From the BBC
By Roger Harrabin, Environment analyst, BBC News
Phil Jones, the professor behind the “Climategate” affair, has admitted some of his decades-old weather data was not well enough organised.
He said this contributed to his refusal to share raw data with critics – a decision he says he regretted.
But Professor Jones said he had not cheated the data, or unfairly influenced the scientific process.
He said he stood by the view that recent climate warming was most likely predominantly man-made.
But he agreed that two periods in recent times had experienced similar warming. And he agreed that the debate had not been settled over whether the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than the current period.
These statements are likely to be welcomed by people sceptical of man-made climate change who have felt insulted to be labelled by government ministers as flat-earthers and deniers.
‘Bunker mentality’
Professor Jones agreed that scientists on both sides of the debate could suffer sometimes from a “bunker mentality”.
He said “sceptics” who doubted his climate record should compile their own dataset from material publicly available in the US.
“The major datasets mostly agree,” he said. “If some of our critics spent less time criticising us and prepared a dataset of their own, that would be much more constructive.”
His colleagues said that keeping a paper trail was not one of Professor Jones’ strong points. Professor Jones told BBC News: “There is some truth in that.
“We do have a trail of where the (weather) stations have come from but it’s probably not as good as it should be,” he admitted.
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h/t Andrew Montford, See more at the BBC here
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Phil Jones :’If some of our critics…prepared a data set of their own, that would be much more constructive.’
Just letting you know, Professor Jones, that some of your critics have prepared data sets which are more constructive. Here down under, Willis Eschenbach and Ken Stewart have examined Darwin and Mackay long term station data and and found temperature adjustments are adding a warming bias. 🙂
<blockquote.“If some of our critics spent less time criticising us and prepared a dataset of their own, that would be much more constructive.”
Clearly, Jones doesn’t understand the scientific process and real peer review.
How did people like him wind up with PhDs?
Hats off to him? No way! He still doesn’t get it!
Naw, they burned them to keep warm during this unusually mild winter.
Bernie:
Something had to trigger this amazing set of admissions.
Perhaps he cut a deal? Turned “state’s evidence”?
Richard Wakefield (17:52:17) :
““sceptics” who doubted his climate record should compile their own dataset from material publicly available in the US.”
I have done just that. you are gonna love this, especially where I run through some 80 years of raw temperature graphs in an animation, correlated with the average of the yearly mean temperature.
It sure is amazing how complex Nature is.
—————
It sure is amazing how good that slide-show is! Thank you.
It warrants a thread of its own, IMO.
It looks like Harrabin found the “UK scientists in current academic posts who are sceptical about AGW”.
The first questions to ask when looking at the questions is why the BBC is allowed the interview, why Roger Harrabin and why those dates and timeframes? Given the bias of the BBC, one should be suspicious. A leopard does not change its spots.
Is the time frame cherry picked for some reason? Examine Questions A and D.
A. Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical?
D – Do you agree that natural influences could have contributed significantly to the global warming observed from 1975-1998, and, if so, please could you specify each natural influence and express its radiative forcing over the period in Watts per square metre.
his answer is…
This area is slightly outside my area of expertise. When considering changes over this period we need to consider all possible factors (so human and natural influences as well as natural internal variability of the climate system). Natural influences (from volcanoes and the Sun) over this period could have contributed to the change over this period. Volcanic influences from the two large eruptions (El Chichon in 1982 and Pinatubo in 1991) would exert a negative influence. Solar influence was about flat over this period. Combining only these two natural influences, therefore, we might have expected some cooling over this period.
So what Prof Jones says is that although the three timeframes have similar rising temperature rates, the third one has to be Anthropogenic because it should have cooled because of the volcanic eruptions and the lack of solar activity. He does not allow for any other reason.
Was the timeframe 1860-1880, 1910-1940 selected to eliminate discussion of the large volcanic eruptions Krakatau of 1883, Mt Pelee 1902, and Santa Maria 1902, so that Prof Jones could use the 1975-1998 period to put forward his new thesis that the earth should have cooled but didn’t and therefore it must be manmade?
I leave it to others to examine the other questions and why they were asked and defined, rather than be sidelined by the answers.
Phil Jones said
“The major datasets mostly agree,” he said. “If some of our critics spent less time criticising us and prepared a dataset of their own, that would be much more constructive.”
This is obviously a clear invitation for sceptics to share some of his research funds instead of having to find the money out of their own resources 🙂
I for one would like a share to examine the historic instrumental records in more detail, that I carry here.
http://climatereason.com/LittleIceAgeThermometers/
In his official capacity Phil Jones has been involved in many joint research projects which have been systematically reducing the temperatures recorded by the historic instrumental sets. These sets certainly need ‘interpreting’ but the adjustments made are sometimes astonishing and then appear to contradict the actual observational records-such as crops/tree lines/effects on everyday life etc.
This is the end result of one such project that Phil Jones carried out, which even after ‘homogenisation; still showed a suprising result. This is carried on my web site above and the intro coments are mine;
“Article: Improved Understanding of Past Climatic Variability from Early Daily European Instrumental Sources. Author: Camuffo D and P D Jones
Phil Jones of CRU was apparently fascinated by the temperature data sets preceding the 1850 cut off point that he chose in 1993. He subsequently identified seven as being of particular interest and in 2002- together with Dr D Camuffo- wrote a fascinating book on early (pre 1850) climate as measured by seven data sets.(behind a pay wall)
http://www.isac.cnr.it/~microcl/climatologia/improve.php
The link to the book/dvd is towards the bottom of the article. The caveats expressed about the longer data sets are worth reading. In it he mentions:
“The actual warming rate has been proven to be at such a slow rate that temperature changes, over years (i.e. 0.006°C/yr) and even decades (i.e. 0.06°C/decade), are in most cases smaller than the instrumental resolution and can hardly be directly detected.”
