Excerpt from the Nature article here
Central to the Russell investigation is the issue of whether he or his CRU colleagues ever published data that they knew were potentially flawed, in order to bolster the evidence for man-made global warming. The claim specifically relates to one of Jones’s research papers1 on whether the urban heat island effect — in which cities tend to be warmer than the surrounding countryside — could be responsible for the apparent rise in temperature readings from thermometers in the late twentieth century. Jones’s study concluded that this local effect was negligible, and that the dominant effect was global climate change.
In the paper, the authors used data from weather stations around the world; those in China “were selected on the basis of station history: we chose those with few, if any, changes in instrumentation, location or observation times”, they wrote.
But in 2007, amateur climate-data analyst Doug Keenan alleged that this claim was false, citing evidence that many of the stations in eastern China had been moved throughout the period of study. Because the raw data had been obtained from a Chinese contact of one of Jones’s co-authors, Wei-Chyung Wang of the University at Albany in New York, and details of their location had subsequently been lost, there was no way of verifying or refuting Keenan’s claim.
Jones says that approaching Wang for the Chinese data seemed sensible at the time. “I thought it was the right way to get the data. I was specifically trying to get more rural station data that wasn’t routinely available in real time from [meteorological] services,” says Jones, who asserts that standards for data collection have changed considerably in the past twenty years. He now acknowledges that “the stations probably did move”, and that the subsequent loss of the details of the locations was sloppy. “It’s not acceptable,” says Jones. “[It’s] not best practice.” CRU denies any involvement in losing these records.
Jones says that he did not know that the weather stations’ locations were questionable when they were included in the paper, but as the study’s lead author he acknowledges his responsibility for ensuring the quality of the data. So will he submit a correction to Nature? “I will give that some thought. It’s worthy of consideration,” he says.
The full Nature article is here
======================================
Doug Keenan writes in a comment to the nature article:
This news report discusses my work on the Chinese weather-station data, but provides no references for that work. The main reference is this: Keenan, D. J. Energy & Environment, 18, 985-995 (2007). It is freely available on the web.
The news report also misrepresents my allegations.
My principal allegation is that some of the data on station histories never existed. Specifically, Jones et al. (1990) claim to have sourced their data from a report that was published by the U.S. Department of Energy and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Yet for 49 of the 84 meteorological stations that Jones et al. relied upon, the DOE/CAS Report states “station histories are not currently available” and “details regarding instrumentation, collection methods, changes in station location or observing times … are not known”. Those statements imply that the quoted claim from Jones et al. is impossible: “stations were selected on the basis of station history: we chose those with few, if any, changes in instrumentation, location or observation times”. My paper presents more details; some updates are available via http://www.informath.org/apprise/a5620.htm .
I have also alleged that, by 2001, Jones knew there were severe problems with the Chinese research and yet he continued using that research–including allowing it to be relied on by the IPCC 2007 Assessment Report. Evidence is in Section 2.4 of my 2007 paper. Jones was one of the reviewers for my paper (the reviewer tally was 2-1 for acceptance, with Jones being the 1). Although Jones had many comments, he did not attempt to dispute this allegation.
Additional support for the latter allegation is given in my submission to the UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee. A copy of my submission is available via http://www.informath.org/apprise/a5610.htm . The submission additionally alleges that Jones acted unscrupulously when he was reviewing my paper.
The news report further claims that “e-mails and documents were illegally obtained from the university”. In fact, it is not known whether the leak of the e-mails and documents was illegal: the leak might be covered under whistle-blower legislation.
Lastly, with regard to Jones’ question “Why don’t they do their own reconstructions?”, the answer is that the data has not been released. In particular, regarding the Medieval Warm Period, what is arguably the most valuable tree-ring data extant remains unavailable. Details on that are at http://www.informath.org/apprise/a3900.htm .
Jones must be on the path to righteousness 🙂
You know what? Thank you Dr. Jones for at least being somewhat straightforward recently. Your former associates over at RealClimate still have a lot of work to do to become respected again.
Oh frabjous day, calloo, callay. Wanging hanging slowly in the wind.
===================
Seems like Jones is realizing the complaints against his work actually have merit, as opposed to being oil-funded attacks on his credibility. Still, it seems he owes Mr. Keenan a big fat apology.
I’m surprised that they didn’t give Keenan equal time in the article to respond. >ok not so surprised considering the source< He had to get his point across in the comments to the article? bad form on Nature's part.
But surely Wang was cleared by a fully independent inquiry at Albany University. Just like all the other inquiries are whitewash jobs.
You know sometimes when you recognise that you are so angry,that you start to laugh? This is one of those times for me. These fecking crooks should be burnt alive!
Ian Plimer:
“I fingered Jones for fraud on pp. 481-482 in my book Heaven and Earth. If investigative journalists had not been advocates for the climate industry, they would have followed my lead and scooped the world. They didn’t because they were too busy trying to frighten us.”
…-
“Climategate: A Defiance of Arrogant Political Power
The average voter has had enough: no more being force-fed scenarios defying that rare commodity called common sense.
The people are speaking. We are seeing a defiance of bureaucrats, officials, government propaganda, and funded climate catastrophe researchers. A scary scientific paradigm of human-induced climate change is collapsing because the cake has been over iced. The average voter has had enough of being talked down to by arrogant scientists with vested interests who present scenarios that defy that rare commodity called common sense.
It was only a short time ago that climate rationalists were told they were factually wrong, that their skepticism was evil, their views were akin to Holocaust denial, and that they should be tried for crimes against humanity. However, Climategate emails show that the coterie of two dozen leading climate comrades shared this skepticism in private — yet denounced skeptics in public. Various cap-and-trade systems have been shown to be an extra tax, which may end up being distributed by the sticky fingers of the UN.
Even more disturbingly, Climategate emails show two decades of systematic willful fraud. Since then, there has been the farce of Copenhagen, which the UK Taxpayers’ Alliance found cost the GDP of Malawi. (If such funds were used to provide electricity and potable water to Malawians, then this would have been a demonstration of true environmentalism.)
The allotted 10-minute speaking time for President Hugo Chavez became a one-hour rant against capitalism. He received a standing ovation. This is what Copenhagen was about.” (more)
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/climategate-a-defiance-of-arrogant-political-power/?singlepage=true
http://www.bluelikeyou.com/2010/02/15/the-debate-is-not-over/#comment-75069
The 1990 paper should be withdrawn. Period.
It is sad to see that Jones is still hemming and hawing on this one.
As he comes clean, next we’ll learn that he’s the leaker
Jones seems both sloppy and a tad on the dishonest side.
From the article… “The science still holds up” though, he adds. A follow-up study verified the original conclusions for the Chinese data for the period 1954–1983, showing that the precise location of weather stations was unimportant. “They are trying to pick out minor things in the data and blow them out of all proportion,” says Jones of his critics.”
That certainly doesn’t sound like he will be issuing much of a correction if he does issue one at all.
Is one simply to rewrite fraudulent papers to regain respectability? At least Jones is being candidly honest these days, a big step up from Mann’s and Pachauri’s strident issuances in interviews, although both the latter have already had their “papers” rewritten for them.
Agree with Dr. Robert. Although it took a devastating and irrefutable blow to bring him to being truthful, Jones is at least on his way to re-establishing his name by going through some pretty painful admissions and pennance. It’s not easy to stand up and say “I was wrong, I knew it, but I soldiered on notwithstanding.”
Meanwhile, here in Pennsylvania, Michael Mann is still trying and hoping to dodge the bullets.
What is it about Pennsylvania. Why do we get both Mann and Michael Behe?
