Thanks to Simon at Australian Climate Madness (ACM) the video of yesterday’s testimony by Dr. Phil Jones of UEA/CRU is now online via YouTube, making it viewable by millions worldwide. There are five parts, each of about 9 or 10 minutes. Jones is accompanied by the Vice Chancellor of the University of East Anglia, Prof. Edward Acton. Symon sums up the questioning: “They don’t exactly give PJ a tough ride, do they? To quote the former UK Labour Chancellor Denis Healey, it was like being savaged by a dead sheep…”. Fred Pearce of the Guardian commented that: “…the Commons committee tiptoed round embattled scientist and sidestepped crucial questions”.
Here’s a sampling of what British press has to say. Thanks to Dr. Benny Peiser and his CCNet Newsletter for the roundup.
MPs have quizzed the scientist at the centre of the “climategate” scandal, the first time he has been questioned in public since the row erupted. Professor Phil Jones used his appearance before the science committee to say that he had done nothing wrong. Earlier, critics told the MPs that the stolen e-mails, which appeared on the internet in November, raised questions about the integrity of climate science.
–BBC News, 1 March 2010
Prof Phil Jones, head of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, is accused of withholding raw data behind his research on global warming. In emails stolen from the university he asks one climate change sceptic: “Why should I give information to you when all you want to do is find something wrong with it?” In a grilling by MPs, Prof Jones admitted he had withheld data and sent some “pretty awful” emails. But he insisted it was “standard practice” to refuse certain information to other scientists.
–Louise Gray, The Daily Telegraph, 2 March 2010
Lord Lawson called for scientists to be more open about their methodologies. “The Freedom of Information Act should not have been brought into this,” former Chancellor Lord Lawson of Blaby, a longstanding critic of climate policy, told MPs. “Scientists of integrity reveal… all of their data and all their methods. They don’t need Freedom of Information Act requests to get this out of them.”
–BBC News, 1 March 2010
Also giving evidence alongside Lord Lawson was Dr Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. He said that sound science was based on “testability, replication, and verification”. Dr Peiser told the committee: “Of course, if you do not have the data sets or methods then you have to trust the word of a scientist. “You cannot even see if he has done these calculations directly on the basis of solid data, and this is the core of this problem – it is not about the overall science, it is about the process.”
–BBC News, 1 March 2010
The integrity of climate change research is in doubt after the disclosure of e-mails that attempt to suppress data, a leading scientific institute has said. The Institute of Physics said that e-mails sent by Professor Phil Jones, head of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, had broken “honourable scientific traditions” about disclosing raw data and methods and allowing them to be checked by critics.
–Ben Webster, The Times, 1 March 2010
The body representing 36,000 UK physicists has called for a wider enquiry into the Climategate affair, saying it raises issues of scientific corruption. The Institute of Physics doesn’t pull any punches in the submission, one of around 50 presented to the Commons Select Committee enquiry into the Climategate archive. The IOP says the enquiry should be broadened to examine possible “departure from objective scientific practice, for example, manipulation of the publication and peer review system or allowing pre-formed conclusions to override scientific objectivity.”
–Andrew Orlowski, The Register, 1 March 2010
The entire 3 hours is available here via Windows Media Player:
http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=5979&player=windowsmedia
Sorry, the MP’s don’t seem to have a Mac/Quicktime link.
Select segments about 9-10 minutes each are available below.
Part1
Part2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
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“it was like being savaged by a dead sheep…”
Oh, the visual! Almost lost my keyboard!
-Dave
Jones is in a dire predicament and looks like a broken man. He knows just what a mess the original data was in and how it had to be massaged to ensure it would fit with the CAGW hypothesis, so better to lose or destroy it than prove his own guilt.
If the world had continued to warm at the pre-1995 rate he would have got away with it, but he has already admitted that there has been no statistically significant warming for the last 15y, so he and the theory of CAGW are now toast, whatever the outcome of this sham of an inquiry.
It will be interesting to see what ‘Plan B’ the politicians come up with.
Brent Hargreaves said: “Don’t destroy his dignity.”
The “his” is Jones.
Will Jones, Gore, Pachauri/IPCC, Suzuki, Hansen, Mann, et al, accept culpability for this?
“Baby survives parents’ global warming suicide pact
A seven-month-old girl survived for three days alone with a bullet in her chest after being shot by her parents as part of a suicide pact over their fears about global warming.”
