes the harder it will be to retract.
Suggestion:
I propose that WUWT redesigns its logo with this embedded phrase::
Caveat Redemptor !
In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.
-Galileo Galilei, physicist and astronomer
Well, the Guardian really Dampened Down the Title. It was originally:
“Leaked climate change emails scientist ‘hid’ data flaws”
Now it has been changed to read:
“Strange case of moving weather posts and a scientist under siege”
Changing the title really lowers the impact on the reader.
Looks like some powers got to him.
Amazing, truly amazing. I had to specifically point out on my article that the likes of The Guardian and The Independent covering this is a turning point for sure.
The US MSM will sniff this and follow. The real enabler will be Reuters, AFP, etc covering it then.
What a plonker!
The tide is not turning. It has turned.
Guess who will be first against the wall when the revolution comes….
>>James Sexton (22:50:46) :
>>Ralph, “Thirdly, the amount of energy each person used has
>>probably doubled or trebled.” Not wishing to be a wet blanket,
>>but……you just made their argument.
I know there was a degree of irony in your post, but the fact remains that they are measuring the wrong thing.
More energy usage = more heat (UHI heat). No need for any CO2 intermediary at all.
But the heat we produce is still miniscule to what the Sun puts out. (Anyone done a calc here?).
But, as anecdotal evidence – A power station will create a cu-nim cloud, just (UK power stations with cooling towers – unlike many USA power stations). But a nice summers day will produce thousands and thousands of cu-nims.
.
rbateman (22:23:20) :
Oliver K. Manuel (20:48:56) :
All the billions wasted on Climate Capers, and now NASA Space gets it’s Moon & Mars missions scuttled. Why should manned space missions have to pay for what others squandered?
i really do hope Jones et al get the hard cover book thrown at them.
[snip a bit OTT]
This blatant and malevolent fraud may set real science back by 100 years.
.
Maybe old news, but I was a bit surprised to see this in Make Magazine… An article about snow by Forrest Mimms mentions the surfacestations project and how the dwindling number of thermometers have a warming bias.
http://www.make-digital.com/make/vol21/?pg=28
Don’t get too excited, Peace is still in denial:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/01/leaked-emails-climate-jones-chinese
“The revelations on the inadequacies of the 1990 paper do not undermine the case that humans are causing climate change, and other studies have produced similar findings. But they do call into question the probity of some climate change science.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/01/dispute-weather-fraud
“It is important to keep this in perspective, however. This dramatic revision of the estimated impact of urbanisation on temperatures in China does not change the global picture of temperature trends. There is plenty of evidence of global warming, not least from oceans far from urban influences. A review of recent studies published online in December by David Parker of the Met Office concludes that, even allowing for Jones’s new data, “global near-surface temperature trends have not been greatly affected by urban warming trends”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/01/climate-emails-sceptics
“How the ‘climategate’ scandal is bogus and based on climate sceptics’ lies
Claims based on email soundbites are demonstrably false – there is manifestly no evidence of clandestine data manipulation”
Look, just on the basis of common sense, do you think London and Vienna have more people now than they did a century ago?
More stoves, refrigerators, air conditioners, cars, sewage treatment plants, etc, etc,….all the things that use power and generate heat.
From first principles alone Jones et al should have known they were wrong.
It really is significant that the Guardian have covered this. The Independent, (the Guardian’s pro-warmest bedfellow) also gone with the story – http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/climategate-scientist-hid-flaws-in-data-say-sceptics-1886487.html
The Independent has campaigned for years with some extemely silly alarmist AGW headlines. And only yesterday headlined with an interview with this – http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/climate-emails-hacked-by-spies-1885147.html
They quickly edited the most ludicrous assertions, but got such a slagging for it in the comments that today they have permitted Dominic Lawson to attack their own paper: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/dominic-lawson/dominic-lawson-so-all-these-climate-revelations-were-a-dastardly-foreign-plot-1886149.html
Interesting times. The UK press are far from perfect but when they small blood they can be voracious. I have been working on Channel 4 News who I think are also beginning to see the light – they started asking questions about glaciergate and also gave Ed Miliband a fairly hard time in an interview at the weekend – http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/science_technology/climate+change+controversy+warning/3521937 Its worth watching the interview with Miliband to see the shock on his face when Krishnan asks him a difficult question on the climate issue. For those that can’t see the video, Miliband did not agree that Pachauri should go, but did agree that all the CRU climate data should be released for independent scutiny.
btw – the local data for January’s just in, down 2.3C on the long term average. (And December was 3 or 4C colder than the lta). See http://homepages.tesco.net/barry.gratton1/ It snowed again in the night, and it looks like it will stay cold for at least the first week of February.
Wow! The Gaurdian and The Independent break the China news and look at that headline! – “How the location of weather stations in China undermines data” .
Many of you have you have suggested the tide has turned within the media.
My radio wakes me here in the UK.
I listen to “The Today Programme” on the BBC.
I could not believe my ears.
The BBC, yes the BBC, covered the story on at least three occassions this morning.
The tide has turned.
Typically late and inaccurate from both papers but still amazing given they are both arch warmmongers and the Guardian is more or less state funded by advertising. It will probably turn out to have been Thatcher’s fault for making the universities compete for research funds.
Should be celebrated in song, how about?
‘On the road to Mann delay, where the flying-fishes play
An’ the dawn comes up like thunder outer China ‘crost the Bay.’
The first line has more resonance over here with our National Treasure Michael Fish the weather forecaster.
I wonder will the Fairfax press namely The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age follow the Guardian’s lead and report to their readers this latest news. The ABC should also report this but don’t hold your breath.
It is very surprising to find that the Guardian is reporting on this it is truly shocking, but very welcome.
A “plonker” is the opposite of a “faker”
Leon Brozyna (21:10:16) :
Climategate
Pachaurigate
TERIgate
Disastergate
Glaciergate
Amazongate
Bootgate
and now … Chinagate.
The new collective is Claim-itgate!
ie someone just has to claim it and they stick it in the IPCC report.
The warm is turning.
I agree this is old news. I said so in Tips & Notes yesterday when the first alert & link on this Guardian-item was posted. But let them take the credit. If they credited the story to WUWT, there’d be lots of Guardian-reader warmists commenting there that WUWT has no credibility. At least they gave Anthony a heads-up, which I interpret as an awkward attempt to sooth him for their behavior. I hope this site adopts a policy of “let the credit go.”
In the big picture, the most underplayed aspect of this affair (to me) is the ease with which the CRU managed to effect “regulatory capture” of their FOI officer. This has disturbing implications far and wide. I urge the UK press to do a thumb-sucker series on the topic in general. It would be a statesmanlike thing to do.
Richard North says that Fred Pearce has not been happy with his treatment by Pachauri and Hasnain recently.
That may explain the reason for the two articles that did not tow the ‘agreed’ line.
It’s a rip tide, anyway.
This is amazing! When even the Guardian starts writing articles like this, the dam really is leaking. Naturally they’re very careful to say that AGW is still certain, concrete, settled and undeniable, yet the whole article really denies this. Cognitive dissonance indeed.
I’ve blogged about this at http://sunriseconsulting.blogspot.com/2010/02/climategate-something-very-strange-is.html, naturally linking to this excellent post.
I was reminded of Comical Ali speaking during the Iraq invasion: while the bombs were going off behind him he continued to state that there was “nothing to see here”. That seems to be the situation now.
Is Albany still a University?
Not being able to see the fraud in Wang’s paper classifies Albany more or less as High School.
But seriously: it is amazing how short sighted Albany behaves when it comes to differentiate between short term and long term damage. And Penn State?
Jones and Wang presented a fraudulent paper… but the Earth is still warming, the rest of the science is still ok
Translated: Investors, this is your warning. Get the **** out of carbon trading. Nobody believes you any more. But we’re giving you time to cover your *****.
I can’t understand what the email from Jones ‘that London has a UHI of X, but that X has got no bigger since 1900.’ is about. Surely X has increased very considerably as can be seen from this very global warming centric report from ‘Red’ Ken Livingstone’s department when he was Mayor of London.
http://www.london.gov.uk/mayor/environment/climate-change/docs/UHI_summary_report.pdf
[snip]
London’s UHI was first ‘discovered’ at the turn of the 19th century by Luke Howard, who is widely known as the man who named the types of clouds. Over the course of 9 years he noted an UHI effect of approximately 2oC (warming) during the night and -0.2oC (cooling) during the day. By the middle of the 1960’s an average difference of 4-6oC in nocturnal temperature between the central city of London and its surroundings was evident. More recently urban climatologists have noted extreme UHI intensities in excess of 7oC. For example during the August 2003 heat wave, the UHI intensity reached 9oC on occasions.
[cont]
Sooo, looks like X is getting bigger to me. I doubt that there are many places in the UK that are completely free of modern influence because we’re so heavily built upon. That may explain why the UK stations referenced on the GISS station data site
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/
are such an odd mix. There are many stations listed as going back to 1880 but most were discontinued in the 50s, 60s and 70s. Only 3 stations seem to run the full span from 1880 to 2009 and they don’t much look like each other. Most of those stations currently being used seem to have started 1931 or later. The current clutch of stations might be chosen in an attempt to minimise the UHI but it would be nice to see the oldest stations continued for comparison.
@neil Hampshire (00:09:20) :
“My radio wakes me here in the UK.
I listen to “The Today Programme” on the BBC.
