Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Dear Dr. Jones:
You and I have been interacting, albeit at a distance, since I first asked you for your data some five years ago. I asked for your data in part because I was astounded by your answer to Warwick Hughes when he asked for the same data. You replied to Warwick at that time, “Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”
I couldn’t fathom that a leading climate scientist could actually believe that. Finding something wrong with other scientists’ data and ideas is an integral part of how science progresses. This requires transparency and access to the data. I also couldn’t believe that other climate scientists would let you get away with saying that, without some other scientist pointing out the anti-scientific nature of your denial.
Foolish me … d’ya think I might have been more than a bit naive back then about climate “science” realpolitik?
In any case, I was also interested in the data for my own research, and I was curious whether you had been misquoted or taken out of context, so I wrote to you and asked for the data. I got no answer. (I found out later you had not been misquoted in any way. But I digress, back to the events.)
So I made a Freedom of Information (FOI) request for the data. Your University of East Anglia (UEA) Climate Research Unit (CRU) FOI point man, Mr. David Palmer, responded that all the data was available somewhere on the web … but David didn’t say where, just waved his hands and uttered the mystical incantation “GHCN”, meaning the data was held by the Global Historical Climate Network.
My response to that was as follows:
Dear Mr. Palmer:
Thank you for your reply. However, I fear that it is totally unresponsive. I had asked for a list of the sites actually used. While it may (or may not) be true that “it appears that the raw station data can be obtained from [GHCN]”, this is meaningless without an actual list of the sites that Dr. Jones and his team used.
The debate about changes in the climate is quite important. Dr. Jones’ work is one of the most frequently cited statistics in the field. Dr. Jones has refused to provide a list of the sites used for his work, and as such, it cannot be replicated. Replication is central to science. I find Dr. Jones attitude quite difficult to understand, and I find your refusal to provide the data requested quite baffling.
You are making the rather curious claim that because the data “appears“ to be out on the web somewhere, there is no need for Dr. Jones to reveal which stations were actually used. The claim is even more baffling since you say that the original data used by CRU is available at the GHCN web site, and then follow that with the statement that some of the GHCN data originally came from CRU. Which is the case? Did CRU get the data from GHCN, or did GHCN get the data from CRU?
Rather than immediately appealing this ruling (with the consequent negative publicity that would inevitably accrue to CRU from such an action), I am again requesting that you provide:
1) A list of the actual sites used by Dr. Jones in the preparation of the HadCRUT3 dataset, and
2) A clear indication of where the data for each site is available.
This is quite important, as there are significant differences between the versions of each site’s data at e.g. GHCN and NCAR.
I find it somewhat disquieting that an FOI request is necessary to force a scientist to reveal the data used in his publicly funded research … is this truly the standard that the CRU is promulgating?
Thank you for your cooperation in this matter.
Willis Eschenbach
Note that I was trying not to make waves. I didn’t want to appeal the ruling. I didn’t want to make any trouble for CRU or for anyone. I just wanted to get the data. A garden variety polite scientific request. (And by the way, this type of polite request, Dr. Jones, is what you have repeatedly denounced as ‘harassment’ … but again I digress from the story.)
After discussing my statements with you, Mr. Palmer wrote back and identified a couple of websites (GHCN and NCAR) where the data you used might possibly be found … but again there was no information about where each station’s data was actually located. I wrote back and said in part:
… While it is good to know that the data is available at those two web sites, that information is useless without a list of stations used by Jones et al. to prepare the HadCRUT3 dataset. As I said in my request, I am asking for:
1) A list of the actual sites used by Dr. Jones in the preparation of the HadCRUT3 dataset, and
2) A clear indication of where the data for each site is available. This is quite important, as there are significant differences between the versions of each site’s data at e.g. GHCN and NCAR.”
Without knowing the name and WMO number of each site and the location of the source data (NCAR, GHCN, or National Met Service), it is not possible to access the information. Thus, Exemption 21 does not apply – I still cannot access the data.
I don’t understand why this is so hard. All I am asking for is a simple list of the sites and where each site’s data is located. Pointing at two huge piles of data and saying, in effect, “The data is in there somewhere” does not help at all.
To clarify what I am requesting, I am only asking for a list of the stations used in HadCRUT3, a list that would look like this:
WMO# Name Source 58457 HangZhou NCAR 58659 WenZhou NCAR 59316 ShanTou GHCN 57516 ChongQing NMSetc. for all of the stations used to prepare the HadCRUT3 temperature data. That is the information requested, and it is not available “on non-UEA websites”, or anywhere else that I have been able to find.
