I’m trying out a new feature, “Hits and Misses” which will highlight some of the on-target and brightest things in science and climate juxtaposed with some of the off-target and silliest things in the past week.
Hit: Almost two years to the day from Climategate 1 in 2009 the Climategate leaker/hacker known as “FOIA” brought us another fresh batch of email from CRU and The Team this week. Verity Jones has a timeline of the blog drops for the download link. WUWT was first November 22, 2011 at 1:02 am (PST – 09:02 GMT) and “FOIA” wanted to be sure we got it so at 1:34 am (PST – 09:34 GMT) he/she added: “moderator can you acknowledge if you get the file ok, thanks”. True to the way WUWT conducted the operation the first time in 2009, we didn’t publish this revelation immediately, but checked into the release to make sure it was real. Andy Revkin, who tells me in an email that he’s never, ever watched Seinfeld, didn’t get the joke of my title update (See here) related to how UEA didn’t recognize the veracity of the emails and the connection to Vandelay Industries.
Some 5000+ new messages plus supporting documents have people poring over details and connections that weren’t clear in the Climategate 1 release. There’s so much info that searchable databases have already been setup. Scores of editorials, blog posts, and calls for investigations have been published. With this new batch, connecting the dots, charting the conversation, and connecting the relationships has become much easier than with the first limited release. There’s even MIMES involved.
There’s an Easter Egg within the FOIA2011.zip file that contains almost a quarter million new messages locked behind an AES 256 bit encrypted password which is tough nut to crack. Speculations abound as to the motive, but one thing is clear, the fat lady has not sung yet.
Miss: In typical style which personifies the ongoing “failure to communicate” that is RealClimate.org, we get a dose of Gavination.
The Team announced that the Climategate 2 email release is a two year old turkey, and offered the usual “nothing to see here, move along” advice. Strangely though they say (as does Mike Mann) these extra 5000+ emails lead to an “out of context” interpretation. Apparently over there in upside down Mann-Tiljander world more information results in less context.
I wonder what the out of context take away of this little gem from the new batch is:
Email 1485.txt Mike Mann says:
…the important thing is to make sure they’re loosing the PR battle. That’s what the site [Real Climate] is about.
Hit: The US pulls out of the UN’s Green Climate Fund. Somebody came to their senses.
Miss: EU Carbon trading is headed for the netherworld, reaching a new record low this week on Thanksgiving Day in advance of Durban.
Hit: Jeff Id comes out and just says what we all know about Paleoclimate, even more sure than before, and so are the people who practice it. McIntyre agrees that Behind Closed Doors: “Perpetuating Rubbish” is team science.
Miss: Stacking the deck panel to make sure all goes well “These guys are solid”.
Hit: Climate, not so sensitive to CO2 after all according to the new study in Science it is overestimated.
Miss: Global warming didn’t roast a quarter million caribou in Canada after all. Never mind.
Hit: James Delingpole recognizes the magic of a Climategate Christmas, and it’s a travesty.
Miss: BBC says “ho ho” You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. ~Inigo Montoya
Hit: The Mail online concludes that collusion helps make a strong climate message.
Miss: Supermandia jumps tall climate tales with a single bound.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Hits and Misses” will appear weekly on WUWT, most likely on Saturdays, or whenever I get around to it.
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Having read the emails I dont belive anyone could come to the the conclusion that this particular team of climate scientists are guilty of collusion, temperature fixing, insider fund managment, monopoly publishing, back stabbing, perverting the course of justice, FOIA tampering & etc. Could they?
They are counting on the public not knowing what the context is.
Excellent feature! Will come in handy when getting into debates.
Getting the context right:
‘con’ + ‘text’ = ‘context’
When perpetrating a ‘con’ one invariably needs, ‘text’ to go with it. These must always be in balance.
Climategate 1 had a lot of ‘con’ in it and people objected saying there was too much speculation, that ‘context’ was unbalanced.
Climategate 2 provides the ‘texts’ to match all the ‘cons’ revealed in Climategate 1. Taken together we now have the whole ‘context’ – lots of them – and everything can be seen in correct perspective. The Climate Team and their minions have been cranking out more and more text all this time to try to balance their earlier work on the cons. Their texts did not seem to balance the cons effectively.
Thank you, FOIA, for assisting the Team to settle the whole matter by providing all the much-needed context. Great job! This enables our future plans as a developing global society on our comfortable little planet to be made sensibly. Without your efforts, things might have gone seriously wrong by now. We came very close to swallowing the global warming con and choking on the global warming text. We will never forget you.
When can a project/effort policy be considered a hit when looked at one way and a miss when looked at another. Meeting a RE target by some date- hit. The cost to the end uses on the other hand could be classified as a miss per http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/23/MNLV1M1CET.DTL&ao=2#ixzz1elvov450
I wonder if the modeled alternative natural gas fired generation option, noted in the article, took into account the rather steep decline in natural gas prices over the last few years………. I can see why CPUC commissioner Mike Florio said- “It just worries me that if we sign too many of these contracts, it’s going to make the program look bad just when it’s being successful,”
Ii’d say the “hits and misses” section is a hit.
@ur momisugly FundMe – Something sure appears to be a”miss”.
FundMe: Not Nick Stokes at least.
Mark
I also don’t get the “Seinfeld” joke/reference !!!