I could not believe my ears. The BBC, yes the BBC, covered the story on at least three occassions this morning. The tide has turned.”
Wakes me too, though this morning, despite the apparent good news, I was listening whilst shaving when ‘Thought for the Day’, the religious slot came on. Bishop Tom Butler reminded us that it was Candlemas, half way between midwinter and spring etc etc and then launched into a sermon on how it was fine to be sceptical but, if the sceptics are proved wrong, we in the evil, big carbon-booted west should be ready, like Christ, to sacrifice ourselves on behalf of others. I now have a nasty shaving cut.
Bishop Tom is renowned here for his apparently relaxed attitudes to refreshments at Christmas:
“The Bishop of Southwark escaped disciplinary action even though a report by a senior judge found “substantial evidence” to indicate he was drunk.
He was said to have been the worse for alcohol in December after he climbed into the back of a stranger’s car and threw toys out of it, saying “I’m the Bishop of Southwark. It’s what I do.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-460220/Whitewash-claims-bishop-cleared-drunkenness.html
Oh, and ‘Thought For The Day’ doesn’t permit religious sceptics to put *their point of view either. Maybe WUWT could take this up for us secular humanists when AGW is finally put down with a stake in its heart!
London UHI has not changed since 1900? I can’t go back to 1900, but I go back as far as when Croydon was London’s only airport. There was a lot more tarmac in London last time I was there, than what there was when I was a boy. The biggest difference, though, was the number of high rise buildings. When I was a boy there was nary a one, unless you want to count St. Paul’s. There were no motorways, of course, and there was still a fair amount of heavy horse drawn traffic, brewer’s drays hauled the beer barrels and great shire horses pulled the wagons that brought the coal. To me it would be astounding to find that there has not been a sharp increase in London’s heat signature since the late ‘thirties, regardless of any climate element.
“He can’t understand that London has a UHI of X, but that X has got no bigger since 1900.”
Might well be. A study about Klementinum temperatures (a former Jesuite college in the center of Prague, a long record) compared with those of neighboring rural stations has shown that UHI effect stopped increasing in 60’s, when the ring of concrete neighborhoods around the city was more or less finished. Any further developer activities did not add a iota to this level.
Seems that it is not possible to adjust for an UHI by a general algorithm.
Yes, most of us knew about this months ago. As I wrote in a comment to another post, The Times basically cribbed information from my blog post http://buythetruth.wordpress.com/2010/01/26/un-ipcc-rotting-from-the-head-down/ four days earlier without giving me credit and made it out to be a new finding last Saturday. What the heck! The MSM tried desperately to ignore Climategate (with few exceptions in the UK, such as the Daily Express) hoping it would go away. We heard ridiculous noises from commentators that it was a storm in a teacup and it would all blow over. It wasn’t and it hasn’t. Instead, it is opening the floodgates. Little by little the MSM are beginning to realize that the tide is going out and they are being left stranded. But they can’t tell their readers that this was all revealed months ago, so it has to be presented as new scoops. It’s cynical, but let’s be grateful that the information is getting a wider hearing. I thought it was quite ironic that the Guardian piece was written by none other than Fred Pearce, the journalist who has written a lot of green alarmism, and who was of course the route to getting Syed Hasnain’s ridiculous 2035 date into New Scientist, for it to be cited by WWF, and WWF cited by IPCC AR4.
Here in UK this morning the main story is that the peer review process had been subverted in the biological sciences on stem cell research, with a small coterie of scientists involved in review slowing down or keeping out certain papers. It’s covered on the Web as well, see here
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8490291.stm
-“Stem cell experts say they believe a small group of scientists is effectively vetoing high quality science from publication in journals.
-In some cases they say it might be done to deliberately stifle research that is in competition with their own.
-It has also emerged that 14 leading stem cell researchers have written an open letter to journal editors in order to highlight their dissatisfaction.
-Billions of pounds of public money is spent on funding stem cell research.
-The open letter to the major scientific journals claims that “papers that are scientifically flawed or comprise only modest technical increments often attract undue profile. At the same time publication of truly original findings may be delayed or rejected”. ”
Two of the journals mentioned as involved in this conspiracy are Nature and Science. Well, who would have guessed!? Since publication is sometimes necessary to secure future funding, these reviewers have been able to make sure that their friends’ papers get published first and get the funding, whilst denying publication and funding to the ‘competition’. Sound familiar? The BBC ran the story strongly this morning, and when their science correspondent Pallab Ghosh (who also wrote the piece linked above) was asked on the radio whether this had occurred in other sciences he failed to mention climate science. There none in his Web posting either. This failure is evidence that the BBC is still trying to ‘hold the line’. An honest correspondent would have stated that such things were under investigation in the Climategate debacle. We could add that this has been a regular feature in astronomy and astrophysics as well for many years, where this sort of corruption runs very deep and one of the worst offenders in Astronomer Royal and president of the Royal Society.
“Ralph (22:28:02) :
Firstly, London has grown considerably in the last century. The population has increased, from about 5m in 1900 to about 7m in 1990.
http://data.london.gov.uk/datastore/package/historic-census-population”
And lets not forget the daily worker migration down the M1, M3, M4 and other arterial road corridors, rail, bus and airplanes which is ~4million, the population of New Zealand. Every day!
Well, the population – and maybe some industries – in London haven’t changed by more than 20% since 1900 but I am still convinced that there are many “luxurious” sources of heat that didn’t exist 110 years ago.
Equally importantly, it’s very interesting that Jones chose London for his paper when speaking about the year 1900 – because the British Empire was near the peak at those times when Britain was a superpower (sorry, Britons) which is why the city already resembled the contemporary cities.
But virtually the whole rest of the world was growing intensely afterwards, as Britain was losing its exclusive position, and the UHI effect “X” was surely increasing since 1900 virtually everywhere else. I would have a big trouble to believe that Jones chose London “by chance” or that he doesn’t realize that he would get very different results with other cities. This is all deliberate, I guess. These are universally just propaganda tricks to confirm predetermined conclusions.
I am not really warming to the idea of adding “gate” to every controversy. I look at the whole interwoven and multifaceted problem as something more akin to a syndrome. Watergate was sooo 1970’s anyway.
So rather than “chinagate” how about the “china syndrome”. And speaking of melt-downs perhaps we should be talking about the “climate-science syndrome”.
No doubt someone can come up with something vastly more witty. Jae? Mosh?
This is devastating. For those who do not live in Europe, the Guardian and the Independent are the leading UK center left papers. Moderate in tone, supportive of ‘New Labor’, the Guardian more so, environmentally oriented, strongly in favor of the AGW thesis, strongly supporting IPCC, in favor of Kyoto, very much supporting ‘green’ energy. The Guardian is the main home of public sector job ads, and is heavily read by teachers and the public sector in general. Its sort of the house organ of New Labour.
When you find stories like this in such papers, its game over. Poor Jones. This is the home crowd, and they are booing and slow handclapping as you walk on the pitch. He did rather ask for it, but one still has to feel sorry for him.
Good grief. First the Times, which just a few months ago ran a massive advertising campaign on the London Metro based on bogus alarmist claims. And now: The Guardian?! *rubbing my eyes*
This makes life easier. Now next time somebody thinks I’ve turned into some wacko right-wing just because I question the AGW propaganda, I can point to those signs of doubt being expressed in what used to be THE newspaper preaching the holy gospel of the church of warming.
I’m wondering how good are the ground weather stations in the UK and has anyone done an independant survey of those?? Do we even know where they are??
Looks like they’re stacking fuel under a scapegoat, so that those that remain will appear cleansed.
The reason that the MSM in Britain have picked up on the story at last, is that the evidence of fraud perpetrated by the CRU and the rest of the IPCC cabal is now beyond refutation and many influential former ‘believers’ have changed their mind.
The owners of the MSM are the same people behind the scam and they are more interested in salvaging what they can of the credibility of the MSM, rather than continuing to support a failed stratagem. If the MSM fail in their role as the ‘creators of public opinion’, a powerful propaganda tool will be lost and would be very costly to replace.
Oliver K. Manuel (20:48:56) :
“Great news!
As the climate scandal unfolds, a lot more filth may be revealed.
Scientists have become instruments of propaganda for those who control grant funds.
The very foundations of astronomy, astrophysics, climatology, cosmology, nuclear, particle and solar science have been weakened by ~50 years of deceit and data manipulation.
What a sad state of affairs for science!
What a sad state of affairs for world government!
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Emeritus Professor of
Nuclear & Space Science
Former NASA PI for Apollo”
I think it will be a good think to get people thinking about science and applying the skills of analytical thinking they have learned during the CAGW scam. Belief in science is just as dangerous as a belief in religion. Belief makes people easy to manipulate and only the truth can guarantee personal freedom.
OT.
Oliver, where do you think the standard solar model stands with the the Fermilab MiniBooNE project failing to confirm the neutrino oscillation results obtained from the earlier LSND experiment?
The MSM have started reporting around the edges of the AGW scandal. The scare stories used by the IPCC can be shot down to make entertaining news articles but Milliband and his band of Government scientists (and equivalents in other countries) will say that the basic science is still sound, unchanged and supported by the science commmunity, etc.
The killer blow for me is the excellent work that shows how the data has been manipulated to produce record warming around the planet. It demonstrates how a very small clique can produce phoney evidence, which the rest of the scientific community accepts, supports and proceeds to build on, all in good faith. If the data upon which it is all based is shown to be bad, then the peer review and scientific consensus is worthless.
