Guest post by Steven Mosher
In Climategate: The Crutape letters we tried to avoid accusing Professor Jones of CRU and UEA of outright fraud. Instead, based on the record found in the emails, we argued a case of noble cause corruption. I enlarged upon that charge at Pajama’s Media . Commenters took me to task for being too soft on Jones. Based on the extant text at that time I would still hold to my case. No skeptic could change my mind. But Phil Jones makes it hard to defend him anymore. On March 1st he testified before Parliament and there he argued that it was standard scientific practice to not share data. Those who still insist on being generous with him could, I suppose, argue that he has no recollection, but in my mind he is playing with the truth and knows he is playing with the truth.
In 2002 Steve McIntyre had no publications in climate science. He wrote to Jones requesting temperature data. The history of their exchange is detailed in this Climate Audit Post. Jones sent data to McIntyre along with the following mail:
Dear Steve,
Attached are the two similar files [normup6190, cruwld.dat] to those I sent before which should be for the 1994 version. This is still the current version until the paper appears for the new one. As before the stations with normal values do not get used.
I’ll bear your comments in mind when possibly releasing the station data for the new version (comments wrt annual temperatures as well as the monthly). One problem with this is then deciding how many months are needed to constitute an annual average. With monthly data I can use even one value for a station in a year (for the month concerned), but for annual data I would have to decide on something like 8-11 months being needed for an annual average. With fewer than 12 I then have to decide what to insert for missing data. Problem also applies to the grid box dataset but is slightly less of an issue. I say possibly releasing above, as I don’t want to run into the issues that GHCN have come across with some European countries objecting to data being freely available. I would like to see more countries make their data freely available (and although these monthly averages should be according to GCOS rules for GAA-operational Met. Service.
Cheers
Phil Jones
We should note these things: Jones sent data. That was his practice. Jones is aware of the problems in releasing this data. Jones believes that these monthly averages should be released according to GCOS [WMO resolution 40] rules. In 2002 his practice is to release data to a total unknown with no history of publication. And Jones releases the data to him knowing that there are issues around releasing that data.
In 2004 Warwick Hughes exchanges a series of mails with Jones. In 2000 Jones appears to have a cooperative relationship with Hughes. In 2004 the record shows the following
Dear Jean Palutikof, Dr P.D. Jones,
I was just reading your web page at; http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warming/ and wish to access the station by station temperature data, updated through 2001 referred to on your CRU web page; http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/#datdow as
“Over land regions of the world over 3000 monthly station temperature time series are used.” Where can I download the latest station by station data which is a foundation of Dr Jones et al published papers ? Note, I am not asking about the CRU gridded data which I can see on your web site. Looking forward to your help,
Best wishes,
Warwick Hughes
Warwick,
The station data are not on the CRU web site. If you look at the GHCN page at NCDC, you’ll see they have stopped access and cited WMO Res. 40 for this. To my mind this resolution is supposed to make access free. However, it was hinted at to me a year or two ago that I should also not make the station data available.
The gridded data are there as you know.
I would suggest you take this up with WMO and/or GCOS. I have raised it several times with them and got nowhere.
Cheers
Phil
As Jones points out he believes that WMO Resolution 40 should make access free. Jones also says that he himself has taken up this issue with them. One can presume he took it up because he wanted to give access to data. Further, he knows that there may be agreements that preclude release of the data.
The start of 2005 is a critical point in the story line. Jones had cordial exchanges with Hughes in 2000. Jones shared data with McIntyre in 2002 and in 2004 Jones believed that the data should be shared. In 2005 he has been transformed. In January of 2005, McIntyre published a paper (MM05) critical of Mann. As luck would have it at this time former CRU employee Wigley sent an email to Jones about a flyer he has received that discusses FOIA. At this stage no FOIA have been sent to CRU. But Wigley and Jones are concerned about skeptics. What ever willingness Jones had to share data is gone. Again, Jones shows a clear understanding of the existence of agreements:
Data is covered by all the agreements we sign with people, so I will be hiding behind them. I’ll be passing any requests onto the person at UEA who has been given a post to deal with them.
At the start of Feb 2005, Jones’ attitude toward data sharing becomes clearer and also contradictory. Some people can get this data in violation of agreements, while others who ask for it using legal means will be thwarted.
Mike,
I presume congratulations are in order – so congrats etc !
Just sent loads of station data to Scott [Rutherford]. Make sure he documents everything better this time ! And don’t leave stuff lying around on ftp sites – you never know who is trawling them. The two MMs [McIntyre and McKittrick] have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send
to anyone. Does your similar act in the US force you to respond to enquiries within 20 days? – our does ! The UK works on precedents, so the first request will test it. We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind. Tom Wigley has sent me a worried email when he heard about it – thought people could ask him for his model code. He has retired officially from UEA so he can hide behind that. IPR should be relevant here, but I can see me getting into an argument with someone at UEA who’ll say we must adhere to it !
Two weeks after the publication of MM05, prior to the issuance of any FOIA whatsoever, Jones contemplates destroying data rather than sharing it. But read closely. Jones sends this data to Scott Rutherford. So what’s the standard scientific practice? The data is covered by confidentiality agreements. Jones shared it with McIntyre in 2002, and now shares it with Rutherford in 2005. Jones knows it is covered by agreements and he’s questioned those agreements—except when he finds it convenient to hide behind those agreements. He violates them as he pleases. He shares data as he pleases. And if he is pushed to share it he contemplates destroying it.
On Feb 21, 2005 Keith Briffa sends Jones a mail with a list of editorials that are critical of Dr. Mann for not releasing data. Jones replies to Warwick Hughes’ request for data that same day:
Warwick,
Hans Teunisson will reply. He’ll tell you which other people should reply. Hans is “Hans Teunissen”
I should warn you that some data we have we are not supposed top pass on to others. We can pass on the gridded data – which we do. Even if WMO agrees, I will still not pass on the data. We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it. There is IPR to consider.
You can get similar data from GHCN at NCDC. Australia isn’t restricted there.
Several European countries are. Basically because, for example, France doesn’t want the French picking up data on France from Asheville. Meteo France wants to supply data to the French on France. Same story in most of the others.
Cheers
Phil
Jones has changed his attitude about the WMO. Prior to the publication of MM05 Jones believed that the WMO guidelines would make the data available. Moreover he argued with WMO that it should be released. Now, Jones changes his tune. He argues that he will not release the data even if the WMO agrees. His concern? Hughes will find something wrong with it.
When it comes to deciding whether to share data or not, standards have nothing to do with the decisions Jones made and he knows that. He knows he shared confidential data with Rutherford while he denied it to McIntyre and Hughes. He knows he regarded the confidentiality of those agreements quixotically. Violating them or hiding behind them on a whim. This was scientific malpractice. Lying about that now is beyond excuse.
April 2005 comes and we turn to another request from McIntyre: There is a constant refrain amongst AGW defenders that people don’t need to share code and data. They argue that papers do a fine job of explaining the science: They argue that people should write their own code based on description in papers. Here is McIntyre’s request. Note that he has read the paper and tried to emulate the method:
Dear Phil,
In keeping with the spirit of your suggestions to look at some of the other multiproxy publications, I’ve been looking at Jones et al [1998]. The methodology here is obviously more straightforward than MBH98. However, while I have been able to substantially emulate your calculations, I have been unable to do so exactly. The differences are larger in the early periods. Since I have been unable to replicate the results exactly based on available materials, I would appreciate a copy of the actual data set used in Jones et al [1998] as well as the code used in these calculations.
There is an interesting article on replication by Anderson et al., some distinguished economists, here [1]http://research.stlouisfed.org/wp/2005/2005-014.pdf discussing the issue of replication in applied economics and referring favorably to our attempts in respect to MBH98.
Regards, Steve McIntyre
When you cannot replicate a paper based on a description of the data and a description of the method, standard practice is to request materials from the author. McIntyre does that. Jones’ “practice” is revealed in his mail to Mann:
From: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: Fwd: CCNet: DEBUNKING THE “DANGEROUS CLIMATE CHANGE” SCARE
Date: Wed Apr 27 09:06:53 2005
Mike,
Presumably you’ve seen all this – the forwarded email from Tim. I got this email from McIntyre a few days ago. As far as I’m concerned he has the data sent ages ago. I’ll tell him this, but that’s all – no code. If I can find it, it is likely to be hundreds of lines of uncommented fortran ! I recall the program did a lot more that just average the series. I know why he can’t replicate the results early on – it is because there was a variance correction for fewer series.
See you in Bern.
Cheers
Phil
Jones does not argue that code should be withheld because of IPR[Intellectual Property Rights]. It’s withheld because he is not sure he can find it and he suspects that it is a mess. More importantly Jones says he knows why McIntyre cannot replicate the results. Jones does not argue “standard scientific practice” to withhold code; he withholds code because it’s either lost, or sloppy and because it will allow McIntyre to understand exactly how the calculations were done. This is malpractice. Today when questioned whether people could replicate his work from the papers he wrote Jones “forgot this mail” and said they could replicate his work. And we should note one last thing. Jones again acknowledges sending data to McIntyre. So, what exactly is Jones’ notion of standard practice? To share or not to share? What the record shows is that Jones shared data and didn’t share data, confidential or not, on a basis that cannot be described as scientific or standard. He did so selectively and prejudicially. Just as he refused data to Hughes to prevent his work being checked he refuses information that McIntyre needs to replicate his published results. At the same time he releases that data to others.
That’s not the end of the story as we all know. In 2007 the first two FOIA were issued to CRU for data. One request for a subset of the data was fulfilled after some delay. The larger request was denied. By 2009 it became clear to McIntyre that the CRU data had also been shared with Webster. When McIntyre requested the very same data that Webster got from Jones, CRU started again with a series of denials again citing confidentiality agreements, inventing the terms of those agreements ex nihilo. Webster could have the data. McIntyre could not.
What the record shows is that Jones had no standard scientific practice of sharing or not sharing data. He had no consistent practice of abiding by or violating confidentiality agreements. He had his chance to sit before Parliament and come clean about the record. He had an opportunity to explain exactly why he took these various contradictory actions over the course of years. Instead he played with the truth again. Enough.
I think this sets out a definite difference between science and “climate science”. Clearly “climate science” does not adhere to the normal, standard expectation of science, that all data, methods, materials, data etc. be open and shareable so that it can be fully tested, by people who support AND people who are sceptical.
Climate science is a unique scientific discipline where research begins at the conclusion and works backwards, selectively adopting (and manipulating) evidence to fit the conclusion. Where the hypothesis never changes, but the evidence changes instead to fit the hypothesis.
In short, climate science is NOT science.
if (science) then world = cooler; if (!science) then world = warmer.
Yes, this is a very convincing account. But surely with the recent inputs of the learned societies, this is over now? Surely from here on in, no-one is going to be able to say, I have studies which demonstrate looming disaster for life on earth unless we immediately start spending trillions and do large scale geoengineering of the climate.
But no, you cannot have the data and the code, because… of commericial confidentiality? Or because its too much trouble to get them into shape? Or because I have lost some of the data in an office move? Sorry, you are just going to have to trust me and spend the trillions?
Its game over at this point.
If you want to read a fictional account of a similar affair, 100 years ago now, I would strongly recommend Penguin Island, by Anatole France. Very funny, and it will remind you eerily of today’s events.
As I recall, Jones wouldn’t even release the identities of the stations that he had used. Of course, it is becoming clear that he probably doesn’t actually know what stations were used…
Worse, he knew then and knows now that he is not good at record keeping. Why didn’t he spend even a tiny portion of his immense grant budgets on some archival expertise?
Are there no rules for telling untruths during hearings of the U.K. Parlament and its committees? Is there going to be any legal consequences for Jones telling tall tales or is he just going to walk away with this?
Normally, an official finding (especially in court) of a public
employee having accomplished the thresholds for misfeasance,
malfeasance, and/or nonfeasance are enough for the Court
to order the employee terminated.
Most employment agreements and public employee
appointments include clauses that hold the employer harmless should such a judgment be rendered… no matter what any
“in house” or “independent” investigation or “peer review”
might find or recommend.
Folks or institutions with deep pockets might want to
“lawyer up” if the whitewash gets much deeper.
I am unsurprised that the Parliamentary committee did not ask searching or even terribly intelligent questions of Prof Jones as most of the political world wants to believe in ‘the science’ as it offers the prospect, through the mechanism of spurious and monstrous ‘green’ taxes, of getting them off the hook of the financial mess they allowed to happen on their watch. Political man seems to have learnt nothing since the collapse of the ‘South Sea Island Bubble’, ‘The Tulip Bubble’ and other major confidence tricks over the preceeding centuries.
Jones doesn’t even pretend to be a ‘post-modern scientist’ but has very obviously bent his ethics to fit the demands of his political masters.
Surely the bottom line is that he should go. He is an inconsistent fool and should be relieved of his duties as soon as possible.
Imagine taxpayers around the world paying out billions of dollars annually on this shonks evidence, it just makes my skin crawl.
You want the Truth? You can’t handle the Truth!
One long ad hom, science content zero.
When will you people get off the backs of people like Dr Jones and leave them to get on with their research?
Incidentally, who are you Mr Mosher? If you think it’s right that everything about Dr Jones should be public knowledge because it might cost us billion if he’s wrong so his science needs infinite testing, then it’s also the case that if you’re wrong it might also cost us billions and so everything about you should be public knowledge.
Therefore I demand you place on public record all your scientifc notes, workings, jotting, e mails, code (every scrap) and papers for the last ten years. All of it, everything, every last word , figure and number. If you don’t do that i will be demanding it by FOI and I wont desisit, I’ll shower you with FOI request for a decade.
Get it?
Dear Peter.
Steven Mosher is not a public employee and not remotely subject to FOI requests. You really should have some understanding of the process involved.
Peter, what a [snip] reply you give here, you haven’t learned anything and repeat just what you have read on other blogs!
This is a very good summary, and I’d like to add my own thoughts (sorry if this is rambling).
Through the 90s the entire concept of AGW and the possibility that humanity was doing things that could alter the climate was somewhat of a given. 1998 was a scorcher, at least here where I live, and it was very easy to believe that things were changing… maybe even out of control. AGW theory was hitting mainstream, I remember Letterman making jokes about Al Gore claiming that the caveman frozen in the ice had been exposed by “global warming”, and the audience laughed… but after the 98 lack of winter people were starting to wonder.
When I personally first started researching AGW for a business project in early 2002, I was looking for data. I also completely believed, and was searching the internet for supporting data to convince people who were not familiar with what was happening. I wanted the historical temperature records, the background behind the hockey stick, everything. Even in 2002 I stumbled across a few “skeptic” sites but was turned off by them. I mean, you know the drill, these guys were oil company shills, they were in denial, etc. I ignored them.
However, now that I see this timeline laid out, I realize that I was coming to my realization around the time this was all playing out. It seems Steve McIntyre was also looking for SUPPORTING evidence, not a way to damage or destroy the idea. But human nature is more stable than climate… when someone balks at giving you what should be relatively basic information that underlies their entire premise, you start wondering why.
I came to realize that the vast majority of supporting websites were all parroting the exact same things, with very little variation, and not a single one had anything like “proof”. Nobody was doing what Science says you should do, which is to question what you are seeing. I started to notice the liberal use of the words “could” and “might”, and the big weasel words, “scientists say”. Which scientists? Why are they saying it? Are these all scientists, or just two?
I still remember the day I found “Still Waiting for Greenhouse”. It was ugly, amateurish, and I normally would have just skipped past it except for that picture of the tide mark. Having been told how sea levels are rising (living at 3500 feet I don’t see the ocean very often), it seemed odd that an old tide mark was still showing modern levels. Tuvalu not being inundated by rising seas? Hmm.
I looked around for other “skeptics”, expecting (honestly!) them to be slick, oil company budgeted productions poo-pooing the entire concept. That’s not what I found. Remember, I live in an oil city, I KNOW what oil company budgeted stuff looks like. It looks like deep pockets. Skeptic sites were ugly, amateur sites asking questions. The right questions.
I don’t remember where my epiphany was, but I do remember that my realization that the whole thing was a complete sham was rapid. There was no evidence. There was no supporting data. There still is neither. The folly and futility of measuring surface temperatures should be obvious to even elementary school students who think about it. I can have huge temperature differences just a few hundred feet away depending on the breeze, or wind direction, or where I am relative to the nearest hill or valley.
Also, the oceans are the vast majority of the planet’s surface. Sun heats ocean, water evaporates, rises as high as it needs to to lose its heat, and falls back down. This is a no-brainer, really, it’s both intuitive and scientific.
I remember reading some of McIntyre’s early writing, and being appalled at what he was saying. Not at him, but at the sheer audacity of someone stonewalling for data. I understand the need for industry to keep trade secrets, but this data should have been freely available. Is the weather not free?
I mentioned before that my car club had a massive argument once back in the late 90s regarding the best color for an intercooler. Either a light color or a dark color would radiate the heat better, and people fell out over this argument. (The answer is, NO color: painting a radiator insulates it. Although color may have some effect, it is completely overwhelmed by the other effects and thus is safely ignored). I saw the parallel. Yes, CO2 will have some effect, I doubt anyone would question it. But it was soon obvious to me that this was in the same level. The effect is vastly overwhelmed by other natural processes, and can be safely ignored.
At around the same time that this was all going on (2002-up) the “scientists” were starting to get known. There was Hansen, and Jones, and Mann, and Briffa, and they’re all getting something like “famous”. They stopped being scientists, though, and became activists for their cause. This trend went beyond ludicrous after Gore’s movie came out. I personally know people who came out of that movie in absolute terror.
However, back to the topic… what I get out of Jones’ testimony and explanations is that his particular cards, the basic bottom layer of the giant house of cards that is the modern AGW theory, has collapsed. There may be warming. There may not. But anyone who says either way with certainty is either mistaken or lying. With the collapse of these base cards, the entire structure must, and will, come tumbling down in a heap.
Science that is not replicable is not science.
Losing data, fudging data, stonewalling data, deleting data, altering data, each is an unpardonable offense to science. The combination is unpardonable-squared.
So many people have “done science” based on the premise of rising global temperatures, and I don’t doubt that the vast majority of that work was done in good faith. However, take away the basic premise that Jones’ work provided and you have nothing.
There was no such thing as “climatology” just a few years ago, and from what I’ve seen there is still no such thing. There are a few people who call themselves climatologists, and with that they appear to believe that they can do whatever they want as they create a whole new branch of science. But it all hinges on an accurate record, which does not exist. 30 years may be the “standard” for climatologists, but they’re willfully blind if they don’t realize that that is HALF of a long-term well documented climate CYCLE. There are no straight lines in nature, and no trend continues unabated in a feedback system.
I am not a “scientist”, but I know BAD SCIENCE when I see it. And I too want it to stop. It is shameful what these guys have done, and switching to activism was the end of all credibility.
Re: Peter Hearnden (Mar 2 02:04),
No, I do not get it.
There is no one in the skeptics camp that is proposing taxes and pyramid schemes in the billions. Where did you get this idea?
Peter Hearnden (02:04:34) :
One long ad hom, science content zero.
A recounting of events with regards to a person’s role in them is not an ad hominem attack.
To paraphrase a popular talking point, “You’re entitled to your own opinions — you’re *not* entitled to your own definitions.”
Once we relegate land surface temperatures we won’t need the CRU temperature index (or GISS):
Why Global Mean Surface Temperature Should be Relegated, Or Mostly Ignored
Re: Peter Hearnden (Mar 2 02:04),
I have re-read your post and I still don’t “gettit”. Could you expand further for me please.