I’mwith Dr Robert: respect to Jones. We need to make it as easy as possible for people to shed their idées fixées and come over to the side of truth and transparency, heaven knows they must be getting it in the neck from former associates with a lot to lose.
Is it just me, or is it that every time somebody wants to check this guys work, the information required has been “lost”?
Raw CRU data? Oops, lost it.
Data proving Urban Heat Island effect is negligible? Oops, lost it.
Anything relating to any work I have ever done? Oops, look I JUST lost it.
But no matter, my conclusions are robust, you can trust me!!! Never mind those emails that show I’m a criminal, the statute of limitations has expired! (Hahahahahahahahahahahaha Stupid Sheeple will never catch me, I’m to smart for em)
This really made me laugh. Alot: http://www.neptunuslex.com/2010/02/14/last-man-in/
Tom,
I truly believe Jones’ accomplices are just digging themselves deeper graves. If we look at RealClimate, you can see their attempt to spin everything, which is especially exemplified in their comments sections by the moderators.
Absolutely ridiculous.
It’s funny, because Phil Jones looked the worse at the start of ClimateGate, but he may end up looking the best at the end of it. Smart man indeed!
DR
I’m really happy to see this post.
It is notable how Nature went about reporting the story of the dispute between me and Jones. The dispute essentially boils down to this: one party accused another party of fraud. Nature’s reporting consisted of asking the accused party if he was guilty, and finding that the accused declared himself innocent. The reporting did not include examining any evidence for the accusation, nor interviewing the accuser. (Inadequate resources could not be the problem, because the journalist traveled to Jones’ university in Norwich, to do the interview.) Even without assessing the merits of the accusation, then, I believe it is fair to say that the reporting on this was abysmal.
I have what might be a dumb question, and is probably somewhat off-topic for this particular discussion, but it’s bugging me, and they did mention tree-ring reconstructions in the article, so I’m not completely off-topic. 🙂
We know that the bristlecone pine and other tree-ring logs diverge from the “official” interpretation of the temperature, by showing flattening or even cooling in recent years.
We also know that trees (and other vegetation) grow better (and thus should have thicker tree rings) in a higher-CO2 atmosphere.
Given those two facts, I’m seeing a pretty major disconnect – if the CO2 is on the rise, and vegetation the world over is responding to this rise by increasing yield (as I think I’ve seen stated elsewhere), why are the dendrochronology reconstructions not showing a CO2 effect?
My English test for the Intermediate Certificate in 1960 did not go well, can I have another crack at it?
For fun, here’s a bunch of related Onion-style takes on Climategate: http://optoons.blogspot.com/search/label/global%20warming
Actually, I do not know anything about international politics.
Criminals must be punished. By the laws of their countries or by international laws.
I can imagine the data from any weather station to be adjusted or corrupted. But. I can not imagine all the data to be handled simultaneously without a source of money involved extremely powerful.
And now …. China connection
I tried to post a comment over at RealClimate this morning, stating that the data gathering techniques were flawed, the data manipulated, and the resulting “peer reviewed” documents biased to support a predetermined result. I’m a bit shocked to see that my comments have yet to be posted with a rebuttal. Everyone knows that RealClimate is moderated by real scientists and they should be able to enlighten a “stoopid” skeptic such as me. According to Reader (Daily Mangle reply 159), “You could stick a thermometer up their (skeptics) ass and they’d deny it was 98.6 degrees.” It seems all of us skeptics are just stoopid.
Well, lo and behold, now the Oracle of East Anglia himself is saying a resubmission is “worthy of consideration” but “the science still holds up..” Why is a resubmission worthy of consideration? Does this mean that (gasp!) the data may not have been correct the first time? It’s for greater minds than mine to figure out – I’m just a stoopid skeptic.
If I’d been in the same gang as Jones, I’d be getting very concerned. Almost everyday now he recanst something, it is classic behaviour, he’s looking for forgiveness, ultimately, if he continues he’ll, as they say , “blow the gaff” and give it all up, including his previous comrades in arms.
MattN 10:01:26
That clip is making a lot of people laugh, a lot, but the magnificent moderation here is going to dump it because of its admittedly distant association with Holocaust denial.
Far be it from me to criticize the moderation, which is one of the keys to the success of this establishment.
===================================
Dr. Robert (10:04:49) :
Smart man indeed!
Well….. He certainly is now making more factual statements
and leaving it to the minions to justify their positions. As the
red in their faces overwhelms the flesh tones an audible
pop may be heard.
Keenans paper is at http://multi-science.metapress.com That link takes you to a list of journals including Energy & Environment, click on it and scroll down until you find Keenans paper. If I read the CRU emails correctly, Mann was suggesting putting the lawyers on E&E and Keenan. Wish he had, what a laugh that would have been!
nature cannot do a simple question-answer interview without considerable (re-?)framing.
What’s in the interview, then?
-Jones says, he acted in good faith
-he was wrong
-science was bad
-critics are bad
-therefore, science is right and he is right
-critics are bad for true science, must not be listened to
OMG
The UEA seem to think differently:
http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/CRUstatements/guardianstatement
“1. The FOI request was responded to in full
2. The accuracy of the data and results was confirmed in a later paper
3. The CRU findings were corroborated by other papers used by the IPCC”
/mango
This ship is sinking fast! As a consequence of AGW unraveling ConocoPhilips, BP, Caterpillar and a raft of other corporate heavy-hitters have withdrawn from the U.S. Climate Action Partnership.
That is really good news. Those companies and many others were only “on board” in the first place as a defensive measure. Many were “bought” with promises to their lobbyists of special consideration under cap-and-trade rules by the U.S. administration. Their membership in “the club” gave the illusion of consensus when they were really there under duress.
Rats off a sinking ship! Toot, toot goes the warning horn! Three cheers go the attacking skeptics!
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100216-707790.html?mod=WSJ_latestheadlines
They say confession is good for the soul, and I commend Jones for trying to come clean. Maybe he has no choice, because the AGW fraud is finally being covered by the main stream media. For those who haven’t seen it, I’m pasting below the lead editorial from today’s Wall Street Journal:
The Continuing Climate Meltdown
More embarrassments for the U.N. and ‘settled’ science.
It has been a bad—make that dreadful—few weeks for what used to be called the “settled science” of global warming, and especially for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that is supposed to be its gold standard.
First it turns out that the Himalayan glaciers are not going to melt anytime soon, notwithstanding dire U.N. predictions. Next came news that an IPCC claim that global warming could destroy 40% of the Amazon was based on a report by an environmental pressure group. Other IPCC sources of scholarly note have included a mountaineering magazine and a student paper.
Since the climategate email story broke in November, the standard defense is that while the scandal may have revealed some all-too-human behavior by a handful of leading climatologists, it made no difference to the underlying science. We think the science is still disputable. But there’s no doubt that climategate has spurred at least some reporters to scrutinize the IPCC’s headline-grabbing claims in a way they had rarely done previously.
Take the rain forest claim. In its 2007 report, the IPCC wrote that “up to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation; this means that the tropical vegetation, hydrology and climate system in South America could change very rapidly to another steady state.”
But as Jonathan Leake of London’s Sunday Times reported last month, those claims were based on a report from the World Wildlife Fund, which in turn had fundamentally misrepresented a study in the journal Nature. The Nature study, Mr. Leake writes, “did not assess rainfall but in fact looked at the impact on the forest of human activity such as logging and burning.”