That addresses the whole argument in my view, but the MSM are not running with it. Obviously they haven’t got the guts to proceed because it is such a huge story with profound consequences. They would be accusing the US Government of fraud. The agencies concerned have not responded officially as far as I can see, though I’m aware that Gavin has been rubbishing the work, so the story has been suppressed apart from in the blogosphere.
What is the next step? How do we overcome the MSM blockage? Do we start with a rock solid case study that the MSM might buy? This site has been full of these for months, without getting MSM interest. Is there a US legal route to lodge a challenge or trigger an investigation? There must be something we can do.
I would be interested to hear the views of the gentlemen who did such a fantastic job identifying and reporting the manipulation.
Luboš Motl (02:13:12)
I think most of us have got used to the idea of our not being top dog anymore so no offence taken. At least we showed the way. One thought, there is far less heavy industry in the centre of London now. There used to be breweries, foundries, glass works, power stations; all gone. Brick terraces have been replaced by glass covered office blocks. There might have been a dip after 1900 but there must have been a rise recently. Cherry picking dates again? Why not 1666 (the Great Fire) in that case.
michel (02:22:12) :
[i]This is devastating. For those who do not live in Europe, the Guardian and the Independent are the leading UK center left papers.[/i]
I live in Hong Kong, and the only thing that I know is that Guardian is the leftest newspaper in UK. When even the Guardian leave that topic that is pro-left, than it is usually quite safe to call it dead. This kind of betrayal is just like Julius Caesar seeing his son joining the force that murder him.
Et tu, Guardianus?
SFT (02:07:11): I listened to those reports too and was astounded at the failure to make the link between the stem cell controversy and this one. It’s inconceivable that those concerned didn’t spot it so it does look like obfuscation.
Even more stupidly it would have made a far better story if the link had been made so it was lousy journalism too.
Wow! In the UK it is absolutely amazing to see ANY even slightly sceptical comment from the BBC, Independent or Guardian (I have had to give up talking about climate change with my brother who reads the Independent because he accepts all the alarms and we argue too much).
I recently wrote to the BBC Trust about the review of their scientific coverage (which I found out about here from a WUWT comment). Their reply – although saying that they were “sorry to hear that you feel the BBC has become a byword for sloppy and biased coverage of certain scientific issues” (i.e. AGW) – then just quoted excerpts from Richard Tait, the Chair the Trust’s Editorial Standards Committee, finishing with “The BBC has a well-earned reputation for the quality of its science reporting, but it is also important that we look at it afresh to ensure that it is adhering to the very high standards that licence fee payers expect”. I suggested some debates/programs they could broadcast – like a debate between Lord Monckton and someone chosen by the Met Office – but I doubt whether my letter will reach the investigation as I requested.
As a long-time sceptic (I was in University computer science for many years and know only too well how models can say almost anything you want) I used to think Christopher Booker was the only bright spot in the UK MSM. I found WUWT through him and have the greatest admiration for the work of all who contribute to this blog and can only thank Anthony (and Steve M and others) for their persistence and their part in finally bringing some of this scandal to a wider audience.
I hope you don’t mind, but I posted this summary of the UHI issue on the comments to the Guardian article :-
“I believe the Guardian got this story from the Watts up with that website.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/
Anthony Watts is a former US meteorologist and weather man and he has dedicated his website to exposing flaws in the global warming/ CO2 theory. One of his main themes is the surface stations project. http://surfacestations.org/
Watts and his team found that the weather station network in the USA from which temperature data concerning climate change was collected is deeply flawed. Only 1-2% of stations so far surveyed met the set criteria and the rest are innapropriately sited, for example on the roof of a building near an air conditioning vent or at an airport near to the exhaust emmissions from jets. Therefore, some or even much of the temperature rise of the past 100 years can be attributed not to real climate change but to increased urbanisation (more local heat over time from more buildings, increased car and air traffic, even barbe-q’s sited near to weather stations). Over time, near to these poorly sited weather stations an apparent warming will be seen. The so called “Urban heat island effect”. This is due to local warming from urban sources and not due to real climate change. An issue of measurement and not a real climate problem.
Watts is still researching this, however, initial results show that global warming over the last 100 years may be less than thought. Panic over!”
Check the sea surface and atmospheric temps yourself.
Looks like Jan 2010 is warmer than 2009.
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/
Gillian Lord
Peter Scott (21.57.33)
In December John P. Costella wrote (SPPI):
Why Climategate is so distressing to scientists
by John P. Costella | December 10, 2009
The most difficult thing for a scientist in the era of Climategate is trying to explain to family and friends why it is so distressing to scientists. Most people don’t know how science really works: there are no popular television shows, movies, or books that really depict the everyday lives of real scientists; it just isn’t exciting enough. I’m not talking here about the major discoveries of sciencewhich are well-described in documentaries, popular science series, and magazinesbut rather how the process of science (often called the “scientific method”) actually works.
The best analogy that I have been able to come up with, in recent weeks, is the criminal justice systemwhich is (rightly or wrongly) abundantly depicted in the popular media. Everyone knows what happens if police obtain evidence by illegal means: the evidence is ruled inadmissible; and, if a case rests on that tainted evidence, it is thrown out of court. The justice system is not saying that the accused is necessarily innocent; rather, that determining the truth is impossible if evidence is not protected from tampering or fabrication.
The same is true in science: scientists assume that the rules of the scientific method have been followed, at least in any discipline that publishes its results for public consumption. It is that trust in the process that allows me, for example, to believe that the human genome has been mappeddespite my knowing nothing about that field of science at all. That same trust has allowed scientists at large to similarly believe in the results of climate science.
Until now.
———-
This seems to be a good way of putting it.
“PeterB (02:46:36) :
Looks like they’re stacking fuel under a scapegoat, so that those that remain will appear cleansed.”
Isn’t that a bit of a mixed metaphor? On the Day of Atonement there were two goats: one was sacrificed as a propitiation and the other (the scapegoat) had the sins of the people prayed over it and was taken to the wilderness and let go as an atonement. The man who took the scapegoat there was ritually unclean and had to be purified.
Maybe we’ll see a few sacrificial offerings to propitiate public disgust, and a few scapegoats led out into the wilderness bearing the shame of the sins of the scientific community.
Maybe spoke too soon on Fred Pearce. He seems to be Mr FacingBothWays. Here is his other piece on the Guardian website yesterday
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/01/climate-emails-sceptics
It’s entitled: “How the ‘climategate’ scandal is bogus and based on climate sceptics’ lies – Claims based on email soundbites are demonstrably false – there is manifestly no evidence of clandestine data manipulation”
Oh, I see, Climategate is utterly false, but the same emails support Pearce’s ‘scoop’ in the Guardian that Phil Jones deliberately suppressed information?
This is just hubris. Smarting from the exposure by ‘climate sceptics’ that Pearce had a hand in the ridiculous 2035 Glaciergate lie, he doesn’t want them to get any credit for blowing the whistle on Climategate. But when he uses the same emails to prove his point, then he presents himself to the Guardian readership as a brilliant investigative journalist. That’s sick.
A note of caution from the UK. This may be the start of a new crisis management strategy from the uber-alarmists. Often called the masochism strategy, you pick your red lines and your sacrificial lambs and take back dominance of the news agenda. Then over time you use the continual exposure to rebuild confidence in a repositioned agenda. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that the so called ‘relentless irreversible warming trend’ is being hidden by natural variability and that we should trust the “science” and not necessarily the unreliable and patchy temperature data. We should probably avoid the smug ‘I told you so response’. Instead we should focus on the weakness of the scientific models and their inability to simulate even the reliable parts of the climate record. DavidS
Keep on plonking….
The Guardian!!!! and especially The Independent!!!!
The UK’s two leading eco warriors changing sides, has the world come to an end? Their poor readers will be in a state of shock.
He, The Guardian and Independent are both AGWer propaganda sheets; you know you’re out of favour with the green left when they diss you.
To see this published in the Guardian is amazing. True, many of us here have known about this scientific misconduct for some years, but it’s very, very good news that it’s finally appearing in the main stream. I believe the Guardian is – or has been – the most alarmist UK newspaper.
Its author, Fred Pearce, has written frequently for New Scientist. I’m pleased that Pearce used the term ‘climate change sceptic’ rather than ‘climate change denier’. From his tone he doesn’t appear to be attacking sceptics at all, which is a welcome change. Maybe Fred is starting to see the light….
At this rate it will soon be Gore, Hansen, Mann and Jones who are the sceptics!
Chris
Interesting post. I would just like to make a few observations.
1. Hopefully, this will be put before the select committee in the UK who are examining the issues arising out of the leaked e-mails from CRU. why the HADCRU temperature record may need review. If anyone is making submissions to the UK select commission, I suggest that these exchanges be used as evidence relevant to issues 1 (manipulation of data) and 2 (compliance with best scientific practice) and hence why the HADCRU temperature record may need review
2. As previous posters have pointed out 60% of the ‘observed’ warming can be accounted for by UHI. Of the remaining 40%, there is a strong probability that a significant percentage of this can be attributed to whatever process caused the warming trend from the early 1800s since there is no reason to believe that whatever process brought about that warming is no longer active.