“Her parents said they feared the effects of global warming in a suicide note discovered by police. ”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/argentina/7344329/Baby-survives-parents-global-warming-suicide-pact.html
…-
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/013473.html#comments
“Y2Kyoto: Reducing Their Carbon Footprint
One suicide note at a time;”
Shades of David Kelly and the investigations into WMD. I genuinely hope the outcome is different.
Despite my disdain for Jones’ blackening of British science, I do not wish him ill.
On a related matter, it would appear that there’s a new response to ‘there’s no empirical evidence’ for AGW.
http://climateprogress.org/2010/03/01/climate-science-video-empirical-evidence-for-human-caused-global-warming/#more-20163
My take is that much of this video is the results of warming, with a bit about radiative forcing. It didn’t address C02’s logrithmic absorption rates or the role of clouds.
I’d be interested to hear others’ assessments on how this provides ’empirical evidence’.
Tenuc,
“It will be interesting to see what ‘Plan B’ the politicians come up with.”
Choose from the following list:
Energy security, green jobs, ocean acidification, climate justice, sustainable development, peak oil and clean energy.
@Brent Hargreaves (07:33:22) : “Some great victories have been won since Climategate emerged; isn’t it time to look for common ground, to capture the parts of climate science that are agreed by both factions? Please, a little magnanimity. Don’t destroy his dignity.”
Not yet, not yet. Jones will merely be (already has become) the alarmists’ chosen scapegoat while the rest fight on, as deviously and mendaciously as before. It’s far too big and wide-reaching to indulge in magnanimity (decency and reason, yes, always, but we *musn’t be fooled again*). The alarmist ranks may be wavering but they’re emphatically not running yet. Like Virgil said: “Spare the conquered when you’ve crushed the proud”. And there are a great number of very proud and very arrogant Lords of Warming who must be defeated yet. The suicide of the Argentinian couple and the murder and near-murder of their children, all driven by fear of global warming, fostered and generated by people like Jones, Gore, Mann etc etc speaks volumes and certainly hardens my heart against much sympathy for these wicked conmen.
No. We need Nelson now: “”Never mind the manoeuvres, just go straight at ’em.” Magnanimity’s for when they surrender and that ain’t yet.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1254619/Baby-girl-survives-shot-chest-parents-global-warming-suicide-pact.html
Hopefully this will dampen “scientist worship” among certain segments of the population. Scientists are just human beings, with the same frailties and prejudices.
A little OT, but the Met Office have given up the unequal struggle with the weather and has omitted to issue a Seasonal Forecast for Spring. The best they offer now is a mid-range thingummy up until the end of this month.
This is all about politics: wanting to do things which we want. What do we want? We want to blame the Co2 (a gaseous fertilizer) as a taxeble pollutant. I’m stunned by the naive “scientists” responding to this trap.
maz2 (08:43:13) :
Brent Hargreaves said: “Don’t destroy his dignity.”
The “his” is Jones.
Will Jones, Gore, Pachauri/IPCC, Suzuki, Hansen, Mann, et al, accept culpability for this?
“Baby survives parents’ global warming suicide pact.”
That, and the deaths in the food riots in Haiti(pre-quake). The denial of energy to the 3rd world nations, (and the subsequent deaths). And the deaths caused by soaring energy costs forcing our poorer people to choose between heat and food during the winter(happens far more frequently than most realize).
While I don’t hold those pin-heads responsible of other people’s acts of stupidity, they just as well as loaded the gun for all. Dignity? There must be a judgment day for those aforementioned people. And many more. Anything less and justice will be stripped of her dignity.
Forget about Jones. Why isn’t the Inquiry questioning Harry?
@ur momisugly James Sexton (09:08:39) :
There’s one more thing to add to your list:
‘Clearing rainforest for biofuel plantations releases carbon stored in trees and soil. It takes up to 840 years for a palm oil plantation to soak up the carbon emitted when the rainforest it replaced was burnt. The expansion of the palm oil industry in Indonesia has turned it into the third-largest CO2 emitter, after China and the US. Indonesia loses an area of forest the size of Wales every year and the orang-utan is on the brink of extinction in Sumatra.’
Link: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7044708.ece
It is beyond ironic that the green AGW proponents, in order to push their carbon mantra, devastate just those environments about which they’ve been preaching to us for years, and are apparently happy for an endangered species to get to the brink of extinction.
QOTW?
“Professor Jones’s face was immobile, eyes steady behind wire specs. He seemed, like a dead calm sea, almost glassy. And, like ships in the Bermuda Triangle, questions that got near him just seemed to disappear.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/parliamentary_sketch/article7046005.ece
Well, the historian, Prof Acton is aware of the MWP, wonder when he told Jones about it?
