Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Whoever took the Climategate emails from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia (UEA) are certainly playing the long game. Two whole years they waited before publishing the second group of 5,292 CRU emails, now known as Climategate 2.0. Impressive. I’m mentioned in 17 of the emails, because I made the first Freedom of Information Act (FOI) request to Phil Jones and the CRU to release his taxpayer-funded temperature data collection. Phil at the time was the head of the CRU. His data collection was and is the basis for one of the major global temperature records.
At the time they fobbed me off using a succession of excuses. They claimed the information was available on the web. But they were unable to say where. They put me off and put me off. My contemporaneous account of the CRU and the FOI lunacy is a posting on ClimateAudit entitled “Measuring Precipitation on Willis’ Boots“. (Not my title, that was Steve McIntyre’s). You should read it first for a concise background, it’s important for understanding the following story. I’ll wait here while you read it …
Eventually, after much time, long after I’d given up the chase as hopeless, the CRU folks admitted that the reason they didn’t release the data was that they didn’t have the data. Somewhere along the line, it had been lost.
Mr. David Palmer was the Freedom of Information Officer for the CRU at the time. In the newly released emails, he expresses his frustration with the whole procedure. I absolutely love his honesty at the time, but unfortunately, it’s a shame he didn’t say the same thing publicly. These latest emails fill in some very interesting holes in the story with new information that wasn’t revealed in the first set of Climategate emails.
From David Palmer to Phil Jones, regarding my FOI request, email #1184, April 2007 (emphasis mine):
Gents,
My head is beginning to spin here but I read this as meaning that he wants the raw station data; we don’t know which data belongs to which station, correct? Our letter stated:
“We can, however, send a list of all stations used, but without sources. This would include locations, names and lengths of record, although the latter are no guide as to the completeness of the series.”
Can we put this on the web? Perhaps I am being really thick here but I’m not sure if putting this on the web will actually satisfy Mr. Eschenbach – we’ve said we don’t have data sources, he says the external websites don’t have them, so who does? Are we back to the NMS’s? [National Meteorological Services -w.] I am happy to give this one more go, stating exactly what we are putting on the web and seeing if that suffices. Should Mr. Eschenbach still insist that we actually possess the information in the form he requests, I can then only give the file to Kitty Inglis for review and then we move on formally….
Cheers, Dave
Dave is right, there’s yer problem. “We don’t know which data belongs to which station, correct?”. That’s staggering, it’s gotta be in the running for some kind of truth in advertising award. Shame he wasn’t that honest with me. Instead, he worked hard to obscure that fact.
Phil Jones isn’t having any of it, though. He replies to David Palmer’s email on 23 April 2007 (emphasis again mine)
Dave,
…
I do not want to make the raw data available, as it will involve more and more requests. We make the gridded data available and that should be enough.
I think it would be worthwhile having a meeting involving a few more people in the light of the Keenan letter and what has been said on the Climate Audit website from Friday.
This to my mind is bullying and virtual harrasment. This is not for any reasonable scientific point. It is quite simply harrasment. These people are self appointed.
Cheers
Phil
My conclusion after all this time is that Phil truly didn’t get it. He actually didn’t understand. He was not the owner of private data. He was the curator of public data. He didn’t understand that FOI requests are legal documents. Throughout the whole episode he treated them as some kind of optional request to grant or not as he saw fit. In this he was aided and abetted by David Palmer.
Upon reading this email, I was very curious to find out what had gotten Phil’s knickers in a twist regarding “what has been said on the Climate Audit website from Friday”. Upon looking up the ClimateAudit post from Friday, April 20, 2007, I laughed when I found out that what Phil was referring to as “bullying and virtual harassment” was the post I cited above and requested that you read. I’m sure you picked up on how I was “bullying and virtually harassing” Professor Jones.
So that was what Phil was complaining about—me pointing out the foolishness of their various excuses. And on that basis he said that would not make the raw data available, as though me laughing at his transparent dodges were a valid exemption to an FOI request.
I note that over at RealClimate they are desperately trying to spin this as two-year-old turkey. However, it’s not just my case that has new information. Regarding a host of other issues, the recent emails contain much previously unrevealed evidence of the perfidy, subversion, misdirection, and malfeasance practiced by the Climategate un-indicted co-conspirators. Among many other things, they provide clear evidence of the destruction of incriminating emails. This was not just “boys will be boys”. This was the leading lights of the AGW supporting scientists, working together to deny access to publicly funded climate data, and twisting, bending and breaking the scientific norms, FOI regulations, and possibly the law in the process. And that’s just what they did in my case, that doesn’t even begin to touch their other misdeeds that they discuss in detail.