3. With respect to Jones, only a fool would cite 1900 as a date. London spread into the suburbs in the 1930s and again in the 1950s. Indeed, the airports surrounding London were not even built in 1900. There can be no doubt that the area over which ‘X’ is observed is far greater today than it was in 1900 such that some stations that were rural/partially urban in 1900 are now fully urban and are therefore now subject to ‘T + X’. I could accept that had he suggested 1960 or 1970 as the date, an argument could be made reasonably supporting the view.
4. Whilst I suspect that once an area has become urbanised the UHI effect is seen immediately, this may not be the case with a city that has continued to grow upwards as well as sideways. In the case of London, upwards building, in the main, dates back to the 1960s. In the case of urbanisations which have developed upwards as well as sideways in some areas of the urban conurbation ‘X’ will have become ‘Y’
The U.S. Media will likely not take their blinders off and “discover” this story until they get out of bed with the Obama administration. The global warming / carbon tax is too embedded in the Obama administration programs to allow them to pull the rug out from under him.
The newly released budget was originally supposed to include funding they expected to receive from the carbon tax revenue now they have dropped that estimated income.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6101VB20100201
Until the U.S. MSM loses its infatuation with the current administration it will not allow open debate on issues that would directly impact his agenda in a negative way. That is in my view one of the reasons the administration tried to declare war on Fox. They were the only mass media outlet with significant market share, that had the balls to tell the truth or even ask the right questions.
Larry
“The revelations on the inadequacies of the 1990 paper do not undermine the case that humans are causing climate change, and other studies have produced similar findings. But they do call into question the probity of some climate change science.”
The thing is… if the data DIDN’T undermine the case that humans are causing climate change, why would CRU need to “lose” or refuse to release it? This has to be a “no smoke without fire” scenario. Otherwise why the subterfuge?
And as for London’s UHI effect not changing since 1900 – well, we all know that Edwardian Brits had computers, central heating, 2 cars per household, air con, washing machines, floodlighting, skyscraper office blocks, diesel engined double decker buses, and Heathrow airport, don’t we?
John:
I volunteer to photograph some of the UK surface stations – there’s enough Brits reading this to make it happen. Anthony, give us our mission brief!
Ben (23:12:52) :
I seeboth stories there. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment has the former as the lead story and #1 read over the last 24 hours. The latter is #2.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/01/leaked-emails-climate-jones-chinese
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/01/dispute-weather-fraud
While the latter says:
A review of recent studies published online in December by David Parker of the Met Office concludes that, even allowing for Jones’s new data, “global near-surface temperature trends have not been greatly affected by urban warming trends.”
Note that it comes from the Met. Is there anyone left in Britain who takes the Met seriously?
Rob R (02:15:24) :
I agree, though more for thinking -gate should be used for historic events. Climategate is okay. NGOgate?
A more trendy word that deserves to be over used and hence added to the junk bin of contemporary slang is the suffix -fail. While it lacks a proper scientific detachment, one can argue that UEA/CRU also lacks a proper scientific detachment.
Therefore, and incorporating the also trendy middleCaps:
I like the ring of PhilFail, but not its ad hominem feature. OTOH, at this point, he may deserve it.
The dominos keep falling!!
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/dominic-lawson/dominic-lawson-so-all-these-climate-revelations-were-a-dastardly-foreign-plot-1886149.html
In the Independent:
“After non-existent weapons of mass destruction, the British Government now wants to terrify us – and the world – with scaremongering about “man-made” weather of mass destruction. That’s the scandal – not whether someone has hacked into an East Anglian computer.
BTW, h/t to Benny Peiser for the above link.
Re the London UHI effect.
North American readers may not be aware of how relatively rare, even in the 1960s and 70s central heating was in the UK. Air-conditioning, outside of brand new office blocks was virtually unheard of outside of American films. As new office blocks replaced earlier, low rise Victorian buildings and newly-converted up-market dwellings with both central heating and air-conditioning were developed the effect must have been significant.
Well things could get a lot hotter for the warmists in UK MSM if, as Delingpole reports, he becomes the Independent’s environment correspondent http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100021983/delingpole-to-be-appointed-independents-environment-correspondent/
Let’s hope and pray he has not jumped the gun in announcing his appointment.
THE INDEPENDENT.
Global warming and higher levels of CO2 makes trees grow at fastest rate for 200 years
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Tuesday, 2 February 2010
The trees appear to have accelerated growth rates due to longer growing seasons and higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Scientists have documented the changes to the growth of 55 plots of mixed hardwood forest over a period of 22 years, and have concluded that they are probably growing faster now than they have done at any time in the past 225 years – the age of the oldest trees in the study.
Higher concentrations of carbon dioxide and extended growing seasons could be favourable for agriculture in some parts of the world, mainly in the NORTHERN HEMISPHERE.
SO WARMER AND ENRICHED CO2 ONLY EFFECTS HALF OF THE PLANET, WOW.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/global-warming-makes-trees-grow-at-fastest-rate-for-200-years-1886342.html
.
>> was reminded of Comical Ali speaking during the
>>Iraq invasion: while the bombs were going off behind
>>him he continued to state that there was “nothing to
>>see here”.
And remember that it was the Western media (incl the BBC and CNN) who kowtowed to Comical Ali, broadcasting his every report as though he were an oracle of truth and veracity.
I’m not sure who was more surprised when the bombs began falling in the background – Comical Ali, in full denialist flow, or the Western media, who were equally gullible and culpable.
.
We really need to sort our MSM media out, especially when it comes to science reports. Every report I see in my field is absolute tosh – do they never ask or research before writing?. Adrian Berry of the Telegraph used to be a national embarrassment – is he still there? Hanlon in the Mail is not much better, enthusing about the paranormal and fringe conspiracies. Really, we need to sack every science reporter who does not have a degree in science/engineering and 10-years experience in the field.
.
Did Prince Charles recently give comfort and succour to these ratbags?
Who is advising HRH, the illustrious Phil Jones perhaps?
O.T. ….. But:
When are we going to get a WUWT for the UK education system???
Hands up, someone…
The UK education system has a hockey-stick graph of results and an establishment who are collectively 2km east of Giza (In De-Nial). 😉
Sound familiar??
.
.
ScientistForTruth (03:31:07) : Your comment is awaiting moderation
ScientistForTruth (03:41:44) : Your comment is awaiting moderation
Is there some problem with the comments that’s making them have to wait?
John (02:43:36) :
I’m wondering how good are the ground weather stations in the UK and has anyone done an independant survey of those?? Do we even know where they are??
John,
I checked the sites on the Met Office site – dig about a bit; it takes some finding. I have also asked Anthony this question but he says that so many of them are at airports that the possibility of a survey had to be abandoned for security reasons. I can just imagine us all being arrested with our cameras out – perhaps we should do it anyway and claim we are journalists or tourists, not terrorists.
I was interested because one of the stations near me is Hurn/Hern (can never remeber the correct spelling) but now known more importantly as Bournemouth International Airport, so I would expect there to be a similar heat island effect as the airport has expanded over recent years. It reminded me of Stansted Airport before that was developed into London’s Third Airport. It used to be a potty little airport, only there because the americans had built the long runway during the war. Now look at it!
Scientist,
No there is no problem. All posts have to be reviewed before publishing to remove ad hominems and other offensive comments. Its normal.
RayG (05:41:56) :
-Well things could get a lot hotter for the warmists in UK MSM if, as Delingpole reports, he becomes the Independent’s environment correspondent…
That is a spoof, of course: look who he puts in charge of the other departments!
Delingpole as the Indy’s Environment correspondent? Now I know pigs may fly…
I was about to make the same point aobut central heating in both London and other UK cities. After leavign Bristol – we all live din big Georgian huses with no heating – I lived for all the 70s in a large house on the Chelsea/Fulham borders with no heating – I had to heat the one room I was using, and worked in bed a lot. Btw, I’m back to doing that now, on my pension, as heating bills this winter are almost 50% of my disposable income thanks to green taxes! There was an orgy of gentification in London thru the 80s, and of office building and general redevelopment, and infilling of any availble building space. All redevelopment and new building was at a much higher occupation density than before
From earlier:
“I have now read 2 versions of the Fred Pierce Guardian story. In the more recent 2nd version, he states that none of the irregularities around the 1990 paper ‘undermine the case that humans are causing climate change.’ In a version online a couple hours ago, he went on at greater length saying in spite of all of this, there is no doubt that global warming still exists, everyone agrees about that, etc.”
I wonder if the person who tipped off Anthony was Pearce, or some junior journo who knew the story would get substantially spun when the powers that be saw it? I think the current Guardian manoevering is just that: spin to ensure they don’t lose too much face while trying to shore up the narrative
“Is there some problem with the comments that’s making them have to wait?”
Yes, surely, the sheer numbers! WUWT has now become essential reading worldwide – and many more people are commenting. Watch the hit counter – it’s astonishing
This is what Mr.Brown said, after the Copenhagen fiasco: LONDON (Reuters) – A handful of countries blocked a legally binding deal on climate change in Copenhagen and the talks process needs urgent reform to prevent something similar happening again, Britain’s prime minister said on Monday
Regarding surface stations, I read a couple of months back that the only station with a continuous record from a device which had neither been changed nor moved since records began in the 1850s, is in Armargh (Northern Ireland). Iirc, it shows a cyclical oscillation but no overall warming…
Can anyone supply a url / graph? I’ve tried to find the site I read this on, but I can’t
(and I *have* to get some work done – Climategate is such a drug…)
Anthony I too would be prepared to help with a UK surface station project. Have camera, do travel… and I know a large network of sports photographrs who do likewise
So Wang claims that if the stations were moved, then it was only a few meters and they ‘corrected’ for the moves.