The IPCC has relied on World Wildlife Fund studies regarding the “transformation of natural coastal areas,” the “destruction of more mangroves,” “glacial lake outbursts causing mudflows and avalanches,” changes in the ecosystem of the “Mesoamerican reef,” and so on. The Wildlife Fund is a green lobby that believes in global warming, and its “research” reflects its advocacy, not the scientific method.
The IPCC has also cited a study by British climatologist Nigel Arnell claiming that global warming could deplete water resources for as many as 4.5 billion people by the year 2085. But as our Anne Jolis reported in our European edition, the IPCC neglected to include Mr. Arnell’s corollary finding, which is that global warming could also increase water resources for as many as six billion people.
The IPCC report made aggressive claims that “extreme weather-related events” had led to “rapidly rising costs.” Never mind that the link between global warming and storms like Hurricane Katrina remains tenuous at best. More astonishing (or, maybe, not so astonishing) is that the IPCC again based its assertion on a single study that was not peer-reviewed. In fact, nobody can reliably establish a quantifiable connection between global warming and increased disaster-related costs. In Holland, there’s even a minor uproar over the report’s claim that 55% of the country is below sea level. It’s 26%.
Meanwhile, one of the scientists at the center of the climategate fiasco has called into question other issues that the climate lobby has claimed are indisputable. Phil Jones, who stepped down as head of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit amid the climate email scandal, told the BBC that the world may well have been warmer during medieval times than it is now.
This raises doubts about how much our current warming is man-made as opposed to merely another of the natural climate shifts that have taken place over the centuries. Mr. Jones also told the BBC there has been no “statistically significant” warming over the past 15 years, though he considers this to be temporary.
* * *
All of this matters because the IPCC has been advertised as the last and definitive word on climate science. Its reports are the basis on which Al Gore, President Obama and others have claimed that climate ruin is inevitable unless the world reorganizes its economies with huge new taxes on carbon. Now we are discovering the U.N. reports are sloppy political documents intended to drive the climate lobby’s regulatory agenda.
The lesson of climategate and now the IPCC’s shoddy sourcing is that the claims of the global warming lobby need far more rigorous scrutiny.
In the Nature article:
“I don’t think we should be taking much notice of what’s on blogs because they seem to be hijacking the peer-review process.” – Phil Jones
Dr. Jones has realized his past world has ceased to exist and is making strides in learning a new world view. However, he’s missed something here. Blogs are not hijacking the peer review process, they’ve found that the peer review process needs major reform. I’m a bit surprised Jones made this comment, several journals also see it’s time to reform the process and are exploring new and quicker routes to publication.
It may well be that Climategate may deserve some credit for hastening that process. Yet another benefit of opening the process and letting the light in.
Several years ago, New Hampshire impeached the head of its Supreme Court and a wave of reform into the courts procedure and judicial review ensued. However, since then thay’ve managed to sew the rents in the curtain back up and citizens have as little visibility into judicial process as before.
I don’t think that will happen at CRU or science in general, but Thomas Jefferson’s line “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance” applies quite well here.
From today’s Wall Street Journal in case you haven’t seen it:
The Continuing Climate Meltdown
More embarrassments for the U.N. and ‘settled’ science.
It has been a bad—make that dreadful—few weeks for what used to be called the “settled science” of global warming, and especially for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that is supposed to be its gold standard.
First it turns out that the Himalayan glaciers are not going to melt anytime soon, notwithstanding dire U.N. predictions. Next came news that an IPCC claim that global warming could destroy 40% of the Amazon was based on a report by an environmental pressure group. Other IPCC sources of scholarly note have included a mountaineering magazine and a student paper.
Since the climategate email story broke in November, the standard defense is that while the scandal may have revealed some all-too-human behavior by a handful of leading climatologists, it made no difference to the underlying science. We think the science is still disputable. But there’s no doubt that climategate has spurred at least some reporters to scrutinize the IPCC’s headline-grabbing claims in a way they had rarely done previously.
Take the rain forest claim. In its 2007 report, the IPCC wrote that “up to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation; this means that the tropical vegetation, hydrology and climate system in South America could change very rapidly to another steady state.”
But as Jonathan Leake of London’s Sunday Times reported last month, those claims were based on a report from the World Wildlife Fund, which in turn had fundamentally misrepresented a study in the journal Nature. The Nature study, Mr. Leake writes, “did not assess rainfall but in fact looked at the impact on the forest of human activity such as logging and burning.”
The IPCC has relied on World Wildlife Fund studies regarding the “transformation of natural coastal areas,” the “destruction of more mangroves,” “glacial lake outbursts causing mudflows and avalanches,” changes in the ecosystem of the “Mesoamerican reef,” and so on. The Wildlife Fund is a green lobby that believes in global warming, and its “research” reflects its advocacy, not the scientific method.
The IPCC has also cited a study by British climatologist Nigel Arnell claiming that global warming could deplete water resources for as many as 4.5 billion people by the year 2085. But as our Anne Jolis reported in our European edition, the IPCC neglected to include Mr. Arnell’s corollary finding, which is that global warming could also increase water resources for as many as six billion people.
The IPCC report made aggressive claims that “extreme weather-related events” had led to “rapidly rising costs.” Never mind that the link between global warming and storms like Hurricane Katrina remains tenuous at best. More astonishing (or, maybe, not so astonishing) is that the IPCC again based its assertion on a single study that was not peer-reviewed. In fact, nobody can reliably establish a quantifiable connection between global warming and increased disaster-related costs. In Holland, there’s even a minor uproar over the report’s claim that 55% of the country is below sea level. It’s 26%.
Meanwhile, one of the scientists at the center of the climategate fiasco has called into question other issues that the climate lobby has claimed are indisputable. Phil Jones, who stepped down as head of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit amid the climate email scandal, told the BBC that the world may well have been warmer during medieval times than it is now.
This raises doubts about how much our current warming is man-made as opposed to merely another of the natural climate shifts that have taken place over the centuries. Mr. Jones also told the BBC there has been no “statistically significant” warming over the past 15 years, though he considers this to be temporary.
* * *
All of this matters because the IPCC has been advertised as the last and definitive word on climate science. Its reports are the basis on which Al Gore, President Obama and others have claimed that climate ruin is inevitable unless the world reorganizes its economies with huge new taxes on carbon. Now we are discovering the U.N. reports are sloppy political documents intended to drive the climate lobby’s regulatory agenda.
The lesson of climategate and now the IPCC’s shoddy sourcing is that the claims of the global warming lobby need far more rigorous scrutiny.
Dave F (09:18:22) :
Seems like Jones is realizing the complaints against his work actually have merit, as opposed to being oil-funded attacks on his credibility. Still, it seems he owes Mr. Keenan a big fat apology.
And the rest of the world as well. Of course, he’s not the only one that needs to apologize. And, I don’t think apologies will suffice.
This paper doesn’t need to be corrected — it needs to be thrown out. A search should be done on the literature and any paper citing this work should also be withdrawn.
Start over, and this time provide the raw data.
gcb (10:15:55) :
Personally, I think CO2 is affecting tree rings. I know some white pine saplings that are growing at an astounding rate. (At least to me and I’m not qualified to generalize.) I may get some photos of them this spring.
In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised that is the issue that required the decline to be hidden. If it’s something else, then whatever is behind the divergence may taint the entire history that lies in the treering data.
Doug Keenan,
I think you should be happy with what you’ve accomplished. Expecting Wang’s superiors find him fraudulent, or hoping that Jones would admit to Science that he committed fraud is now too much to hope for. A fair reading of this article makes it clear that at best, the station data was faulty and should not have been used. (This work is clearly not repeatable.) At worst, it appears that the station data was fraudulently put together to bolster the case for AGW. In either case, both Wang and Jones look like poor excuses for scientists.