I appreciate all of your assistance in this matter, and I trust we can get it resolved satisfactorily.
Best regards,
w.
Again, a simple, polite, scientific request. You said the data was on the web. I simply wanted to know where I could find it. I made it clear that a trivially simple three-column response would suffice. Your new excuse was that some of the data was under distribution restrictions from the originating National Weather Service. I said OK, not a problem. Send me the data that’s not under restrictions.
Internally, the emails (#3298) show that at this time Dave Palmer was discussing these questions with you, saying:
Phil/Michael,
As expected, Mr. Eschenbach is not satisfied with our most recent letter. I guess the essential question is whether we have the list of actual sites used for HadCRUT3 [global temperature reconstruction], and if not, who does….
And indeed, that is a very important question, Dr. Jones. Did the CRU have a list of the actual sites used for HadCRUT3?
Incredibly, the only conclusion can be that the answer was “No”, because subsequently Mr. Palmer wrote back to me and said that UEA was not able to identify the locations on the web where the information was available.
I was totally befuddled at that point, because at the time I was unaware that you didn’t know where the data was located. So I wrote back and said:
Dear Mr. Palmer:
It appears we have gone full circle here, and ended up back where we started. I had originally asked for the raw station data used to produce the HadCRUT3 dataset to be posted up on the UEA website, or made available in some other form. You refused, saying that the information was available elsewhere on non-UEA websites, which is a valid reason for FOI refusals.
“I can report that the information requested is available on non-UEA websites as detailed below.”
Your most recent letter, however, says that you are unable to identify the locations of the requested information. Thus, the original reason for refusing to provide station data for HadCRUT3 was invalid.
Therefore, since the information requested is not available on non-UEA websites, I wish to re-instate my original request, that the information itself be made available on your website or in some other form.
I understand that a small amount of this data (about 2%, according to your letter) is not available due to privacy requests from the countries involved. In that case, a listing of which stations this applies to will suffice.
The HadCRUT3 dataset is one of the fundamental datasets in the current climate discussion. As such, it is vitally important that it can be peer-reviewed and examined to verify its accuracy. The only way this can be done is for the data to be made available to other researchers in the field.
Once again, thank you for your assistance in all of this. It is truly not a difficult request, and is fully in line with both standard scientific practice and your ” CODE OF PRACTICE FOR RESPONDING TO REQUESTS FOR INFORMATION UNDER THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT 2000″.
I am sure that we can bring this to a satisfactory resolution without involving appeals or unfavorable publicity.
My best regards to you,
w.
Unfortunately, that letter was of no use either. The recently released Climategate email #1184 shows why, with Mr. David Palmer, as befuddled as I was, discussing my request with you and saying (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? 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 asked, who does have the data? The answer, sadly, turned out to be … nobody. Taken in conjunction with Dave’s earlier email, this makes the problem clear. You didn’t know which data belonged to which stations. And as a result, at the end of the day you put just a list of stations on the web, without any data or references at all to where the data could be found … because you couldn’t find it.
At that point, not knowing any of this backstory revealed by the Climategate emails, I figured I’d never get any more from you than the list of stations, and I gave up the fight. In retrospect, I should have fought all the way to the top with it.
Here’s my problem with all of this, Dr. Jones. You tried out a variety of claimed reasons for not responding to a request for your data. None of them were even remotely true. They were all intended to hide the fact that you didn’t know where the data was. Dave clearly spelled out the problem: “we don’t know which data belongs to which stations, right?”
You claimed that the data was out there on the web somewhere. You claimed you couldn’t send any of it because of restrictions on a few datasets. You claimed it came from GHCN, then you said from NCAR, but you couldn’t say exactly where.
You gave lots and lots of explanations to me, everything except the truth—that your records were in such disarray that you could not fulfill my request. It is clear now from the Climategate emails that some records were there, some were missing, the lists were not up to date, there was orphan data, some stations had multiple sets of data, some data was only identified by folder not by filename, you didn’t know which data might have been covered by confidentiality agreements, and the provenance of some datasets could not be established. The unfortunate reality was that you simply couldn’t do what I asked.
Rather than just saying that, however, you came up with a host of totally bogus reasons why you could not give me the data. Those were lies, Phil. You and David Palmer flat-out lied to my face about why you couldn’t send me the data.