The discouraging part is that, to this day, not a person among them has admitted that they did anything incorrect in the slightest. Not one has acknowledged that they went a ways, not just a little ways, but a long ways over the line of ethics, morality, and honesty. No one has said they did a single thing wrong, no one has admitted they evaded an honest FOI request. Silence.
And silence, unfortunately, has also been the overwhelming response of the climate science community to their misdeeds. The miscreants say nothing, their supporters say nothing, they keep awarding each other honors and prizes, and they hope it will go away.
Ah, well. The saddest part is that the new revelations of the unthinking, off-hand venality of these main scientists of the AGW movement have lost their power to shock. That is a tragedy for climate science in particular and for science in general.
Finally, my particular thanks to Steve McIntyre for his part in all of this. Not that he advised me or told me to file the FOI in question, he didn’t do either. That was my own idea and choice. But his dogged persistence, his insistence on and demonstration of transparency of code and data, and his general Canadian generosity, honesty, and geniality have been an inspiration to me. His work is generally an example of the scientific method at its cleanest.
My best regards to all,
w.
PS—Interestingly, whoever released the emails also released a whole host of other CRU emails in a password protected archive. The purpose of this archive remains obscure, and the password has not been provided. At a minimum the publication of the archive ensures that the other emails will not be lost in a hard drive crash, or seized by the authorities. Whether it constitutes a warning or a message, and to whom it might be addressed, is unclear. Grab a beer and some popcorn, this story’s not over.
If you have Bittorrent or uTorrent or similar, use this torrent to download all the emails:
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/6835213/Climategate_2___Climategate_II___FOIA2011___FOIA_2011
Easy to do, and no problem with too many people who download at the same time.
Willis,
While I might want to believe there is more to the story because of the existence of the AES-encrypted file inside the zip, I don’t. It’s not because I don’t want to believe there’s more juiciness from it, I do. However, the size of the encrypted zip was suggested at what, 200,000+ more emails? The size alone tells us that those are likely personal and/or irrelevant. Any e-mail box might have millions of messages. A significant portion of those (from Phil’s generation especially) are likely spam they didn’t know what to do with. This is not to mention all the personal correspondence, travel itineraries, meeting schedules, etc… The contents of that file is most likely all the mundane stuff that has nothing to do with climate science. Their release might be embarrassing personally for the scientists, but our goal is not to personally humiliate them. It’s likely a veiled and perhaps empty threat that all that personal correspondence is available publicly behind a password. I’m guessing the purpose of the person who released it was not to hold out on releasing ‘ever-more incriminating’ evidence, but rather to stop short of personal attacks while pressuring those men to do what is right.
As such, I believe this is the last release we’ll see about Climategate. It should be enough.
It is clear that much of the so-called scientific research was anything but. The AGW proposition had already been laid out. Any ‘study’, theory, conjecture, observation, or graph was then ‘tuned’ (their word) to support it. Many have noted for years the seemingly poor scientific, mathematical, and statistical skills exhibited by AGW proponents. The reason is now clear. This cabal that controlled the publication of scientific papers dressed up even the weakest entrants so long as it supported AGW, while ensuring that more critical studies, likely more meritorious and reality based, were embargoed.The proliferation of publication thus served to advance the careers of very weak academics and stifle those that were either neutral , skeptical, or simply uncaring of AGW.
I said at the time of Climategate 1.0, and I’ll say it again. I shake my head in disbelief that these (allegedly) highly intelligent scientists don’t have any clue about how email works. Simply deleting email from your computer does not delete all of the uncounted copies of the email that exists on various servers and archives that are out of your reach. Email is not like pen on paper. You can’t tear it up and think it’s gone forever.
“Alex the skeptic says:
November 23, 2011 at 6:40 am
Just out:
>>Google pulls plug on renewable energy planSearch giant quitting non-core projects, including solar power<<
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45409951/
Could this ditching of RE projects by Google be a result of Climategate-Season 2?"
I'm pretty sure that I had already read about this before the latest climategate emails where broken. This story is revised also.
“Whether it constitutes a warning or a message, and to whom it might be addressed, is unclear.”
Perhaps more mileage can be obtained by NOT releasing the rest just now but by merely threatening to do so. Several years ago, an article appeared in our paper that police have 22 license plate numbers of men who sought the services of prostitutes. The men were told that if they showed up at the police station to pay their fine, no one would come knocking on their door at home. As I recall 25 showed up!
