UPDATE: A prescient comment from Willis Eschenbach has been added to the body of the story, see below.
There’ an article in Nature Magazine which is an interview with Phil Jones of the CRU regarding his role in Climategate and what has happened in the past year. It seems to be mostly a sappy rehabilitation piece where Dr. Jones gets to play the victim and the reporter is fully sympathetic. Even more troublesome, Dr. Jones seems to have fully rationalized everything that has happened in the past year.
For example, we all vividly remember this email:
From: Michael Mann mann@xxxxx.xxx To: Phil Jones p.jones@xxxxx.xxx Subject: Re: IPCC & FOI Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 08:12:02 -0400 Reply-to: mann@xxxxx.xxx Hi Phil, laughable that CA would claim to have discovered the problem. They would have run off to the Wall Street Journal for an exclusive were that to have been true. I'll contact Gene about this ASAP. His new email is: generwahl@xxxxxx.xxx talk to you later, mike Phil Jones wrote: > >> Mike, > Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? > Keith will do likewise. He's not in at the moment - minor family crisis. > > Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don't > have his new email address. > > We will be getting Caspar to do likewise. > > I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature > paper!! > > Cheers > Phil > > Prof. Phil Jones > Climatic Research Unit Telephone [removed] > School of Environmental Sciences Fax [removed] > University of East Anglia > Norwich Email p.jones@xxxxx.xxx > NR4 7TJ > UK
Look at what he says now about email deletion in the context of the ongoing FOI requests:
“We just thought if they’re going to ask for more, we might as well not have them.”
Regarding the Chinese Weather Station fiasco:
Jones said in a separate interview with Nature2 that he was considering a correction. He now says such a step is unnecessary and that he stands by the claims in the paper. He was on medication during the previous interview, he says, and felt under pressure then to publicly concede that he had made mistakes. He says the description of weather-station
movement “has been completely misinterpreted”.
The set of 84 Chinese stations referred to in the paper were drawn from a larger group of 265, for which the Chinese had location histories. Jones and his colleagues did not claim
that none of the selected stations had moved, only that they picked out ones that had moved the least, he says.
Such shifts do not significantly affect results, Jones says, because there was no general pattern to the station relocation: on average, ones moving to colder places were balanced by ones moving to warmer spots. But the Chinese scientist who supplied the station information has now retired and the authorities there have not released the full station-history data — making it impossible for Jones, he says, to provide the evidence to support the statement.
Okaaaayyyy. I call BS on this, because 20 years later, NCDC’s Dr. Matt Menne developed USHCN2, with a change point detection algorithm in it specifically to detect and correct change points in temperature data resulting from station moves. If station moves “don’t significantly affect results”, why did NCDC dedicate so much time and effort to develop such an algorithm? Either Dr. Jones is in CYA mode, uninformed, or both.
Professor Jones apparently hasn’t learned anything except this:
“I’m a little more guarded about what I say in e-mails now,” he says. “One thing in particular I’m doing is not responding so quickly. I might have got an e-mail in the past and responded with an instant thought in the next 10 to 15 minutes, whereas now I might leave it a day.”
In a time-line of the career of Professor Jones, the November 2010 entry is interesting:
Jones tells Nature he is on the mend, but still fears more e-mails could be released in the future.
“Jones and others connected to the CRU fear the hackers may be sitting on more stolen e-mails, but Jones feels confident the worst is behind him.”
Hmmm…
Here’s the article in Nature Magazine (PDF)
h/t to Shub Niggurath
UPDATE: I’ve added this from comments as it is very germane to the story”
I enjoyed this from the Nature article:
The e-mails also triggered several official investigations, including one by the UK Parliament, which ultimately determined that Jones had not committed any serious offences. Case closed.
As my daughter says, “In your dreams, Dad”.
They were more subtle in their timeline, lying by omission.
2005 Britain introduces the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act, giving critics a legal route to demand data from Jones and the CRU (above).
July 2009 The CRU receives 58 FOI requests in under a week as part of a blog campaign.
Makes it sound like things were going swimmingly, then suddenly the CRU is bombed with FOI requests.
In fact, I made the first request in (IIRC) 2006 for the CRU data. It was turned down. Other requests were made. We got the list of stations but not the data. They claimed there were secrecy agreements. We said OK, show us the agreements. They refused. We filed FOI requests for specific countries, about six countries at a time. That was to avoid any one of them being rejected because they entailed too much work.