Jones himself says that “the stations probably did move”, and that the subsequent loss of the details of the locations was sloppy. “It’s not acceptable,” says Jones. “[It’s] not best practice.”
I think that’s as close as anyone can get to a mea culpa and continue to work in his field. If Jones said much more than that, he’d be admitting to fraud, and he won’t ever do that.
Congrats, Doug! You’ve done a great thing here.
The article in Nature is itself quite questionable. They obviously did not fact-check anything with Keenan before publication. They didn’t fact-check and independently verify any of what Jones claimed, either.
If Jones is trying to rehabilitate himself, he has a long way to go. He is still in “CYA” mode and seems to be justifying himself, not apologizing for anything.
We can all thank Al Gore for his invention of the interweb. Otherwise, the other side of the story would never come to light.
A most probable “Submission to Court” scenario..
OT but relevent in a small way
Here we have some comments from the last major project Mr Muir was involved in, the building of the New Scottish Parliment Building, orginal budget £50M, actual £360M ish.
The Accounting Officer and Permanent Secretary, Muir Russell, was semi-detached
from the process.
Tory peer Lord Fraser said there was no single “villain of the piece” when it came to the problems which plagued the building of the Scottish Parliament.
Announcing his findings, the inquiry head said it still astonished him that ministers were kept in the dark over cost increases.
He cleared the late First Minister Donald Dewar of misleading MSPs.
However, he named Sir Muir Russell, former head of the Scottish civil service, as a man with responsibility.
He said: “Clearly the top man was Sir Muir Russell – there was a number of very sharp criticisms made of him in the Scottish Parliament, and I respectfully adopt their recommendations.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/scotland/3656166.stm
There is nothing to rejoice in here regarding Jones’s new found ‘truthfulness’.
Jones says that approaching Wang —seemed sensible at the time. “I thought it was the right way to get the data. I was specifically trying to get more rural station data that wasn’t routinely available in real time—“
He now acknowledges that “the stations probably did move”, and that the subsequent loss of the details of the locations was sloppy. “It’s not acceptable,” says Jones. “[It’s] not best practice.”
Jones says that he did not know that the weather stations’ locations were questionable when they were included in the paper, but as the study’s lead author he acknowledges his responsibility for ensuring the quality of the data.
He was simply shifting the blame sideways.
So will he submit a correction to Nature? “I will give that some thought. It’s worthy of consideration,” he says.
“Nature” was simply on a fishing expedition for another story. This is simply more obfuscation on both Jones’ and “Nature’s” part.
In my view, Jones grabbed this stuff with alacrity. He didn’t care about its veracity because it fitted the story he wanted to tell. This is consistent with all the evidence of his behaviour in the ‘climategate’ emails. Now he excuses himself by hiding behind ‘sloppiness’
Doug Keenan’s response shines the light upon the value of both Jones’s words and “Nature’” motives.
Doug
“I thought it was the right way to get the data. I was specifically trying to get more rural station data that wasn’t routinely available in real time from [meteorological] services,” says Jones….
Right, when you’re after good “rural” station data it’s always best to go to China, because they’re all Peasants over there to begin with and thus their data would also be especially “pristine”, at least if things hadn’t been warmed up by “peasant unrest” – but which never happens in China anyway. Plus since the end of WWII they’re Communists, and we all know how scrupulous they are in preserving historical facts and data.
Doug Keenan is to be congratulated for identifying this deception and directly confronting it with Phil Jones and the editors of Nature.
Like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar, I do not expect Phil Jones or the editors of Nature will admit any wrongs.
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Hope is the last thing to die.
I’m hoping Phil Jones will come clean and fess up, step-by-step, and drain this AGW swamp. He’d be doing science a great service is he did.
Of course my hopes here are hopelessly low.
Douglas J Keenan (10:10:53)
I’m really happy to see your comment here. Congratulations on being vindicated.
I know you and others have, in the past, contributed much to the ‘sane’ side of this controversy, but only since ‘Climategate’ is anyone listening. More power to you.
Frugal Dougal (09:46:18) :
I’m with Dr Robert: respect to Jones. We need to make it as easy as possible for people to shed their idées fixées and come over to the side of truth and transparency, heaven knows they must be getting it in the neck from former associates with a lot to lose.
————-
Reply
True, but consider all those high-powered, “peer-reviewed” research papers over the decades that have been based on the flawed CRU mantra. Perhaps between climate colleagues, love means never having to say you’re sorry.
gcb (10:15:55) :
why are the dendrochronology reconstructions not showing a CO2 effect?
Because the particular reconstructionists are not doing real science, which doesn’t mean they would necessarily be able to show a CO2 effect if they were. It just roughly means that they haven’t shown anything much because they don’t do real science.
I’d like to know to what degree the Jones and Wang paper has corrupted the whole temperature record. Is it true that this paper was used to help validate and verify the satellite tropospheric series?
====================================
It seems that all the data used by Jones et al and the CRU had so many issues that they were not fit for purpose.
Now that Jones is ‘fessing-up’ I suspect others will follow, or risk taking the drop. We are only seeing the very tip of the iceberg at the moment – soon much more will be revealed.
“A follow-up study verified the original conclusions for the Chinese data for the period 1954–1983, showing that the precise location of weather stations was unimportant.”
Would somebody please enlighten my poor brain as to why the locations are irrelevant? Could I for instance have one in my bathroom, next to my fireplace or in the fridge? Something to do with difference not actual – sorry????
Dr. Robert (10:04:49) :
“It’s funny, because Phil Jones looked the worse at the start of ClimateGate, but he may end up looking the best at the end of it. Smart man indeed!”
Yep, smart by engaging a publicist to spin himself out of the s___ !
Notice dodgy Phil is yet to issue an uneqivocal apology ? Actually, that would be due to legal advice.
Call me cynical. Groan.
maz2 (09:23:11) :
“It was only a short time ago that climate rationalists were told they were factually wrong, that their skepticism was evil, their views were akin to Holocaust denial, and that they should be tried for crimes against humanity.”
Now the shoe on the other foot. Jones and hockey team need to come clean, admit to their fraud and then get out of climate science forever. Like evolutionary anthropology after Piltdown – it will take decades for proponents of “climate change” to recover from the snake oil sales image they are rightfully branded with.
A few, supremely arrogant, self-serving, self-righteous men of marginal intelligence hoard their tins of alchemical wizardry and believe they have a right to force people to live under tyranny?? But they do so though only in the infinitesimally unimportant world they lord it over. Pulling pathetic strings on their Obama, Jones/Pachauri, Lisa Jackson and Glenn Beck puppets. They suffer inferiority complexes buoyed by a savior addiction – neither of which demands honesty.
Jones, Mann, Briffa, Hansen and cohorts believed they were bigger than the forces of nature itself – and if nature wouldn’t cooperate with their “science” they would rewrite the science. To do so is a fraud, an affront to good people, science and scientists. There is no room for this caliber man in science. They must be drummed out of the corp in a bold and public way so as to put other tyrants on notice.
I don’t agree with some of you that Jones is looking good in any of this. He seems to me to be a text book example of a guy caught red-handed trying, only after great pressure, to walk back his bogus science. His actions have cost 10’s of millions of dollars (at least) and damaged the reputation of anyone who had challenged his cabal’s theories.
I don’t find him particularly admirable to this point. If he would come totally clean without having to be forced then I might change my opinion.