So can I be first in the queue for a share of the funding that Phil Jones gets please.
Tonyb
‘Most likely predominantly’ leaves an awful lot of space for future wiggle room. If ‘most likely’ = 75% , and ‘predmoinantly = 75%, the you only get to 56% in combination….or 44% of wiggle room. Just another 7% and he’ drop into ‘denialism’! (not a word I normally use)
And its not ‘the lack of a paper trail’ that is worrying. Its the fact that Harry_read_me shows that he had all this data,, but mostly hadn’t a frigging clue where it came from or what it was supposed to mean. There was no ‘data dictionary’, nor seemingly agreed standards for reporting. As a Data Custodian the CRU was unfit for purpose.
Do not send Jones out to Tesco’s with your shopping list. He’ll lose it on the way. Try to remember if it was tea or coffee that you asked for. Return with a brown goo made from Ovaltine and camomile extract. And give it to your sister by ‘genuine mistake’
I apologize if someone already noticed that Jones and the groundhog that emerges from its burrow in February have both the same name: PHIL. Some times life imitates Arts. 🙂
BBC interview?
The fact that we can’t explain the warming from the 1950s by solar and volcanic forcing
We can’t explain it, so it must be man made, we have no other ideas
Damage limitation anyone?
Come off it, where is the data? i.e. the original, raw, non-value added, not adjusted, non homogenised data?
A ‘bunker mentality’ as a metaphor means that you are stuck in a defensive position and getting hammered. You have no possible offense and have to sit and take it. You trust no one. You are scared.
It is not a golf course bunker/sandtrap.
Statement by the Met Office in response to questions about data inconsistency.
It is inevitable that available archive versions for some stations will differ between data held by National Met Services, including the Met Office, and those in the archive prepared by the Climatic Research Unit at University of East Anglia. Indeed, explicit wording to this effect was required in the letters sent to gain permission to release data under the purview of each NMS.
Most of these data recovery and digitisation efforts occurred in the days before widespread computer networks, designated world data centres etc. Therefore such vagaries as the choice of record version (there are often several paper records for the same station that may differ), choice of stored data accuracy, exact location details, and length of record digitised are bound to differ for at least some stations. Further, either the NMS and/or CRU may have applied adjustments to the data. Differences between the archives cannot be used in any meaningful or quantifiably defensible sense to infer the absolute quality of either the CRU archive or records held by others.
yep, he’s shifting but still a long way to go.
Now, about this public data we are supposed to be analyzing in our own time… perhaps you could point us to it?
How about all the political implications of what you have just said, Phil me old mucker? Are you going to join Richard North in bringing down IPCC, cap and trade, green taxes?
A long way to go.
“OMG. He destroys Mann’s Hockey stick by admitting there was a MWP! This is huge! First time an alarmist has admitted that anything about AGW is not settled!”
The HS shows a MWP.
When Dr Michael Mann wrote about the HS in a British meteorological journal I have he talked about the MWP and LIA. Ok, that account doesn’t fit the myth but it’s, I’m sorry, the truth.
“Hmm. I enjoy how (non)specific climate scientists can be. “He said he stood by the view that recent climate warming was most likely predominantly man-made.” In other words, we kinda think that maybe about half of the warming is manmade–or maybe not.”
Yes.
No one has claimed all the warming is man made.
Blimey, myths abound here today..
“Given the nature and significance of these revelations, it might be interesting to speculate what caused the soul baring by Prof. Jones.”
The death threats?
“And he agreed that the debate had not been settled over whether the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than the current period.”
Perhaps he might start by looking up some of the papers referred to here: http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?hl=de&sl=de&tl=en&u=http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php&rurl=translate.google.com&usg=ALkJrhgyKEL_HML73L-PWs8SGqmGN44FlA
vilmous
Australians are ‘very, very na’. Whatever does he mean?
Let’s face it. Jones, likes many “scientist” sold their souls for a piece of gold, paid for by politicians to promote political agendas to reward a few at the expense of the consumer/taxpayer.
“‘We do have a trail of where the (weather) stations have come from but it’s probably not as good as it should be,’ he admitted.”
Uhh… Well… Ahem… Isn’t this exactly the thing that should distinguish the amateur from the professional researcher?
The professional i supposed to document all trails so that the results can stand up against scrutiny!
What he is in fact saying is that their data collections aren’t reliable at all!
Baffling.
And; the MWP-admittal is immensly important. Without the hockey stick they truly have some explaining to do, because then the models are all proven to lack reconstructional worth and therefore also predictional worth.
Interesting how people who have retired to their bunker when forced to admit their fault of “bunker mentality”, consider the outside as a bunker too, and charge its inhabitants with having a bunker mentality.
Goldfish see the glass wall of their bowl as imprisoning the rest of the World.
Peter Stroud>> Thank’s for that link!
Please explain to me how come when this has been published:
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=de&sl=de&tl=en&u=http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php&rurl=translate.google.com
…and at the same time these CRU/Penn State jokers are allowed to trumpet out the message that the MWP probably wasn’n warmer than CWP?
Because as I read it, an overwhelming amount of studies show that the WMP indeed was warmer..!?
The “untidiness” excuse is merely a desperate attempt to grasp a lifeline thrown by some of his colleagues; the leaked CRU emails confirm that the withholding of evidence was deliberate and intentional — he threatened to destroy it rather than divulge it, for heaven’s sake!
What I thought was great was the way he said the evidence for the Medieval Warm Period was all in the northern hemisphere – even though this is untrue. But let us assume it is true and look at what evidence he has that it does not exist and where does it come from.
Why the Northern Hemisphere of course.
So tree rings from Siberia can prove there was not Medieval Warm Period in Australia.