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 .
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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.