Maybe.
bill hughes (10:40:58) :
A copy of my E&E paper is also at
http://www.informath.org/pubs/EnE07a.pdf
This copy displays a little better (due to cropping).
I don’t think we should be taking much notice of what’s on blogs because they seem to be hijacking the peer-review process.” – Phil Jones
Oh. It appears that “peer review” is a form of censorship. If the reports do not line up with the dogma/mantra, they must be rejected. Blogs make this step a little sticky.
A blog can’t hijact peer review. A blog can at most expose peer review that is fake.
I refer to the e-mails where review results are predicted in advance by reason of the reviewers being an inner circle of friends.
Jones is coming clean for one reason only – he’s trying to save himself from legal prosecution for fraud.
May be fair to post this link to a recalibration of the urbanization effect:
http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/CRUstatements/guardianstatement
Note, even with urbanization effect, the trend remains. But of course perhaps all this data has been falsified. Some AGW deniers may not accept any data other than what they see on their own backyard thermometers? But who can blame them with all the data revision going on?
Also of course, as there seems to be much frothing going on, it might be nice to point out that temperatures at the sea surface remain at record levels for anytime of year (normally they peak in mid-march).
See: http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/
And click on “sea surface” in lower right box. The troposphere remains very very warm up to 46,000 ft. It has come down some since the peak (probably related to the AO?), but it is now leveling and preparing to build to another record in early March. Just too much heat in the troposphere. Still on track for 2010 to be a record warm year globally…
It seems to me that Jones is slowly learning “the truth shall set you free”.
In some ways I do feel sorry for them man and I think most of his errors were from ignorance and disorganization heaped with undue accolades due to being on the “right side” of the issue.
I do NOT, however, think he should be allowed within 3 counties of any correction work on his UHI papers. He is demonstrably incompetent and so salvation, for him, does not follow that road.
As a follow-up, allowing Jones to correct his UHI paper is like allowing a surgeon a second chance to remove the correct kidney.
If Jones really wanted to cap off his return to the Admiralty, he would come up with the location of a lot of missing station data on the original forms.
Neo (11:28:15) :
Jones said he might submit a correction to Nature. But he nonetheless attacked bloggers and other critics for “hijacking the peer-review process…
——-
Reply:
Well, hey, SOMEBODY has to do it–they haven’t shown any great aptitude for the job. Besides, the Lame Stream Media aren’t responding either (the NYT is still appearing blind and clueless).
The bottom line: Jones, Mann, Briffa, Trenberth, et al would still be driving down that fast lane to climate destruction and economic ruin had bloggers not gotten in their way.
(Maybe bloggers ARE the new peer-review process. They certainly are behaving like it.)
@KPO (11:32:51) :
Your “poor brain” has not to be “enlighten”-ed.
To me, it works quite well so far.
Locations only don’t mattter, when the – already predefined –
result is what you like to get.
Thank you Douglas Keenan for joining in here. I’ve long followed your story. Thank you for link to your article on Queens University Belfast and the treering data they are still secreting as “personal property” despite having been closed down. Thank you for pointing out Nature’s failure to check your story.
The putrid infestation in Science now has the light shining on it but there is still a lot to reveal and come clean about. Thank you everyone here for holding the light pretty steady.
Thank you Dr Jones for starting to scrub the dirty linen. We are willing to help you scrub so long as you help scrub clean yourself. Soon and Baliunas next?
Doug — If I were you I would politely complain to the editor in chief of Nature that Olive Heffernan improperly failed to reference your article in her interview, and request that a correction be made, with a link on the interview article to the correction.
There are two points I would like to make:
1. The world needs to create a “safe” environment for Dr. Jones to “turn a new leaf” as it seems he may be wanting to do. In the end, his (apparent) new acceptance of scientific principals of openness and honesty should be lauded.
2. The Chinese Government blocks internet access to this website and others who attack the hypothesis of AGW while allowing open access to all websites supporting the hypothesis. In Chinese news releases, they are pushing for more money to be transferred from the “developed nations” to the “developing nations” while portraying themselves as supporters of reduced CO2 output. So it seems China has a lot to gain from supporting the hypothesis of AGW. So it wouldn’t surprise me to see the “sudden” availability of Chinese data supporting Dr. Jones’ paper. I’m just saying…
KPO (11:32:51) :
Would somebody please enlighten my poor brain as to why the locations are irrelevant?
Obviously, because locations are irrrelevant when you live in a Fantasyland.
Jones is not letting go, really.
And “Nature” is still his accomplice.
They have let him off the hook completely,
Their acceptance of his sloppy science is breathtaking in the extreme…particularly in light of the ripple effect it has on other papers relying on the veracity of the claims of the original!
To revise those is a monumental task and it simply will not be done.
There is no question that there is serious liability questions arising and CRU legal beaks will be mentoring very carefully.
The science was wrong but the conclusions felt right. Unbelievable!
It shows the staggering bias of “Nature” to keep buying that line.
>>Allen C (12:12:37) :
And who has been spending the last few years living in China and helping advise them on “green” development?
Maurice Strong, the original head of the UN Environmental Progam which ultimately begat and controls the IPCC. He just so happens to be the chairman of the China Carbon Corporation and on the board of the Chicago Climate Exchange.
This is a very tangled web and getting the truth out will not be easy or fast, there is way too much money riding on this scam.
Before you all get too carried away trying to “reform” the good Dr. Jones, it might be fair to post Real Climate’s response to the Jones interview:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/02/daily-mangle/
Which RC makes the point at the end of saying that Jones agrees with.
R. Gates (11:50:59) :
The troposphere remains very very warm up to 46,000 ft. It has come down some since the peak (probably related to the AO?), but it is now leveling and preparing to build to another record in early March.
AMSU-A Daily global average temperature at: 25,000 ft / 7.5 km / 400 mb (ch06) states very clearly at the center of the chart:
“The temperature on 2/14/2010 is 0.16 degree F warmer than this day last year.” Gosh.
AND it is cooler than 1998 and falls within the +-0.5C annual norm. Alarmism has a long way to go before “recovery” can be declared.
It is interesting to consider these recent comments by Jones in the context of the emails – particularly going back to the interactions between Mann and CRU (particularly Briffa and Jones). Could it be that after Mann seemingly threw Jones under the bus that Jones is now retreating to what his collegue Briffa had been arguing behind the scenes several years ago?
I first saw Shenzhen (Shum Chun in Cantonese) in 1974. It was a tiny village next to the Hong Kong – Chinese border adjacent to the cross-border road at Man Kam To and the rail crossing at Lo Wu. Shum Shun was located in a very pretty agricultural valley and had no more than about 300 residents. It had the China-side railway station, a Police post (to receive the illegal immigrants sent back daily from Hong Kong), a few village stores and a petrol station. The single track roads and tracks leading from Shum Chun were all edged with trees for as far as one could see. Road traffic was almost nil.
I last saw Shum Chun in 2003. It was a roaring city inhabited by millions. The cross border road traffic included thousands of 18-wheelers crossing at Man Kam To and by then Lo Wu was the world’s busiest land border crossing point. At Chinese New Year about a quarter of Hong Kong’s population went north across the border. Hong Kong maintained a Frontier Closed Area on their side of the border which remained very sparsely populated (comparatively speaking) and mainly agricultural in aspect. Shum Chun was high-rise buildings, over 30 floors high, right up to the border. Hong Kong’s manufacturing industries all fled north to Shum Chun because of the almost complete absence of pollution controls and the super abundance of cheap but very talented labour. The labour is so abundant that the Shum Chun Special Economic Zone decreed by Deng Xiao-ping (“Seek truth from facts.”!) was empowered to construct a second ‘border’ inland to control the influx of people anxious to partake of the economic boom in Shum Chun.
