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 .
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!