“Peter Hearnden (02:04:34) :
One long ad hom, science content zero.
When will you people get off the backs of people like Dr Jones and leave them to get on with their research?”
Mentioning Jones and Research reminds me of Gandhi being asked about Western Civilisation “I think it would be an excellent Idea, when will you start”
As for Mosher being subject to FOI, he would need to be spending public (i.e our) money before that would apply….
“Dear Peter.
Steven Mosher is not a public employee and not remotely subject to FOI requests. You really should have some understanding of the process involved.”
Dear ‘Jeez’,
If what people like Mr Mosher say is wrong it might cost the world billions because climate change science will have been right all along but we didn’t listen to it and sort the problems when we could because we listened to the Mr Moshers of this world. So, therefore, he should be open to the same scrutiny as everyone else in this business – views like his might cost the world BILLIONS. What kind of an excuse for not scrutinising views that might cost us billions is it that Mr Mosher isn’t a public employee? It’s a nonsensical excuse.
Dear Peter,
It is this kind of excuse. It is the law. It is standard ethics in democratic society with laws protecting freedom of speech. It is the way it is. Good luck filing an FOI against Steven.
Can I make a plea to stop this focussing on “open data”. Yes the data should have been made available, but the main reason they didn’t want to make it available is because it would show how bad the data was in the first place.
Anyone who has ever had any real experience of temperature measurement knows what a difficult subject this is. It is bad enough in a carefully controlled laboratory, but in real life, in the real world, with real people … it is a nightmare.
Let me recount one story. In the days when the lighthouses in the UK used to take Met readings, the lighthouse keepers took the readings. Now these guys were paid a pittance and treated like dirt by the lighthouse board – so there were a few people who did the job because their health wouldn’t allow them to do other jobs. And, let’s just say that not everyone with a heart condition would make the regular journey up and down the lighthouse to take the temperature reading – and who was going to be awake in the early hours to know anyway that the readings had been made up.
I’ve also seen the same thing in factories: reading after reading after reading of absolutely perfectly running equipment which when you look isn’t working at all!
There’s also the timing of readings which is pretty key. If e.g. the local temperature is 20C in the day and 10C at night, it will be heating up by 1-2C/hour in the morning. A 0.33C difference thus corresponds to 10-20min. That is an incredible 0.1C for each 3-6minutes. Now tell me honestly whether some station attendant in the darkest reaches of Africa who hadn’t seen England for years, let alone anyone from the Met Office and relied on a pretty wonky sundial/clock, is going to be standing over the Met Station waiting in the gathering heat to take a reading at the precise time appointed, ensuring that the temperature of all the readings was taken precisely within a minute of the hour?
There are good reasons why we automated the temperature readings worldwide – but that WILL have changed the nature of those readings. It also means that there isn’t the same regular check of equipment so that e.g. insects, animals, moisture can contaminate the readings without anyone noticing for long periods.
The fact is this data was never intended for this purpose, and those “scientists” pretending their data analysis can make bad data good are kidding themselves!
Re: Peter Herndon. (March 2, 2010)
Peter, please use a quality dictionary to ascertain for your personal enlightenment the definition of ‘ad hominem’, then use the term correctly and with an understanding of the post you wish to comment on.
“Re: Peter Hearnden (Mar 2 02:04),
Get it?
I have re-read your post and I still don’t “gettit”. Could you expand further for me please.”
Yes.
It’s claimed climate science needs to be deeply scrutinied because acting upon it will cost the world BILLIONS and thus we need to be completely sure it’s right so to act. But, equally, if sceptic are wrong they will have cost the world BILLIONS because we listend to them, you, but you were wrong and we didn’t act. Therefore sceptics also need to be deeply scrutinised. Everything for the last decade they have produced, jotted, discarded, emailed, calculated, coded, everything needs to be in the public domain. I therefore demand Mr Mosher (amongst others) do this – and put it all in a form anyone can understand.
Is that clearer?
Pete (01:47:41) :
Are there no rules for telling untruths during hearings of the U.K. Parlament and its committees? Is there going to be any legal consequences for Jones telling tall tales or is he just going to walk away with this?
And who would you call as an expert witness to testify regarding what is or is not standard practice in “climate science”?
The quote One problem with this is then deciding how many months are needed to constitute an annual average. is a perfect example of why replication based on the published papers is not practical. In this field, there are so many tiny details (infilling, end padding) which have a variety of valid approaches.
The hypothesis of some of the skeptical work is that the series are more noisy than is accepted by the primary work, and that the outcome is more by chance or an artifact of the analysis method.
In order to test this particular hypothesis it is necessary to understand each stage in precise detail. This is evidenced by Mann’s response to MM03 where several errors in the analysis are held up as invalidating the whole paper – but it was the lack of openness which led to these errors.
In order to test the hypothesis that the method or data flaws are contributing to the result, an independent analysis based on raw data can never be conclusive (see the Yamal discussions where there is no agreement). Either the specific analysis is mathematically flawed, the elective decisions made in the analysis are (most likely subconsciously) biased, or the result is valid.
If the whole analysis can’t be questioned, there is no chance of independent scientists being convinced that the result is valid with a high level of confidence (rather than hope/belief)
“Dear Peter,
It is this kind of excuse. It is the law. It is standard ethics in democratic society with laws protecting freedom of speech. It is the way it is. Good luck filing an FOI against Steven.”
So, we’re not all equal under the law. That’s bunkum.
Sceptics should be open to the same level of scrutiny as everyone else. I can’t for the life of me see how anyone could argue they should above a law that applies to others.
If sceptics are wrong but we mistakenly listen to you, you will have cost the world BILLIONS! Thus scepticism needs to be scrutinised as much as science.
Dear Peter,
I struggle to explain it to you any more clearly, but I will try.
A law prohibiting the purchase of alcoholic beverages by a minor under the age of 21 does not apply to a non-minor over the age of 21, such as a 45 year old man who is legally entitled to purchase alcoholic beverages.
A law that says public employees are subject to FOI requests of disclosure does not apply to non-public employees who are not subject to these same FOI requests.
Does that help?
I invented a saying a long time ago.
I can explain it to you, but I can’t understand it for you.
I think it applies in this case.
jeez
CodeTech (02:14:32) :
“I don’t remember where my epiphany was, but I do remember that my realization that the whole thing was a complete sham was rapid.”
My own journey has mirrored yours. For a while, I played “pick the authority figure”, and surrendered my judgment to eminent men of irreproachable integrity. But I quickly realised that this was lazy, and went in search of corroborating evidence.
I asked: “What is the longest continuous record of direct CO2 measurements?”, “What is the longest continuous direct temperature record?”, “What is the longest direct/indirect glacier record?”, and “How do they measure sea levels – to what datum?”
The answers I got were: (i)Mauna Loa, 1958 (ii)Central England, 1659 (iii) Aletsch Glacier 3200 years and (iv) By satellite, but durned if I can understand the methodology.
Which brought me to my current layman’s stance: (i) CO2’s going up (ii) Temperatures go up and down (iii) Glaciers come and go (iv) Dunno, but I ain’t building any ark just yet.
@Peter Hearnden (02:04:34) :
One long ad hom, science content zero.
————————–
CRU has just three scientists working on data which guides government policies worldwide and that data is at best suspect. I watched the video of Jones being questioned and anything more like a cornered rat I can’t imagine. This catastrophic climate B/S has got our city into very serious trouble, where a previous city council sold out the city to warmists in the NZ govt to the extent that 104 ,40 story wind turbines are planned for the city’s water supply and last remaining native forest and towering over 2,000 homes. The corruption has been unbelievable. If you think Jones is the victim of an ad hom, just what do you think an attack like this on 80,000 people is??
This kind of save the planet disaster will just happen everywhere if the carbonistas win. Thank God they are not.
http://www.palmerston-north.info
There, I wrote this without a single expletive.
Steve Mosher.
Hi – I suggest you forward a copy of your report to each member of the parliamentary committee.
I agree with an earlier comment.
I believe there is a law about submissions to parliament in the UK.
The committee should be aware of the events that you have described.
Re Peter Hearnden (02:04:34) :
“Dr Jones should be public knowledge because it might cost us billion if he’s wrong so his science needs infinite testing”
You don’t get it. The reason why his science needs testing is not because otherwise it would cost us billions. His science needs to be testable because OTHERWISE IT IS NOT SCIENCE.
Get it now?
Additional dates to add to the timeline:
-Jones released his station data back in 1993. See here:
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/ndp020/
-In 2001, he published his Antarctic pressure and temperature data, see here:
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/ndp032/
Re 3×2 (02:46:01):
As I recall, correct me if I am wrong, Jones did not even release the station list (their identities) and still claims to have released all data and methods necessary for other scientist to replicate his findings. You don’t need any witnesses for that, it should be easy to verify it with help of documents.
Peter Hearnden,
“Therefore I demand you place on public record all your scientifc notes, workings, jotting, e mails, code (every scrap) and papers for the last ten years. All of it, everything, every last word , figure and number. If you don’t do that i will be demanding it by FOI and I wont desisit, I’ll shower you with FOI request for a decade.”
Peter, I have to say, [snip]. We are talking professional misconduct at the very least, before we even get into the quality of Jones science. Jones is a disgrace to science, a disgrace to the office he holds and a disgrace to the British people. He has brought science into disrepute and abused the trust placed in him. But I guess that’s alright with you because Jones is “on message.”
Your demands to Mosher to release “every scrap” are no more than ravings. You flail about in all directions because you see the AGW scam collapsing before your eyes. What the hell has Mosher got to do with any of this? He is smart enough to see the logical inconsistencies in Jones testimony – lies actually – and you aren’t. You think releasing Mosher’s emails would change what Jones has done?
When you write of Mosher “I’ll shower you with FOI request for a decade,” all I see is the impotent rage of a [snip].
Peter Hearnden,
“Thus scepticism needs to be scrutinised as much as science.”
Actually Peter, scepticism IS science – doh!
Re: Peter Hearnden (Mar 2 02:44),
Yes it is.
I’m a skeptic and am very active on blogs. I’m doing everything I can to stop this madness including lobbying my politicians (it worked here in Australia).
I own and operate a video store. I don’t do research nor do I collect data (but I make “The Great Global Warming Swindle” available to my customers free of charge).
What exactly should I be making public? All my blog comments already are. Just google Baa Humbug.
p.s. I’m also having an affair, should I make that public? Will that stop the waste of billions?
Or maybe you are refering to people who are INTEGRAL and CRUCIAL in the AGW debate. People like those who help produce the IPCC reports, (those pesky reports the politicians rely on)
Skeptics have been beating the drum for 22 years now. Name me one instance that a skeptic influenced the IPCC reports profoundly?
@Peter Hearnden
First, you complain that people think, Jones etc. should comply FOI requests.
Then you write everybody else should too be requested by FOI.
You are contradicting yourself.
Would you believe it, we have just moved and I had to register with the doctor and ask for an opinion on certain symptoms that I have been experiencing.
Doctor said, I know exactly what you mean go home take this and trust me everything will be OK, I responded, sorry I didnt catch your name, funny thing this he said it was Al Gore, and again repeated those reassuring words “trust me”.
Today I registered with a new doctor and he recommended that he perform some tests!
And trust me human induced global warming as an entity is not over yet, the UN is constituting a review body (more overpaid out of work flunkies) to review the work of the IPCC because the concept of human involvement in climate change is robust so the words change again, it was global warming then it was climate change and then the science is settled (what science) and now its robust.
For me the overriding issue is what is all the fuss about, climate change has been happening since forever for one reason or another and will continue to do so. Human Co2 remains at 0.117% and methane 0.066%, this is the only fraction that we can have any effect on and with a rising population try as we might those figures are not going to change, they may get worse but long before our bit has any effect (if indeed it ever will) most carbon resources will have expired so – as previously – the earths atmosphere will automatically correct.
Because there is no science what we have is lies damned lies and climate statistics, most of which have been manipulated and fudged and the resulting war of words will continue until our political masters decide that enough is enough.
Whatever the motives of the UN, EU and IPCC really are we may never know but instead of wasting huge amounts of cash on supposed scientists we should divert that cash into building the flood defences and similar pragmatic solutions that will actually confront the practical issues that communities will face whether or not human induced global warming exists or not or are such commonsense practical initiatives beyond simple comprehension?
Maybe both sides of the debate have a vested interest in the continuing farago of cant and humbug that emanates from everyone involved, more committes, more carbon trading, more taxation, it all proves to me that the real issues is that there are too many people on this planet and too many of them have very little of anything worthwhile to do with their lives so they spend it fulminating about who said what and when.
In essence there is just too much hot air and maybe that is what is causing the problem after all?
David Wells
Steve Mosher:
It sounds to me like the whole thing can be described thusly —
From Jerry Pournelle’s site — “Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself.”
Consider Dr. Judith Curry’s recent post here wherein the upshot seemed to be that the consensus amongst fellow practitioners was a resolution to use crayons or speak slowly so as to better “communicate” with benighted outsiders. The obvious answer to this entire situation is “hey, I work for the public, so I’ll put everything online for them and stay out of any politics.” Sort of the I Report You Decide thing.
jeez — Steven Mosher is not a public employee and not remotely subject to FOI requests.
Bingo. I’m still not following how it is that data paid via public funding ought to be hidden such that FOIA is even required. Why is it not automatic that public funding requires a particular standard? Good grief, if you wrote code for DoD in the 90’s you had standards and/or requirements up the yingyang.
>>Peter Hearnden (02:44:40) :
>>Is that clearer?
No. I would suggest you do a little more thinking on the relationship between the individual and the state in a free society. AGW has become nothing more than another government program, one with huge implications for the rights and responsibilities of people, industry and society as a whole, and individuals have not only the right but the responsibility to question the logic and the motives of any new government program.
If AGW is real then the proof should be clear and the scientists advocating this theory should be willing to show all of their data and methods. Given their dire predictions, they have an ethical and moral responsibility. Given their status as quasi-government officials, they have a legal responsibility which they already been shown to have breached by ignoring FOI requests.
Mr. Mosher’s motives, which I believe are an honest attempt at testing the accuracy of the theories, are irrelevant. Your demand for all the information from him or other skeptics makes no more sense than demanding the information from every person who is skeptical of any new government program.
So there we have it. The “dog ate my homework” so I can’t “hand in the work I used to come up with the findings in my climate research assignment”. So, Mr teacher will you still pass my assignment? Mr teacher would rightly say: “No, I can’t since you have not shown how you came to your findings. So, they may be incorrect. You have failed your assignment. Go away and do it again.”.
Hello, the personal stuff starts.
I just don’t see why, if the sceptic case is so strong, it can’t be placed under the same scrutiny as the science? What has the sceptic case got to hide?
Remember, if the sceptic case is wrong but we act upon it, then it will be scepticism that costs the world BILLIONS!
Anway, like I say, the personal stuff has started so I’ll go and do something more productive for a while.
If the so called climate scientists had been open with all data, codes and models for the last thirty years, no one would have filed FOI requests, no one would have suggested that Global Warming might be catastrophic.
Many thanks, Steve. Clear, clean, concise. It adds immeasurably to my understanding.
Heh, Peter, the world no longer wants Phil Jones and the like to get on with their research.
==========================
:@Peter Hearnden:
1. FOI
As far as the Jones is concerned, FOI only applies to the work they do on the public purse. It applies to all public bodies. It’s back stop that allows the public to know what their money is being used for.
Nobody is suggesting we need to know what Phil Jones does in his private life, or things done not using public facilities and funds. if Phil Jones wants to engage in whatever activities he likes, in his private time, not using public facilities and funds, those activities would not be subject to FOI.
If Steve Mosher or anybody else works for a UK public institution, then those activities will also become subject to FOI requests too. But activities Mosher does privately, like activities like Jones does private, are not paid for by the public, not subject to FOI.
2. Data
FOI is actually a side-issue.
The only reason FOI came up, is because Jones and others wouldn’t release the data – and FOI was used as a means to try to make them release it.
But FOI should not have been necessary.
Both funding bodies (which the CRU took funds from), and many journals (in which Jones et al published), and good scientific practise (ref, e.g. IoP, RSC, RSS) is to release scientific data behind a paper. See for example – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_data_archiving
The problem was the funding bodies and the journals were not enforcing their own rules on Jones. And Jones apparently thought it was standard practise in climate sicence to ignore good scientific practise of releasing data.
But I absolutely agree with you to the extent, anybody publishing in a journal, or, accepting funding from official bodies, should be required to release their data. That includes Jones, but that also includes Mosher or McIntyre or anybody else – should they publish.
Hi Peter
I don’t believe in God or the after life. If someone tells me they have scientific proof of such a thing I’d like to see the evidence. What you are saying is hey stop demanding to see the proof and oh by the way what is your evidence for the no God theory, let’s see your evidence for that. You also add that if I’m wrong and people listen to me then they are being condemned to an eternity of hell and damnation.
I think AGW is a religion, if I’m to change my mind I want to see the proof and have it tested by open minded people – not fellow believers. I’m not going to believe a lot of old wives tales.
Lawson at the hearing, by Quentin Letts, acerbic and ironic Parliamentary sketch writer:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1254763/Lord-Lawson-labelled-climate-alarmists.html
“Jones was accompanied by his university’s vice-chancellor, Professor Edward Acton, who provided much-needed comic relief. Professor Acton, a younger version of Professor Calculus from the Tintin books, beamed and nodded at everything Professor Jones said. ‘I think that answer was spot-on,’ he cried, after listening to one response from the terror-stricken Jones.
Professor Acton’s left eyebrow started doing a little jiggle of its own. His eyeballs bulged with admiration for the climate-change supremo. His lips were pulled so wide in wonderment they must nearly have split down the seams like banana skins.
Others, watching the tremulous Professor Jones, will have been less impressed. He may be right about man-made climate change. But you do rather hope that politicians sought second, third, even 20th opinions before swallowing his theories and trying to change the world’s industrial output. “
Re: Peter Hearnden (Mar 2 02:44), Everything for the last decade they have produced, jotted, discarded, emailed, calculated, coded, everything needs to be in the public domain.
How does that advance the science? The respectable lukewarmers and skeptics have been open with their calculations, are not significantly involved in the peer reviewed literature, and don’t seem to have made a significant contribution to the policy debate.
Fairness and even-handed treatment is fine, but why would you be interested to know who has sent me draft copies of their own papers for my critical review? The demands for greater visibility of the inner workings of the team are a problem of their own making. Encouraging journalists to stay ‘on message’ by threatening to cur off their access to authoritative quotes isn’t something that a skeptic has much weight with, only the more public figures in the debate have that ability.
Is it more relevant where Monkton’s funding comes from, or where Pachauri’s money comes from? Which one would be expected to be impartial?
And, Peter, you are wrong about the skeptics costing billions. Here’s the difference. Really, skeptics, who’ve been called denialists, are just agnostic. We do not know the truth, but have figured out that the alarmist case is not the truth.
You will find it difficult to find a reasonable skeptic who will claim that CO2 has no effect. Most say that they do not know the effect, though we suspect it is small. The skeptical case is really not about ‘denying’; it’s about saying ‘we don’t know’. We would like to know, so that policy can be created to spend money wisely.
Well, so much for the symmetry of your objection. I’m sorry you are so blinded by rage and fear not to be able to see what is going on around you. Things’ll get better, I’m sure.
=================
Thanks for that Steven – what we need is a presentation like that in court!