Hong Kong is still, to this day, blighted by the pollution sweeping down from Shum Chun. In 2002 it was common for me to be unable to see Kowloon one kilometre away from my harbour-side office on Hong Kong Island.
To state that such a degree of urban development in Shum Chun could have only an insignificant effect on the local temperatures and climate is to be facile in the extreme.
“R. Gates (11:50:59) :
[…]
record in early March. Just too much heat in the troposphere. Still on track for 2010 to be a record warm year globally…”
It’s dead Dave, AGW is dead, Dave, and you know it. The triple crown of cooling is there and the CO2 – temperature correlation is broken. See it coming… boast your tropo temps as long as they’re high, the oceans won’t care…
Jones can not gain respect for his “work” as a conspirator to the crime of the centuries.
Some $ 4 TRILLION has been Fraudulently expended at least in part because of his efforts – does this merit a slap on the wrist?
He needs to go to prison for life.
No scientist should get any favors not extended to Madoff!
We all know he is guilty, is he trying to somehow compromise our case against him and his team?
Real ETHICAL Scientists know this needs to happen OR the public will laugh at them from now on!
Bob Paglee.
(The lesson of climategate and now the IPCC’s shoddy sourcing is that the claims of the global warming lobby need far more rigorous scrutiny.)
Their statement should have read ” global warming INDUSTRY lobby”. Better still just condense it and call it “the scam”.
regards
(everyone putting away food??)
The weather station pictured in Shenzhen above, is it located in the Shenzhen Garden Expo Park by any chance?
I am glad to see this step but having trouble forgiving Jones his long obstruction and anti science agenda. Another blatant example of Jones’ abuse of science was his fighting to prevent publication of the Keenan paper; not because it was wrong but because it worked against Jones’ agenda. There aren’t a whole lot of “sins” in science that could possibly be worse than this one.
Tom G(ologist) (09:42:23) :
What is it about Pennsylvania. Why do we get both Mann and Michael Behe?
Don’t equate Behe with Mann. Behe is telling the truth while a consensus of scientists, so called, refuse to see the evidence and admit they were just as wrong as the AGW group was. There are none as blind as those who refuse to see.
Mike Lewis (10:22:33) :
(…) According to Reader (Daily Mangle reply 159), “You could stick a thermometer up their (skeptics) ass and they’d deny it was 98.6 degrees.” It seems all of us skeptics are just stoopid.
Of course I would deny it, I don’t feel sick!
Down there, you would get closer to core temperature, which normally runs warmer than the under-the-tongue temperature. After checking the medicine cabinet, I found two old mercury-in-glass medical thermometers (don’t tell the EPA). As I remembered, one is labeled “Oral” while the other is “Rectal.” As mentioned here, there is about a 1 deg F difference in actual temperatures, rectal thermometers are “calibrated” to read that much lower than a normal thermometer.
If they stuck a lab thermometer down there and insisted it read 98.6 deg F, I would wonder how I possibly could have gotten so cold!
Of course that comment did come from Real Climate, which has a history of being unable to understand “real” temperatures… 🙂
But… but… the research was robust!
/sarcasm off
Two reasons for the improvement of the peer review system. Firstly, it should be open for all to review, academic or not (especially if you are a patent office clerk). This would keep all scientists honest. Secondly, it would be beneficial to cope with the proliferation of papers coming out of all academic endeavors. In some fields, there are too many papers being produced to keep up. Stephen Hawking ( a warmist, which is irrelevant to my point) has spoken of this problem in his field.
Dr Jones “now acknowledges that ‘the stations probably did move’, and that the subsequent loss of the details of the locations was sloppy. ‘It’s not acceptable,’ says Jones. ‘[It’s] not best practice.’”
Now I don’t know much about temperatue stations or climate science, but I do know something about IT systems and data organization. And having read HARRY_READ_ME.txt from the leaked emails bundle (http://www.eastangliaemails.com/index.php), I can certainly say this: Loss of data involved in some undergrad two-month project may be “accepable”; loss of data underlying a peer-reviewed paper may be “not acceptable” and “not best practice”; loss of data by Dr Jone’s team, data that underlies decisions taken by governments to tax people to the tune of trillions of dollars, is nothing but gross criminal negligence.
People, it’s not difficult to hang on to data, it really isn’t. All it takes is some 101 version management, 101 data retention management, and 101 IT system management. Dr Jones seems to run a department that couldn’t compute its way out of a paper bag. He should be prosecuted.
Why would someone want to undertake a study on UHI in China. For most of the last century China was a third world country where the quality of the data would be questionable at best?
Yes this Chinese data manipulation is important, but a bigger “trick” was employed by Jones Santer Wigley Karoly et al in their Nature 382, 39-46 (4 July 1996) | doi:10.1038/382039a0; Accepted 30 May 1996 paper which was used to “prove” the infamous “a discernable human influence” remark added to chapter 8 of the SAR AFTER the meeting of the drafting scientists in Madrid.
Jones et al cherry picked radio sonde data from 1963-1987 to show that observations matched their models.
However the full available radio sonde data (Nature, vol.384, 12 Dec 96, p522) shows no such warming or proof.
See the 2 graphs HERE
Jones has lots more to come clean about. So far all I’ve seen indicates Jones is probably being helped by a “pr spin doctor”. All of a sudden he is doing interviews (in between contemplating suicide) knowing full well there is an investigation underway.
We want the truth, the WHOLE truth and nothing but the truth Dr Jones.
MODS: The first two links in Keenan’s article aren’t “live” (clickable). Fix?
Here are some of the quotes I liked in this thread:
I hope that the investigation of Jones will force the U. at Albany to release its transcripts that cleared Wang. If the investigation fails to ask for the transcripts — nay, demand them — it will paint itself as a whitewash. I hope notable bloggers keep up the pressure on this.
Say … I wonder if Albany cleared Wang because it found that Jones was the guilty party. (!!) That’s a question that should be asked of Albany.
““They are trying to pick out minor things in the data and blow them out of all proportion,”
When you’re talking 1/10ths and 1/100ths of a degree, you don’t have to blow hard.
Having followed the Wei Chyung Wang scientific misconduct case for the last couple of years, I have a feeling that no investigation done by any university, with any connection to the defendants [such as Penn State/Michael Mann] will be anything other than a complete whitewash. Meaning that there may be a mild slap on the wrist over a peripheral issue, but the central issue will be exonerated.
For those who may believe that justice will be served and that the university will follow its own written rules and guidelines, the first links on Dr Keenan’s page give a real world preview: click
I also recall the leaked emails by Wang and others, with Wang’s insistent demands that Doug Keenan must be sued for slander or some such. That will never happen.
The last thing in the world that these jokers want is to sit through lengthy depositions, have their data and methodologies subpoenaed, and face cross examination. If nothing else, their gross incompetence would be on trial, along with the sources of their income and grants.
But as the scientific misconduct of the clique that sacrificed Dr Jones to save their own skins continues to unravel, Wang the data inventor may yet find himself on the hot seat, trying to explain how someone could remember twenty year old temperature data from over forty stations. A simple memory test on the stand would destroy that ridiculous myth.
Popcorn, please. Extra large.
Also this article by Heffernan in the Guardian is this nice explanation of the importants of the MWP:
Yes, I have always wondered about those severe medieval summers — not just for those English grape growers but also think of those poor Greenland graziers!…How was there ever enough surplus weath and labour to build all those cathedrals??