With this second release of Climategate emails, it has become clear that whoever is behind the liberation of this information, they have a preplanned strategic communication strategy they are working from.
Their apparent strategy is to throw some meat and vegetables into the communications stew pot; let it come to a boil; let it simmer for awhile; then open the pot and let the interested public and the press chew on the latest batch; and then throw in some more fresh meat and vegetables to keep the topic fresh in the public’s eye.
Concerning the topical content of the emails themselves, I would observe the stark contrast between how the climate science industry approaches its fundamental responsibilities in terms of professional data management and end-to-end traceability of analysis and data, and how the nuclear industry approaches those same responsibilities.
In the nuclear industry, the data and the analysis are one inseparable thing. If an analysis is published, or if it is used to support a decision making process, a clearly defined end-to-end audit trail must exist in readily retrievable condition which clearly establishes the flow of data among the various analytical processes, in addition to maintaining a historical record of the data itself and any transformations to that data which occurred along the way.
Maintaining a history of the current and past configurations of the data and the analytical processes is an expensive proposition. Providing an airtight data/analysis audit trail was one of the primary cost drivers behind the considerable expense of the Yucca Mountain nuclear repository project, which spent roughly $15 billion dollars over twenty years before being terminated by the Obama Administration for purely political reasons.
I bring up the situation with the Obama Administration’s illegal termination of the Yucca Mountain project as being indicative of the enormous contrast between the disciplined and highly transparent approach used by DOE and the NRC in documenting and analyzing the science and engineering behind the geologic spent fuel repository, as opposed to the highly opaque and generally undisciplined approach used by key climate scientists supported by DOE, NOAA, and the EPA in pushing the IPCC’s anthropogenic global warming agenda.
ClimateGate 1.0 got me interested CAGW – until then I just blew off AGW as “that Al Gore thing”. I’ve read up on the topic (Donna’s book makes the 12th book I’ve read with the Mosher/Fuller book being number 1), hang-out on blogs, I’ve downloaded temperature reconstructions, bought a logger from Anthony and measure my local UHI (mind-blowing here in Phoenix AZ), cancelled subscriptions to magazines, written my congressman and senators repeatedly and routinely bore my friends and family to tears describing this thing. In other words, Climategate 1 forever changed my outlook and changed my life.
One can’t help but ask the question, “what were they thinking?” If the whole thing is an organized fraud/conspiracy wouldn’t any reasonable crook/conspirator at least do something a bit more careful like keep two sets of books – one for FOI and one for “Climate Science”. Or are they simply incompetents.
If they are incompetents wouldn’t they be subjected attacks from inside academia – after all; isn’t science a “blood-sport”. If they are incompetents, it also helps explain why they were unprepared for FOI requests. Let’s see here, you are making pronouncements to alter modern society, and you think no one is going to want to have a look at the raw data? No anticipation of “self-appointed” investigators?
Wouldn’t the climate crowd, flying around the world, making earth-shattering pronouncements to media, think that somewhere out there in the voting public, there would be scientifically/mathematically inclined people that would exert extreme scrutiny of their work? Even “self-appointed” ones?
Bottom line question: Why weren’t they ready for FOI requests because it appears they really weren’t ready. Had they had simply provided the data, some data, anything at all, wouldn’t it just have remained in the realm of a nit-picking squabble because after all, these temperature anomalies are counted in tenths of a degree delta. So it seem to me that running the clock back, it would have been far better to comply with FOI requests from the beginning.
But that would have meant they would have had to spend time on the requests. No sweat. Call a meeting with the FOIA officer and simple build a little organization within the department to do just that – a nominally paid grad-student and make it a little PR cottage industry.
Willis, thanks for all your hard work and for this post – this must take a tremendous amount of your time and if you are doing this as a hobby; you have chosen quite a demanding hobby
“GW says:
November 23, 2011 at 8:58 am
If I were President of the US…
…
Finally, I would announce that all funding within executive jurisdiction to or for green energy projects would be cancelled henceforth.”
How would you kickback/launder campaign contributions then?
How does this e-mail from July 2009 fit into this story of the raw data:
http://foia2011.org/index.php?id=1527
date: Tue Jul 28 09:19:16 2009
from: Phil Jones
subject: Re: FOIA requests for ‘confidentiality’ agreements
to: “Palmer Dave Mr (LIB)” , “Colam-French Jonathan Mr (ISD)” , “Mcgarvie Michael Mr (ACAD)” , “Ogden Annie Ms (MAC)”
Here are a few other thoughts. From looking at Climate Audit every few days, these people are not doing what I would call academic research. Also from looking they will not stop with the data, but will continue to ask for the original unadjusted data (which we don’t have) and then move onto the software used to produce the gridded datasets (the ones we do release).