Now, I’ve come to accept that you lied to me. Here’s what I think. I think you are a scientist, and a reasonably good one, who was hard squeezed by two things—the Peter Principle, and Noble Cause Corruption. When you began your scientific career, your sloppy record keeping didn’t matter much. And you didn’t want to be the record keeper in any case, you wanted to do the science instead, but you kept getting promoted and you ended up curating a big messy dataset. Then things changed, and now, climate decisions involving billions of dollars are being made based in part on your data. Disarray in your files didn’t make a lot of difference when your work was of interest only to specialists. But now it matters greatly, money and people’s lives are at stake, and unfortunately you were a better scientist than you were a data manager.
So when my FOI request came along, you were caught. You were legally required to produce data you couldn’t locate. Rather than tell the truth and say “I can’t find it”, you chose to lie. Hey, it was only a small lie, and it was for the Noble Cause of saving the world from Thermageddon. So you had David tell me the data was available on the web. You knew that was a lie. David, apparently, didn’t realize it was a lie, at least at first. You hoped your Noble Lie would satisfy me, that I would get discouraged, and you could move on.
But I asked again, and when I called you on that first answer, you thought up another Noble Lie. And when that one didn’t work, you invented another Noble Lie.
OK, so you are a serial liar. Like I said, I’ve made my peace with that. It used to rankle me, but not any more. I just accepted that you can’t be trusted and I moved on. I do have compassion for you, Dr. Jones. None of you guys set out to do the ugly things you ended up doing. You all got caught by Noble Cause Corruption, by the vision of being smarter than everyone else and of being the only people standing between us and global destruction. It’s heady, treacherous stuff.
I have been a victim of that same self-delusion myself. I understand the sweet seduction that arises from the conviction that your mission is of vital, crucial importance to the whole planet. However, I quit that kind of nonsense around the time the sixties wound down … but again I digress. I have compassion for your position, and I was, although not satisfied, at least at ease with the outcome.
So if I made my peace with you, why am I writing this letter now?
I’m writing because in response to the new Climategate 2.0 email release, over at the UEA website, you have a new post in which you are up to your old tricks, trying to peanut-butter up the cracks in your stories. Inter alia, you are attempting to explain the following two quotes. First, the new release of emails revealed that you had written:
Email 2440: “I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the process”
Your explanation of your statement is this:
At the end of the IPCC process, chapters, formal comments and responses are all published and that is the appropriate place for this information. It is important that scientists should be allowed free and frank discussion during the writing process. I might also point out that I decided not to take part in AR5 because of the time commitment it requires.
That sounds perfectly logical … if we were dealing with honest men. But if the Climategate emails have shown anything, they have shown that we are not dealing with honest men. Far too many of the leading AGW supporting climate scientists have been shown by their own words to be serial liars like yourself.
But in any case, only scientists with something to hide need privacy to have a “free and frank discussion” about science. Honest scientists have no reason to hide their views. Honest scientists discuss these scientific issues on the web in the full light of day. Why on earth would someone need privacy to discuss the intricacies of the climate models? Do you really have to go into a closet with your best friend to speak your true mind about atmospheric physics? Is it true that you guys actually need some kind of ‘private space’ to expose your secret inner ideas about the factors affecting the formation of clouds? From my perspective, these kinds of private discussions are not only not what is needed. This two-faced nature of you guys’ statements on the science are a large part of the problem itself.
This is quite visible in the Climategate emails. In your communications, you and many of the scientists are putting out your true views of other scientists and their work. You are expressing all kinds of honest doubts. You are discussing uncertainties in your and other scientists understandings. You are all letting your friends know which papers you think are good and which you think are junk, and that’s valuable information in the climate science discussions.
But you never say any of this in public. Not one word. For example, in public it’s all about how great Michael Mann’s science is, not a word of criticism, while in private some of you guys justifiably tear both him and his work to shreds.
I find this double-speak deceptive and underhanded. It has nothing to do with “free and frank discussion” as you claim. I think that if AGW supporting scientists actually broke down and told the truth to the public, you would fare much better. I think that if you disavowed your beloved Saint Stephen (Schneider) and his advice, and you expressed all of your doubts and revealed all of your uncertainties about the climate and told the plain unvarnished truth about your opinion of other scientists’ work, we’d be infinitely better off. Nobody likes two-faced people. You would be miles ahead if you said the same things in public you say in private, and so would the field of climate science.