Well, what would be the point of moving the stations only a few meters? And how were corrections calculated?
If stations really were moved only a few meters, then they would have done so to be better sited, validating UHI. And if UHI isn’t much of an effect, why correct the data?
Obviously, the stations were moved a considerable distance, if the stations existed at all. And, most likely, the stations were moved from rural to urban areas.
RDay (20:54:54) :
“Hmmm, what does the Guardian have up its sleeve? Why are they so, so, so journalistic all of a sudden? The um, skeptic in me is well, skeptical.”
It’s like a woman catching her husband in a lie, as opposed to a woman catching Billy Joe Bob of Billy Joe Bob’s Auto Emporium in a lie.
She never trusted Billy Joe Bob to begin with.
Being an unrepentant/unreconstructed temporarily expatriate colonial living in England, I find the the idea of taking seriously the huffing and puffing of Sir David King, former UK science supremo, who told the Independent that ‘ Russian spies or possibly a wealthy American ‘denier” stealing emails from UEA to be absolutely hilarious. Sadly, the class-indoctrinated Brits think the ‘K’ and his former status have prevented Sir David from becoming a victim of senile dementia. Having read something of his background, I realise he has a history of being made a fool of by the Russians and this obviously stings, but a time arrives when his outburst would be better left unsaid for his sake.
One can see the same awe of status and title in the adulation the irrational and devious Lord Stern is held in by the political class.
(Yahoo) Armagh Observatory
I’ve been a closet AGW sceptic ever since I first saw Al Gore’s ludicrous GW presentation, but was unable to reconsile my limited knowledge and gut feelings on the subject with the “concensus of 3000 scientists” working for the IPCC. Then, during the big freeze of last Christmas, I read “The Real Global Warming Disaster” by Christopher Booker, which not only puts the whole GW farse into perspective, but also intoduced me to Anthony’s excellent WUWT blog. I have for the past few weeks become an avid follower of his tireless work and the comments by all of you sceptical warriors. I only wish I had joined you much sooner; I feel as though I am joining the frey just as the battle is about to be won (let’s hope so!).
Now that The Guardian and The Independant are begining to sense that AGW is mostly a fairy tale, the Washington Post and NY Times must surely soon realise that something is seriously amiss with this unproven theory.
Yesterday (1 Feb), in New Zealand, it was disclosed that there has been unwarranted modifying of the national raw weather data. The actual records, over a period of 150 years, shows little variation in SL temperatures and no upward trend!
Finally, one for Anthony: Phil Jones’s figures for UHI-affected weather stations cf “real climate change” suggests the following:
Temp Change during 1951/2004 = 0.81 – 0.1 * (2004 – 1951)/10
= 0.81 – 0.53 = 0.28 degC#
# 0.28degC is the same figure for the GW Anomily show on the “World Climate Widget” – is this an “Inconvenient” coincidence or am I onto something?!?
“REPLY: Yes that’s right, and you know what else is amazing? The Guardian authors emailed me this afternoon to make sure I knew about this story. I’ve never been given a tip from the Guardian staff before, evar. – Anthony”
When I first read this artical, I though that I might have had my UK Rag taxonomy mixed up. Guess I did’nt. The Guardian and Independent are both Chiroptera lunae latrans.
What is going on? Is the world ending? Is this one of the signs of the Apocalypse?
And …
In the US, the band continued to play …
@Alexander (07:46:01) : “the class-indoctrinated Brits think the ‘K’ and his former status have prevented Sir David from becoming a victim of senile dementia”
Hold hard Alex! Speaking as a Brit (and a republican sensu stricto), I certainly don’t assume the K, or peerages for that matter, are a nostrum against senility and silliness amongst our government. Large portions of the House of Lords benches are crammed solid with the mentally challenged, as is the case for the Commons too.
We here are cynically very used to the idea that scum rises to the surface of the pot, particularly where the government, civil service and the nobility are concerned. But be fair, old chap, we do have the Noble Lord Lawson as our Inhofe equivalent and another aristocrat, Monckton, in the vanguard of the charge against the AGW scam – and even the bloody Guardian seems to be getting a bit of common sense these days (which is quite mindboggling of itself).
The Contrary View:
Frank Luntz on FOX News – Climate Change – 12-14-2009
[Author of “What Americans Really Want…Really”]
He appears to be advising politicians “The public has now come to a conclusion that Climate Change is real …Don’t fight over the Science…Focus on what the American People want done…Let’s make the change right now — let’s not wait”
So when will Amerika reach the tipping point? Will they have to find a doofuss for a scapegoat first? It does seem Jones is the scapegoat in the U.K.
Should this board nominate a scapegoat so the Media can save some time?
I see our scapegoat candidates are into writing science fiction books and trying to ramp up an alternative income stream. Romm is out soon with a new book as is Hansen. We need a lot of books to read while waiting for 3 hour battery recharges at the electric meter.
Joe Romm is so slow it takes him 2 hours to watch 60 minutes.
The press in Britain and America know about each other…
(I’m sure the American press is following what the British press is doing.)
The recent British press attention might be a test case for the American press.
Don’t be too surprised (depending on the reaction of the British citizens: do they buy more newspapers, do they vote against AGW political candidates) if this Spring, with Winter hanging on, then the American press finally starts to run with the story.
If not, then you know they’re really drunk with the Kool-Aid.
Poor Philip Campbell, editor of Nature. In
addition to presiding over one alleged daisy chain of
peer-reviewers for climate related research articles, a second
claim in an unrelated, billion dollar/pound area arises:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8490291.stm
Will there be another Nature editorial defending the
sanctity of Nature’s peer-review process ? What terminology
can Campbell apply to the new complainers that won’t sound
like a repeat of his beat-down of climate deniers ?
If you’re bringing the popcorn, I’ll bring nachos & cheese…
Nigel S (03:05:04) : ..and, in a few years, there won’t be any source of heat but windmills on a deserted land…all londoners should have emigrated by then .
The former proud empire turned into devasted and forgotten ruins.
UEA has replied:
http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/CRUstatements/guardianstatement
I don’t know enough about the ins and outs of this to comment about the veracity of the statements regarding releasing data to Keenan in 2007.
oops the link is not correct. Try this:
http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/CRUstatements/guardianstatement
It seems that the last few letters from the URL are being truncated. It should read /guardianstatement
Donald (Australia) 5:59:10:
Hallo, Don,
Prince Charles is advised by Jonathon Porritt, probably Britain’s best known Green, (extremely Green). He’s in Wikipedia. He is the son of a former Governor-General of New Zealand, so you can blame them. (That should please a fair dinkum Aussie!)
This article could use some feedback on some of the latest news post-Climategate because, it would appear, that the Globe and Mail has some sort of a policy regarding not publishing any stories on the IPCC or the CRU. Comments, as usual, are open.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/prentice-attacks-quebecs-climate-strategy/article1452601/
Here’s Mark Steyn on the Independent, the Guardian, the US liberal minority media (LMM) and (hilariously) James Delingpole’s response to those who’ve been slagging him off for years – and are now on Delingpole’s side:
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=M2QyM2E1MTk2N2FiNWVlYzA0ZTI0MDgzZThkNmE2NzQ=
American Business Practices, British Integrity, Western Ethics, it doesn’t get more “X”-rated than that. It matters not what the issue may be, weather, medical care, climate, autism, banking practices, contracts, perks for politicians, spacetravel, measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccines, if there’s a buck to be made, you can bet your last dollar some worthless lowlife business ‘person’ (sorry ladies) will pay some other worthless lowlife “scientist”, who will hire some politician to poison, rape, and/or murder some innocent good for very little nobody to get their hands on her pitiful life’s savings (or real estate).
___________
Check link below. Sounds so much like Climategate
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/AutismNews/autism-british-doctor-andrew-wakefield-started-autism-vaccine-debate-ethics-debacle/story?id=9713197
How can the IPPC honestly claim that they rely on peer-reviewed research when they cite a paper, which makes claims about the supposed minimal effect of UHI based on weather stations, which only exist somewhere in Narnia? It beggars belief.
On the response by CRU… that must certainly be Jones that wrote that letter. Else, there is someone else pulling the strings there… the same AGW strings as before.
Interesting that Phil Jones earned Tom Wigley’s opprobrium. From what I can piece together, it was Wigley who presided over CRU’s most active period of deletions and “improvements” (in the name of data storage).
Now, of course, he’s ensconced amidst teraflops of storage at the Univeristy Corporation of Atmospheric Research (UCAR), modelling away out of the limelight.
Tim Ball’s take on Wigley:
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/17364
Doug Keenan,
where are you? Can you comment on the UEA statement?
Mike D. (21:23:56) :
You are you an incorrect approach to scientific fraud and cover ups. Jones et al are co-conspirators. The crime is multiple counts of criminal conspiracy to defraud, falsify, misrepresent and cover up scientific research and underlying data, etc. They can all go down for the count.
Congratulations to the Guardian and The Independent, two ‘Green’ papers who obviously put principal before ideology on this occasion. Perhaps they will be seen to be the catylist that will bring the house of cards crashing down forcing the BBC and the other big dailys to give far more balanced reporting on the subject.
