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
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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 .
“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…
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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!