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
“The major datasets mostly agree,”
Is this why? http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/12/noaa-drops-another-13-of-stations-from-ghcn-database/
“Richard Wakefield (17:52:17) :
”
Nicely done, but you need
-a learned guy with a british accent to read it
-some dramatic opera choirs for the “but then something interesting happens”
moments (and get more of these, i like them)
-some real life photo shoots in between the statistics
Somebody should remix your video
If Jones is innocent of manipulating data, as he proclaims, we must remember the tweaking, manipulating, adjusting, and downright torturing of data that has been shown on WUWT to have taken place around the world before CRU got hold of it.
Harrabin:
If you agree that there were similar periods of warming since 1850 to the current period, and that the MWP is under debate, what factors convince you that recent warming has been largely man-made?
Jones:
The fact that we can’t explain the warming from the 1950s by solar and volcanic forcing – see my answer to your question D.
There is perfectly good explanation, and it is not to do either with the solar or volcanic forcing :
http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/41/83/04/PDF/NATA.pdf
Re: Richard Wakefield (Feb 12 17:52),
What an excellent and interesting piece of work.
It would be good to see it as a posting in its own right.
””’old construction worker (00:55:49) : 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.”””
I like to use the words “compromised their profession”. For a professed scientist to compromise science is a profound act.
John
The life stolen from taxpayers and others as a result of his actions is a crime to begin with. He sat by and allowed his work to be sold around the world for the purpose of trashing peoples lives, their country, and the memory of their ancestors who fought and died for a place they believed in. He took food off the table of a wage earner, and time that could have been spent with family and children, to pay for what is now in the trillions for a fake ‘climate’ industry. He substantiated that he didn’t have all of the records needed, and that the MWP data isn’t such that an entire population should be demonized around the clock, robbed, and enslaved. His next problem is the media bought what he said in the worst possible way and turned it into a political machine. Will he call the NY Times and Washington Post and tell them to back off man made climate change? Finally, businesses have already been robbed by cap and trade scammers, shaking down honest people who believed the constant propaganda that the hockey stick proved we were killing ourselves and our fellow man. Will Jones call the NRDC and tell them to stop?
“Richard Wakefield (17:52:17) :
”
Oh, another suggestion: To give the viewer a hook start with a riddle like: Why haven’t max temperatures not increased?
Before the animation tell the viewer to look at the 30 degree line that is reached through all the years but never crossed.
Afterwards explain the answer: The planet cannot get hotter because it can’t sustain a higher temperature (too much radiation going outward, Stefan-Boltzmann law, 4th power of temperature)
Show 2 y axisses: 1 with the temperature and the second with the according radiative flux of a blackbody. This helps to show the limiting nature of high temperatures.
Phil Jones says;
“He said this contributed to his refusal to share raw data with critics – a decision he says he regretted.”
That’s not what is implied in one of your e-mails Dr Jones. Liar liar, pants on fire!
Baa Humbug (19:24:01) :
Re: Richard Wakefield (Feb 12 17:52),
“that was excellent Richard, well done. ”
I agree. Very well done.!
Needs to be shown in every class room.
Dr. Robert (18:22:46) :
Here’s the link to the Q&A: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm
___________________________________________
Thanks for this, I laughed long and hard. I particularly like:
“B – Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming
Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level ….. [blah, blah, waffle, waffle]”
as in
Q: Do you agree that this is a duck
A: Yes, but only just. The genetic makeup is very close to an Aardvark.
Heh, heh, heh, heh. You’ve got to love him, if only for the entertainment value. 😀
“debreuil (20:27:59) :
To keep a record of all his data, code, and documents, including revisions, all he needed was a source control system. These have been around almost as long as computers, and are free.”
To be more precise, revision control systems started to conquer the market in around 1990, and some are darn expensive (IBM’s Clearcase). The CRU would have had the money, though.
He assumes it must be man-made CO2 because he can’t think of anything else. In the past ‘conclusions’ were drawn about what caused what with some hilarious results. The scientific method, particularly in relations to climate science, means you should be able to make predictions and forecasts using your hypothesis. If they fail miserably and continue to fail then you have a problem.