Do Americans Understand the Significance of these Stories?
Mirroring some of the comments of other UK based readers I am still in a state of mild incredulity at reading these stories published in the Guardian and Independent.
These two journals, but particularly the Independent, have been stalwart promoters of the AGW cause. This turnaround defies belief. What has caused it? Even with all the criticisms of AGW in the wake of the Himalayan debacle there was no evidence in recent days of any real change in the attitude of these two papers.
From a British perspective it’s quite astonishing: It’s as though the Papacy conceeded Martin Luther had a point. Do American ( and Aussies, Kiwis, Springboks, Canadians, Germans et al ) do Americans appreciate the significance of these articles?
Another Hockey Team — More Problems in Journal Peer Review
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8490291.stm
This is a report on the BBC concerning leading stem cell researchers writing an open letter about papers being blocked from publication by a clique. Members of the clique also ensure that their or their followers’ papers are published in prestigious journals even if there is only a modest element of scientific worth in them. It seems that complaints about hockey teams are not limited to climate science.
From the article:
This is all very curious. It’s only been a few weeks since the Guardian carried this banner headline (referring to Copenhagen):
And since the Independent published a special section entitled:
Pielke on the 2008 paper of Jones
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2009/03/23/a-new-paper-has-appeared-urbanization-effects-in-large-scale-temperature-records-with-an-emphasis-on-china-by-jones-et-al-2008/
It looks to me as if Phil Jones is being thrown under the bus in a big way.
Still no major stories in NZ press other than the usual “this looks awful but really, it changes nothing” spin.
I saw the revelations on the front page of the Guardian today and I nearly bought a copy. But I came to my senses just in time!
It might interest non-British readers to know that the Guardian is where all left-leaning levels of local and national government advertise their highly paid, politically correct jobs such as “diversity outreach officers” – a process which is is otherwise known as buying votes.
I think CRU clarification lacks credibility on several points:
– It should include the actual Chinese locations used on Jones 1990 paper instead of the statement that they where handled on response to FOI request.
– A link to the FOIA record where it gives record of the fullfilment of this FOI request.
– It should include a link to used raw data for the used stations, and also the processed data after adjustments.
Climate email row: scientists speak out
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/science_technology/climate+email+row+scientists+speak+out/3524137
As Phil Jones, the man at the center of the climate change emails row, finally gives an account of himself, Peter Liss, his temporary replacement at the head of the University of East Anglia’s climate research unit, tells Channel 4 News Jones will get his job back and be vindicated.
Professor Phil Jones, of the University of East Anglia’s climatic research unit, has faced allegations that he covered up flawed data on temperature rises. But he said the 20-year-old study questioned by sceptics “stands up to scrutiny” and was corroborated by more recent work.
The research centre has been under fire from climate sceptics since 13 years of emails were stolen from university’s servers and posted online in November in the run-up to the UN climate talks in Copenhagen. One newspaper claimed Professor Jones withheld information from sceptic Douglas Keenan, who queried data from Chinese weather stations used in a 1990 study on global warming.
Professor Jones said he was confident the paper, which drew on 42 urban and 42 rural sites, was correct because it was validated by the new data. And he said: “I am confident in my mind the site movements that might have taken place at some of the sites were not that important to affect the average of the 42 sites.”
The paper also used records from Australia and what was then the USSR, over which no questions have ever been raised, he said. He said that some of the Chinese sites may have moved to warmer or cooler places, and that it was the large scale average that was the key issue. The later study showed an average 0.1ºC warming per decade due to urbanization and 0.15ºC of climate warming each decade between 1951 and 2004.
Peter Liss, acting director of the university’s climatic research unit, told Channel 4 News: “I think there is no question that the global temperature record produced by the climatic research unit is absolutely correct and of course it is vindicated by two other institutions in the United States, who have looked at the data and processed it in their ways. It is almost impossible to see a difference between the results so I think the results from the climatic research unit are rock solid.”
Reports claim the Met Office has found mistakes in the research, but Professor Peter Liss insists any problems will not have a major effect on the report’s findings. He said: “Of course flaws are worrying and as soon as we know about them they will be corrected if they are flaws. But I think these flaws will be rather small details and I very much doubt they will make any significant difference to the global data set and the temperature record the climatic research unit has developed over the years. I don’t think the accusation of sloppiness will stand. I think the scientists involved, who I know rather well, are very serious scientists. I think sloppiness is a statement you can easily make but is very hard to sustain. Obviously there is a concern because the media have been leaping on what I consider to be small details, sometimes accurately but generally not accurately.
“I think that does make doubts in the public’s mind but I think the politicians seem to still be fully on board, they are making their commitments following the Copenhagen conference and all the major nations have signed up to their commitments. So I think the politicians judge it rather differently to some of the public. Of course if we are to cut carbon emissions it is all of us that will have to do the cutting.”
Professor Liss also criticized the information commissioner for a lack of communication with the university. He added: “As far as I am aware, the university has not received from the office of the information commissioner the judgment on the case. The last university heard about it was last August and the university has complied with all requests from the freedom of information office to provide data or reasons why they cannot provide data. I was extremely surprised to read about the information commissioner’s thoughts and opinions in the newspapers rather than from the office directly. It sounds rather irregular. The university has been in contact and I don’t think they’ve had any definitive answers out of them.”
For the iterested
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2F2007JCLI1348.1
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=forward-links&doi=10.1175%2F1520-0442%282003%29016%3C2941%3AAOUVRI%3E2.0.CO%3B2&ct=1
Kate (11:49:33) : Lie, lie, that something….Well, it seems that they will keep singing their global warming (now Climate Change) mantra until a world binding agreement is reached ,…occidental civilization collapses and green paradise blooms.
Cheers with Kool-Aid!!
Anthony – screaming “ewwww” won’t change anything, you are becoming part of the MSM. Over the long term, the internet and the blogosphere will obliterate other forms of media. The evidence to support this is already clear with newspapers and others clearly suffering from a negative feedback loop caused by the creation of the internet. They should probably sue Al Gore for inventing it. Of course that assumes a high level of sensitivity to internet creation. There could very well be a positive feedback loop unaccounted for which has not yet emerged.
LEAKED!
Both the Guardian and the Independent actually referred to the CRUtape letters as “leaked,” not “hacked.”
In related news, squadrons of aerobatic swine were sighted over Fleet Street…..
….as an aside and slightly OT, swear words are a huge part of my vocabularly which I refrain from using on other people’s blogs. May I use h-e-hockeystick-hockeystick instead? and will the moderators all me to shorten this to h-e-briffa-briffa? Or would h-e-double-Jones be more appropriate?
In defence of the CRU, it must seem the world is getting warmer when your bum is on fire.
Sam
UK Met office have all their min/max/median (they call average) temps available here : http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/stationdata/ – pick station from pull down & there’s the data.
I put Oxford & Argmah into an SQL data base & play from time to time – don’t have enough time to work out how to publish
Mods : my appologies if this doesn’t work – it should give some basic data extracted from the UK Met office OXFORD data set : (comes out of Star Office ods sheet)
Overview
Oxford Data
Oxford Graphs
Sheet 1: Oxford Data
Oxford data
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/stationdata/oxforddata.txt
Tmax : Average Maximum Temperature by month since 1853
Month
Month Tmax Average
Standard Deviation
Maximum Tmax
Minimum Tmax
-1 SD
+1 SD
1
6.7
2.00
10.4
-0.2
4.71
8.71
2
7.4
2.26
11.5
-0.2
5.16
9.67
3
10.0
1.82
15.5
6.0
8.14
11.77
4
13.1
1.54
18.0
9.5
11.60
14.68
5
16.7
1.49
20.4
12.9
15.21
18.18
6
19.9
1.58
24.4
15.9
18.32
21.48
7
21.7
1.94
27.1
17.5
19.80
23.68
8
21.2
1.75
26.4
17.1
19.49
23.00
9
18.5
1.54
23.2
15.2
16.97
20.04
10
14.1
1.34
18.9
11.0
12.79
15.47
11
9.6
1.39
12.9
6.1
8.25
11.03
12
7.3
1.84
10.6
0.2
5.45
9.13
Tmax : Hottest 10 months since 1853
Year
Month
Month’s Max Temp
Month’s Min Temp
2006
7
27.1
14.9
1983
7
26.8
15.4
1995
8
26.4
13.9
1911
7
26.1
13.1
1921
7
26.1
13.3
1976
7
25.9
13.2
1868
7
25.8
12.7
1947
8
25.8
13.1
2003
8
25.5
13.5
1874
7
25.3
11.8
Tmin : Average Minimum Temperature by month since 1853
Month
Month Tmin Average
Standard Deviation
Maximum Tmin
Minimum Tmin
-1 SD
+1 SD
1
1.5
1.95
5.2
-5.8
-0.49
3.41
2
1.5
2.07
5.3
-5.3
-0.55
3.58
3
2.4
1.51
6.4
-1.2
0.93
3.95
4
4.4
1.12
7.0
1.7
3.24
5.49
5
7.2
1.09
9.7
4.7
6.07
8.24
6
10.3
0.89
12.7
8.1
9.38
11.16
7
12.2
0.95
15.4
9.5
11.28
13.18
8
12.0
1.01
15.7
8.8
10.99
13.01
9
9.9
1.18
13.5
7.0
8.71
11.08
10
6.9
1.56
11.1
2.3
5.30
8.43
11
3.7
1.56
8.4
0.0
2.13
5.25
12
2.1
1.88
5.9
-4.0
0.17
3.93
Tmin : Coldest 10 months since 1853
Year
Month
Month’s Max Temp
Month’s Min Temp
1963
1
-0.2
-5.8
1947
2
-0.2
-4.4
1890
12
0.2
-4.0
1986
2
1.0
-4.1
1879
1
1.6
-2.8
1855
2
1.7
-4.5
1963
2
1.7
-3.1
1881
1
1.8
-4.0
1895
2
1.8
-5.3
1940
1
1.9
-4.6
Sheet 2: Oxford Graphs
Once again confused …
from the UEA graph notes … “The 2008 study undertook additional analyses using more extensive data and did conclude that there was a likely urbanization trend in China of 0.1 degrees Celsius per decade for the period 1951-2004. But allowing for this, there was still a large-scale climatic warming of 0.15 degrees C per decade over the period 1951-2004 and 0.47 degrees C per decade over the period 1981-2004. The paper concluded that much of the urbanization trend was likely due to the rapid economic development in China since the 1980s, after the period analysed in the 1990 paper.