That’s how we got to 58 requests in a week. Because they had blown off all of our FOI requests that had gone in one by one.
You don’t want to get 58 FOI requests, Phil?
Try answering the first one. If he had answered my initial FOI request, that would have been it for requests for the data. He could have avoided a host of grief.
Of course, the emails about the IPCC subversion were a different matter. Those are the ones that mysteriously vanished … Phil says he didn’t delete them, but somehow, they’re still gone.
Curiously, I find I feel sorry for him. He was caught in a paradigm shift, where suddenly his scientific work was being used to justify billions of dollars in expenditures. His knowledge and standards of data handling and documentation were insufficient, perhaps even wildly insufficient, to the task. They were fine when it was just him in his office fiddling with the global temperature. But …
For example, when I asked Phil for the data, I assumed it would be like almost every other database of climate information I’d dealt with. It would be in one single block, with the rows representing years and columns for station identification, monthly data, and the like. I thought it would be easy for him to email me that single block of data.
Instead, as the CRU HARRY_READ_ME file showed, there were hundreds and hundreds of individual data files. In addition, there were often identically named files that were for different stations, there was no semblance of version control, and no overall record of what files were, or where they might be located.
I was astounded when I read that. Everybody puts their data in a single block, with perhaps a second block for metadata … everybody but CRU, it seems …
That’s what I mean about how his skills and knowledge weren’t up to the task.
Pitchforks and Pike poles…. it’s the only way.
“Jones and others connected to the CRU fear the hackers may be sitting on more stolen e-mails, but Jones feels confident the worst is behind him.”
Quite the silliest claim of all is that the release of the e-mails was the work of “hackers”. Anybody who refers to the matter in that way is deserving of my utter contempt, unless, of course, they can come up with a meaningful hypothesis of how such hacking could have been achieved bearing in mind the very tight time line.
The whistleblower will probably remain anonymous at least until he or she becomes financially independent. And they will likely miss out on the Nobel prize that is so very richly deserved.
Booooah!!!!! Those bad kids of WUWT are bullying me!
Let’s make a movie. A title? Ah yes…..
Phil Jones and the CRU/UEA Slime Ball Bowl-a-Rama.
A modern day Euriah Heap at work.
Coalsoffire,
“Years later they will meet you (their defense counsel) and accuse you of having surrendered them unwillingly and wrongly to a completely unjust end, since in their current judgment they did nothing wrong and so the punishment they received must have been your fault.”
Be worried then if your former client looks like Robert de Niro and you were planning a trip to Cape Fear.
Wow, Phil seems even more emboldened about flaunting the law! Phil thinks, because he’s “weathered the storm” that he’s impervious to pretty much anything. He’s openly discussing deleting e-mails prior to a FOI request as if it would pass some legal muster? And none of his superiors are batting an eye? Wow, just wow.
A fresh coat of paint doesn’t fix the cracked foundations.
“Jones and others connected to the CRU
fear the hackers may be sitting on more stolen
e-mails,”
Why should he be worried if the emails do not contain additional information that will further implicate Jones in this whole shoddy Business. His comments suggest that their is additional information in his emails which he’s afraid to see released.
And I wonder whether, in the interests of balanced reporting, Nature Magazine will give as much space to an interview with a qualified sceptic scientist. If they don’t then they cannot be considered to be a publication which is truly open minded to the vastly important but so far unresloved subject of AGW
Tried to post the following at Nature : “Page Not Found”
From: Michael Mann mann@xxxxx.xxx
To: Phil Jones p.jones@xxxxx.xxx
Subject: Re: IPCC & FOI
Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 08:12:02 -0400
Reply-to: mann@xxxxx.xxx
Hi Phil,
laughable that CA would claim to have discovered the problem. They would
have run off to the Wall Street Journal for an exclusive were that to
have been true.
I’ll contact Gene about this ASAP. His new email is: generwahl@xxxxxx.xxx
talk to you later,
mike
Phil Jones wrote:
>
>> Mike,
> Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?
> Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis.
>
> Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t
> have his new email address.
>
> We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.
>
> I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature
> paper!!