Matthew W says:
November 26, 2011 at 8:30 am
“I also don’t get the “Seinfeld” joke/reference !!!”
Referencing the young lady’s breasts:
Matthew W:
You don’t need Seinfeld to assess the nature of Madeleine Mammary’s full-bosomed upper tier: Her endowment’s real, not silicone implants, and –yes– “(it’s) spectacular.”
“There’s an Easter Egg within the FOIA2011.zip file that contains almost a quarter million new messages locked behind an AES 256 bit encrypted password which is tough nut to crack. Speculations abound as to the motive, but one thing is clear, the fat lady has not sung yet.”
________________________________
Perhaps FOIA is protecting him/herself by having the password ready to release if harassed in any way by the thought police. My guess is that a second “entity” has access to the password, just in case he/she is suddenly prevented from accessing a computer.
Pick me. Pick me.
@ur momisugly Matthew W says:
November 26, 2011 at 8:30 am
It may be because “it’s about nothing” !!!!! Which is really “something”!!
The old heads they win . . . tails you lose . . gimmick!
Does anyone think that Penn State might reopen their investigation of Michael Mann now that the former president of Penn State had to resign. Strike when the iron is hot.
Keep Smiling 🙂
Jeff
Some people have no sense of humor anyway, when the joke is reference to themselves even less. This is a great idea. I suspect in the coming months much fodder will available too.
II noticed that Gavin on Real Climate stated that the models were not the proof of AGW. I should ask Gavin what is the proof but my posts never appear on the site. Does anyone know what is the proof of AGW?
Isn’t this against the law?…………..
I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI [Freedom of Information] Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the process. 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 (U.S. Dept of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original station data
“Eve Stevens says:
November 26, 2011 at 9:10 am
II noticed that Gavin on Real Climate stated that the models were not the proof of AGW. I should ask Gavin what is the proof but my posts never appear on the site. Does anyone know what is the proof of AGW?”
Coincidence and speculation.
Coincidence: The global temperatures they “calculate” have generally been going up since the Industrial revolution. This also coincides with the end of the Little Ice Age and massive urban growth (urban heat island effect).
Speculation: They speculate that CO2 will cause warming and that it will be measurably significant. They speculate that it will cause a chain reaction of further positive feedbacks that will make these temperatures extreme. They speculate that since they can’t imagine any significant negative feedbacks there must not be any.
This second dump of Climategate emails should be enough evidence for Penn State to reopen their investigation of Michael Mann. In addition, Penn State is walking on pins and needles. They may just do a good job on a second investigation in order to get some credibility back.
Keep Smiling 🙂
Jeff
LIke this as a feature Anthony. It could work on so many levels as a weekly roundup if that’s what you’re planning.
MISS:
Once again claiming that their comments were taken out of context, Phil Jones, backed by UEA’s Vice Chancellor Edward Acton met the press to defuse the latest leak. The report appears here:
http://news.yahoo.com/leak-climatologist-takes-case-public-135113620.html
That possibility is a bright outlook but let’s not overlook a potentially darker one – once FOIA is certain he/she hasn’t been fingered the password becomes a .. ‘bargaining apparatus’. Terms of payment could be very interesting depending upon FOIA’s ultimate intentions.
We don’t know what emails are missing out of the batch just released but one or more of those people associated with ‘the cause’ probably know and are maybe now just beginning to realize that what was released was only meant to jog their memory of what else wasn’t released.
Let’s hope FOIA’s intention is to give them the choice to fully confess their sins in public to avoid anyone seeing what’s in the locked file.
Hi Anthony and all:
Re your Hit:
“Climate, not so sensitive to CO2 after all according to the new study in Science it is overestimated.”
Suggest this is perhaps a political hit, but still a wide scientific miss.
A political hit, because climate sensitivity is heading in the right direction (lower sensitivity),
BUT
The alleged climate sensitivity in the Science paper is still far too high at ~2-4C, in that it assumes significant positive feedback, whereas most/all real evidence points to negative feedback, or a sensitivity of ~1 or less.
To understand why, we revert to the politics of science:
On the previous thread, Roger Knights provides mature insight:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/26/hits-and-misses-for-the-week-of-november-20-26/
November 25, 2011 at 5:52 am
“They’re backing away from the consensus in small, politically/socially acceptable steps. This has happened before in science. Examples I’ve read about include the way that incorrect values assigned by consensus to certain fundamental constants were chipped away at in steps over the years to arrive at the correct value, although those making the corrections (except the last) must have realized that a larger correction was needed. But, socially/politically, that was a bridge too far.”
And then there is the “elephant in the room”:
Atmospheric CO2 LAGS global temperature at all measured time scales.
There is a reasonable probability that we are headed for a “black swan event” on the whole notion that atmospheric CO2 is a significant driver of global temperature. Maybe CO2 is predominantly a result, not a cause.
Almost nobody talks about this now, but they will…
Mann these Climategate2.0 emails really reveal how the UEA was at the center of it & that it was so political.
Perhaps the UEA should have named the CRU: the Climate Research And Political Unit !
Oops, looks like my ‘n’ key is a little sticky.
On November 22nd Dr. Hathaway gave an interview to the US radio station expanding on the sunspot count, possible forthcoming grand minimum and sun-global warming link:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC7a.htm