So .1C per decade warming due to “likely urbanization trend” per period (53 years) compared to .15C per decade (same period) for ” large-scale climatic warming”. Does that leave .05C per decade of real warming?
Also why the period 1981 – 2004? Looking at the graph 1981 seems a lower anomaly year. Why not 1978 which an anomaly roughly 7C higher?
My, UAE, what big slopes you have…
All the better for alarmism my dear
“Well commenters? What is your verdict?”
Put them in the iron maiden.
Yes it truely is amazing ‘Wots Up With Papers’ in the UK.
Today the LCD press (Murdochs ‘Sun’ and Blairs ‘Daily Mirror’) ‘discovered’ Climategate.
Tonight Channel 4 News had Nigel Lawson and Prof Bob Watson at it hammer and tongs.
That only leaves the Biased BBC TV to give us a proper balanced account.
Once that happens it will be game set and match.
If i put you forward Anthony would you accept a Knighthood?
Lord S Wott has a nice ring to it.
BTW – the CET (Central England Tempreature) set is one of the finest unadulterated records going back to 1669. its available at http://www.climategate.com and was in an article dated 15th Jan 2010
These are more substantial versions of the Phil Jones Guardian story from 2008 (when they took place). Any mention of these links was deleted by Guardian moderators. I reckon they are getting their ‘versions’ of Jones’ crimes out first. That is two in the same number of days.
Kafka at Albany
Dr Keenan alleged that in work that has come to be widely cited in climate studies, work that included the collation of data from temperature measuring stations in China, Professor Wang made statements that “cannot be true and could not be in error by accident. The statements are fabricated.” ……
But Doug Keenan is a tenacious man. In July 2008, after being refused sight of the report, he submitted a formal complaint to the Public Integrity Bureau at the Office of the Attorney General of New York State, alleging criminal fraud . In this complaint
http://freebornjohn.blogspot.com/2009/03/kafka-at-albany.html
Doug Keenan’s report (which is peer reviewed) –
The Fraud Allegation Against Wei-Chyung Wang
One of the main studies cited by the report to justify that conclusion substantially relies on the claims that Wang fabricated—indeed, Wang is a co-author of the study.The study is authored by Jones et al. (1990). It treats not only China (where Wangwas responsible for supplying the data), but also Russia and Australia (where Wanghad no responsibility). The regions of Russia and Australia are not considered here,but there is some evidence that they too are problematic.4
http://www.informath.org/pubs/EnE07a.pdf
Chinese climate scientists tactfully tell the IPCC that surface air temperature (SAT) trends over north China include a large component of urban warming
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=203
Mark Steyn on AGW: click
hese are more substantial versions of the Phil Jones Guardian story from 2008 (when they took place).
Kafka at Albany
Dr Keenan alleged that in work that has come to be widely cited in climate studies, work that included the collation of data from temperature measuring stations in China, Professor Wang made statements that “cannot be true and could not be in error by accident. The statements are fabricated.” ……
But Doug Keenan is a tenacious man. In July 2008, after being refused sight of the report, he submitted a formal complaint to the Public Integrity Bureau at the Office of the Attorney General of New York State, alleging criminal fraud . In this complaint
http://freebornjohn.blogspot.com/2009/03/kafka-at-albany.html
Doug Keenan’s report (which is peer reviewed) –
The Fraud Allegation Against Wei-Chyung Wang
One of the main studies cited by the report to justify that conclusion substantially relies on the claims that Wang fabricated—indeed, Wang is a co-author of the study.The study is authored by Jones et al. (1990). It treats not only China (where Wangwas responsible for supplying the data), but also Russia and Australia (where Wanghad no responsibility). The regions of Russia and Australia are not considered here,but there is some evidence that they too are problematic.4
http://www.informath.org/pubs/EnE07a.pdf
The UEA response;
http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/CRUstatements/guardianstatement
The IPCC incompetence story went mainstream BIGTIME tonight in the UK when it was the main feature item on NEWSNIGHT – the nation’s flagship news analysis programme. Anchor-woman Kirsty Wark interviewed Roger Pielke live in the studio with IPCC vice chairman (Field?) desperately trying to hold the gate against reality battering down the door. She hit him repeatedlyL
“they were wrong about the glaciers?” – er, well, rmm, dunno, maybe , ermm
“they were wrong about the rainforests?” – ‘yeh, well , you know how it goes – our data is very robust, it’s a broad pyramid, lots of peer review’
“well the Guardian and the Times both have major articles tomorrow attacking the IPCC credibility – but Pachauri says he will not apologise
..it went on and on – a bloodbath.
Roger Pielke was excellent – he just kept repeating that the only way forward for the IPCC was to STOP defending its errors and initiate an independent review/ audit of all its science procedures.
If you have BBC iPlayer you can see the whole interview there.
The fact that Newsnight treated the IPCC vice chairman so roughly means that the foundations really are crumbling over here. They are in full rout – there was a secret meeting in a rural conferenece centre today – led by professors from LSE – trying to come up with a strategy for ‘rebuilding trust with the public in relation to the Science of climate change’.
The BBC have finally cracked ……..
just watched Newsnight http://www.bbc.co.uk click on ‘bbciplayer’ newsnight.
Kirsty Wark just did a good interview with Prof Pielke versus Prof Field from IPCC.
Sadly she could not get to say climategate it was mainly email hack neme.
also very interesting stuff about some renegade scientists meeting in a country manor house plotting on how to restore the credibility of ‘the science’
well worth a watch – except they are trying to give all the credit for the tumbling walls of jerico to – would you believe the Guardian. our overseas friends must realise that most BBC employees were probably at prep school with the denizons of the Gruiard.
I am led to believe that there can be some strang goings on in private schools in England. nod nod wink wink.
REPLY: Arrrghh! Well the pinheads at BBC won’t let me play it here in America..they put up a disclaimer message. Somebody needs to get it on YouTube please. – Anthony
“patrick healy (15:07:11) :
[…]
tumbling walls of jerico to – would you believe the Guardian.”
Because of the investigative reporting of the Monbiot twins.
Oh and before you go all “The BBC has cracked” please enjoy this Copenhagen-trauma induced piece of writing: Copenhagen – The Munich Of Our Times?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8490935.stm
The comments sound, ahem, largely skeptical.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1247973/Leaked-climate-change-emails-scientist-hid-data-flaws.html
The scientist at the heart of the climate change email scandal tried to hide flaws in key data, it is claimed.
Professor Phil Jones, director of the University of East Anglia’s prestigious climatic research unit, is said to have refused to release information that could have cast doubt on a widely-quoted study into how the growth of cities affects temperature.
The study, by the professor and a Chinese expert in 1990, concluded the effect of urbanisation was small – so city sprawl alone could not explain recent rapid rises in temperatures.
The research was published in the journal Nature and used by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to bolster its case for man-made global warming.
But many sceptics were convinced that cities played a much bigger role and claim Professor Jones refused their Freedom of Information requests for more details.
When he did release the information in 2007 his Chinese colleague, Wei-Chyung Wang of the University of Albany in the U.S., was accused of scientific fraud as he was unable to provide the history of the locations of all the weather stations included in the study.
Dr Wei-Chyung Wang told the Guardian that although he knew all the locations when he started the study, he no longer has the information. He added that his university had cleared him of any scientific fraud.
Professor Jones denied withholding the information, said the study ‘stood up to scrutiny’ and its results had been corroborated by more recent work.
More…
* Caught again! UN climate claims on ice loss melt away
* Scientists broke the law by hiding climate change data: But legal loophole means they won’t be prosecuted
* Climate change chief says sorry for hot air claim over melting glaciers
He has already had to defend allegations that his unit manipulated data on global warming and explain an email in which he suggests using a ‘trick’ to massage years of temperature data to ‘hide the decline’.
Picture shows the Himalayan glaciers
Errors: The IPCC has already been forced to make an apology after claims that Himalayan glaciers could vanish within 25 years were exposed as nonsense
The latest claims will pile more pressure on Prof Jones, who has stood aside while an investigation is carried out into the leaked email scandal.
The Climategate row broke in November ahead of the UN Climate Change summit in Copenhagen when hundreds of stolen emails from the world-renowned Climate Research Unit in Norwich were posted online.