CRU is considered by the climate community as a data centre, but we don’t have any resources to undertake this work. Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we get – and has to be well hidden. I’ve discussed this with the main funder (US Dept of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original station data.
(…)
Some of you may not know, but the dataset has been sent by someone at the Met Office to McIntyre. The Met Office are trying to find out who did this. I’ve ascertained it most likely came from there, as I’m the only one who knows where the files are here.
@Phil Jones
“This to my mind is bullying and virtual harrasment. This is not for any reasonable scientific point. It is quite simply harrasment. These people are self appointed.”
Yes, “self appointed” in the same sense that Rosa Parks, back in 1955, “appointed” herself to demand the right to a seat on a publicly owned conveyance. Possibly some folks saw her in same light that Phil Jones is seeing the skeptics: “Why is she acting like a bully and harassing us? Not for any reasonable need for transportation (i.e. back of the bus is fine). If we let her sit up front then they’ll all want to sit up front. Better to stop and discredit her now. Or these harassments will never end.”
Just substitute “public bus” with “public documents” and think of someone like Ms. Parks demanding access to documents paid for and owned by the American people. Denying access is thus equivalent to denying civil rights.
“Alex the skeptic says:
November 23, 2011 at 6:40 am
Could this ditching of RE projects by Google be a result of Climategate-Season 2?”
Unlikely. I’ll bet Google has had this in the works for awhile. As a public company Google has shareholders who find wasting money not to their liking. My guess is that Google’s leaders were taken in by all this green energy nonsense – this isn’t their area of expertise. Others, whose knowledge does include energy and economics, and are large holders of GOOG (stock; see the 5-year chart):
http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/goog
have not been pleased.
Almost as soon as they started this plan there were critics:
http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/03/05/05greenwire-google-ceo-fires-at-critics-defends-its-energy–9995.html
And the world has learned a lot in the past 2.5 years. “NoTricksZone” by P Gosselin has had recent posts. Here is one:
http://notrickszone.com/2011/11/22/german-ard-public-television-green-energy-in-germany-threatens-to-be-biological-and-environmental-debacle/
Yes, he’s obsessed with authority. Just like it’s not science unless its peer reviewed, apparently, in his mind he’s under no obligation to provide anything to anyone who hasn’t been appointed by someone with some sort of authority.
Well, if it makes him feel better, as a member of the human race (that’s been convicted without due process), I do hereby appoint the bloggers, moderators, and regular contributors of CA, WUWT, and JN (and expressly including Lord Monckton and Willis Eschenbach) as counsel for the defense with the authority to audit, debunk, fact check, or any other humanity defending or catastrophe denying activity that they see fit.
Just for fun, I remembered where I’d heard the University of East Anglia mentioned before:
sometime after 2.40 – if you cannot be bothered to watch it all…….LOL
AnonyMoose says:
November 23, 2011 at 5:31 am
“I wonder how many British citizens will report the failure to follow FOI requirements.”
It’s clear that to far too many US & UK agencies and institutions, there is no “Freedom of Information LAW.”
It’s either a “freedom of information SUGGESTION,” or worse, a “Freedom to Manipulate Information Act.”
Another possible explanation for the encrypted archive is that it would discourage the authorities from pursuing an arrest. Suppose they figured out who it was, who had the remainder of the emails – their priority would be to make a surprise arrest and impoundment to capture any further damaging data before it can be released. It would be a strong motivation to actually make a quick arrest. But a passphrase would be easy to get out – virtually impossible to prevent. There’s now no benefit to the climate community in prosecution, and a potentially massive risk. It’s like a hostage situation.
The police, probably, would not let that stop them. If they have evidence of a crime, they have to prosecute. (Although there can be ‘public interest’ considerations.) But the academics and politicians now have a very good reason for wanting Mr/Ms FOIA to be left alone. Whether this is in response to events happening in the background or a simple precaution there’s no guessing.
It could also be a way to reduce the risk inherent in future disclosures. Had they simply released another block, I think further releases would have been expected, and they would have been watching for them. This tactic could be read either way.
Good post. I get it, but unfortnately the press hardly care about good or bad practice in science. The culprits are responding to Climategate 2 as being more of the same but weaker.
There is plenty here that seems to bolster up the “Hide the Decline” manipulation, and give an impression of slight of hand. There is evidence of real nastyness, such as paying for private investigations on opponents to their theories.