CodeTech – great write up – thanks for your contribution. I had a similar experience of looking for evidence and finding nothing except stone walling and abuse of people who didn’t hold to the ‘party’ line! – That get’s may back up too and makes me dig deeper! 😀
The bolgs and many of the papers seem to have got this all sorted now – BUT – there doesn’t seem to be ANY change in political or governmental policies! – It is so enormously frustrating!
There aren’t any of the mainstream parties I could vote for (here in the UK) 🙁
– sorry ‘blogs’ not ‘bolgs’ LOL 😀
Re: Peter Hearnden (02:56:07) :
Actually, we are all equal under FOIA law in England,
and in America.
We all have the legal right to file FOIA requests for
any document, summary, data, or program held or created by
a public institution or a public employee. There are very
limited exceptions to the “open records” written into the laws
on both sides of the Atlantic.
Station identifications, temperature data, statistical programs
for extrapolating weather or climate trends used by public
institutions like CRU, the Met Office, NOAA, NASA, NCDC, etc.,
don’t really fit into the “exceptions” catagories… and therefore should be open and available.
The public institutions have the legal obligation
to provide this information in a timely manner, or explain why it
can’t. Saying it is covered by one of the “exceptions” can be
appealed for review. If that doesn’t satisfy the person making
the FOIA request, trotting the matter into court is the last resort.
For the public employee or the FOIA officer to furnish wrong
information in this context would be misfeasance, to deliberately or willfully not fulfliil a legitimate FOIA
request that’s is known as malfeasance, and to just
ignore the request into oblivion is nonfeasance.
To obtain work product or documents from a private citizen
requires a subpeona to be issued by a competent court of law
or legislative body empowered to issue subpeonas. As private citizens and/or corporations we have constutional rights
preventing unwarrented seaches and seizures not available to public employees or public instututions in reguard their public work.
When one accepts a public appointment, either as a worker,
a professor, or a reseacher, one has automatically accepted
FOIA as a condition of their employment.
Take a refesher couse in civics, and quit trolling.
This is all really sad.
You so-called sceptics are tying yourselves into knots trying desperately to prove that the intrumental temperature records are wrong, the UHI effects that have been allowed for are biasing the data, that the satellite records are wrong, that all the different proxy reconstructions are wrong, that the temperature data you think are rubbish show the world is cooling, that the glaciers aren’t retreating, that the ice caps aren’t losing volume, that the ice shelves aren’t disintegrating, that the saturation argument wasn’t disproved 60 years ago, that species aren’t migrating their habitats, that growing seasons aren’t changing, etc etc etc.
This latest attack on Phil Jones is the most grotesque example of a witch-hunt since the McCarthy era.
It really will go down in history as a truly shameful episode.
Does anyone here really think that once all the raw temperature data comes to be freely available (instead of just almost all of it, which is the case now), that there is even the slightest chance that someone will come up with an analysis of it that shows something significantly different from what the various satellite and surface instrumental series already show?
Really?
If Jones was recalcitrant in dealing with the numerous demands for data with the aim of concealing something, rather than simply reacting understandably to harrassment, then I look forward to contributors to this blog demonstrating, while making available all your coding and methodology, just what it was you think he was concealing.
Peter Hearnden
You are vicious. Jones is or was the custodian of public data. The FOI act only covers public data. If Jones was looking after it, his first duty was to curate it adequately. His second duty was to use it responsibly, and his third duty was to make it available to others by applying the same standards to each request.
Incidentally I am a scientist and all the data I use, the minutes I write, the project plans I construct, are stored properly on my section of the company server. And the dated notebooks I record my daily work in are stored in date order in my office cupboard. That’s the duty I owe to my employer.
This is not an ad hominem attack. This is a totally warranted critique of the scientific standards of the CRU, are run – in a very hands on way – by Dr Jones.
The stakes have been high in climate change. The appropriate thing to do is to insist that all the expensive conferences, scare stories and spending of public money have some sort of rational basis.
What do you think that basis is, now?
Peter Hearndon — I just don’t see why, if the sceptic case is so strong, it can’t be placed under the same scrutiny as the science?
As per Carl Sagan — “extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.”
The skeptic position is that Jones Hansen Mann Briffa et al are making an extraordinary claim. They’re asking for proof.
By definition, there is no claim being made by skeptics.
Using your logic, you can make the extraordinary claim that aliens are taking over radio stations via your cat. We skeptics say “prove it.” This isn’t a competing claim that your cat is really after TV stations. Skeptics have a much simpler request — you make the claim, then you prove it.
Dear Peter H.,
Shall we all simply overlook Phil Jones’ involvement in the Trillion dollar Global Warming hoax? He now looks very different than the [old] photos of him circulating among the MSM and the Internet, twenty years beyond his real age, IMO. Rather than getting on with his research, the man in this photo appears like he should be getting on with his retirement.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1254660/Climategate-professor-Phil-Jones-admits-sending-pretty-awful-emails.html
As to the lack of pertinent truth seeking by the parliamentary committee, you have to understand that there is a General Election in the offing and that no party would wish to demonstrate the slavish idiocy of their respective leadership who are all firmly aboard the Climate Change wagon.
“The quote One problem with this is then deciding how many months are needed to constitute an annual average. is a perfect example of why replication based on the published papers is not practical. In this field, there are so many tiny details (infilling, end padding) which have a variety of valid approaches.
The hypothesis of some of the skeptical work is that the series are more noisy than is accepted by the primary work, and that the outcome is more by chance or an artifact of the analysis method.”
It is possible to use a process of interpolation to predict missing data values if some are missing from a set. The bigger the set and the smaller the number of missing values, the better.
There are standard techniques for doing this as the RSS could advise.
There is a need, when using interpolation to note that it has been done and what method has been used.
Its not rocket science and it is fairly simple statistics.
Obviously the use of interpolation does require some caveats to be inserted into conclusions but, even a full data set giving a result at the .001 level has in a sense a built in uncertainty.
I think there is always a problematic gulf between those who want to have scientific “truths” etched on the fabric of the universe and those who understand that the best you can get with staticical techniques in science is some level of probably.
To CodeTech
“I don’t remember where my epiphany was”.
I don’t either, I used to be a warmist, but about 2 years ago it began to dawn on me that something smelt rather fishy about this whole AGW thing.
I’m not a scientist, but when I was young I was taught to think for myself and to ask questions.
I care deeply for the environment, the planet, and all life including people.
But this whole AGW thing is just BS, pure and simple.
Thank you Anthony for this site and all it has taught me.
Nylo (03:02:30) :
Re Peter Hearnden (02:04:34) :
“Dr Jones should be public knowledge because it might cost us billion if he’s wrong so his science needs infinite testing”
You don’t get it. The reason why his science needs testing is not because otherwise it would cost us billions. His science needs to be testable because OTHERWISE IT IS NOT SCIENCE.
Get it now?
Well said Nylo!
Mike Ramsey
Peter Hearnden (03:13:12) : I just don’t see why, if the sceptic case is so strong, it can’t be placed under the same scrutiny as the science?
JK: You completely miss the point: The skeptics case is that it is up to the warmers to prove their case and they haven’t, at least partly because they are operating in secret. The skeptics are simply asking for a complete proof which has not been forthcoming because the data and methods are secret.
BTW, did you notice that Jones’ complete case for the A in AGW is because he can’t figure out anything else that might be causing the temperature measurements’ recent rise? Why don’t you start by explaining why this is actual proof of man’s causing the recorded temperatures to rise recently. To help you here is the Jones quote from the BBC interview:
The fact that we can’t explain the warming from the 1950s by solar and volcanic forcing
Peter Hearnden (03:13:12) : What has the sceptic case got to hide?
JK: This is a classic debate technique. Accuse the other side of doing what your side is doing. The actual hiding is being done by the warmers’ hiding of data, suppressing publication of opposing papers, asking others to destroy data and refusing FOI requests. Why do you appear to be defending these practices?
Thanks
JK
Peter Hearnden (03:13:12) :
I just don’t see why, if the sceptic case is so strong, it can’t be placed under the same scrutiny as the science? What has the sceptic case got to hide?
I’m sure that this is the case for published articles. Seve McKintyre for one makes all his work available.
The very nature of questioning the science is inviting questioning of your own skepticism. You put up a counter-argument and allow the original scientist in question to respond, in doing so, you must also allow them to view your methods.
It’s a two way process. This may result in refining and improving the method, it may even back up the original science if your own methods are found to be flawed. It’s only with this scrutiny that the science can be trusted.
Reply: Ok, McIntyre may be a little tough to spell, but Steve? ~ ctm
Mr Hearnden
“Every scrap, every jot…should be released etc etc”
Relax … Its just the new meme/strategy whatever you want to call it. I’ve seen the same question at other places. How come we didn’t particularly hear this argument for so many months, or years now?
The others frantic props being erected are:
McCarthy = Inhofe
Intimidating emails, threats to family, death threats, nasty emails
Both these ideas were simultaneously peddled at the Guardian and Scientific American – the UK friends of AGW. Good fun as long as they come up with creative ideas.
Jones somehow seems to think of the gridded anomaly derivations as a blackbox ‘product’, not scientific values. He is ready to give you the ‘product’ or share it with you, if he likes you. He may even give you input to this blackbox – the station data, if he really likes you.
But he does think, even to this date that the nuts and bolts of the black box – the adjustments and ‘variance corrections’ are what makes the raw data into a product and therefore falls under the domain of intellectual property rights.
“When will you people get off the backs of people like Dr Jones and leave them to get on with their research? ” – Peter Hearnden (02:04:34)
Ad hominems are not ad hominems when they are true statements about someone.
The comments about the alleged scientist Phil Jones are valid and appropriate when the individual(s) involved are not being honest or true to the principles of science.
Also, Phil Jones is the one making the extraordinary wild claims soothsaying doom, gloom and our utter destruction with really bad statistics and what clearly is fraudulent science.
Following the principles of science and in particular the Carl Sagan Principle the onus is upon one Phil Jones et. al. to back up their extraordinary claims with extraordinary evidence. So far he won’t even release his data when asked. Some scientist that Phil Jones is, he won’t even come clean with ordinary alleged evidence. Phil Jones FEARS the scrutiny of his work. In fact he seems highly motivated to do all he can to avoid the scrutiny of his alleged science work. That isn’t a person following the principles of the scientific method, that is a person with something to hide. Now that wouldn’t be a problem except that he’s supposed to be a scientist working for the public; he certainly has been paid by the public purse. It’s time Phil Jones openly proves his case or retract his claims.
pwl
http://PathsToKnowledge.NET
” Peter Hearnden (03:13:12) :
Remember, if the sceptic case is wrong but we act upon it, then it will be scepticism that costs the world BILLIONS!”
Acting on the sceptic case would mean what? Scrap some supercomputers and fire climate scientists? That would save the world billions, not cost.
Or do you mean that when we do nothing against CO2, temperatures will rise by 6degree C and all the consequences predicted by Hansen will occur? That wouldn’t cost billions but trillions.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t avoid it anyway if CO2 increase had such consequences. Kyoto has led to zero emissions reduction. The thing planned at COP15 would have led to zero emissions reduction – too many nations would have been excempt.
So what exactly do you propose mankind should do? Stop using light bulbs?
OT. Sorry if already posted. Good write up of the enquiry so far: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/02/parliament_climategate/
Peter Hearnden (03:13:12) :
Hello, the personal stuff starts.
I just don’t see why, if the sceptic case is so strong, it can’t be placed under the same scrutiny as the science? What has the sceptic case got to hide?
————–
Reply:
Nobody says it shouldn’t be placed under the same scrutiny. The skeptic’s case is based on the same data the warmist’s is based on (or at least insofar as they’ve been allowed to see it). But I agree with you–let’s see every email (and I mean EVERY email), EVERY document, EVERY calculation, and the basis of EVERY research paper by everybody involved.
“Remember, if the sceptic case is wrong but we act upon it, then it will be scepticism that costs the world BILLIONS!”
————-
Reply:
Could you please supply a list of the $billions that it will cost if we maintain the status quo? I’m a firm believer that seeing food production world-wide increase ~20% is a BENEFIT rather than a cost. But I’m interested in your list. Let’s get definitive about all this money that’s being thrown around rather than running around screaming through the night.
Anway, like I say, the personal stuff has started so I’ll go and do something more productive for a while.
—————
Reply:
I can see your Main Man has taken a big hit here, Peter. I can’t for the life of me see how Global Warming is going to survive this expose`. But to be fair, I’d like to see Lord Monckton, Mr. McIntyre, or Mr. Mosher take the stand and explain their take on the subject, too. You ask for both sides; you should get both sides. I’d also like to see Al Gore take the examination chair and explain his knowledge about the subject, and while he’s there, also how he’s been able to conveniently accumulate all that $$$$$$$$$.$$ from carbon trading. (Do I detect a conflict of interest here? Will Al Gore last a full examination session?)
I’d also like to have Harry the programmer take the stand and explain his comments in the Harry_Read_Me file. Oooooo… That should be good.
This is nothing personal, Peter. Indeed, responses to you here are far lighter than the recommendations of extermination made by Warmers against Deniers in the past several years. But whether you stick around or not, the bottom line is that the science wreck they call Climatology is about to land in the bottom of the canyon of disrepute. My biggest complaint is why wasn’t this miserable excuse for science discovered on the first $billion spent? Who are the so-called “geniuses” that have perpetrated this fraud and who are the enablers that have allowed it to continue? I’m sure the lawyers will want names, dates, places, expense accounts, travel schedules, emails, documents, databases, etc. etc. etc. Oh, they’re going to have fun! The discovery process should be enlightening.
By all means, open disclosure of everything is exactly what you and I want. On both sides.
I’m thinking there aren’t too many skeptics that will dance around the issue like the warmers will.
You want Mann’s records? How about Trenberth’s? How about Hansen’s? You do? Great!
So do I.
We’ve spent at least $50 billion so far accumulating what we have; certainly another $0.1 billion should be sufficient to open all the records. B’golly, it would only be cricket.
We might even find the status quo and the direction the earth is heading is actually beneficial to humanity. You’re going to hear opinion you’ve never been allowed to hear before.
I’m sure we’ll both come away enlightened.
Quote of the day:
http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2010/03/quote-of-day-030210.html
Superb piece. Clear. Thorough. Irrefutable. An elucidation of Professor Jones’s (mal)practice which cuts through the clutter. Nothing is vague. There is no innuendo or editorializing to distract from the establishment of the facts. And all done without any grinding of axes. An invaluable contribution to our understanding of the process that we now call Climategate.
The approach here is so well-structured and transparent that if Professor Jones feels himself wronged or misrepresented in any way he will have no difficulty in setting the record straight because Dr. Mosher presents that record so straightforwardly. Therefore natural justice is well served.
@Peter Hearnden (03:13:12) :
Excellent idea. May I suggest taking a good course in logic where you can argue these same points with the professor? Or is that too “personal?”
Correct me if I’m wrong but I believe ALL of the skeptics information has been built up from the scraps that the proponents of AGW (“scientists”, Jones et al) sloppily allowed to fall from feeding trough where they were busily stuffing their faces.
Bits and pieces fell through the cracks and were pieced together by numerous, and intially unknown persons from differing backgrounds.
Careful what you ask for: the trail from S. Mosher’s dust bin would most likely lead right back to the key players in this scandalous debacle, Jones, Mann, Briffa, et al.
The key point here is not who is right or who is wrong. The key point is this: is the science right, when did they know it, and why did they lie, cheat and obstruct to try and hide it. Points to which Mr. Mosher has provided us with excellent information. Do you REALLY want all his info, sound to me like he had been holding back.
The piece about the spaghetti Fortran immediately holes the project (any) below the water line. As an ex Gov (UK) Lead Auditor/Assessor on Software QA and related systems I can easily say that reliance on any data/info output from such software tool(s) fails. A number of documents must exist either side of software to qualify it (integrity) with regular assessment. Having over dosed on this Climate scam for too long I have always suspected the process part of this subject. From my experience the last place our Gov employs is its own former research base (not Uni) for software support. Hence I note many major software project (and IT) failures throughtout OGD over some 20 years that would have been identified early. Its a project control issue all the way through and there is no way I would trust a bunch of Uni’s and Gov to handle that. On this occasion we are talking Planet..not NHS/Air Traffic Control stuff although the latter are both safety critical. I hope WUWT et al will ensure that this project is forever sunk or at least independantly and impartially reviewed..some doubt that that will happen?
Vincent (03:06:46) :
Peter Hearnden,
“Thus scepticism needs to be scrutinised as much as science.”
Actually Peter, scepticism IS science – doh!
I have to say with all due respect, Peter, Vincent & others are absolutely right. If somebody puts forward a scientific theory of how something does or does not work, then it is up to that person to provide all the evidence to support that case, not to provide some it, lots of it, or only a small part it, they must provide all the evidence. If they do not, then they lay themselves completely wide open to charges of fraudulent science, it’s that simple. It is not up to the sceptical scientist to put forward a counter theory per se but to be convinced by the argument put by the proponent, without all the evidence there is little or no argument!
Anyway, so far so good in Parliament, but being a grumpy old cynical so’n’so the words, wash, white, carpet, under, & sweep, all reside at the back of my mind! On a slightly different note, I do not like to see people bullied, or intimidated to the point of distress, but if Prof Jones is culpable of malfeasance, then he should be given little quarter over this issue, considering virtually the entire contemporary AGW base is founded upon his teams work. Whilst I feel sorry in part for Prof Jones if he has suffered great stress as a result of this upheaval, that sorrow is tempered by the thought of all the stress he & his team have subjected anyone who did not follow their “teachings”! It will be interesting to see if any come out of the woodwork to testify of such treatment! Quid-pro-quo, etc!
And the house of arrogance comes tumbling down. Looks to me like Jones will turn on his friends soon, and the dominos will start to fall. He does not look like Mann, who can lie to himself and others for all eternity without missing a step
My work emails and internet activity are logged by my employers, of course. I have no qualms over that.
Likewise ex-scientist Phil Jones should have no qualms over his employers – that’s us, the taxpayers – being able to see what he has been up to. His gaunt look shows he has realised his last 20 or 30 years of his career have been an unscientific sham and he will be notorious in decades to come for his poor science, cover-up, and now the lying about it all.
I think Peter Hearnden is yet again playing his game of distraction when he knows it is clear the AGW scam is being exposed. His illogical arguments seem to be a clear avoidance of the issues.
Good post.
It illustrates how Jones changed from a normal, even seemingly proper, scientist to a paradigm-warrior. A result, I believe, of him simply being unable to deal with all the sudden scrutiny of his work.
On the AGWH crowd in general: They knew that the evidence for their hypotheses was flimsy and inconclusive, at best. They knew that if their methodology were to be properly evaluated, eyebrows would be raised. Finally, I presume that none of them (Jones included) wanted to be the ‘weak link’ that would break down the suddenly gained status and creditibility of ‘climate science’ and propel it back to obscurity.
In addition, I’m sure that they were (and still are) convinced that they are saving the world… or at the very least, saving some polar bears. ‘Noble cause corruption’ indeed.
I think I’ll go with Napoleon on this one:
“Never attribute to malice, that which can adequately be attributed to incompetence”
..but incompetence it is. And now that the pus is coming out, it is surely time to quit equating climate science and the robustness of its conclusions to that of settled scientific disciplines.
Pete (01:47:41) :
Contempt of Parliament? Although I’m not sure if Jones’ truth-massage is (or ought to be) severe enough for this to be applicable.
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/glossary/?gl=95
Peter Hearnden (02:04:34) :
First, Mosher’s post is no ‘ad hominem’. He addressed a clear inconsistency between Jones’ statement to Parliament and well-documented facts. As a matter of fact, I think Mosher is being quite generous in his sketching of the motives involved.