Walter M. Clark (13:59:14) :
You support Michael Behe? He’s just a stupid person who is several sandwiches short of a picnic. Intelligent Design? P’shaw!
In a November 8, 1996 interview Richard Dawkins said of Behe:
“He’s a straightforward creationist. What he has done is to take a standard argument which dates back to the 19th century, the argument of irreducible complexity, the argument that there are certain organs, certain systems in which all the bits have to be there together or the whole system won’t work…like the eye. Darwin answered (this)…point by point, piece by piece. But maybe he shouldn’t have bothered. Maybe what he should have said is…maybe you’re too thick to think of a reason why the eye could have come about by gradual steps, but perhaps you should go away and think a bit harder.
re: R. Gates (12:36:53 and other):
I had a bit too much wine to drink at dinner, so I don’t know if I can be as coherent as I should. But …
First, let me say that I appreciate those warmists who come on this site and try to debunk weak arguments or sloppy thinking. But all too often your arguments, and your basic stance on these matters, are downright bizzare. For the last 3 months most people in the northern hemisphere have been freezing their nuts off. At the same time, there’s been a succession of revelations showing that the supposed evidence for the dire effects of CO2 emissions is questionable or evanescent. Under these circumstances, it makes no sense to keep banging on about some inexorable global warming that doesn’t match anyone’s experience. It’s silly. It’s Looney Tunes stuff parading around as superior understanding.
The point is that under the circumstances there’s something wrong with your entire stance. It’s as if you’re stuck in some kind of groove that is no longer related to the parameters of the situation as it now stands. The problem (for you) is that the tectonic plates of the argument have shifted – and you don’t seem to be in the least bit cognizant of that fact. So, in a very real sense you’re just confirming the suspicion that the whole AGW thing is daft.
It appears Jones is taking a professional approach to the questionable past practices. I give him full credit for facing the issue straight on and commenting on it.
Meanwhile, Michael Mann is still sitting with his lip hanging out professing his innocence. And he may get away with it – the love-in on the first inquiry exonerated him on 3 of 4 charges. The last one will get a second look but I won’t hold my breath looking for anyone finding him culpable of anything.
Honorable mention needs to be given to Samuel Settle, a student at Penn State, who organized a rally of student and community individuals protesting the velvet glove treatment given to Mann. Samuel, if you read WUWT, thank-you again for taking direct action and letting the Penn State bureaucracy know that their ‘pal-review’ handling of the Mann inquiry is less than stellar.
Dirk said: “It’s dead Dave, AGW is dead, Dave, and you know it. The triple crown of cooling is there and the CO2 – temperature correlation is broken. See it coming… boast your tropo temps as long as they’re high, the oceans won’t care…”
How exactly is AGW dead? Even with the maximum revision of data sets, the signal of GW is still quite clearly there…and tropospheric temps ARE what we are talking about here, for that is where greenhouse gases have their main effect. That January 2010 tropospheric temps were at reccord levels is exactly what you’d expect from GHG related AGW…and I’m confident that more records will be set throughout 2010…2011…2012…etc.
AGW dead? Hardly. Those studying it everyday will certainly now be far more cautious in their data and analysis for sure, but (now with the solar minimum behind us) the temperature trend for the troposphere is up up up. What, if not GHG’s could be causing these records? Certainly not the mild El Nino (compared to what we saw in 1998).
Anthony, I’m listening to you right now on KFI AM in Los Angeles! Listening how you became interested in all of this due to paint. How interesting!
Jones claims to have acted out of “good faith”.
Methinks it was “blind faith” in his own beliefs.
The emails leaked from the CRU indicate that sort of religious fervour on the part of some of the hockey team members.
Stephen Brown (13:10:54)
What is really laughable is reading the Hong Kong pollution complaints in the South China Post. “Send Hong Kong the humongous profits derived from China’s competitive advantage, but keep your pollution on the other side of the border!”
Particulate pollution in the Eastern China coastal plain SZ to SH is beyond the comprehension of most Americans. After a 12 year absence, I returned to Eastern China in 2007 and spent two weeks in open-mouthed amazement. Its is highly unlikely that the perpetual ground haze/smog running continuously for 100’s of mile of coastline has not impacted temperatures and climate. That being said, the last two winters in Fujian province have by all reports been quite cold.
Indeed it was only a short time ago…To think how confident was Hansen to say this in June 2008.
Quote: JackStraw (12:33:11) :
“And who has been spending the last few years living in China and helping advise them on “green” development?
Maurice Strong, the original head of the UN Environmental Progam which ultimately begat and controls the IPCC. He just so happens to be the chairman of the China Carbon Corporation and on the board of the Chicago Climate Exchange.
This is a very tangled web and getting the truth out will not be easy or fast, there is way too much money riding on this scam.”
JackStraw is getting close!
The filth at the base of the Climategate iceberg includes an international alliance of politicians, federal research agencies, publishers, news media, and editors of scientific journals who use research funds as a tool to control scientists and science as a propaganda tool to control the world.
Democratic decisions and honest scientific investigations are too time consuming and the outcome too uncertain for narcissistic, self-appointed guardians of the world that are blinded with arrogance and conceit.
Our input is limited to tax funds at the base of the money stream.
That’s the how it looks from the snow covered banks of the Mississippi River!
Oliver K. Manuel
Emeritus Professor of
Nuclear & Space Studies
Former NASA PI for Apollo
[snip]
[Repeatedly using the denigrating term “deniers” when referring to other commenters is unacceptable. ~dbs, mod.]
R. Gates (16:48:41)
Why are you so confident about future temperature?
Phil Jones is not.
And what EXACTLY is the connection between CO2 and temperature?
Many people talk about it.
Nobody explains how it works in practice in the atmosphere.
I think Jones’s recent interviews are a damage limitation exercise, conducted with the full oversight UEA’s legal and PR department. They should not be taken at face value, as they are far form spontaneous. In any case whatever he says which can be taken as casting doubt on AGW, he then rescinds at least in part.
We shoudl not underestimate how far we still have to travel. Even within the blogospherer, atricles and comments on the AGW-friendly sites continue in the main to deny there is a problem with their thesis. there is still little coverage in most of the mainstream media, and certainly no callapse of faith among opinion-formers and decision makers.
For example, I had a reply today from my email to Tim Yeo, Tory shadow minister for the environment and likely to Cameron’s Minister after the election. He failed to address either of my main points, namely that there is no basis for the theory of AGW and therefore no basis for the consequent carbon taxes; and that Tory policies seem to be content that the EU drives our Environment policies, since they have decreed the % of our energy which must come form renewable sources in the future.
He wrote:
“I’m afraid, however, that the prospect of higher energy prices is unavoidable. The need to produce electricity from lower carbon sources is extremely urgent and will become more so during this decade. Those countries which respond to this challenge earlier rather than later will be at a big financial and commercial advantage….”
The Guido Fawkes blog has recently had posts on a possible confict of interest, concerning Yeo: they had a notable clash on Newsnight last week
Perry (15:55:01)
Quoting Richard Dawkins to refute Behe is like quoting Phil Jones to refute Lindzen. I repeat: There are none as blind as those who refuse to see.
While this probably will be expunged by the moderators as being OT what I see as the two impossible problems with evolution are:
There are no intermediate fossils (part way along the evolution from one species to another). For example, no one has been able to explain how a creature half way between jaw bone and the three tiny bones in the human inner ear could function. This led to such fairy tales as punctuated equilibrium and the “hopeful monster.” I remember the drawing showing a dinosaur looking quite surprised to see her egg had hatched a bird. Even if it did happen, where was the bird’s mate, to continue the species? We’re supposed to accept not one, but two “hopeful monsters” at the same time in the same place with all the same massive changes from the dinosaur so they could mate and continue the species.