For example, the emails clearly show that you privately knew it wasn’t true when you told me that the data for which I had filed an FOI was available on the web. You knew the reason you couldn’t release the data was, as Dave Palmer belatedly found out, that “we don’t know which data belongs to which station, correct?”
You could have told me the truth. But no, you decided to lie to me. And as with Nixon and Watergate, and with Clinton’s impeachment, it’s the cover-up that always brings the real trouble, not the original misdeed. If you had said something like ‘my office is in a mess, I can’t find some of the data, here’s almost all of it, let me get back to you when I can track down the rest’, you could have then put your house in order and sent me the data. And you would have been telling the truth.
Instead, you lied to cover it up. And when it was shown to be untrue, you lied again. And again. Here’s my point—the only reason I know that you lied, the only way you were caught in your lies, was the release of your emails.
And now, you come forth to advocate that everyone destroy their emails once the upcoming IPCC AR5 crime against science has finally been committed? Can’t say I’m impressed by that advice, it seems more than a touch self-serving.
Here’s the thing, Dr. Jones. I don’t trust you. I don’t trust your friends. And I don’t trust your “free and frank discussions” out of sight of the public. This final distrust, of your secret discussions, arises from the same logic the cops use. They don’t give a couple of criminals any private time together for free and frank discussions about how to present believable lies to the police about their crime.
Call me crazy, but for the selfsame reason I don’t want to make it easy for you to hold that kind of free and frank discussions about how to present believable lies to the public about the climate. I don’t want you covertly discussing how to hide the decline. And in the current case, your own words have betrayed you again. You say to the person you are addressing that there is some need to “cover yourself and all those working in AR5”.
So what is it you think they’ll need to cover up this time, Dr. Jones? What is it you assume they will be saying that you don’t want the polloi to know about?
If you truly have something to say about the science, hey, don’t be shy, Doc. Just blurt it out. And if you are unwilling to say something about the science or the scientists in public, DON’T SAY IT IN PRIVATE. That is cowardly backstabbing. Your assumption that the AR5 participants will have something to “cover up”, and your suggestion that they should obliterate and destroy the evidence of their true opinions about the science, are totally congruent with the fact that you were found out by way of your own emails. So of course you don’t want emails around. They proved you were lying, when nothing else could have. In scientific terms, I believe your current reaction to emails is called the “vampire/garlic syndrome”.
When you and your friends get together off the record in your frank discussions, Dr. Jones, you cook up ugly things. The Climategate emails convict you all of this, in your own words. As a result, I do not want to make it easy for you all to compare notes with each other on how to lie to me, on how to subvert the IPCC rules to slip in the next “Jesus Paper“, or on how to further deceive the public. I thank the fates that your emails were released. Without those, we wouldn’t have known you were deceiving us, or why. And I think that destroying the emails related to the IPCC AR5 is just a way to hide further malfeasance.
Your perennial but ultimately quixotic quest to leave no potential evidence un-destroyed comes up again and again in the emails. You try vainly to explain this over at the UEA website, where you refer to an email wherein you say:
Email 1897: “Do I understand it correctly – if he doesn’t pay the £10 we don’t have to respond? With the earlier FOI requests re David Holland, I wasted a part of a day deleting numerous emails and exchanges with almost all the skeptics. So I have virtually nothing. I even deleted the email that I inadvertently sent.”
Your explanation of this is as follows:
This relates to a request from Steve McIntyre made under the Data Protection Act for any personal data held about him. Following a previous experience with FoI, I had adopted a more judicious approach to retention of emails that I no longer needed. I had deleted old exchanges with sceptics I had prior to 2005. I was saying that I probably no longer had any emails relating to Mr McIntyre, a prominent sceptic.
The emails referred to were unrelated to any prior request from Mr Holland. Let me say again that I have never knowingly deleted any material subject to a current FoI request and this email should not be read in that way.
You must be kidding. When the emails are read in order, it is obvious that you destroyed a host of relevant emails once people gave you a nudge and a wink. You were surprisingly blatant in your emails regarding the fact that you were destroying important documents under the guise of “housekeeping”. You really should read your own words again, they make it quite clear that you deleted emails under false pretences.