Second, there are many scientists who have serious issues with the methodology underpinning Jones’ work. In particular, the amount of ‘opinion’ injected into data, or ‘facts’, is often unclear. Given the prominence and perceived importance of his scientific output, not only for policy (e.g. ‘Unprecedented warming!’) but also for a whole lot of research building upon his data, until these issues are addressed, one cannot simply ‘get off his back’ and ‘let him go on with his research’.
This might be tough on Jones, personally, but that comes with the territory (and the spotlight, and large amounts of public research funds…).
Peter Hearnden (02:56:07) :
?
The use of FOIA requests to get the data would have been unnecessary, had the Hockey clique followed settled practice in empirical sciences and simply posted all their data, codes and methods. The fact that they claim that this is ‘standard practice’ in climate science, is the most worrying element of that entire testimony.
If you take a good look at sites of skeptics, such as McIntyre, you will find all of his methods etc. available. If something is missing, I’m sure he will email it to you. Note that he will do probably do that without receiving millions in public research funds, obliging him to disseminate that information.
As for your last claim (i.e. the ‘BILLIONS’!); the fact that something ‘might’ happen, doesn’t mean that it will. First we need credible evidence that the probability of it happening is in fact significant, which, in spite of all the huffing and puffing, is still missing. Besides, you are disregarding the very high (humanitarian) costs associated with unnecessary action based on the (false) AGWH premise, as well as the opportunity costs of such actions in general.
Peter – deep, cleansing breath. The beauty of the blogs is that all of this is documented, no FOI required.
Steve M merely recounts for you a publically available timeline to highlight the fact that Phil Jones may have perjured himself (was this sworn testimony?) when he described ‘standard scientific practices’.
Its just that simple. Nothing else.
And really – it isn’t at ALL unreasonable (for something of this import) to have someone – PARTICULARLY a sceptic – check your calculations and come to the same conclusion. But as it stands – we cannot do so.
Scientists show their work, and even offer the negative tests to disprove their hypotheses. They should welcome this call for openess.
If they’re scientists.
The point has been made over and over by Lord Monckton and, for that matter Professor Lindzen, (both of whose data and calculations are clearly set out or referenced in their papers) that even if every word of the alarmists temperature predictions were accurate, proceeding down the path suggested would be disastrous. Adaptation if and when required (and it has always been required in higher or lower degrees) is the only sensible course. So no, even if the sceptics are wrong it is still RIGHT not to sink billions in ridiculous, half baked, panicked mitigation schemes which are, in any case, merely a cover for a political transfer of power.
I can’t blame Phil for being nervous. He’s the poster boy for bad science, and the politicians in whose service he laboured are going to blame bad science for their failure to grasp worldwide power through carbon control. He’s just a sad little poor scientist who will end up the scapegoat, and the monsters who promoted this scare will skate.
Yep, I’d flutter my hands before my face, too.
==============
Steven Mosher
Thanks Steve, a very to the point post.
Every time I reflect and want to cut these guys some slack,
they say or do something that destroys that feeling in me.
Here is a link to an interview with Mann that has all but sealed
my opinion of the whole crowd. This is a long interview (40 min)
“Michael Mann – Unprecedented Attacks on Climate Research”
http://www.centerforinquiry.net/mp3_stream/myWimpy.html
steven,
You assert that Jones’ attitude changed with the publication of MM05, but you are forgetting one very important event from 2005: Congressman Barton’s fishing expedition into the lives of climate scientists, which was essentially an attack on scientists (remember that Barton wanted not just details on the science, but details about the personal lives of Mann and others.)
Whether McIntyre was working closely with Barton or not–he seemed to be. So why would scientists share data with someone perceived as being part of the witch hunt against them? Thus, Jones started treating McIntyre differently, and while he may not have been justified in his actions, they are certainly understandable given the circumstances.
Peter Heardon:
“If what people like Mr Mosher say is wrong it might cost the world billions because climate change science will have been right all along but we didn’t listen to it and sort the problems when we could because we listened to the Mr Moshers of this world. So, therefore, he should be open to the same scrutiny as everyone else in this business – views like his might cost the world BILLIONS. What kind of an excuse for not scrutinising views that might cost us billions is it that Mr Mosher isn’t a public employee? It’s a nonsensical excuse.
”
If only someone of the hundreds of governmentally-paid for research studies had a conflicting view to “mainstream” climate science, so that you could issue FOI requests to them…
And that’d be GRAND, because it would mean that the money was going toward fully understanding the issues from all angles. Perhaps some enterprising young scientist can get funding to do just that, now that the orthodoxy is broken.
And Dr. Jones is fully capable of asking Mr. Mosher for information, and trying to discredit his work. I seriously doubt that Mr. Mosher would be anything but forthcoming. FOI requests wouldn’t be neccessary, unlike the crew with something to hide.
“He does not look like Mann, who can lie to himself and others for all eternity without missing a step”
The key to really getting away with a lie is somehow to convince yourself it’s true. Jones evidently doesn’t. Look at how ill he is looking with the realisation of what he’s been up to the last few decades.
Peter Hearnden (02:04:34) :
He’s got to be trying out stuff for some sort of comedy review doesn’t he?…
Oh… I see from the followups that he is serious.
Well, a particular biblical quote (perhaps paraphrase) seems relevant
There are none so blind as those that refuse to see.
(and mate, at this point you must be really really trying hard not to see)
Re the so called “science” and the so called “research”.
another old saying comes to mind.
“I may be cabbage looking, but I am not green”
cheerio
Jim
Peter:
“If sceptics are wrong but we mistakenly listen to you, you will have cost the world BILLIONS! Thus scepticism needs to be scrutinised as much as science.”
Hi Peter. Whether you like it or not, or think it’s a good idea or not- rigorous and normal scientific scepticism as applied to climate science actually helps scientific understanding of climate. I’ve seen enough sceptical scientists here admit their mistakes- I’ve never seen a pro AGW scientist admit their mistakes…
This quote best sums it up I think-
“What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know.
It’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so.”
” Veronica (03:29:41) :
Peter Hearnden
You are vicious. ”
No I’m not (and this is not about me or my character) but I suspect nothing will convince you otherwise?
R.S.Brown (03:29:11) :
No, I’m not trolling, I’m asking question that I think need answers. Again, I suspect nothing will convince you otherwise either but it happens to be the truth.
Boris 4:25:50
The Barton Committee came about because the Piltdown Mann’s Hockey Stick was crook’d, not because of any sort of ‘attack on science’ as envisioned in Deep Climate’s deeply paranoid head.
===================
The main point Mr Mosher makes is very important to push out there right now.
Much press gives it that Jones consistently refused requests for his data.
Such a claim can be defended by policy, rules, protocol and even by the lesser crime of not wanting others to take a royal road to publication by lifting all CRUs hard work.
Mosher’s point is that Jones inconsistently refused requests for his data.
This is a lot harder to defend especially when clear patterns start to emerge in the inconsistency.
There is an irony here which is delightfully delicious for me. For years the alarmists castigated skeptics by accusing them of believing in a worldwide conspiracy of scientists. Now that that conspiracy is revealed for the world to see, the response of the alarmists is to accuse the skeptics of belonging to a worldwide conspiracy.
You can see such stark raving paranoia from many of the most rabid alarmists. In the US that paranoia is still supported by the mainstream press, but too many of the public are getting wise to the madness. As I told Phil Plait, I pity Naomi Oreskes for her paranoia, and I feel sorry for Jeffrey Sachs for his fear.
There is so much pathology.
===========
Peter Hearnden (03:13:12) : states…
“I just don’t see why, if the sceptic case is so strong, it can’t be placed under the same scrutiny as the science? What has the sceptic case got to hide?”
Hum?, first of all if the climate scientists had released their data and metadata, as requested years ago, there would have been no need for the e-mails to be released. As far as I know S. Mosher is not proposing anything, and his questions are very upfront, so what are you trying to decipher by your absurd proposal, what would you hope to gain? Third, the proposals for preventing CAGW will, for certain, cost trillions of dollars and disrupt billions of lives, and without India and China fully aboard with like measures, achieve virtually no effect; and the benefits of doubled CO2 (which are known) may out weigh the negative consequences (which are ifs and maybes), we simply do not know, we just know we have certain costs, with very uncertain results, this equalls bad policy. Fourth, the skeptics such as M&M, do make their data available, or have you not been paying attention.
“Remember, if the sceptic case is wrong but we act upon it, then it will be scepticism that costs the world BILLIONS!.”
I think you mean, if we choose not to act, unless you consider non action, to be action, which is sort of like considering cooling to be warming (-: See above for policy comments. The precautionary principal does not apply for the case of CAGW.
And fifth, the skeptic case is science also, indeed more so, as the e-mail release shows.
Jones opened his mouth a couple of times during yesterday’s hearing to change feet.
Gaz — You so-called sceptics are tying yourselves into knots trying desperately to prove that the intrumental temperature records are wrong… [snip]”
You’re confused and a bit like that Peter guy. The job of warming advocates is to prove their case. Skeptics doubt their case. Skeptics don’t disprove, they merely ask for proof.
That the temperature seems to be rising is self-evident; the Thames used to freeze up as did the Hudson. No longer. However, before the cooling of what’s called the Little Ice Age (LIA) occured, these rivers did not freeze. Vikings were farming Greenland; England had a great deal of viticulture; even today it’s still too cold for these things. These are all things known from historical written record, archaeology, etc.
Knowing this, it is therefore logical to ask whether or not the rising temps are natural recovery from the LIA, part of a natural cycle, etc. It is up to the warming advocates, who claim that it isn’t natural, to provide proof that rising temps are not natural. It is not up to the skeptics to prove otherwise; by definition skeptics are simply demanding the extraordinary proof that is required for an extraordinary claim. Warming advocates are making the claim. Skeptics are not. The burden of proof belongs to the claimant.
Regarding proof, the IPCC output is riddled with editorials from eco-groups touted as ‘scientific evidence’ mixed with a series of papers of unknown quality given that much of the source of these is hidden. In this day and age, proof doesn’t consist of editorials, opinions, and graphs derived from mysterious and shrouded data and/or methods. In recent months it is being demonstrated unequivocally that what has been claimed as proof is actually nothing of the sort.
So where does that leave us?
Most of the skeptical community would like little more than to remove the secret witch doctor mask from the process. (This is the 21st century, not medieval Europe.) If the world is warming due to man, then it will be proven OPENLY and we’ll deal with it. But no back room stuff, no hidden data, no secret deals.
On a personal note, the advocate’s argument sounds eerily similar to that which is in Ken Follet’s Pillars Of The Earth where medieval priests are convinced of their obviously superior knowledge of medicine (because they studied Galen!) and using this authority like a club to ban (working) practices like washing hands in vinegar between patients because it’s unscientific (not what they learned.)
At least when the Mayan priests scared the populace into submission via lunar eclipse prediction they were using knowledge. Jones, Hansen, Mann, Briffa — less trustworthy than Mayan shamans.
“As before the stations with normal values do not get used.”
There must be millions of normal values pushed aside to just allow the abnormal values and not incorporating these would make value left look more menacing.
These people know exactly what they are doing and expected to have free funding without anyone reviewing their raw data.
Why would anyone? The umbrella of the UN is protected information.
To alter or destroy any science is to manipulate it to your own means!
This creates many believers that are manipulated and hard to sway back as it was published and must be true then.
Gaz @ 3:29:38
You have put your finger on the real crime of the alarmists. Truly, we no longer know what we know or don’t know. Had they not blindly insisted on the settledness of the science, we might have made real progress toward the truth rather than chasing the chimera of carbon demonization.
================
How many FOI requests did they get? It seems to me the relevance of the ‘make work’ FOI requests is proportional to the number they received. If they received 5,000 with McIntyre’s being just one, to which they have to respond to emails, taylor the data to the requests, etc. then that is something to talk about. Does anybody know the numbers of requests we are talking about?
2 FOI requests is not ‘make work’. Thx
REPLY: Sixty FOI requests, most for the same thing, which could have been satisfied under a blanket release. – A
Gaz (03:29:38) :
This is all really sad.
You so-called sceptics are tying yourselves into knots trying desperately to prove that the intrumental temperature records are wrong, the UHI effects that have been allowed for are biasing the data, that the satellite records are wrong, that all the different proxy reconstructions are wrong, that the temperature data you think are rubbish show the world is cooling, that the glaciers aren’t retreating, that the ice caps aren’t losing volume, that the ice shelves aren’t disintegrating, that the saturation argument wasn’t disproved 60 years ago, that species aren’t migrating their habitats, that growing seasons aren’t changing …
What’s really sad is that you forgot to add “that the sea level hasn’t risen 20 feet since 1989, that millions of species are going extinct every year, that dozens of Force 5 hurricanes have been lashing the Gulf Coast every year since An Inconvenient Truth came out, and that Teh Earth is going to explode like a kitten in a microwave.”
Geez, if you’re going to use talking points to refute data, use *all* the talking points.
That is “Progressive Ethics”
@Peter Hearnden (03:13:12) :
“Hello, the personal stuff starts.
I just don’t see why, if the sceptic case is so strong, it can’t be placed under the same scrutiny as the science? What has the sceptic case got to hide?
Remember, if the sceptic case is wrong but we act upon it, then it will be scepticism that costs the world BILLIONS!”
The burden of proof does not lie with the skeptics. The burden of proof lies with the persons forming the hypothesis, in this case it is the warmists / AGW crowd. Another tenet of science is that the claims must be falsifiable. That is why the persons making the claims must freely share their methods and data, so other scientists can attempt to reproduce them, or if the claims appear to be invalid, to attempt to shred them. That’s the way science works. (I have nearly 30 years of experience working in an academic research department at an Ivy League University, so know a bit about the process.) This sharing clearly has not been done (i.e. “The dog ate my data!”), hence the FOI requests. And to spend large sums of money acting on a hypothesis (Anthropogenic Global Warming /Climate Change) that has not only NOT been verified, but has many contraindications is a fool’s mission.
Peter Hearnden (03:13:12) :
I just don’t see why, if the sceptic case is so strong, it can’t be placed under the same scrutiny as the science? What has the sceptic case got to hide?
Remember, if the sceptic case is wrong but we act upon it, then it will be scepticism that costs the world BILLIONS!
…so I’ll go and do something more productive for a while.
The phrase “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” comes to mind. Perhaps you’ve heard of it? You see, before “post-normal science”, when science was just science, skepticism was the norm. The bigger the claim, the more evidence was required. Common sense to most, but something AGW Believers have difficulty with, I guess. The claims of AGW, that we humans, through our additions of C02 to the atmosphere are causing the climate to either heat up or to change dangerously are indeed huge.
But, in answer to your ridiculous question, “What has the sceptic case got to hide?”, the answer is, nothing at all. The skeptic case, as you put it, is about bringing back basic scientific principles, which have been run roughshod over by climate scientists like Jones. What skeptics, or climate realists want essentially is the truth, nothing more, and nothing less.
I see you are now whining about things “getting personal”, which is a typical troll tactic, playing the victim card. As far as doing something “more productive” – good idea. You might try reading a bit beyond the usual AGW claptrap. Here are a few links to try:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=1396
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=1396
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=1302
“Peter Hearnden (02:56:07) :
So, we’re not all equal under the law. That’s bunkum.”
Most people certainly are not, that’s the most people, like myself, who cannot afford expensive lawyers, like Jones, Gore, Mann et al.
You should remove your blinkers.
Pete (03:03:18) :
Re 3×2 (02:46:01):
As I recall, correct me if I am wrong, Jones did not even release the station list (their identities) and still claims to have released all data and methods necessary for other scientist to replicate his findings. You don’t need any witnesses for that, it should be easy to verify it with help of documents.
Just pointing out that potential expert witnesses would all be from the same incestuous little clique identified in climategate and by Wegman. Most of them having as much to loose as Jones himself.
Jeez said: “I can explain it to you, but I can’t understand it for you”.
Just great! Copied, filed, deserves to be immortilized.
Would you please drop by my blog (El Atril del Orador”) and let me know your real name?
This article is wonderful. It presents a smoking gun. In fact, it presents ground zero after the nuclear explosion. The hearings in Parliament have had a beneficial result. This article is that result.
To CodeTech
“I don’t remember where my epiphany was”.
I do – it was on the island of Corfu last summer. Took a bit of light reading on holiday – a book debunking Global Warming. That finally opened my eyes as to what has been going on and the rest is history as they say.
I’m a physicist/engineer so I feel a bit silly that it took me so long really. And I certainly don’t like being made a fool of.
@Peter Hearnden (03:13:12):
I do ‘get it’ what you mean. Skeptics also have a responsibility – and for what data they produce, e.g. by McIntyre or A.Watts; I believe data is publicly available.
I see the problem thus:
Climatologists say: In our expert scientific opinion, the world will end if you don’t spend trillions, but we won’t show you fully how we worked it out, partly due to shoddy coding.
The skeptics say: No data, no action. What data exists fails to support AGW.
Should society spend trillions “just in case”, remembering that there is a huge opportunity cost to that money. If Climatologists turn out to be right, are skeptics to blame? No, climatologists should have provided the data.
The AGW science may be rotten to the core, but the AGW social movement, that wants to regulate CO2 and impose huge costs on us in doing so, is alive and well.
We need to keep pushing until the edifice of AGW is toppled in the public square, and its believers either realize their errors are shuffle off to something less harmful, like UFO’s.
The question that I know will never be properly answered is this:
“How do we get our money back?”
> $50 billion, down the drain.
So Gore not only invented the internet, he invented one of the greatest apocalyptic cult scams in history.
I seriously doubt that anyone will ever again call Jones, Gore, Mann, etc., etc., etc., (and a whole bunch more) liars about AGW. They invented it and they sold it to a lot of people, kinda like The Ponzi Scheme Greatest of All Time, Good Ol’ Bernie Madoff. But they never lied about what they were selling. Bernie, however, now looks like a one day flash in the pan, and a 6 year old pickpocket compared to these guys (and their loving ‘Elected’, “MSM”, and Hi-Fin Wizzard friends).
Nope they never lied about any of it. They called it “Anthroprogenic Global Warming” and that is exactly what it was. It was entirely manmade, entirely their own invention –with a lot of help from a lot of stupid people.
They’re going to walk! No court in the world is going to convict anyone for telling the truth and accepting money from fools who just want you to take it and do anything you want with it.
Now the fact that everyone except the Chinese and Indians (and a couple other countries) have gone broke in the process is another story. “Ponzi” will still apply to the Madoff variety of theft. But the new word to define civilizations that are extinguished by such colosial schemes will no doubt be “Gored”.
To CodeTech
“I don’t remember where my epiphany was”.
I do – it was on the island of Corfu last summer. Took a bit of light reading on holiday – a book debunking Global Warming. That finally opened my eyes as to what has been going on and the rest is history as they say.
I’m a physicist/engineer so I feel a bit silly that it took me so long really. And I certainly don’t like being made a fool of by the likes of Jones et al.
On warmist/alarmist websites, I believe sceptic comments are rarely if ever posted. Censorship is rarely a sign of innocence.
Consequently, I hope the writers of these warmist comments here will at least acknowledge they are allowed a fair hearing, even if almost nobody agrees with their comments.
It is all a matter of professional courtesy – however, the concept of ‘professional’ is one that warmists and sceptics will never agree on. Sceptics say that practices that would never be allowed in other branches of science, should not be allowed in ‘clmate science’.