Tokyoboy : Bunker Mentality – Just like in Neon Genesis Evangelion when the city goes in hiding while the Angels attack 😉
A boy is caught with his hands in the cookie jar. Quietly and humble he’s explaining mommy what went on: “The other boys on the street led me to do it”.
Mommy is listening patiently. However a bit of fear is heard in the boy’s voice: “What will happen when daddy returns from work?”
THE BIG LIE:
“He strongly defended references in his emails to using a ‘trick’ to ‘hide the decline’ in temperatures. These phrases had been deliberately taken out of context and ‘spun’ by sceptics keen to derail the Copenhagen climate conference, he said. And he denied any attempt to influence climate data: ‘I have no agenda,’ he said. “
Well done Phil Jones. You are on the right track, although there is a long road ahead of you.
Less well done BBC, for the sentence ” people demanding to see raw data behind records showing an unprecedented warming in the late 20th Century”
Hello! You just wrote that Phil Jones admitted that there were 2 periods of similar warming, and that the temperature of the Medieval Warm period isn’t settled…
A particularly interesting detail of Jones’s exchange with Harrabin was when, in response to the question “Do you agree that natural influences could have contributed significantly to the global warming experienced from 1975-1998 …”, he replies “This area is slightly outside my area of expertise”. In other words, he (and the CRU) are not really climateologists at all: they’re collectors, processors and publishers of temperature data. And, as Jones now admits, they haven’t even done that very well: the data was “not well organised” and he was not good at keeping a paper trail.
So, if the effect of natural forces is outside his area of expertise, what value can be put on his unsurprisingly vague support (referring to IPCC chapter 9) for the AGW hypothesis? None, I suggest.
Indeed, on the basis of his comments, it could be argued that there is no such discipline as climatology.
Well this is interesting. Hansen’s original hypothesis of CAGW (Science, 1981) predicts:
– CO2 warming effect from 1975 to 2010 of around 0.5C (given actual fossil fuel consumption most closely mirrors his ‘fast growth’ scenario)
– CO2 warming overwhelms other sources of climate variability by the year 2000 (as measured by a 2 standard deviation temp range)
– therefore, from 2000, there should be an unambiguous statistically significant warming trend caused by CO2 irrespective of what the other climate factors do
This model of CAGW has been comprehensively falsified now, confirmed by Phil Jones own admissions
– no statistically significant warming from 1995 onwards
– no warming trend from 2000 onwards
Hansen’s original model published in 1981 was less alarmist in its projections than subsequent hypotheses
The mark of a decent scientist is someone who ‘fesses up when the observed facts falsify his hypothesis, and honestly strives for an explanation as to the reason why. Has Hansen bothered doing this??
Jones: “I’m not a bad man – just a bad wizard.”
sceptics” . . . should compile their own dataset from material publicly available in the US’’
Surely Prof Jones you could help us with one small intact data set, say the Chineese Jones Wang data showing urban heat island effect was minimal.
“John Whitman (22:07:57) :
”””’tokyoboy (21:36:05) : I can’t figure our well the nuance of the “bunker mentality.” Does this trace back to a bunker in golf yards?
Anyone teach me please.”””’
Tokyoboy,
A bunker is a reinforced structure usually underground that is build for the purpose of keeping military leaders….”
Reminds me of the golf professional who advertised his lessons with
‘I could have got Hitler out of that bunker!’
cheers David
Really poor questioning with no follow up and no direct reference to the voluminous contradictory emails and still Jones comes off as the lying a**hole he is. Criminal. [Literally!]
Al Gore’s Brother: yeah of course. As soon as there are fiefdoms in science, it’ll be the “tenants” that get shafted. 😉
E – How confident are you that warming has taken place and that humans are mainly responsible?
Jones
I’m 100% confident that the climate has warmed. As to the second question, I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 – there’s evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity.
Doesn`t the IPCC rely on Jones and Wang`s dodgy china study showing little warming from UHI.