The emails appeared to show researchers discussing how to manipulate historical temperature data and dodge requests under the Freedom of Information Act.
This latest revelation comes after a string of embarrassing blunders and gaffes from climate scientists and will fuel concerns that key researchers are too secretive and too arrogant.
The UN’s climate change panel was also caught out this week making unfounded claims for the third time in a fortnight.
The IPCC used a student’s essay and an article from a climbing magazine to make claims about reductions in ice on mountains.
The IPCC has also been found to have used data that had nothing to do with global warming to warn of looming catastrophe in the Amazon rainforest.
“Jeef (11:29:18) :
It looks to me as if Phil Jones is being thrown under the bus in a big way.”
Yes, a Route Master. And “Route” is a naughty word here in Australia.
REPLY: Yes that’s right, and you know what else is amazing? The Guardian authors emailed me this afternoon to make sure I knew about this story. I’ve never been given a tip from the Guardian staff before, evar. – Anthony
This suggests to me not only the signifiance of your blog site (well done, Anthony) in the world of changing climate but also that The Guardian now realises that the debate has turned and they are on the losing side.
This item has been reported in Australia but they wheeled out the wobbly talking heads, yet again, who told us this does not change the underlying science!!!
@Jeef (11:29:18) :”…Still no major stories in NZ press other than the usual “this looks awful but really, it changes nothing” spin.”
Here’s a Kiwigate story.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/SC1002/S00004.htm
Sorry, should have given h/t to climategate.com for that kiwi story.
http://www.climategate.com/
And (non-kiwi) a Washington Times editorial:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/feb/02/osama-and-obama-on-global-warming/
‘The hitch is that the man-caused catastrophic global warming theory is dead, and it needs to be buried. Evidence had been mounting for years that there were problems with the global warming model; most telling was that the globe refused to warm up. Carbon emissions continued apace, but the world began cooling. This is why true believers abandoned the “global warming” brand name and tried to shift the debate to the more ambiguous label “climate change,” which is something the rest of us like to refer to as “weather.” ‘
It is just after midnight in the UK.
I have just gone on the BBC website and got their latest weather forecast. I do not live in the city centre but rather just within the main orbital ring road, about 10 to 12 miles from the city centre. Apparently, the current temperature is 7C with a minimum forecasted temperature of 3C. I also checked the weather details for a near by town about 7 miles away from me further out from London but still just within the M25 orbital motorway (which for US readers is the main orbital motorway circumventing London). Obviously the High Street of this nearby town is fully urbanised and there is a mixture of terraced, semi detached and detached housing. The town is set is a semi rural area. The current temperature is said to be 3C with a minimum forecasted temperature of 1C.
It will be noted that the difference in current temperature is 4C and the difference in forecasted minimum temperature is 2C.
Where I live in say 1940 would have been very similar to Loughton, ie., semi-rural. You would have to have taken the train from London to my home, now one takes the tube (underground/subway) although the tube station is overground.
It is easy to see from this simple experiment the UHI and the effect of urban sprawl. I do not know where the nearest weather station used for the HADCRU data set is located. However, had there been a station near me in the 1940s it would have yielded similar data to that of Loughton. 60 years on, it is now 4C warmer than Loughton.
Anyone who denies that there are potentially serious problems to data sets caused by UHI and urban sprawl is frankly delusional and the men in white coats should be coming to lock them up.
Anyone else like the irony in Monbiot’s writing on this business?
He says
Wow, anyone got time to unpack all that? First of all, Pearce did not “break the story” in the most meaningful sense — as he acknowledges in his own piece on the subject, it was — who? — skeptics … SKEPTICS … who identified this problem and caused the crisis. In the case of the glacier story, Pearce, being the “brilliant reporter” that he was, certainly understood the documentation difficulties in the original article, and evidently came clean when he saw the writing on the wall and knew the dam was about to break. He had a choice, either come clean or go down with the story.
I can’t believe Monbiot can get away with this raw ad hominem full of inuendo about backroom deals with evil oil conglomerates.
Maybe that’s why McIntyre, Watts et al are all so filthy rich … /irony
Jeff C. (20:34:32) :
“… I guess we should be glad that this story has finally gotten legs, but the blatant cribbing without attribution is annoying. Where were they the last three years?”
As a skeptic I am very happy to see the journalist cribbing from WUWT and others. The NYT has also done it just recently.
I expect they are afraid to acknowledge a source like WUWT, even though we know Anthony works very hard to keep this a decent science blog.
Why, It is almost as bad as getting your tips from a really crazy conspiracy site! /sarc
Mike D. (21:23:56) :
John Whitman (20:54:17): Ladies & Gentlemen of the Jury of Independent Thinkers, do you find the accused Dr Jones guilty of crimes against the integrity of Science?
The crime is fraud, and Jones is an accomplice, not the ringleader. Follow the ill-gotten gains.
I second that.
Perhaps the stories are coming out in the UK because the Carbon trading legislation is a done deal and the politicians and money-men really do not care. However they are still trying to push the CAGW laws down out throats here in the USA and also in Australia so the media is still being kept on the leash.
Gail Combs – I agree. Once the bricks crumble, there will be time for a forensic analysis of who broke what when.
Pachauri of ‘Policy Neutral’ IPCC Calls for ‘Grassroots Action’ in Response to Setbacks http://bit.ly/dDxZao
Andrew30 (21:47:07) :
“Just to clarify that list:
They all have links to Carbon Trading and they all either provided fraudulent input to, or published fraudulent output from the IPCC, and are not listed as being direct funders of the CRU. The direct funders are easy.”
The more evidence the better.
How about the banks?
Roger Knights (01:13:07)
“….In the big picture, the most underplayed aspect of this affair (to me) is the ease with which the CRU managed to effect “regulatory capture” of their FOI officer. This has disturbing implications far and wide. I urge the UK press to do a thumb-sucker series on the topic in general. It would be a statesmanlike thing to do.”
The corruption of the FOI officer should certainly have been headline news. It is in the same league as finding out your village coppers are taking bribes in my book.
@Patrick Davis (16:05:31) :
‘“Jeef (11:29:18) :
It looks to me as if Phil Jones is being thrown under the bus in a big way.”
Yes, a Route Master. And “Route” is a naughty word here in Australia.’
PD – I’m in NZ and know what you mean. BTW, if it’s a Routemaster can I be the conductor? I’d like to check his ticket, I think he’s been riding too long!
Thanks to Peter and to Patrick for info regarding the Met temperature records;
I’ll do my best to make some sense of them ;^)
Sorry to hav emissed Newsnight – I came in as it started but when I heard the Squawk I switched off automatically! She and her husband are big noises in Labour politics in Scotland btw – he’s a NuLab or Union apparatchik, can’t remember which
Martinlejudge (10:51:20) :
Do Americans Understand the Significance of these Stories?
Yes I think we Americans do …. and we are jealous! Aside from the Wall Street Journal, US media is nothing but bought and paid for propaganda machines. I quit watching TV and buying newspapers years ago in complete disgust.
Here we are in agreement (network ‘evening news’ is worthless exc for maybe showing footage of wx events but then there is http://www.stormtack.org for good coverage of wx events and I don’t have Fox News).
.
.
Someone may have addressed this point, but whether and to what degree the UHI has manifested itself depends essentially on where the thermometer is placed. Could anyone in the know tell me where?
The “Tokyo temperature” over here has been the reading of a thermometer placed in a cortile of the Meteorological Agency, surrounded by toll buildings that have gradually increased their number, and in an area where heavy urbanization has taken place. As a result, the Tokyo temp has risen by more than 3 degC in about 100 years.
In the first paragraph I forgot to state the topic was the UHI effect in London, on which many folks have discussed.
Tokyoboy:
“Someone may have addressed this point, but whether and to what degree the UHI has manifested itself depends essentially on where the thermometer is placed.”
I think you’re confusing instrument siting, the subject of the surfacestations project, with UHI. Siting issues are a question of microclimates, familiar to any gardener, and can be said to be a question of ‘false’ readings: putting your thermometer beside an airconditioner discharge generates a “false” reading for the location, one which you wouldn’t get if you placed it a few meters away. Whereas UHI is a matter of “real” temperature for an entire district due to urban buildup, a question of kilometers rather than meters.
Some of the attackes on Anthony based on Menne’s paper confuse the two issues.
OK, so I just opened the “response” and looked at the plot. Two main points:
1- Any plot that looks that good, I’m crying “FOUL!”
2- Where are the frigging corrected coordinates?
keenans paper is now available at http://multi-science.metapress.com Interest in it and Hollands paper from BBCs ‘You and Yours’ programme. Apparaently next Tuesdays broadcast willl be about how climate change will cost us more. A first?
Climategate: A Noxious Slurry of Dirty Tricks and Illegal “Hactivities”
http://legendofpineridge.blogspot.com/2010/02/climategate-noxious-slurry-of-dirty.html
It’s interesting to me that whenever “scientists” talk about man made climate change, they are always talking about the common man having a barbeque in his yard, an SUV in his driveway and keeping his house warm or cool. That is, so called UHI’s.
Why don’t we talk about man made climate change in terms of HAARP, or chemtrails, or depleted uranium, or constant war, or countless government programs that do nothing but waste resources and polute the environment? Obviously, scientists are not going to bite the hand that feeds them. You can’t tax any of these activities. These are the givens. Scientists have no credibility to me unless they address the full spectrum of human activity. Otherwise, what good are they?