Not only does Acton know about it he now thinks they need to do more research in to it. I assume that this research will be for an Acton UEA history paper, can’t ever see CRU getting funding for it. Or am I just being naïve?
Also I wonder how much of CRU funding kept Acton & UEA going. Seems an awful lot of taxpayer cash for “a very small unit of only 3 full time academics”
Brent Hargreaves (07:33:22) : “Some great victories have been won since Climategate emerged; isn’t it time to look for common ground, to capture the parts of climate science that are agreed by both factions? Please, a little magnanimity. Don’t destroy his dignity.”
This isn’t even close to being over. When CAGW is dead and buried, then it’s time for magnanimity.
BTW, the “pitiful” Dr. Jones is still lying; as the comments above illustrate, his testimony included at least two whoppers, i.e. withholding data was his “standard practice”, and Canadian temperature data is restricted. I don’t believe in “magnanimity” for unrepentant liars.
Peter Hearnden (07:59:33) :
‘Richard M’ (07:27:03) :
Is it possible we might discuss this without your best ‘argument’ being to accuse people of being ignorant?
To quote a very astute fictional character. “Stupid is as stupid does.” Your silly attempt at redefining the scientific method can’t be called anything less than ignorant, and doing it here … [self snip].
O/T: Anyone else seen this weather is not climate item? In Lajamanu, Australia residents were greeted with a summer fish rain. Yet another sign of the impending climate apocalypse.
http://pastabrain.blogspot.com/2010/03/taleser-tails-from-sea.html
Viv Evans,
“It is beyond ironic that the green AGW proponents, in order to push their carbon mantra, devastate just those environments about which they’ve been preaching to us for years, and are apparently happy for an endangered species to get to the brink of extinction.”
It is not so ironic when you realise that these fanatics are motivated only by their hatred of humanity and modern civilization. In this sense, an extinction here or there is simply “collateral damage” as they their war against the rest of us.
I wonder if the Big Bang show that had Sheldon digging himself a hole in front of the judge was a poke at….nah.
When I first looked at this thread, I wasn’t able to get the link (glitch, I guess) to Prof. Jones’ evidence so I found it independently. Fortunately, the website I viewed contained the evidence of all the other witnesses for the inquiry on that day. It was striking to see how assured Lord Lawson (skeptic) was, even though some of the questioning he faced was pretty hostile, compared to Prof. Jones who looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights.
It makes you wonder. Lawson came across as someone with nothing to hide while Jones was picking his words very carefully AND appeared to be receiving handwritten advice from some bloke (lawyer perhaps) sitting behind him.
Man have these warmist guys got something to hide!
Ritchie, James, I share your fury at the obscene fraud that is AGW.
(RichieP (08:54:05) – “… these wicked conmen”,
James Sexton (09:08:39) – “There must be a judgment day…”)
If the Hockey Team didn’t believe their own pseudo-science I’d agree with you that the attack must go on. But listen to the interview Mann gave on 26 Feb – http://www.pointofinquiry.org/michael_mann_unprecedented_attacks_on_climate_research/ and I hope you’ll hear what I hear: this guy thinks he’s just an honest scientist being attacked by irrational savages who try to undermine his solid research and the consequent…. aaaah… apocalypse. Yes, he’s barking mad. Steven Mosher, here on WUWT argues that it’s a case of “Noble Cause Corruption”. Mann is wrong, not evil.
Ritchie, your references to Virgil and Nelson make your point very well, but the historical metaphors I would offer are 1918 v 1945. The allies foolishly took Germany to the cleaners at the end of WWI, and wisely helped Germany back to health at the end of WWII. Fight the disease (self-calibrating data-withholding gravy-train futurological pseudo-science) not the patient.
I suggest that a true victory would be Michael Mann declaring, “Based on the data I then had, the Hockey Stick was good science. But in the light of the new evidence, I agree that recent decades are well within historical range. Maybe the “driver” – if any driver is required – is solar. Whilst we all agree that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, we now know that its variations are a consequence of temperature changes, not a cause.”
And they all lived happily ever after 😉
Its amazing to some of us how caught up in all this we’ve all become. There is a very simple explanation for the entire debate about ‘global warming’.
According to the local paper the UEA has vowed to “Learn from the row over climategate” This small article is not available online, so I’ve scanned and uploaded it here:
http://i48.tinypic.com/34nsl7a.jpg
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.”