The warmist/alarmists supporters argue that these practices are sound and should be allowed.
Never the twain shall meet.
It is not just Jones (or Pachauri) that has to go. That would be just window-dressing – another whitewash.
The corruption of climate science is so pervasive that “tinkering with the details” will not work.
All the corrupt information must be publicly discarded, and we must start afresh.
The information that is clearly corrupted is:
1. ALL the surface temperature “adjusted” records from CRU, GISS and NCDC.
2. ALL the IPCC reports.
3. Almost everything written on climate science since ~~1995 in Nature, Science and Scientific American, among others.
Yes, it IS that bad.
If we really want to clean up climate science, we must start with a big broom.
Peter Hearnden – here’s a deal for you.
We give the same level of funding to the skeptical side as is currently granted to the alarmist side…and then we subject both sides to the same high level of scrutiny.
How ’bout that?
Ken Hall (01:32:32) :
“Climate science is a unique scientific discipline where research begins at the conclusion and works backwards, selectively adopting (and manipulating) evidence to fit the conclusion. Where the hypothesis never changes, but the evidence changes instead to fit the hypothesis.”
I propose recognising new discipline in human enquiry for which the CRU et al will be acknowledged world leaders – Ecneics
As a matter of principle anybody who is publicly funded should make his work and all of it available to the public without any constraints and everybody who is not publicly funded may make his work available to the public as his own choice , so the solution for mr jones would be NO MORE PUBLIC FUNDING since he is clearly advocating his second choice . He wishes to have a choice , well be a man , be brave and stand up for yourself and do not ask others for a penny or more .
Mr Hearnden and Gaz need to spend some quality time reflecting deeply on the raison d’etre of the insurance industry and its success, seeing as how they both are stellar representatives of their target market.
We’ve just spent many years listening to the four horsemen ride through the country yelling “the British are coming, the British are coming”, and once again, they’re having to be tossed overboard as clearer heads prevail.
Now that collection of mixed metaphors, Peter, is an ad hominem…
standard practices!? we don’t need no standard practices!
truth!? we don’t need no stinking truth!
Gaz,
“You so-called sceptics are tying yourselves into knots trying desperately to prove that the intrumental temperature records are wrong,”
If anyone is being tied in knots it’s so-called scientists like Phil Jones as they try and unsay today what they said yesterday. Very sad.
We “so-called sceptics” are not trying to prove anything. Believe it or not, there are a lot of people out there who are trying to follow the scientific method, and are insisting that other so-called scientists do the same.
This is not some whim that has been pulled out of the hat by oil industry shills. We are talking fundamental principles of science and these points are being made by the Institute of Physics, the Royal Chemistry Society and the institute of statisticians. Namely, all data, methods and codes must be available in order to replicate alleged results, otherwise it’s not science.
You complain that sceptics are asking for all these datasets that make up the temperature records hoping to prove Jones et al wrong. We already know he is wrong. The paper he co-authored with Wang on Chinese UHI is as wrong as can be. Why wouldn’t you want this and others placed under further scrutiny. Why should this all be kept behind locked doors? That’s not science, it’s superstition.
The animosity expressed by Phil Jones pre-dates his lack of cooperation with Steve McIntyre: click
“Standard Scientific Practice to not share data” “Dr. Jones” Has now officially proven he is incompetent to pass a 9th grade science class or a high school graduation test. UEA and anyone associated with him should be profoundly embarassed.
In reply to Peter Hearnden,
No, we don’t get it, because what you are saying is illogical and nonsensical.
I know enough about Steven Mosher to know that he believes the following:
1. The world has warmed since 1850.
2. Man MAY be having some influence on how much it has warmed.
3. We do not KNOW the exact influence that man has had on the warmning, because it appears that the “science” behind all of this has been shoddy, at best.
4. We need real, falsifiable science in order to determine what influence (if any) man has had, and the magnitude of this influence.
5. If it does indeed turn out that man has had measureable (non-insignificant) impact on climate, then solutions should be formulated.
So what I believe Mr. Mosher is advocating is a simple return to the scientific method. What about this request would require him to release every scrap of anything he has ever done? Certainly, if he has climate-related research, such a request pertaining to said research would be perfectly reasonable in order to test his hypotheses.
I don’t think anyone particularly wants to know if Phil Jones has a birthmark just to the left of his navel. However, when it comes to his “climate research”, it is perfectly reasonable (and even expected) that other scientists would want access to the unadulterated raw data, and any code that was used to manipulate that data. That is simply how science actually works.
In closing, I don’t presume to speak for Mr. Mosher, so if I said anything out of line Steve, please correct me 🙂
Thanks Codetech, for your thoughts.
My “alert”started with a reprint of a talk Fred Singer gave at a small college up in Michigan, Hillsboro is it?
I sent a transcript to a friend who was proselytizing the CAGW pitch in Alabama and got back a tirade of “..in the pay of big oil.” “..was in the pay of big tobacco.” “..hadn’t published peer-reviewed science in years.” “..Wasn’t his discipline.” “..all objections had been de-bunked.” “..Science was settled.” “..consensus of 2500 scientists.” And so forth.
It was amazing.
As I’ve subsequently discovered, I now had a single document containing virtually every type of nonsense attack on anyone having a shred of doubt about the veracity of the CAGW concept.
I wrote back that none of these objections precluded Singer from being right.
No answer.
Peter Hearnden (04:34:50) :
“No, I’m not trolling, I’m asking question that I think need answers. Again, I suspect nothing will convince you otherwise either but it happens to be the truth.”
Peter, the truth is, skeptics will release all of their data, the method they used to get there, along with a long explanation, every detail…….
…..reason being, they will be dis-proving this manipulated science and nailing them to the floor.
You whole premise is moot.
Prof Jones’ testimony reminds me of a policeman with whom I spoke 30 years ago. He was investigating a theft of my property. I asked him how he knew when to chase someone down. His reply: “If he runs, you got him.”
If, on the one hand, we are seeking bore hole data from an oil company, which data is used in prospecting for oil, it is legitimate to assume that the oil company has a proprietary interest in that data. Such was the case in the original investigation of Chixculub (sp?) [the massive meteorite strike in the western Carribean]. The oil company is a private firm. It is in business to make a profit. It does not want to give its proven reserves away to another oil company.
On the other hand, when we seek the data which underlies a report or publication made by a publicly funded organization, which report will serve as the basis for public policy, that data MUST be released in its entirety, so that other researchers can duplicate [or not] the analysis.
The oil company need not release its core data. The oil company will stand or fall based on the accuracy of its analysis. If they are wrong they go broke.
The publicly-funded document must have all raw data released, since the accuracy of the report depends on independent verification of the claimed results. If the report is wrong we (the Public) go broke.
A number of recent posts on wattsupwiththat have made clear the observation that the documents provided by Prof Jones cannot be replicated, nor his conclusions confirmed. The emails were bad enough. But the Fortran coding– what a preposterous collection of undocumented fudges. Adjust a rural Alaska site upwards to make it correspond to a heat island? Adjust a rural Virginia site to make the older temperatures colder? Post claims about vanishing glaciers in the Himalayas, when most of the glaciers there have not been documented?
Where did the mystical Fortran tables come from?
I have worked in Fortran. Specifically, a program to simulate the flight of a sounding rocket. Tables are used to encapsulate ground experiments, such as thrust, drag, and so on. But each table is sourced.
And the Fortran tables in Crugate are not sourced; they just show up.
Just like the little boy who observed that the Emperor had no clothes, Mr Mosher has no need to prove himself.
It is Prof Jones who must supply the proof, and he is apparently unable to do so.
“veracity of CAGW concept” isn’t quite right.
We don’t know about its veracity, do we?
We do know that scientifically developed evidence in support of this concept isn’t there yet – if it ever will be.
Sorry
I’d suggest all global warming alarmists like Al Gore, Hansen, Jones, Mann and even Peter would be smart to hire some good lawyers. With people committing suicide based on your claims, you are now open to civil lawsuits. If these claims are found to be fraudulent, it won’t be pretty. I have no idea how many people have killed themselves, but I could see some lawyers looking to get rich. This could be the biggest lawsuit ever.
It is a bit surprising to see so many get distracted by the shallow claims of “Peter.” Steve has done an excellent job pointing out Dr. Jones’ wandering definition of shared data. This evidence along with his testimony before Parliament is legally and morally damning. But the implication of malfeasance resides not only with Jones, but with the whole global warming movement.
What we are demonstrating in these various investigations is how a hard core of operators, Jones, Briffa, Hansen, Mann etc., commandeered climate “science” to meet their agenda. That this unambiguous coup d’etat was not glaringly obvious to learned societies, academia, independent press or government officials, speaks volumes to the depth of corruption. Otherwise the climate charade demonstrates the willful manipulation of human behavior simply to titillate an audience. Both cases constitute a crime.
Now that we have evidence indicting Jones and UEA, we next must see the IPCC explain their collusion in the fraud. And from there we must clean up the U.S. EPA, and various government agencies that blindly embraced the “climate change” agenda. It is a very large iceberg that Dr. Jones stands on. And the heat has only just been turned up.
“Peter Hearnden (03:13:12) :
Remember, if the sceptic case is wrong but we act upon it, then it will be scepticism that costs the world BILLIONS!”
to put it simply, isn’t this an argument to *not* do anything now? You stated that to combat AGW it would cost billions. I would presume the ‘skeptic’ view is to do nothing. In that case, should AGW be evident and the result is damaging, then it will cost billions.
This seems like the better course of action, based on your argument is to actually do nothing.
Unfortunately, a lot of AGW supporters fall back on the precautionary principle. It’s easy to do, something that the majority of people are very susceptible to, and something that people like Al Gore and the media love. It serves as smoke and mirrors to mask the fact that the science is shaky to say the least, and, as currently being discussed, rife with potentially fraudulent and morally reprehensible behavior.
” Peter Hearnden (02:04:34) :
One long ad hom, science content zero.
When will you people get off the backs of people like Dr Jones and leave them to get on with their research? ”
That is all you got to dazzle us with a counterpoint to Steve Mosher’s guest post?
Come on Peter,
try the old fashioned idea of posting a counterpoint to what Steve wrote and leave out the counterproductive whining.
You can do better than that.
I am always hoping to read a good counterpoint to help broaden my understanding of the topic.That you failed to write,instead increases my belief that you have no good replies to make,thus make a spectacle of yourself instead.
By the way can you tell use where his MISSING data is from his past uninterrupted research?
LOL.
Peter Hearnden;
Researcher produces paper that says sky is purple. I don’t agree, but it doesn’t much matter. Other people in the color of sky discipline can dispute all they want, and I still don’t care. Some of them say it is red, others orange and some blue. I don’t care.
Then someone says that BECAUSE the sky is purple, I have to give some of my money to someone else. Now I care. Show me how you concluded that the sky is purple. Show me how you concluded that this is a problem. Show me how my sending money to someone else will fix that problem.
MY profession has nothing to do with it. My work has nothing to do with it. The only way anything I have done personally that has ANYTHING to do with it is IF I have done research on the matter that refutes your research AND I use it to refute yours, in which case my research needs to stand the same tests as yours.
But when the conversation is limited to YOUR research and MY money, then yes, I want to see every last line of code, raw figure, methodolgy and possible other explanations. If you are right, you can have my money. If you are wrong, you can’t. If you are wrong and knew you were wrong and lied about it to try and get my money… I have a cell for people like you.
This is getting really silly. (OK, it was silly before. This is just another level of silliness.)
Was Jones being highly professional? No, probably not. And I don’t excuse him for it. But what is the *correct* solution to the problem?
The problem here is harassment by people who don’t know what they are doing. Climate scientists study climate science. They understand what the data means, how it is gathered, what the processes are, what standard methods have been built up in past works and why, the lingo, etc.
Then people come along who have no idea how climate science works with question after question, perform poor analysis of data because they haven’t bothered to learn how to do climate science, full of biased analysis to get a result they want, and then advertise results that differ from the reported results. And the media and public often can’t tell the difference.
This, to a scientist who knows what they are doing, is “noise”. It is an annoyance to have to go and explain climate science and analysis processes to people who clearly don’t know. Should we burden every scientist with becoming a teacher to every skeptic, or is the onus on the skeptic to learn the science first? This typically isn’t a problem in science since there generally isn’t a movement by non-scientists to discredit scientists in a particular field. Climate science seems almost unique in that sense.
You can see this in the article itself. Jones first wants to make data as freely available as possible, though limited by international agreements. As he gets harassed more, and becomes more aware of the poor analysis and public consequences of M&M’s crusade, he becomes more resistant. Now, instead of doing science, he must teach people how to do proper analysis. He even says that he knows why McIntyre isn’t getting the same results — something that climate scientists would know but McIntyre doesn’t. Should he bother taking the time to teach McIntyre how to do it properly, spend time formalizing and explaining the code, and deal with the media and people who listen do McIntyre? Or should he do climate science?
If somebody else who studied climate science wanted the data and code, it’d probably be quite easy to get. It’s amateurs with an agenda that get in the way of people doing their work that is the problem. What is the *right* solution?
I’m not sure I wouldn’t do what Jones did myself. “Noise” is an annoyance. The onus is on skeptics and deniers to become educated in climate science first, *then* and *only then*, are their objections worth paying attention to. So how do we get then to do that?
Peter Hearnden, please try this on:
Climate scientists have said they’ve collected some data, done some analyses and calculations and, as a result, have strongly recommend governments shell/continue to shell out gobs of taxpayers’ monies.
Among many others, Mr. Mosher has effectively said “Fine, but in all those analyses and calculations, you scientists have said that 2 + 2 = 5, you endlessly keep trying to justify that notion, and you are being caught demonstrably fibbing in addressing this questionable fact.”
Please explain what it is exactly in Mr. Mosher’s complaints that needs to be scrutinized.
Peter Miller (05:45:15) :
On warmist/alarmist websites, I believe sceptic comments are rarely if ever posted. Censorship is rarely a sign of innocence.
Consequently, I hope the writers of these warmist comments here will at least acknowledge they are allowed a fair hearing, even if almost nobody agrees with their comments.
I’ve not had a post of mine deleted for a while, so, yes, I, at least, am allowed my opinion.
Now, whether the modest number of AGW sceptical views on pro warming sites is evidence of censorship rather begs the quesion why there are so few sceptical (of AGW scepticism) views like mine on this site, does it not? I think it’s more to due with polarised views than censorship, myself.
So, to re phrase my questions, suppose (just suppose, OK?) AGW science is right and we see 2-4C global warming for a effective CO2 doubling. 2-4C warming is a lot, it’s something that will cost humanity a lot – BILLIONS, TRILLIONS probably. Now, if we follow the AGW sceptic ‘do nothing’ approach I think it’s fair to ask the AGW sceptics to justify their position in great detail – since doing as they (you want) might have a very, very great cost. The thing is whatever we do, or don’t do, might well have a very great cost and thus, if the argument is about money (and it clearly is) should not AGW sceptics be under the kind of searing spotlight they so happily want to hold science? So far all I’ve seen in various excuses for AGW sceptics not to be so held to account, and (of course) more than a few comments directed not at my questions but at me…
“Dashing.Leech” – absolutely! A post I wish I’d written….
“b_C (07:00:11) : ”
What ‘Dashing.Leech’ said.
Seems reasonable to assume that anything publicly funded should be available to the public. As with any contract there are conditions built in. If the project impacts on areas of security/IPR etc. then info will likely not be available. I don’t think the station data relates to security/IPR though. Where it gets to be a problem is what tools/processes are used to manage such data and thats where IPR hits. Then there is the numpty who constructed and authorised the contract(s). Apart from that I cannot understand why a pile of Fortran (whatever) should be hidden from the public. If it were me I would be proud to show my work..and take any useful comment. If that improves things..so much the better. Weren’t we all taught that?
don’t feed the troll
Henry@gaz
My problem with AGW is this: The basic science is wrong and I suspect most people here are with me on that.
We know that Newton’s laws are right because we have proved them right in a number of different applications. We also know that Svante’ Arrhenius law or formula was proven wrong and we are still looking – & waiting for the relevant research that would give us the right formula.
Not that it matters anymore to me, (because I am now 100% with Willis on the papers he has written – global warming is improbable because earth is a giant water cooling plant, & global cooling is more probable – as the historical records will show you ), but at this stage I am not even sure that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. For a greenhouse gas to be a what it is, the warming properties must be more than its cooling properties.. Namely, CO2 also has certain cooling qualities, i.e. having a number of absorptions in the 0 to 5 um band it must cause cooling by deflecting sunlight. They recently determined new absorptions of CO2 even in the UV range. So CO2 is a bit similar to ozone. This is all stuff that nobody realised before. This radiation from the sun deflected by the CO2 is so apparent that our equipment can measure it as it bounces off the dark side of the moon back to earth.
So if you say to us that CO2 causes global warming (the main theme of AGW) you first have to find us the right formula from the right data from the right testing that everyone must be able to verify…
Having a little fun: http://i49.tinypic.com/2m6wynn.jpg SFW, unless you work at EAU.
In reply to Dashing.Leech,
Your post is nonsensical and illogical.
“Climate Science” is bascially a brand-new science. Claiming anyone is an “expert” in it and beyond questioning because no other scientist has any understanding of climate is just plain silly.
Now, if you would prefer to come up with some sort of cogent argument, please do.
THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD
1. Observe phenomenon
2. Make hypothesis attempting to describe phenomenon
3. Design experiment to test hypothesis
4. Gather data
5. Analyze data
6. Determine if hypothesis is rejected or potentially confirmed
7. If hypothesis is rejected, return to step 2.
8. Provide experimental design, raw data, analytical parameters, results and conclusions to other scientists.
9. Encourage other scientists to attempt to replicate your results.
10. If other scientists are unable to replicate your results, return to step 3, or possibly even step 2.
What you seem to be arguing for is a complete rejection of the scientific method. What do you advocate? Rule by “experts” and un-questioning acceptance by the “masses”?
To all anti sceptics: The following quote by Steve Mosher should explain all sceptics concerns in this matter.
“The issue is worth $1 trillion a year, the amount that many environmentalists consider the appropriate sum to throw into the fight against global warning. With such astronomical sums at stake, getting the science right would seem to be at the heart of the discussion.”
If you can’t agree with this-you are beyond help.
Dashing.Leech (06:56:13),
So, you’re claiming a statistician trying to understand a statistical analysis of climate data is “noise”. Do you have any idea how silly this sounds? Could you make a worse argument for your case?
Unfortunately, what we see here is the level of understanding of those who support AGW. Peter obviously doesn’t understand the scientific method. Leech doesn’t understand that climate science is really a multi-disciplinary field and WAZ has no clue about what the skeptics have really been saying.
I realize they get this nonsense from pro-AGW blogs. But for them to come here and expose their ignorance is quite amusing.
In reply to Peter Hearnden,
There is no use in SUPPOSING anything. Humans (at least sane ones) do not act on mere supposition. Sane humans require reasonable proof.
If, as you suspect, the AGW scientists are indeed correct, it is up to THEM to properly follow the scientific method and allow other scientists to either find support or rejection of their hypotheses. That is the way that science works.
Science is NOT “Assume X is true, then discard all data which calls X into question and only retain data which supports X, and then act as if X were true.” That is not science at all, and if you believe that it is, you have no understanding of the philosophy of science.
If AGW theory is indeed correct, then we should certainly act upon it. However, it is perfectly sane, reasonable, and expected that we all request that the science behind it be completely sound and defensible before we do anything whatsoever.