>
> Cheers
> Phil
>
> Prof. Phil Jones
> Climatic Research Unit Telephone [removed]
> School of Environmental Sciences Fax [removed]
> University of East Anglia
> Norwich Email p.jones@xxxxx.xxx
> NR4 7TJ
> UK
Reading the above one can come to only one conclusion the presentation of Dr Jones as a victim is absurd and nauseating.
I am amazed, not surprised, however that anyone who is called out like this cannot
stand and say-“I was wrong.” -like a man. I was an e-mail friend of John Daly.
His memory deserves better….
How about looking at the science itself, instead of individual scientists’ private emails?
http://climateprogress.org/2010/11/15/year-in-climate-science-climategate/#comments
Or maybe you can figure out a way to discredit the 40 or so major studies cited here which indicate a high probability of future catastrophe. Humans have adapted to new information before, and so can WUWT readers, many of whom are quite bright.
“One thing in particular I’m doing is not responding so quickly. I might have got an e-mail in the past and responded with an instant thought in the next 10 to 15 minutes, whereas now I might leave it a day.”
Err…he should try honesty, truth, and efficient email turnaround. Perhaps this will be the CRUs academic motto when it is rehabilitated as a keyboarding skills training center.
Fraud.
R. de Haan says:
November 16, 2010 at 12:22 am
“British Rubbish”
I say! Steady on old chap.
SSam says:
November 16, 2010 at 6:47 am
Pitchforks and Pike poles…. it’s the only way.
========================================
Aye….. and Tar and Feathers. Run th’ buggers outta town on a rail.
Now, why would he be afraid of more emails being leaked? What other secrets are as yet undiscovered?
Thank you, Eric. This hypothesis seems very plausible. The only reason to fear further releases would be Jones or Briffa’s knowledge that the decent staff member did not release everything that had been salted away. It seems unlikely (to me) that the decent staff member would be only partially decent, so I doubt that there will be any more emails released.
Given that the UEA/CRU have incremental backups of ‘3 scientists’ email from the CRU (on USB drives), they could, if they wanted, test this hypothesis.
From Eric:
“Gee, what would it take to hack into a network, somehow knowing, of course, that there is a central email archive? I’m guessing it might not too easy.
What seems a lot more likely to me is this:
1) Pesky requests for emails
2) Desire to delete emails, but
3) Fear of losing something important, so
4) Gather emails into archive then delete local copies and
5) Claim the emails have been deleted, which is half true, but
6) Shocking to some decent staff member, who
7) Leaks the email archive”
Fenton obviously doing the rounds … non-ascribed simultaneous drivel in the Telegraph today. General cast of comments interesting.
I have the perfect remedy for what ails you, Dr. Phil Jones: Go to an AA meeting. It’s full of people just like you who want to put the past behind them.
No proper scientist will believe anything that come out of the CRU again.
Jones has trashed himself and the reputation of UK science with it. That he has the hubris to try and rehabilitate himself in this way is a disgrace. In an earlier age he would have been shut in a room with a bottle of whisky and a loaded pistol.
Her Majesty Prison at Dartmoor.
Looks cold Phil, doesn’t it?
http://i54.tinypic.com/312tumc.jpg
In Re; Rob M Nov. 16 at 12:45 am
Quite to the contrary; if his intent in deleting the emails was to avoid having information subject to FOI requests then that is a clear violation of the law.
Since these emails clearly delineate an attempt to conspire to destroy information subject to FOI in anticipation of such a request, this is felonious behavior.
The fact that the UK is completely unwilling to prosecute (or even admit there is an infraction) on this is ridiculous.
Historians will have a field day with this stuff in 50 years.
Mike Roddy @7:39 a.m.,
Please don’t link to a blog that censors all but heavily alarmist comments. Climate Progress is funded by the Nazi collaborator-judas goat George Soros, who herded his fellow jews into cattle cars by promising them they were being sent to Palestine. Why would any decent person pay any attention to the despicable Joe Romm, who needs Soros payola to keep his blog afloat?
But I’ll see your 40 grant-begging papers, and raise you 800.
Not sure if this is already meantioned here, but the author of the Nature article (David Adam) is responding in the comments:
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2010/11/15/jones-in-nature.html
When the world is crashing down around you… Take a pill. Modern pharmaceuticals will allow you to realize the world is not coming to an end. Now, recant any confessions , you may have made, and blame it on the drugs. If guilty feelings begin to resurface… take another pill and repeat process.
Isn’t modern science wonderful!? GK