I suppose what we need is evience that they lied to the whitewash enquiries. This might provide the UEA with soap to wash their hands clean of the scandal. Lots more evidence of email deletion on a grand scale, but they say that was part of routine clean up. (I know it is clear that the clean up was stimulated by a wish to hide, but is this enough?)
Funding form Energy companies looks liek a good hook
Are there any silver bullets emerging from this latest selection of emails?
Where else in any kind of job is sloppy work and outrageous claims, predictions, and demonstrations be tolerated? I can’t think of any jobs that tolerate sloppy work and the only jobs I can think of that should prosper from outrageous claims and predictions and demonstrations are in science fiction novels and movies.
Science fiction movies where there is one lone scientist, usually a divorced young hot female scientist, who knows and predicts impending disaster and has the solution. The movies often made from novels that have the slowest bullets, explosive shock waves, response from the hero who has to say his lines before responding to the obvious immediate danger while the danger is on hold, the fastest subway trains that can plow through steel reinforced concrete pillars without losing speed and staying intact, violent weather caused by global warming moving like a tidal wave and causing instant freezing to absolute zero, and of course the detached visitors from outer space either warning mankind to change or face destruction from them or with the intent to destroy mankind up front for bad behavior against nature and the planet.
The novels and movies don’t pretend to be real science and are to entertain and sometimes stimulate the imagination and decisions in law and regulations are not made from movies as they are sometimes from scientific reports.
Interstellar Bill says:
November 23, 2011 at 9:21 am
Thanks, Bill. I was going to highlight that issue, but the piece was getting long. In the event you’ve done it better than I would have, I had a muddy paragraph on the subject that I threw out.
Jones has complained mightily of getting so many FOI requests … not realizing that the numbers kept increasing simply because he wasn’t answering them.
w.
I wonder if FOIA is playing a long game or just woke up in a bad mood. Two years is a very long time to wait, they could have kept the pot boiling with more interim releases. Maybe they felt threatened and wanted to protect their position (if that is the motive they succeeded, the warmist don’t want to bait FOIA)
Also how much work have they done selecting these emails. If I were planning a second attack for two years I would spend some of that time collating the emails. For instance pick out a selection to do with data manipulation, or focus on hide the decline, and put them out together as as single release, and then make another selection about corrupt pal review for another hit later.
The Climategate 1 failed to have more impact because the information was sporadic in nature, and each scandal relied on isolated pieces of the jigsaw. This allowed the warmists to say it was an isolated quote taken out of context.
It seems these new emails are just a random pull from a very big library that has not been looked at in much detail by FOIA. They back up and build on what we already know, but do not provide an audited narrative (yet). I wonder how committed FOIA really is.
“Jones also was asked about a message he wrote suggesting that emails could be deleted to dodge freedom of information requests. Both he and his university have been criticized for obstructionist attitudes toward Britain’s right-to-know law, and the university now says it’s far more open about sharing its data.
In his response, Jones appeared to suggest that the public need not interest itself in the inner workings of groups such as the International Panel on Climate Change, which produces authoritative reports on the future of the world’s weather.”
http://news.yahoo.com/leak-climatologist-takes-case-public-135113620.html
Nothing to see here, move along.
Phil Jones has spoken out on the release:
Does anyone but me think that his answer and the question come from different planets? He’s asked about deleting emails, and he answers about whether we need to know who wrote the IPCC report.
Say what??!?!?
w.
Willis Eschenbach says:
November 23, 2011 at 11:34 am
Jones has complained mightily of getting so many FOI requests … not realizing that the numbers kept increasing simply because he wasn’t answering them.
================================================
He’s not that stupid…..no one is that stupid
…he was stonewalling and lying
Perhaps someone should submit a Freedom of Information request to the Freedom of Information Commissioner, enquiring if he considers CRU-UEA has completely & truthfully provided all relevant information in all the responses CRU-UEA has provided to every FoI request it’s received?
CNN.com has climategate 2 mentioned in small text in a list of other minor news.
>New e-mail leak from UK climate research center<
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/11/23/world/europe/climate-email-leak/index.html?hpt=hp_t3
Opening the link one finds that the report pours lots of water on the news item, without even quoting one single e-mail. It even tries to criminalise the leak using words such as 'theft' while using innuendos such as' thought to originate from…', 'If genuine…these e-mails…' "As in 2009, extracts from emails have been taken completely out of context." Then it goes into a spin saying how the perpetrstors in climategate 1 were all found innocent and also tried to justify this scam by mentioning the BEST report.
The Main Lier Media are at it again.