Your point of view seems to be, “What if the sky were to fall tomorrow! Even if we have no valid evidence whatsoever, we had better spend trillions building a giant sky-support structure!!!”
Thanks, but no. Provide me with real, falsifiable science which provides reasonable evidence of your claim first, then we go from there.
I expect we will see more and more CAGWers coming here. Although most are still in “denial”, the next stage is “anger” as we saw from Peter H. This is one place to vent that anger. Peter starting to get into “bargaining” by asking for FOIAs for skeptics.
The process continues just as predicted.
I find it interesting that all of the alarmists, including the trolls on this site, acuse the skeptics of the very sins that they have committed and are committing. It reminds me of the cheating girlfriend. Once confronted with her crime, she yells at you and insists that YOU are or were cheating!
Here’s the original quotation, from Samuel Johnson:
Roger Knights
I can distinctly remember the discussion when I came up with my statement and when, and it appears to be simply coincidental to the one you cited. I’m not saying this out of hubris. I am just being as factual as I can be. I’m not the most erudite person and have never read Samuel Johnson.
It is just as derivative of you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink. The words understand and understanding make it look like plagiarism, but I don’t really think that’s the case. Maybe I just channeled Johnson.
Re: Peter Hearnden (03:13:12) :
Peter, It isn’t the responsibility of a skeptic to prove anything. It IS the responsibility of those who support the hypothesis of AGW to provide the proof that the hypothesis is true. If the hypothesis can’t be proven to be true, then the null hypothesis (there is no AGW) can’t be rejected.
To date, I have seen no proof that the hypothesis of AGW is true at the 95% confidence level. The gobal average temperature forecasts projections based upon the AGW hypothesis that I have seen do not correlate very well with actual temperatures being recorded. This convinces me that the the AGW hypothesis can not be accepted. No need to prove anything else.
A friend of mine has the following definition of the word “expert”
X is the unknown quantity, and spurt is a drip under pressure.
Peter Hearnden (02:04:34) :
One long ad hom, science content zero.
When will you people get off the backs of people like Dr Jones and leave them to get on with their research?
Incidentally, who are you Mr Mosher? If you think it’s right that everything about Dr Jones should be public knowledge because it might cost us billion if he’s wrong so his science needs infinite testing, then it’s also the case that if you’re wrong it might also cost us billions and so everything about you should be public knowledge.
Therefore I demand you place on public record all your scientifc notes, workings, jotting, e mails, code (every scrap) and papers for the last ten years. All of it, everything, every last word , figure and number. If you don’t do that i will be demanding it by FOI and I wont desisit, I’ll shower you with FOI request for a decade.
Get it?
——–
Hi Peter, I “get it” from seeing your previous postings on this site, that you are a person who is convinced he is right. Because I have seen you on other threads I know that you know what the arguments for and against AGW are about. However, nobody needs to explain anything to you, because you won’t listen anyway. These comments are about your character as displayed by your comments on various threads. If your feelings are hurt so be it. I believe you are being mischievous and are attention seeking.
As far as I am aware, IF something needs to be done to lessen a problem caused by AGW if it is proved, I and many other sceptics of AGW will happily approve spending on that problem AT THAT TIME.
However, can you show me where there is a problem occurring now from AGW? You can’t because there isn’t any. So why should any of my money be robbed from me now to set up false schemes to mitigate non existent problems which may or may not occur in the future?
So if you are proved right, then AT THAT TIME I will be happy to pay for the problem.
You have been told many times that proper scientific method requires the AGW proponents to prove their case.
Dashing.Leech (06:56:13) :
This is getting really silly. (OK, it was silly before. This is just another level of silliness.)
Was Jones being highly professional? No, probably not. And I don’t excuse him for it. But what is the *correct* solution to the problem?
The problem here is harassment by people who don’t know what they are doing. Climate scientists study climate science. They understand what the data means, how it is gathered, what the processes are, what standard methods have been built up in past works and why, the lingo,
Then people come along who have no idea how climate science works with question after question, perform poor analysis of data because they haven’t bothered to learn how to do climate science, full of biased analysis to get a result they want, and then advertise results that differ from the reported results. And the media and public often can’t tell the difference.
————
You are simply parrotting the latest memes from the AGW camp which are quite untrue and have been proved untrue.
Jones had a duty to release data full stop. If he had done that, he wouldnt be in the pickle he is in today.
dashing.leech — Should he bother taking the time to teach McIntyre how to do it properly, spend time formalizing and explaining the code, and deal with the media and people who listen do McIntyre? Or should he do climate science?
What abject nonsense. Jones is paid by the public, meaning every iota of data, code and such needs to be published openly. McIntyre either gets it at that point or doesn’t, and it makes no difference. Certainly McIntyre is entitled to his opinion. Full disclosure means that Jones isn’t obligated to say anything at all; the work does that for him, leaving Jones free to pursue science unfettered.
Meanwhile, McIntyre et al asked questions and asked for data etc because these weren’t available, yet your post suggests that the rationale was to disrupt the work of Jones. This smacks of wholesale swallowing of Al Gore’s specious “make work” claims.
Just to be clear: McIntyre et al were forced to ask questions because data etc that was supposed to be open was not. It wasn’t the other way around. Only an idiot would buy that argument.
“He even says that he knows why McIntyre isn’t getting the same results — something that climate scientists would know but McIntyre doesn’t. Should he bother taking the time to teach McIntyre how to do it properly, spend time formalizing and explaining the code, and deal with the media and people who listen do McIntyre? Or should he do climate science?”
Very good… now lets analyze that statement.
He KNOWS why McIntyre can’t replicate the results… because there’s undocumented steps in the process (and a rather arbitry step at that.) If the process is not thoroughly documented so that other people can easily repeat the experiment or analysis, it’s not science.
Dashing_leech and Peter Hearnden: Your writings indicate neither of you have any understanding of science, how it is done, how it is evaluated, even what it is.
You both would be well advised to return to school, preferably a good institute of higher learning, and work to a serious degree in a scientific discipline. Then come back and talk to us about climate science and Phil Jones.
What you don’t get, or more likely won’t accept, is that you are being talked at here by people who have done exactly that. People with as much or more scientific education and training than Jones et al, even in their own specialization, who are critical and choose to disagree with this particular perversion of climate science. These same people are telling you the CRU science is faulty, as is the environment in which it is carried out. You choose to believe the myths, instead. Most here, with professional circumspection, don’t. And you know what? Their collective scientific wisdom is greater than that of Dr Jones, et al, even within climate science.
Leech, your offhanded slur on McIntyre only demonstrates you don’t understand the mathematics underlying the analysis, or indeed, the research.
As a biologist, I know that the tree proxies used are worthless for the climate purpose they are being used for. Your “climate scientists” evidently don’t, but then none of them are biologists either. So perhaps you can explain how it is that your climate scientists, without training, can conduct good science in areas they are not familiar with, and others, who do have the expertise, can’t criticise them? How exactly does that work?
Remember the adage: “its better to be silent and be thought a fool, then to open one’s mouth and prove it”.
Quit wasting everybody’s time.
Peter Hearnden (07:03:13),
I very much enjoy your posts, since they’re so easy to deconstruct. For example, you say:
“…suppose (just suppose, OK?) AGW science is right and we see 2-4C global warming for a[n] effective CO2 doubling. 2-4C warming is a lot, it’s something that will cost humanity a lot – BILLIONS, TRILLIONS probably.”
Leaving aside the risible term “AGW science,” I would like to point out that there is no empirical evidence showing that a rise in CO2 will cause runaway global warming and climate catastrophe. The physics is straightforward, but the planet isn’t cooperating, meaning that the effect of CO2 has been vastly overestimated.
There are endless opinions expressed in the pal reviewed literature, and there are two dozen supercomputer models that can’t ever seem to get it right. But there is no real world evidence that CO2 is anything other than a harmless and beneficial trace gas. So your supposing is just that: speculation based on zero evidence.
Yet you advocate spending immense amounts of new taxes, based on your “what if…” speculation. Contrast that crazed world view with the very real likelihood of an NEO impact such as an asteroid on a populated area.
For less than has already been spent “studying” global warming, an effective defense can be established. But the True Believers in the empirically baseless CAGW conjecture don’t care about actual, preventable threats. Instead, they fervently believe what their religion tells them to believe: that $trillions must be raised through increased taxes and much higher prices [due to the proposed requirement for carbon credits], and spent on what is nothing but a supposition (“just suppose, OK?”) being promoted by entities pushing the CAGW agenda.
When you start putting your energy into demands for action against the very real threat of an object from space hitting the Earth, instead of demanding action to create a grant-fueled wealth transfer scheme, I will start to view you as a rational thinker – rather than a CAGW true believer who uses ‘projection’ to try and blame skeptics for Phil Jones’ self-inflicted troubles.
That goes for the Dashing.Leech, too. Mr Leech, like yourself, still fails to understand how the scientific method is designed to work. Since neither of you can seem to grasp such a simple and straightforward concept, the likely explanation is cognitive dissonance; a condition that strongly resists treatment. As Dr Festinger points out, the CD-afflicted believe that the flying saucers are still coming, only the date of their arrival has been changed.
Henry Pool — My problem with AGW is this: The basic science is wrong and I suspect most people here are with me on that.
You’d probably be surprised.
As with any number of skeptics, I can’t imagine that humans *don’t* have influence on the climate — certainly humans affect every other aspect of their environment. Nor can I imagine that spewing a great deal of CO2 into the atmosphere as an open ended experiment is particularly clever. We humans certainly need to examine this in some detail.
My skepticism begins and ends with the concept of “catastrophic.”
At least my ad hominem attack was entertaining, the alarmists can’t hope to sustain a trillion dollar enterprise on the back of “you wouldn’t understand, so trust us”.
The wild, unkempt hair, the jacket, open shirt/no tie; it all fits the image one would conjure up for Moshpit …
No time to digest the article, yet … so no critique there.
.
.
Kevin Trenberth (a climate science “expert”) wrote the following on October 14th, 2009:
“Hi Tom
How come you do not agree with a statement that says we are no where close to knowing where
energy is going or whether clouds are changing to make the planet brighter. We are not
close to balancing the energy budget. The fact that we can not account for what is
happening in the climate system makes any consideration of geoengineering quite hopeless as
we will never be able to tell if it is successful or not! It is a travesty!”
What this means is that the so-called “experts” have no idea how to balance the energy-budget of the earth’s climate. They do not know all of the variables involved, and they do not fully understand the interactions of all of the variables involved.
Kevin Trenberth further writes:
“”The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment
and it is a travesty that we can’t”
What this means is that the models of the “climate experts” predicted unabated warming, and the lack thereof cannot be explained by their models. This further means that their models cannot effectively predict REALITY.
So, we have an admission from one of the “experts” that A) the experts really don’t have anything even vaguely resembling a complete understanding of all of the variables involved in climate and how these variables interract, and B) their models failed utterly to predict 15 years with no statistically significant warming.
Yet, according to Peter Hearnden and Dashing.Leech, we should either trust these “experts” because they are the only ones who fully understand climate science (even though they freely admit that they have no such understanding), or we should act based upon the supposition that they MIGHT be correct, even though they have not correctly followed the scientific method.
Thanks again, but no.
‘Richard M’ (07:27:03) :
Is it possible we might discuss this without your best ‘argument’ being to accuse people of being ignorant?
‘Allen C’ (07:36:05) :
Sorry, but I’m not asking for proof, I’ve not used the word. I’m asking why if we need to scrutinise every last letter and figure of Dr Jones’s output because he might be wrong and it might cost us BILLIONS if he is, why we should not scrutinise ever letter of AGW sceptic output because it might also be wrong (ie the AGW science might be right) and doing what AGW sceptics want us to do (which is nothing) might also cost us BILLIONS in climate related costs. Could you please consider that?
Climate science is in very near danger of becoming something akin to some historical hoaxes and career destroying erroneous ‘science’ such as phrenology, cold fusion, Piltdown Man, Cardiff Giant, Feejee Mermaid, Bigfoot, Jan Henrik Schon, The spaghetti tree, The Nacirema Tribe, Disappearing Blonde Gene etc., etc.
The media should learn not to jump on bandwagons!
http://science.discovery.com/top-ten/2008/hoaxes/hoaxes-08.html
The facts about AGW have not stopped Obama, Pelosi, Boxer, Kerry and Jackson. They cannot be oblivious to the current revelations of scientific malfeasance.
Peter Hearnden, congratulations you win my “Troll of the week” award. You just kept them biting.
Smokey (07:53:08) :
“…Since neither of you can seem to grasp such a simple and straightforward concept, the likely explanation is cognitive dissonance; a condition that strongly resists treatment...”
Oh, not that we’re ignorant then?
Peter Hearnden
In response to your invocation of the precautionary principle. The cost of 2-4 C warming is smaller by at least an order of magnitude than the cost of cooling or than the cost of stupid ideas like cap and traede or so called renewable energy fixes. Further warmer temperatures would tend to have a net positive effect as does increased CO2 on the health and diversity of the biosphere.
To put it simply; the cure is far worse than the disease.
Peter Hearnden (02:04:34):
Those who make scientific claims are the ones who have to produce evidence, data etc., not Mosher. Maybe you didn’t know this Peter but that is the way science works. Sceptics don’t have to produce a damn thing. Sorry!
Q: What’s the biggest difference between Bernie Madoff & Co. and Al Gore & Co.?
A: Trillions!
“Dashing.Leech”, apt name for the suckiness of your post.
“The problem here is harassment by people who don’t know what they are doing.” – Yet again the classic I’m smarter than you argument, getting oh so boring now. I’ve yet to see one AGW proponent PROVE man made CO2 will have catastropic effects. All we read is that the models “suggest” this or that. There is no evidence to support any catastrophic claims, none.
” Climate scientists study climate science.” – WOW
“They understand what the data means” , Who are they, and apparently they only know what they want the data to reflect vis their models.
” It is an annoyance to have to go and explain climate science and analysis processes to people who clearly don’t know. Should we burden every scientist with becoming a teacher to every skeptic, or is the onus on the skeptic to learn the science first?” Again the we’re smarter than you elitist attitude that is so pervasisve these days, and not just in this arena.
The real noise is the whining from the very people who would usurp my money and have me thank them at the same time, sorry not today. This issue is all about control, problem is it just might be too late. Might be.
Ken Hall (01:32:32) wrote:
“Climate science is a unique scientific discipline where research begins at the conclusion and works backwards, selectively adopting (and manipulating) evidence to fit the conclusion. Where the hypothesis never changes, but the evidence changes instead to fit the hypothesis.
In short, climate science is NOT science.”
Ken, sadly climate “science” is NOT unique.
This kind of backwards justification for theories is standard practice in much of the astronomical community.
Rather than admit their a priori theories have been falsified by subsequent observation & measurement, they “massage” or manipulate the data to fit the theory — and they have done this to such a great extent — that they, in effect, have climbed out onto a thin branch and, so, their only recourse is to trash those that point out the falsification of their theories.
Astronomy used to be considered the “Queen” of the sciences — no more, now, it is in crisis.
And, woe to those that would openly challenge them.
Of course, now, much of the general public knows about this practice in climate “science”. Eventually they will know this about astronomy, too.
And, then, the “woe” will be on the other foot.
Peter Hearnden (07:03:13)
[i]So, to re phrase my questions, suppose (just suppose, OK?) AGW science is right and we see 2-4C global warming for a effective CO2 doubling. 2-4C warming is a lot, it’s something that will cost humanity a lot – BILLIONS, TRILLIONS probably.[/i]
Actually this is an assumption based on a less than 5% possibility. Warming does not automatically equal disaster. The world was warmer during the medieval period and did very well. The most likely result of warming is simply improvement in living conditions. The disaster scenarios that are constantly being painted are actually extreme unlikely events that might result from warming.
Note that the only scenario you hear out of the AGW side is the disaster. Why is that? Remember the disaster isn’t a very likely result, instead the likely result is improved growing belts and better living conditions world wide.
Dashing.Leech (06:56:13) :
Climate science is an infant discipline. Furthermore, it is a composite of a lot of other, much more well established disciplines, such as physics and statistics. Assuming that people outside of the field, which includes a lot of contributors here, have no idea what climate scientists are doing, is foolishly arrogant, at best.
Coming from quantitative economics, I have no problems reading the average ‘climate science’ paper. That said, I would like to see Jones et al digest an average Econometrica publication (given that the IPCC can’t even interpret a p-value properly).
Now stop excusing the inexcusable.
As Jones’ institute received millions in public funds, their results have been used by scores of individuals and organizations (Academic / Government / NGO’s / Business etc), ergo they should have released the data and codes, instead of breaking the law in avoiding to do so.
Period.
Peter Hearnden (07:03:13) :
Your alarmism is flawed. Costs of limiting carbon emissions, or of ‘action’ if you will, are extreme, especially for developing countries. Even if we set aside the enormous costs to developed countries, we still have the following (e.g.):
(1) Due to their unsaturated industries, poor countries require a higher % of CO2 emissions growth for 1% of GDP/c growth than do rich countries (i.e. the income elasticity of emissions is decreasing in wealth). The negative effects of cuts on their economies, and thereby all development indicators (which are tightly linked with GDP/c), will thus be much more severe than in developed countries.
(2) Energy is more expensive in developing countries (in both relative and absolute terms), and it’s scarcity is already taking its toll: clinics and factories can barely operate. Mandatory emission cuts will make this situation only worse.
(3) The opportunity cost. Consider the amount of money we are going to spend on trying to ‘revert the climate’ (I can’t even type this without chuckling 🙂 and save ourselves from this unproven threat, when we have a (obvious and proven) global pandemic (i.e. HIV/AIDS) killing millions each year. In Sub Saharan Africa alone, there were over 7.5 million AIDS orphans in 2007.
…
So applications of the ‘precautionary principle’ approach are inappropriate in this context, as there are both direct (1 and 2 above) and opportunity (3 above) costs tied to ‘action’. We do not live in the binary world of Pascal’s wager, my friend.
Mr Hearnden –
One thing at a time: Let’s do the “what if the AGW scientists are wrong?” thing first, given all the recent evidence and revelations at hand.
And then do the “what if the AGW theory is right?” thing.
And do you also realize you’ve backed off from the AGW camp’s previously held position? You’ve backpedalled from your position that said – “we are right. Period.” to “what if we are right?”. The belligerence of the AGW camp in its red-eyed certainty makes it hard for anyone to feel sympathetic right away. Too bad its that way.
Your billions trillions (in full caps) argument cuts the other way too. It is equally expensive and disastrous to implement effective ‘mitigation’. Just look at any well-reasoned pro-AGW source.
Stop being a troll. Join the fun, open up your mind.
Regards
Dashing.Leech (06:56:13) :
“The problem here is harassment by people who don’t know what they are doing. Climate scientists study climate science. They understand what the data means, how it is gathered, what the processes are, what standard methods have been built up in past works and why, the lingo, etc.”
Dear Mr. Leech,
you suggest that the study of climate “science” is so esoteric, so arcane as to be understood only by the very few, self-anointed high priests of the four winds? This is utter rubbish and the fundamental reason we are immersed in a climate fraud. Professor Jones’ own words impeach his integrity:
“The two MMs [McIntyre and McKittrick] have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send [ ] to anyone.”
The Institute of Physics, the Royal Society of Chemical engineers, and hundreds of thousands of honest scientists are outraged. Professor Jones is neither a competent professional nor an adherent to the scientific method. He and you had best get used to having publicly funded research scrutinized by a variety of experts. The former mechanism of “knowledge filtering” has been dismantled. The data, code, and methodology of climate research has been dragged into the light of day. Get used to the glow.