But that’s not the worst of it. The egregious part was contained in the email you somehow neglected to mention in your recent UEA attempt at self-exoneration. That was the email wherein you counseled deleting evidentiary emails directly covered by David Holland’s FOI request:
Mike [Mann],
Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise… Can you also email Gene [Wahl] and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address. We will be getting Caspar [Ammann] to do likewise.
Cheers, Phil
You not only destroyed emails subject to an FOI request that contained the evidence of your misdeeds. You warned all of your friends to do likewise. Gene Wahl admitted that he destroyed emails at Michael Mann’s behest.
And now you want us to believe that you never destroyed emails under FOI request? That claim doesn’t even pass the laugh test. The Information Commissioner said of your emails and actions that it was not possible to imagine “more cogent” prima facie evidence of contravention of the FOI Act. Unfortunately, as the Commissioner pointed out, the statute of limitations had run out on any crime by that time, so you were off the hook. But the evidence is still there, and the public’s statute of limitations on lying scientists hasn’t run out.
So don’t try to make me believe that you’ve never, ever, oh my no, haven’t ever destroyed emails subject to FOI. Your own words show that’s a joke. And don’t bother telling me that the “investigation” declared that you were whitewashed as pure as driven snow. I know that, I watched them apply the necessary coats of paint, it was quite an impressive process. The facts remain. You erased emails containing evidence of your malfeasance and you advised your confederates to do the same. You lied about it then. You subsequently lied about it to your friends on the in-house whitewash “investigation” committee. And you are lying to us about it now.
And that is the answer to the question why I am writing to you at this time. It’s disquieting enough that neither you, nor any of the other un-indicted co-conspirators, has ever offered up even the slightest word of apology for the flagrant misdeeds and scientific malfeasance revealed by your own words. You guys did huge damage to climate science and to science in general, and none of you have ever breathed even a whisper of an apology. But that’s not the reason I’m writing, because as I said, I’ve made my peace with that. At the end of the day, I realized that you were men without a scrap of honor, so it was quite foolish of me to expect you to apologize.
But for you to stand up and start in again proclaiming your innocence? No way that’s gonna wash. I’m writing because I will not endure your new duplicity in silence. Stop this foolish, futile attempt to rehabilitate your reputation. Your reputation is so shredded and utterly lost at this point that, crazily, I find that my heart goes out to your predicament, calling on you to stop with the mendacity and prevarication, give up on the justifications, and return to your science. Your continued lies only make it worse. Only an apology could possibly begin to rehabilitate your reputation, and you seem totally unwilling to do that.
So in lieu of acknowledging what you’ve done wrong, please just go and work on your science in peace, Dr. Jones, and leave the denials of wrongdoing to those who haven’t done wrong. You have done what you have done, and thanks to the release of the emails your works both good and bad are explained quite eloquently in your own words. My strong suggestion is that if you are unwilling to apologize, that for your own peace of mind you turn the page and leave yesterday behind, stop rehashing your past actions, and move forward to see what remains for you to learn about the climate. I’m sure there must be some small part of climate science left that is not already “settled”, something that you could profitably investigate.
In closing, I am certain that if you wish to respond publicly to this open letter, Anthony would be more than happy to post your reply exactly as written. If you think I am mistaken in any part of what I have said, please let me know, and if you are right I will certainly retract any misstatement and correct the record. Until such time, however, what I wrote above is the truth to the best of my knowledge.
Very sincerely,
w.
Sounds like Phil is a bit of a disorganised bloke who may be a good scientist, but has lost his way due to the old mistake of trying to hard to prove his own hypothesis. It’s a mistake than can happen to many people, but the redeeming fact should be when they become aware of how much their subjective ideas have influenced their theoretically objective results, they should be open and honest with themselves and others. However, insight is a remarkable asset that is not as common as we would hope. Phil Jones is not the only person who does not like to see his ideas debated and will try underhand tactics to derail any debate. It can happen on all sides of the science.
Phil is a Brit and much beloved of CAGW fans Mr Cameron and Mr Huhne, who will argue in his support: “the end justifies the means”. The same argument used by communist insurgents in the second half of the last century and islamist terrorists today.
Unfortunately, it is highly unlikely Phil and his friends will be punished for their distortions of science, which is leading many countries, including Britain, into the land of economic insanity in regards to energy policies.
Anyhow, five bucks says you won’t get a response to your letter, which I found to be one of the most damning and well argued pieces of literature I have ever read.