And even bigger, before we consider survival of the fittest someone has to explain arrival of the fittest. This is such a problem that it’s been proposed the original life forms happened on another planet somewhere in the galaxy and were seeded onto the earth. All that does is push the “how did life actually start” question onto another planet. Apparently that’s supposed to solve the problem.
A point regarding temperature meansurements, on which much has been written here lately: one UK contributer wrote that the MET Office had decreed that snow should NOT be cleared from the measuring stations as it had been in [revikous winters, and that tmeperatures were therefore very likely no longer equivalent to those in previous years.
Thermometers protected by snow will of ocurse read higher than they would if cleared of snow. I wonder how much ‘gerrymandering’ of the temperature record is still going on – all in a ‘warmer’ direction, naturally!
I was horrifed btw to read of the Chinese links to Strong, and the links btwn the Chinese and Chicagoan carbon exchange entities; also of their censoring of the web over AGW. Menawhile they have bought up a huge chunk of Australia’s coal reserves. What on earth is going on? This hydra will be damn hard to slay.
Has the urban heat island been shown to be inconsequential in papers other than Jones et al, Menne et al? We know there are problems with these papers.
Like the hockey stick was reproducible in other studies after the initial MBH paper?
Regards
Shub
Re: R. Gates (Feb 16 16:48),
Well lets see. To know how it’s dead, we need to understand what made it “alive” in the first place. And what made it alive was…
A-) Unprecedented warming
B-) Warming unexplicable by models except with CO2 forcing
A-) We now know there is nothing unusual about the current climate
B-) Data fed into the models, be it proxy or thermometre is suspect
That’s how I know AGW is dead, IT WAS NEVER ALIVE in the first place.
“This paper doesn’t need to be corrected — it needs to be thrown out.”
Not to mention all the papers since 1990 that used this paper as a reference.
Ausie Dan asked:
“Why are you so confident about future temperature?
Phil Jones is not.
And what EXACTLY is the connection between CO2 and temperature?
Many people talk about it.
Nobody explains how it works in practice in the atmosphere.”
The basic physics of GHG thermal forcing in the atmosphere is relatively simple, and I’ve seen nothing to contradict the basic physics. The recent solar minimum caused a temporary blip in the general upward march of warming in the troposphere. These charts clearly show the pattern of temperatures and solar cycles….yes, the solar cycles affect warming and cooling, but the GHG forcing is greater:
http://www.climate4you.com/Sun.htm#Recent solar irradiance
With the sun waking up once more to the next solar max, CO2 and methane continue higher, there being less ice (on an annual basis) in the arctic, so more solar radiation is being absorbed, so why would the temps not go up? January 2010 is already the warmest globally on record so why would I have any reason to believe that the trend isn’t higher this year? What scrap of evidence would make me think that 2010 won’t be a record warm year globally? I would gladly look at it if someone offered it. The only thing that comes close is the notion that overall the sun is going into some kind of Maunder minimum, but I just don’t agree…and even if it is, I’m not convinced that the extra forcing by increased GHG’s won’t at least balance the affects of a quieter sun. I actually see the sun being more active than suspected even a few months ago and suprising many of the experts with a more active solar cycle 24 than thought possible based on the prolonged quiet sun of 2008-2009. I suspect by the end of May or mid-June of this year at the latest, the curve for the maximum sunspot number for solar cycle 24 will be adjusted (back up) as sunspot numbers increase beyond the current projected curve and radio flux and general solar activity are more intense than currently projected.
Walter M. Clark (20:22:34) :
Good grief. There are creationists here. Please dont let discussions on climate be distorted by discussions on evolution.
Let them have their own threads on that subject…
R. Gates
You want us to take Gavin seriously?
This is how he paraphrases Jones’ response to a question in the BBC interview:
“The title itself is a distortion of what Jones actually said in an interview with the BBC. What Jones actually said is that, while the globe has nominally warmed since 1995, it is difficult to establish the statistical significance of that warming given the short nature of the time interval (1995-present) involved.”
This is what Jones actually said: ( Note how I use the word ‘actually’)
Question: – “Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming?”
Answer: ” Yes, but only just. “
“R. Gates (21:35:11) :
Ausie Dan asked:
“Why are you so confident about future temperature?
Phil Jones is not.
And what EXACTLY is the connection between CO2 and temperature?
Many people talk about it.
Nobody explains how it works in practice in the atmosphere.”
The basic physics of GHG thermal forcing in the atmosphere is relatively simple, and I’ve seen nothing to contradict the basic physics.”
In the infamous words of Australias’ Pauline Hanson “Please exapain (The “forcing”)?”.
Please explain?
Jones will think about submitting a correction. The data in question, which has* been alleged to have been dodgey, has been lost by Jones and it seems that its originator, Wang, is unlikely to provide any replacement. What sort of correction can result from that?
*”data has” is the ordinary English idiom. I don’t need to prove that I know that the word data is a plural by giving it a plural indicator, “have”, and sounding like a pedant or an idiot in so doing.
>>Oliver K. Manuel (19:55:34) :
>>The filth at the base of the Climategate iceberg includes an international alliance of politicians, federal research agencies, publishers, news media, and editors of scientific journals who use research funds as a tool to control scientists and science as a propaganda tool to control the world.
Indeed. Just because we are paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get us.
Point in case, I was not a bit surprised when it was revealed that some of the IPCC report was nothing more than advocacy pieces from WWF and Greenpeace. This is the way these campaigns from the far left have been run for years. It should come as no surprise then that there is a hidden nexus where information is disseminated to various like minded organizations so that they can appear to be independent but in fact very much linked. That nexus for AGW as it has been for other scares like the great alar apple scam is Fenton communications.
The same Fenton that lists the UNEP, WWF, Greenpeace among others as clients, the same Fenton that first set up and hosted RealCLimate.Org, the same Fenton that served as Al Gore’s communications director for his 2000 presidential bid.
AGW is no more real than the Alar scam was.
It’s not a “simple physics” problem. See “The Unbearable Complexity of Climate” by Willis Eschenbach, here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/27/the-unbearable-complexity-of-climate-2/
As possibly your only Shenzhener, and since the picture above could have been taken from my window, let me give you some perspective on the urban heat island effect in Shenzhen.
Thirty years ago Shenzhen had an official population of 300,000: actually it was only half that because half the population had fled to Hong Kong during the Cultural Revolution. Today it’s population is fourteen million (I’ll repeat that, fourteen million). It is China’s richest city by far, has two million private cars and hundreds of miles of the freeways needed to support that car population. Even if the weather station hadn’t been moved, the idea that here could be any comparison between the statistics from 30 years ago can only be described as fraudulent or dumb. Take your pick
Jryan (11:54:06) :
“It seems to me that Jones is slowly learning “the truth shall set you free”.”
“Yes, so long as it’s not confused with endless amounts of freedom, which sets itself up as the truth.”
(Umberto Eco, ‘The Name of the Rose’.)
Eddie
Some google earth “fly to” co-ordinates 22 32 30.92n 114 00 19.56e should take you to the building in the picture.
Has this Shenzhen weather station recently been moved to its pictured location because I can’t spot it on my google earth? The image in the article above is dated 2009/05/24 my google earth imagery for that approx location is dated Feb 20th 2008. I am pretty sure where the station should be in relation to the building but is not there! I know it’s only a little box and my eyes are nearly worn out but I should be able to see it, help put me out of my misery!