Jimbo (08:01:49) :
Good list. Leave out cold fusion. There is lots of evidence of LENR.
Dashing.leech,
“Then people come along who have no idea how climate science works with question after question, perform poor analysis of data because they haven’t bothered to learn how to do climate science.”
Dashing leech, you have spent too long in the great echo chambers of desmogblog and Rabbett run. Because sceptics have criticised the work of people like Mann, Briffa and Jones, and have found errors, that means they don’t understand climate science.
Steve McIntyre doesn’t need to understand how a photon reacts with a CO2 molecule when he’s auditing the MHB98 hockey stick. He applied standard statistical techniques that apply to the analysis of any data sample, whether they be widths of tree rings or geological data from a mining study. His findings falsified the conclusions of Mann’s hockey stick and was upheld by Wegman’s report.
However, if it was only a handful of amateurs who had made these criticisms, then you might, just might, be able convince some people with your appeals to authority. Fortunately for the rest of us, not only your logic, but also your facts are up the Swanee. Considerable criticism has come from other climate scientists such as Lindzen, Spencer, Christy, Soon, Douglass, Loehle, Scafetta, Ball and Pielke. Are they all in need of climate science lessons from Jones?
Maybe you should do some reading before posting such nonsense.
I agree that e.g. Jones in person was in a state of chaos, doing whatever he found doable, convenient, or whatever he was forced to do. So in this sense, it’s “morally neutral” – not good enough for a well-known scientist.
However, the “system” has been distorting various things in a non-chaotic fashion, statistically losing the things that are convenient to be lost, and finding and inventing other things that could be convenient. This statement is a matter of statistics. So while it’s hard to attribute many individuals “strange events” to a moral collapse, it can be seen statistically that there had to be many ethical failures during those years.
What a wonderful site this is! And it’s made even livelier by the spirited arguments of warmists and the subsequent give-and-take.
What is fascinating about these arguments is that, when one thinks about them, they rarely make any sense. So Peter H. wants sceptics to release their materials, just like they have asked to climate scientists to do. Okay. But what material is there in this case? If Steve McIntyre analyzes the Hockey Stick and finds it faulty, what is there to release beyond the analysis that is already published? The notes he made while working out the derivations? Early drafts of the paper? What?
He didn’t collect data from which wide-ranging conclusions were drawn, but which remains inaccessible. In fact, the empirical evidence in this case is the set of claims themselves, which are already in print – so the situation in the two cases is completely different. Which is what makes comments like these so interesting. They have a kind of soap-bubble plausibility, which dissolves as soon as attention is focused on them.
I have described the steps of the scientific method above. I would suggest that both Peter Hearnden and Dashing.Leech actually read what I wrote.
They both seem to be suggesting the following:
Pre-suppose X to be true, then also pre-suppose that consequences Y and Z will DEFINITELY occur, because X is true. Further, take action based upon the certainty that Y and Z are going to happen, because we have pre-supposed X to be true.
That is not science, that is religion.
Kinda ironic that Pascal’s wager was applied to religion. The Peter Hearnden’s of the world are approaching the problem from the same angle. Its religion to them, so why not apply medieval logic to the problem.
Even the term “denier” has religious connotations. I wonder if they know how evangelical they sound?
Lubos,
“However, the “system” has been distorting various things in a non-chaotic fashion,”
But the “system” consists of people too, including Jones himself. Could it be that the system is greater than the some of its parts, a self organising intelligent entity with an autonomous will and direction?
Ideas have consequences, Peter Hearnden, though I hate to get started on my little soapbox by skeptics of skeptics, kinda becomes paradoxymoronic.:) Hall of mirrors. But I think this is possibly an unprecedented mass delusion of the worst kind. In reality, I think this was just another dot com/housing type investment scam looking for naive investors among world governments.
The possible consequences of investing so heavily in fruitlessly attempting to change the normally capricious climate back to “normal” are huge. Considering just one bigger picture of human nature shows this to be not only dangerous but extremely naive and foolish.
The entire developed world has already over speculated, lost ALL of its financial reserves, and is afraid to further sully the pure innocent planet by using their own natural resources. China has already won this Monopoly game and is packing up the board.. anyone notice yet or are we off on our bikes to the farmers market to pick up some fresh organic arugula on our credit card? (Or to WalMart in our Dodge Ram to pick up a boatload of Chinese plastic underbed Christmas wrap organizers using our government unemployment check, depending on our social/political affiliations)
China is a masculine culture with an excess of males, (think high IQ prison gangs) not to mention some 10,000 annual engineering graduates who are unemployed. China has more children involved in just the serious study of MUSIC than America has children! India also has an excess of males, innovative dudes who can make anything they want out of discarded broken lawn mowers from the US. Masculine cultures/governments are much less likely to fall for old wives tales and fuzzy stories about sad little polar bears. They will have to control millions of unemployable/unmarriageable young men by having them in the armed forces or prisons. They have plenty of money now to do whatever serves their interests. Islamic cultures are also masculine in outlook and policy.
Remember, “old” Europe isn’t having children. I recall reading somewhere that the US college guys only developed “green interests” because that’s what the chicks were into. Western males are basically spilling their seed [squandering their power] through video games and porn.
There is nothing left to “invest” (substitute borrow from China) that isn’t needed desperately, here and now. When before in history have we all witnessed in real time the repeated destruction of entire cities, even nations, by the forces of nature? Haven’t we learned anything about the crushing power of natural forces and the necessity of putting something away for emergencies that we know we absolutely cannot control? We have to borrow from China for our grandiose foreign aid gestures to Haiti.
America is now like a whole nation of unemployed, indebted, twenty something college grads who live with Mom and Dad (China) use their parents’ credit card for micro brews and stay up all night playing video games, while lecturing Mom and Dad about their mean rules and their incandescent light bulbs. Meanwhile Mom and Dad are both working full time trying to figure out when to throw out the kids and who’s going to care for Grandma and Grandpa, since they didn’t have any daughters or marriageable sons.
The entire undeveloped world is now enraged, not about AGW but CLIMATE CHANGE, expecting massive financial compensation forever for any and all changes in the weather. You think they won’t exaggerate or falsify in order to stay on the dole? Nigerian corruption manages to skim the equivalent of all world aid to Africa every year! I think that in itself was the biggest eye opener at Copenhagen, enough, perhaps, to make everyone think again and slowly back away from the multi-headed monster they have created.
The real horror in life is not the ever changing climate. It is not tsunamis, hurricanes nor earthquakes.
The human horror is Pol Pot, Mao, Stalin, Idi Amin, Hitler, the French Revolution, the Red Guards, the US Civil War, Rwanda, Ukraine, WWI, WWII…… Watch some of the Okinawa footage on the History Channel. Just a little.
Blindly inviting, allowing, accepting the massive unbalancing of world power, as we have irrevocably already done, is our crime against HUMAN nature. I think the Western nations originally hoped we could control China and India through the UN, human rights pressure, environmentalism, peer pressure. Think again.
Selling our birthright for a bowl of soup comes to mind. The Grasshopper and the Ants. Aesop’s dog dropping the bone in the water …. Foxy Loxy and the true fate of Chicken Little….
Suppose (just suppose, OK?) that AGW can be mitigated by Peter Hearnden giving me all of his money for the next forty years. I have some data that will prove this, but the Canadians and French are a bit sticky on releasability. Most of my friends think this theory is valid – in the past, Peter didn’t have any money and it was cooler then. Out of an abundance of caution I think the money transfers should begin immediately.
I think Peter will want a bit more proof before this scheme is enacted.
Gurgle, gurgle, glug, glug …
Bye bye Phil. You’ve lost. You and your corrupt, manipulating peers won’t be missed.
Now we can get back to rational science and reasonable governance.
This account reminds me of the boot monument to Benedict Arnold. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boot_Monument) Like Jones, he was initially a great soldier, but betrayed the cause. His leg was seriously wounded in the battle of Saratoga, so, the Americans erected a statue to his leg and were determined to hang the rest.
Phil Jones (2002) sounds like a great guy.
_Jim (07:58:55) :
The wild, unkempt hair, the jacket, open shirt/no tie…
http://www.olemiss.edu/courses/logic/godel3.gif
Peter Hearnden
China and India are doing nothing, so why should we? How much has Europe’s emissions gone down after all the money that has been spent on curbing emissions? China and India have nearly half the worlds population, don’t preach to westerners about doing nothing, travel to China and India. See how you go there, when you get a commitment from those two countries, get back to me.
Peter Hearnden (07:03:13),
“…suppose (just suppose, OK?) AGW science is right and we see 2-4C global warming for a[n] effective CO2 doubling. 2-4C warming is a lot, it’s something that will cost humanity a lot – BILLIONS, TRILLIONS probably.”
Yes Peter, well suppose (just suppose, OK?) that Al Gore believes that the Earth is going to be hit in 100 years time by a giant turtle currently hurtling towards us from the direction of Andromeda .
If he is right the collision damage will cost humanity a lot – BILLIONS, TRILLIONS probably.
So we had better start building some sort of extra-terrestrial shield, regardless of how many billions it costs, just in case he is right? A good idea?
Well actually, no!
Before a penny were spent I would want to see scientific proof that the threat was real.
Equally I would like to see irrefutable scientific proof from Jones, Mann, Wigley et al. that AGW is 95% certain before agreeing to governments blighting the world economy with suicidally costly defensive measures.
James F. Evans (08:12:48) :
Astronomy used to be considered the “Queen” of the sciences — no more, now, it is in crisis.
Apart from the queen being Mathematics, Astronomy is not in a crisis. On the contrary, e.g.
http://www.physorg.com/news186667261.html
Steve:
Nice summary.
All:
I am with IndianaBones – I know it is sometimes hard but please do not feed those who utter nonsense and have a feeble grasp of reality.
re: Peter Hearnden (03:13:12)
Peter
There is NO sceptic case. By definition a sceptic case does not exist. A sceptic is one who by definition thinks THE Case or YOUR Case may not be ironclad.
Let’s say that an engineer builds a bridge in my community. For some common sense reason, local to my area, I am sceptical that the bridge will support the traffic the engineer says it will. I research the plans and come up with a reason why the bridge may not work to specifications. I don’t have a case. I don’t want to build another bridge. I want the people that funded, designed and built the bridge to do it correctly.
So it starts getting out that there might be a problem with the bridge. Then one of the workers, an experienced concrete guy says that, while he’s not an engineer, every other bridge of this type, in this area, is constructed a certain way but this bridge is an exception. Finally the county commission hires a consulting bridge engineer to check it out. He may find that everything is fine or that there are problems.
The point is that anyone should be able to be sceptical about things that involve public funding (public data), public safety, or public regulations that severely disrupt normal conduct (drilling for oil, refining, driving, etc). Anyone! It’s up to the public agency to prove it’s case.
Again, I just noticed “Now, if we follow the AGW sceptic ‘do nothing’ approach” just above. Once more THERE IS NO SCEPTIC APPROACH!! There is no “do nothing approach”. It doesn’t exist. It may be a default case if certain people are wrong, but it’s NOT a sceptic case. The sceptic is not convinced, yet, that those in the know, really know. The sceptics, for good reasons, are not yet convinced of the AGW case. They haven’t been fully convinced yet. Some individual sceptics may have a differing view of the matter, but that is totally irrelevant. Prove the case first. Convincingly, with transparent data, and transparent procedures, and transparent motives.
You gentlemen are feeding the trolls. That is like wrestling with a greased pig in the mud. It gets you nowhere,but the pig enjoys it immensely.
Vincent (09:00:43) :
I think you’re over-thinking it 🙂
What Dr. Motl is saying is that, while one individual’s mishap might be attributed to unrelated personal/professional failures (e.g. being unorganized or simply incompetent), when we look at climate science community™ as a whole, there is a clear pattern of misrepresentation in one direction.
E.g. We are yet to see the IPCC citing a contra-AGWH grey literature publication.
Putting it in the words of a statistician: there is enough statistical evidence to infer a clear system wide bias towards the AGWH cause.
Peter Hearnden (07:05:55) :
“Dashing.Leech” – absolutely! A post I wish I’d written….
Nah, the moniker had promise as did Dashing’s failure to read and understand the problem with Climate “Science”. But if he wants Thorazine, he’s going to have to do a much better job in selling his own case!
Peter Hearnden (02:04:34) :
“One long ad hom, science content zero.”
If you have read me around the net or read the book you would know that my position is this. I believe in AGW. I am a Lukewarmer. The mails change nothing about the science. The mails are not science. Science is changed
by other science. What the mails do for me is cast doubt on the process.
That process must be fixed to restore trust. BTW it’s not an ad hom to point
out what a man said, what a man did.
“When will you people get off the backs of people like Dr Jones and leave them to get on with their research?”
Like Dr. Jones? I will never get off their backs. I do respect the work of
peole like Judith Curry and others who support Open access. People who don’t? Sorry.
“Incidentally, who are you Mr Mosher? If you think it’s right that everything about Dr Jones should be public knowledge because it might cost us billion if he’s wrong so his science needs infinite testing, then it’s also the case that if you’re wrong it might also cost us billions and so everything about you should be public knowledge.”
You have a problem with logic. If you want to know about me, read my submission to parliament. I don’t think its right that “EVERYTHING” about
Phil should be public. The mails are public. people mis represent what they say. I clear that up for them. If don’t think the science needs infinite testing.
I reccommended in the book that Jones temperature series be “done over”
That effort is underway. The problem you have with a fellow like me is I don’t think Jones’ science is wrong. I think he behaved badly. That behavior leads to a lack of trust. get it? It’s up to him to fix that loss of confidence.
“Therefore I demand you place on public record all your scientifc notes, workings, jotting, e mails, code (every scrap) and papers for the last ten years. All of it, everything, every last word , figure and number. If you don’t do that i will be demanding it by FOI and I wont desisit, I’ll shower you with FOI request for a decade.”
Go ahead. Jones’ words still stand. Here is the funny difference you dont get. None of my words, my works, my facts will change what Jones said.
That is why I QUOTE HIM. his words not mine. You finish your little FOI
project against me and the doubt around Jones still stands. Now, by defending Jones you keep doubt alive. If doubt is kept alive people won’t act. If people wont act, it will cost us Billions. See what damage you are doing.
please child.
Jimbo (08:01:49) :
I would say CAGW is more akin to
polywater and nuclear winter.
scienceofdoom (02:30:13) :
I continue to enjoy your blog. The surface record should not be such a big deal. It’s largely an accounting task. a historical task. The “science” of area averaging and series adjustment is largely cook book statistics. I’ve said this repeatedly. By fighting over the issues in this the CAGW crowd have kept this issue alive longer than they had to.
Dashing Leech,
Your arguement seems based on ‘only climate scientists can judge other climate scientists and the like of SM etc should back off because they make schoolboy errors’..the old a little knowledge is a dangerous thing point.
Fair enough.
But where your arguement breaks down is when another climate scientist DOES criticise the method used by your pref climate scientists. And as there are quite a few examples of this your arguement is rather illogical. Do you get that?
Peter….I think we skeptics come from the problem we have with the Hockey Stick. For years accepted history, and science, said there was warm/cool/warm/cool/warm trend starting with the Roman Optimum (and before really) and ending with the LIA which we believed were coming out of. Then Mann comes along and says, nope, that never really happened, temps were flat etc etc. We all raised an eyebrow at this because its part of the written history, so we wanted proof – he may have been right, we may have been associating annectdotal evidence and hard data said something else.
But…really…when we asked to look at the evidence we got stonewalled. That made us suspicious, so we asked harder. In the end we find that the evidence for his Hockey Stick is not as robust as he maintains. This then makes us say “well hold on, if our MWP/LIA is now back on the menu (as Briffa/Jones have since indicated) firstly WHY did you try to say it the MWP/LIA did not exist, when your data does not prove anything, and if they did exist, what is unprecedented about now? Our suspicions being raised by this to an intense level, we then start looking under other stones, and what we find are quite a lot of assumptions have been made on less than robust data. We are now at a situation where I think the ‘concensus’ of opinion in the skeptic ranks is that the warming we see is prob about half that of what is stated (uhi/rural etc etc) and if THAT is the case, if we apply ENSO etc, where is the CO2 influence at all? Peter..if you cannot see our concerns based on that you are blind man? I can’t help you if you do not see that we may well have been counting angels dancing on the head of a pin for the last few years.
As an aside, I think I read the (non climate) science community having a bit of a night of the long knives here. Fellow scientists TRUSTED these guys to be true to the data, they backed them, without looking into it themselves, because they believed no scientist would go where Mann etc would go, trying to eek data from noise to such an extent. Now the rest of the community is embarrassed by this, what thier colleagues have done. And I think Jones & Briffa know it. He can’t back up his theory with data.
We all know what happens in a sealed lab experiment…it just does not seem to be happening in the atmosphere.
Sorry about the capital letters..am not shouting, just trying to get over the main thrust of the sentance.
Peter Hearnden (02:04:34) :
“When will you people get off the backs of people like Dr Jones and leave them to get on with their research? ”
What “science” are we talking about here?
-Calculating some averages
-Plotting some datapoints.
Bah! You can do that after college! Just avoid putting in some secret fudge-factors and you are good to go!
But show us the data so we can check you spendt the tax dollars correctly, thats all. If you hide it, you probably have something to hide.
Gosh…..by the time I’d written my ramble a dozen people pipped me to it, more succintly too.
The posts here are getting huge. I can remember when it took all day to see another post. Blimey.
Ref – Leif Svalgaard (09:12:59) :
“_Jim (07:58:55) :
“The wild, unkempt hair, the jacket, open shirt/no tie…”
____________________________
But those glasses!!! Yuck!!!
That old farmer he’s standing next to reminds me of a fella I used to go fishing with. Called him “Granddaddy”.
VS
Putting it in the words of a statistician: there is enough statistical evidence to infer a clear system wide bias towards the AGWH cause.
If you do Bayesian, the probability that all that has transpired happened accidentally – all the data tapes being lost from the 80s, all the AGW symapathetic researchers getting loads of data, all the hiding behind IPR, all the FOIA evasion, all the chest-beating, hand-wringing, moaning, complaining, all the RealClimating – the probability must be miniscule.
🙂
Graphite (03:28:10) :
Thanks for that Steven – what we need is a presentation like that in court!
Well, we don’t get any time in court. we dont get to ask Jones the tough questions. I guess people can mail the article to friends and parliament and
their representatives, etc etc.
michel (01:38:14), thanks for the reference to Penquin Island. I’ve only read the Preface so far but have already found this gem:
“It is true that the scientific reasons for preferring one piece of evidence to another are sometimes very strong, but they are never strong enough to outweigh our passions, our prejudices, our interests, or to overcome that levity of mind common to all grave men. I follows that we continually present the facts in a prejudiced or frivolous manner.”
If/when CAGW is ever dead and buried, this could go on its headstone.
Something was odd with this questioning and it has finally dawned on me. The defence being offered by Jones was that “all the information is available from other sources …. it’s all as clear as day, the FOI were totally unnecessary”.
Except, whilst they asserted that it was all very simple and all the information was clear, the committee at the very end of the sessions had to ask Prof Beddington to contact them regarding exactly which data was really public.
Put it this way: “the Science and Technology Committee were forced to make a special request (FOI) to obtain information because Prof Jones had so obfuscated about the information that he had failed to supply it as requested.”
I really cannot believe that people would still defend this charade.
ESpecially after Dr. Jones’ comment that “There has been no statistically significant warming since 1995 ”
The Naivete and gullibility of otherwise intelligent people is astounding.
Climate science is not even a “settled” discipline, never mind its content.
I have exactly Zero confidence that al factors have been adequately accounted for or even acknowledged.
Just for the CAGW crowd:
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Jan_Hendrik_Schön
These people exist. There ARE dishonest Scientists.
Schon worked for Lucent/Bell at Murray Hill and KNEW perfectly well that
his work would be subjected to physical replication as well as scrutiny because he was supposed to come up with new stuff that would be produced and sold. Not just data, products. It did not stop him .
In this case we have Scientists of a similar not-fully-honest
bent who fell in with a bad crowd of Social engineers and Political masterminds ( to be kind) which gave them a license to cheat.
>>steven mosher (09:41:06) :
>>please child.
Smacked down with a Chad Ochocincoism. That’s gotta sting.
Dr. Svalgaard
Ref your insistance that the sun has nothing to do with ‘it’ (whatever ‘it’ is:-) This should brighten your day:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aLAUn4Gy92ss
PS: I guess they ought to put “Climate Change” under Geology as a minor field of study. It seems to have nothing to do with the weather or solar physics, as you’ve always insisted.
Smokey (06:09:20) :
Good find.
Henry@ G.L. Alston
I think there is nothing wrong with adding CO2 to the atmosphere. Any biologist should be able to tell you that it is good for growth and acts as fertilizer for forests, crops, etc. Anything you have eaten today is dependant on CO2. The historical record also shows much higer CO2 levels in the past.
As you would have noted from my post: I think the warming properties and cooling qualities of CO2 are pretty much a tie.
I can also do a simple experiment that would prove that AHF (the heat that we produce together) is much more than the heat that can possibly retained by the 70 odd ppm’s of CO2 that were added to the astmosphere since 1960.
However, I have now come to believe that global warming as such is improbable, because earth has its own water cooling plant with built-in thermostat. I have also noted that since 2003 the tables (on the sun) have turned and that global cooling is becoming a real possibility.
Gaz (03:29:38) :
“This is all really sad.
You so-called sceptics are tying yourselves into knots trying desperately to prove that the intrumental temperature records are wrong, the UHI effects that have been allowed for are biasing the data, that the satellite records are wrong, that all the different proxy reconstructions are wrong, that the temperature data you think are rubbish show the world is cooling, that the glaciers aren’t retreating, that the ice caps aren’t losing volume, that the ice shelves aren’t disintegrating, that the saturation argument wasn’t disproved 60 years ago, that species aren’t migrating their habitats, that growing seasons aren’t changing, etc etc etc.”
Gaz. I am not a skeptic. That line of attack will not work with me. I don’t believe the temp record are wrong. I believe they ought to open and verifiable. For me this is not an issue of right and wrong data. It is an issue of public trust. You can whine that people should trust Jones, but they don’t. Judith Curry and others like me have been banging the drum for open access for the last two years. Everything you say about the changes is true.
All the more reason to get this episode behind us by answering critics directly rather than hiding.
jeez said:
Here’s the original quotation, from Samuel Johnson:
Sir, I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an understanding.
Thanks, I’ll file both; yours as “jeez’s version”
@ Pascvaks (10:07:53) :
“Ref – Leif Svalgaard (09:12:59) :
“_Jim (07:58:55) :
“The wild, unkempt hair, the jacket, open shirt/no tie…”
____________________________
But those glasses!!! Yuck!!!
That old farmer he’s standing next to reminds me of a fella I used to go fishing with. Called him “Granddaddy”.”
Big smiles :))
After reading this account it is clear that Phil Jones is in a group of people whose lives are not governed by any guiding principles. Every decision is based on the idea that each issue is “gray” and must be considered independently of all others. How one feels about the issue is more important than any principles that may apply. The result of this is a life history when opened to public scrutiny appears inconsistent and contradictory.
These are the people who accuse more principled people of “black and white” thinking and unable to consider gray areas. They misinterpret consideration of principles first for black and white thinking.
Phil Jones may indeed be a very nice and good person, but just not a very good scientist due to his unprincipled nature.
I have no problem with Steve Mosher or his post but I do disagree with one of your comments.
“. By fighting over the issues in this the CAGW crowd have kept this issue alive longer than they had to.”
I think you are wrong here Steve. The flaws and errors are so systematic and one directional in bias that I think an honest surface temperature record with UHI and land use corrections that have some basis in reality, would eliminate most of the warming of the last 150 years. It would at least make it obvious that recent warming was not unusual, and may well criple if not destroy their entire cause.
I think the obfuscation and stalling is deliberate and at least on a subconscious level caused by this realization. It is very easy for scientists just like anyone else to fool themselves if the belief is strong in one particular direction.
Pascvaks (10:23:38) :
I guess they ought to put “Climate Change” under Geology as a minor field of study.
This would not be a bad idea considering that “Geology (from the Greek γῆ, gê, “earth” and λόγος, logos, “speech”) is the science and study of the solid and liquid matter that constitutes the Earth.”
What does the WMO say about data sharing?
IANAL but I don’t see where this supports the hoard and stonewall data policies that CRU developed
What difference does it make who Steve Mosher. Lets just say Steve Mosher is no one and knows nothing(like me say). If Steve’s hypothesis is correct, it’s correct, irregardless PNS aside for a minute. What Jones is saying is:
…..I believe in AGW, therefore, you should too because of who I am Trust me. Pay up…..
Aside from the truth, as best can be determined, Jones is no one either. In fact.
NO ONE IS ANYONE. Put the facts on the table.
I don’t see that mosher has anything to worry about from an foi mr hearnden I have no doubt that fenton comms or al gores 300mil have chcked out every nook and cranny of his and any other major skeptic and if there was anything even slightly dubious it would be promulgated everywhere. The fact that there is no such outcry imho opinion proves there is no evidence. Apart from romms accusation that macintyre was once on the same continent as barton(or something equally ridiculous) I doubt very little of their past or present activities is not already known. Anybody ever taken your trash away on the wrong day mosh?
………….and, truth be known, skeptics don’t care if the world is cooking to boiling point or not. That is not what we are about. We are just not going to tolerate lies, BS, and corruption of the cherished idea of Science as an empirical
seat of physical truth.
What is left unanswered so far in this whole mess is the critically important question.
We ALL (yes, even the so-called “deniers”) know that the world has warmed since 1850. 1850 is widely recognized to be towards the end of the Little Ice Age. To me, it would be mightily inconvenient if the earth had not warmed since then.
Most of us skeptics also acknowledge that it is POSSIBLE that human contributions to greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere COULD be contributing to warming.
The problem is, that despite what all of the models purport to show, the REALITY is that from 1850-2010 the earth has warmed approximately 0.8 degrees celsius, or on average 0.05C/decade. What has not been answered are the following questions:
Is 0.05C/decade anything to worry about whatsoever, especially when we have been emerging from a little ice age?
Are the global historical temperature records even accurate? If so, how accurate? Even if we make the GENEROUS assumption that they are accurate to +/- 0.5C (and I do believe that to be a very generous assumption), that yields a range of 0.3C warming over 160 years (completely insignificant noise) to 1.3C over 160 years (well above insignificant noise, but still must be evaluated for human contribution percentage).
Has this warming trend, or an even stronger warming trend, happened in the past? (we don’t really know, this is one of the areas where the data and conclusions have been dodgy… from recent studies I have seen, this sort of warming trend is not outside of normal variation however.)
Is the earth warmer now than it ever has been before, or have we been warmer (perhaps far warmer) in the past?
Is the CO2 content of the atmosphere alarmingly high, or has it been higher (perhaps even much higher) in the past? (I have seen some studies that show it was on the order of 1000ppm (or 1 part per thousand, or 0.1%) in the past at times.)
I have also seen studies that warmer temperatures and higher CO2 levels yield more abundant and productive plant life, which leads to more prosperous and healthy animal life. If this is indeed true, would this be a good thing?
What other variables are “forcing” climate. Are the other variables far stronger than CO2 as a forcing, or are they weaker? Is there ANY scenario under which CO2 can be shown to be the CONSISTENTLY dominant force controlling climate and temperature?
Until we have answers to these questions provided by falsifiable hypotheses which have undergone rigorous (or to use the CAGW term, “robust”) testing using the scientific method, we cannot draw any conclusions, much less formulate any policy whatsoever.
Thanks Steven for a nice clear and concise post about Dr. Jones involvement in the Climategate scandal.
Clear evidence that the man is guilty as charged and can no longer be considered as a scientist, along with the rest of the CRU crew. I find it quite ironic that the whole CAGW scam is based on data which has proved, in the fullness of time, to be worthless.
The CAGW Climate Scam is also having a disastrous effect on the UK political scene, where our politicians are already seen as dishonest, following the Iraq affair (reason for war based on more dodgy data) and fiddling expenses paid by the tax-payer revealed in another data ‘leak’.
PeterB in Indianapolis (06:23:55) :
Thanks Peter. You have my position represented fairly accurately.
They call me a skeptic. I believe in AGW.
They say the mails don’t change the science. I agree, they erode trust.
They say I attack the man. I quote the man’s words.
It must frustrate them.
Although, It already seems predisposed to whitewash the CRU and Jones, I certainly hope that Anthony, Steven Mosher and other guest posters, including Prof Ravetz, will be making submissions to the RUSSELL Inquiry.
Gaz (03:29:38) :
“This is all really sad.
“You so-called sceptics , etc etc etc.”
___________________________________
You’d be very surprised at how much the people here believe about the points you’ve listed (and many more). Stick around and read between the jokes and sarcasm.
Though I do believe that the vast majority might agree that Jones, Mann, Gore, Pachauri, and many others aren’t what they claim to be and are only out to feather their own nests; and accomplish a political objective -the redistribution of the world’s wealth according to their own formulae, a’la Marx.
Wondering Aloud (10:39:00) :
I have no problem with Steve Mosher or his post but I do disagree with one of your comments.
“. By fighting over the issues in this the CAGW crowd have kept this issue alive longer than they had to.”
I think you are wrong here Steve. The flaws and errors are so systematic and one directional in bias that I think an honest surface temperature record with UHI and land use corrections that have some basis in reality, would eliminate most of the warming of the last 150 years. It would at least make it obvious that recent warming was not unusual, and may well criple if not destroy their entire cause.”
We will have to disagree on this. I’ll suggest that we pick this discussion
on a science related thread. I’m a Lukewarmer. This thread really isn’t the right place to address your concerns. Simply, though, the land record is but a piece of the entire story. I’ve seen no data and no code that supports
a conclusion that MOST of the warming in the past 150 is spurious.
johnnythelowery (05:00:14) :
How many FOI requests did they get? It seems to me the relevance of the ‘make work’ FOI requests is proportional to the number they received. If they received 5,000 with McIntyre’s being just one, to which they have to respond to emails, taylor the data to the requests, etc. then that is something to talk about. Does anybody know the numbers of requests we are talking about?
2 FOI requests is not ‘make work’. Thx
REPLY: Sixty FOI requests, most for the same thing, which could have been satisfied under a blanket release. – A
Anthony….Thankyou! I suppose the next variable is over what expanse of time? However, given the importance of the issue, the size and extent and cost to industry, and given an employee to do this, does it really matter. He wasn’t going to give McKintyre what he wanted. And that is the end of the story really. Still, nice to know the true facts regarding the ‘make work’ insult. The only one making work is this context is the twit that didn’t provide the basics in the first place.
I eagerly await Jerome Ravetz’ article on ‘Post Normal Standard Practice’
_Jim (07:58:55) :
The wild, unkempt hair, the jacket, open shirt/no tie; it all fits the image one would conjure up for Moshpit …
Ha. That picture was taken on a lovely day trip to “the city of sadness”
Juifen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiufen
I did have a little pendant on. A scorpion.
Actually……Steve Mosher…..I am starting to believe there is something fishy with the temp record. I know you are a lukewarmer, and I frequent Lucias pages so know there are a lot who are. I think I was.
I was quite relaxed about our 0.7C warming…….but recent stuff has me now thinking a big part of it is indeed bogus. I’m steering towards the ‘actually…there is little temp variation outside natural’ and reading Bob Tisdale ENSO stuff makes me think the Lukewarmer bit is more Tepidwarmer…?
Maybe thats why Leif keeps saying ‘it ain’t the Sun’ because maybe it ain’t anything… Maybe 0.7C is actually only 0.4C…..where does that leave C02? Maybe 0.2C….
I’m now starting to look at the sat temps with a skeptical eye too. Maybe Lindzen is right? Theres nothing much to see?
Its fascinating to see how this has evolved.
I do think there is enough evidence now though to put the brakes on for a year of contemplation.
Steve Mosher: You believe in AGW? What……0.6c over_______years? How many years? What degree? Using thermometers acccurate to a +/- of ___________ F?
At every reading? What part of the 0.6C is AGW and which is natural? As you don’t have the raw data….how can you be sure? Or do you?
Is it trending to ‘normal’ or away from ‘normal’.
I think Steven has seen the light at last. I said some time ago what he has now come to realise. Well done Steven.
Peter Hearnden (07:59:33) :
“I’m asking why if we need to scrutinise every last letter and figure of Dr Jones’s output because he might be wrong and it might cost us BILLIONS if he is, why we should not scrutinise ever letter of AGW sceptic output because it might also be wrong (ie the AGW science might be right) and doing what AGW sceptics want us to do (which is nothing) might also cost us BILLIONS in climate related costs. Could you please consider that?”
Peter, I have considered “that”. Once again, the sceptics don’t have to have ANY output. It is up to the AGW theorists to PROVE their hypothesis. Without ANY proof, then the hypothesis remains a “what if”. Unfortunately, we don’t have enough resources in the world to prevent EVERY “what if”. Therefore, we have to be sure that the “what if” is more like a high probability. So far the AGW hypothesis remains a “what if”.
What if an asteroid were to hit the earth? What if a gigantic earth quake were to happen and the whole west coast of the USA were to separate from the mainland? What if a large number of volcanos were to occur at nearly the same time and send the earth into a new ice age? Boy, this “what if” game is fun!!
Sorry, I won’t spend a penny on a “what if”. There are too many other KNOWN and PROVEN threats to mankind that need tax payer dollars LONG before any cent is spent on a “what if”.
So, you see, I have considered it.
Steve (Moshpit),
You sure know how to throw a WUWT post party. Lively time here. Thank you and thanks Anthony & the Mods.
But, where are the capering gnomes? (to go along with the, well, you know who) There aught to be capering gnomes. Wait, don’t bother ….
With apologies to Judy Collins.
John
Vid S (08:18:11) :
“Coming from quantitative economics, I have no problems reading the average ‘climate science’ paper. That said, I would like to see Jones et al digest an average Econometrica publication (given that the IPCC can’t even interpret a p-value properly).”
Hope springs eternal! Maybe after climatologists admit that they can’t accurately predict the next 100 years’ climate, econometricians could perhaps admit to the limitations of modeling infinitely more complex human interactions.
Hmm so we had a good sampling of world “temperature” 150 years ago ? That must be a joke.
Anyway playing the “what if” what about if we had spend the Global Warming Money trying to advance science that predict earthquakes? Maybe would lead to nothing or maybe we would have saved hundred thousand of lives.
This is, I hope, not an ad hominem attack but is not Peter Hearnden the internet version of the man who used to walk round our local town in the fifties with a sandwich board proclaiming: “The End is Nigh!” ?
” Peter Hearnden (02:04:34) :
When will you people get off the backs of people like Dr Jones and leave them to get on with their research? ”
That assumes that Dr Jones (and MBHSH etc) are capable of science. The evidence clearly shows they are not. You call it research? Well at least you didn’t call it science which is a good thing because it surely is not.
Boris (04:25:50) :
“steven,
You assert that Jones’ attitude changed with the publication of MM05, but you are forgetting one very important event from 2005: Congressman Barton’s fishing expedition into the lives of climate scientists, which was essentially an attack on scientists (remember that Barton wanted not just details on the science, but details about the personal lives of Mann and others.)”
Boris. That is a fair observation, but chronologically challenged. I think it would be a beneficial to do a much more detailed chronology of this era. I don’t think Barton’s committee met in Jan or feb of 2005. One of the things that appears evident is that Jones didn not feel the heat the same way Mann did. Thru the course of the mails it is clear that Mann feels beleagured . He calls for help. Says he cant do this by himself. That is what makes that feb21 2005
mail from Briffa or Jones so interesting. It was like Jones to the rescue.
So, Mann felt like he was under attack. If Jones felt some sympathy for Mann that’s to be understood. But that doesnt change what he said to Parliament.
If he said ” look, mann was under attack. I thought the attacks were unfair.
I put my personal loyalty to Mann above my scientific practices. I defended my mann. I got caught up in his drama.” I would have no problem.
I HAVE NO PROBLEM with Jones explaining why he did what he did and explaining that they felt like they were under attack. But That’s NOT what he said. that’s what other people say. Let jones say it. Let Jones say that he sacrificed his scintific principles to defend his mann.
“Whether McIntyre was working closely with Barton or not–he seemed to be. So why would scientists share data with someone perceived as being part of the witch hunt against them? Thus, Jones started treating McIntyre differently, and while he may not have been justified in his actions, they are certainly understandable given the circumstances.”
Again, if Jones offered this defense my story would be different. And you focus on Mcintyre but forget Hughes. My story up to today has been “jones felt under attack; jones hid data as a result”
NOW, jones says he hid data as a part of a standard practice. he had a chance to say what you say that. he didnt. He could have said ” I refused data to Hughes because of a Barton investigation that hadn’t happened yet.”
I have no issue with somebody who wants to explain their behavior as a
reaction to a “perceived” attack. But they dont make that defense. You make that defense. They make a defense that is at odds with the facts.
stephen richards (11:32:03) :
“I think Steven has seen the light at last. I said some time ago what he has now come to realise. Well done Steven.”
Jones is very convincing.
mikef2 (11:15:01) :
Maybe 0.7C is actually only 0.4C
The difference between the current warm period and the period that ended around 1940 isn’t much more than 0.4C. I wouldn’t be very surprised if at least half of that turns out to be spurious (due to UHI and airports). Not much left to be explained by CO2 then. The next 10 years may give us more data to work with. If we get another 0.5C (or more) of warming, I’ll reconsider AGW theory. I just hope we don’t get 0.5C or more of cooling, even if it debunks AGW theory…
Henry Pool — I think there is nothing wrong with adding CO2 to the atmosphere.
That’s not the same as knowing, and knowing trumps any form of assumption, whether from the Hockey Team or from you. If it’s not OK for the Team to assume, it’s not OK for you.
For all we know (which isn’t a lot at this point) increasing CO2 could well be a nasty precursor to an ice age for reasons we have yet to discover.
The Team can be wrong, but that doesn’t make you right.
johnnythelowery (11:16:25) :
Steve Mosher: You believe in AGW? What……0.6c over_______years? How many years? What degree? Using thermometers acccurate to a +/- of ___________ F?
At every reading? What part of the 0.6C is AGW and which is natural? As you don’t have the raw data….how can you be sure? Or do you?
1. Radiative physics is sound normal science. RTE are “correct”
If you want to talk about the record and the accuracy or lack thereof, this is not the thread. If you want to talk about the accuracy of thermometers, this is not the thread. It’s also not a problem. I used to think so, but working through the problem analytically showed me otherwise. If you want to talk about the influence of GHGs versus natural variation, this is not the thread.
If you want to talk about GCMs, this is not the thread. I hang out at other places where we have those conversations. You are welcomed to join them.