Nice one Willis
Bravo, Willis! You have said the things that needed to be said, for everyone who believes in the practice of sound science. And if their records are such a mess (which they have proven to be), why on earth would anybody have reason to believe ANY conclusions that these jokers publish? But that, of course, is a rhetorical question.
Nudge. Creeaaaaaaakkkkkk….(insert sound of disintegrating structural materials here)
Expect……..a deathly silence.
Like Larry in Texas says, you’ve said the the things that need to be said. But don’t expect a reply, and I reckon that quite a few folk will consider your letter a touch over the top, maybe getting uncomfortably close to the hysterical in tone.
Just my thoughts.
I had totally different experience with UCAR . I asked for some data, although person I emailed to was away, the email was forwarded to a colleague, and within two days two data files were emailed back.
I found them very helpful, and data proved to be very productive. Data produced (up to then unknown) direct link between the Icelandic low atmospheric pressure and the AMO, where the Reykjavik pressure can be considered as a useful precursor to the SS temperature changes in the North Atlantic:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/theAMO.htm
LevelGaze says:
November 27, 2011 at 1:25 am
LG, I have no expectations as to whether he will reply.
And yeah, it’s likely a bit over the top. But to have gone through all that was one thing. Then to have the inner part revealed by Climategate 1.0 was great. Dr. Phil had to step aside and he got investigated. I figured maybe we’d heard the last of him.
Now we have Climategate 2.0, which contains even more evidence of Dr Jones’ malfeasance and perfidy. But he’s like the horror film monster who can’t be permanently killed, “he’s baaack!” to falsely re-assert his innocence.
So I agree, LevelGaze, but I’m overly passionate about it because it’s not theoretical for me. I’m the one who made the request. I’m one he lied to and deceived. So it’s not just about book-based climate science. It’s personal for me in this case, and I’m a passionate guy.
I thought about toning it down. I wrote it a couple of days ago, and slept on it a couple of nights. I changed a host of things over that time. I considered dampening it to make it more acceptable and then I thought no. This had to accurately reflect my true feelings if it were to be anything. And the truth is, it mightily and woefully angrifies my blood that Jones has popped up again to claim he is innocent of wrongdoing. He is not.
Thanks for your thoughts,
w.
A sales opportunity here?
Or to put it more succinctly, ‘oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive’. It’s ironic that the world wide web has allowed us to untangle the deceit.
It’s important that Phil et al follow Willis’s advice because climate science is now truly damaged by the secrecy. Sceptics no longer have to argue the scientific rights and wrongs to a bemused bystander, we just have to demonstrate that climate scientists have lied repeatedly, even about simple things.
The Hockey Stick has long been a rod to beat AGW theory with because it is so clearly wrong that even non technical people can grasp that bad science is being done. That the AGW fraternity clutch it and its flawed siblings to their collective bosom proves that they will encourage anything that supports their cause. When we can also prove their private misgivings about proxy reconstructions, we can legitimately pose the question ‘where does the lying stop?’ At this point I’m not even sure that climate scientists know the answer.
Time to clean house and put systems in place to stop them from slipping back into cloak, dagger and PR science.
An excellent, level-headed, straightforward recitation of the facts. Which we know full well will either be met with silence, or with a large amount of blustering, more deceit, and misdirection.
Your comment that Jones work is central to much of the alleged climate science being done today. And the simple fact is they cannot verify or duplicate it. How is something not verifiable or able to be duplicated considered science.
Sorry Mr. Jones – this isn’t elementary school – saying the ‘dog ate it’ isn’t going to wok here.
What you really have here Willis is outright fraud.
They know they cannot document or duplicate and yet they continue to present as fact. This information is relied upon by people, agencies, businesses and governing bodies worldwide – and involves billions of dollars in spending – heck the AGW research alone is over $2 billion in funding.
Jones knows the data is gone, and that he cannot document or support his work – he knows his work is being used and encourages and supports that. He makes no effort to let people know there is no data to support his claims.
Forget FOI requests – these could well be civil charges of fraud, detrimental reliance, violations of good faith and fair dealing and the like. And it is not that far a stretch to look at this as a criminal enterprise – conspiring to knowingly affect the data and research for personal gain. With billions in funding on the line – and the personal wealth being generated by their activities promoting the warming hysteria – a RICO investigation would not seem out of line.
I acknowledge the poor PR aspect – that some would claim it was a witch hunt against honest scientists with differences of opinion. But that is not what is going on here – active collusion to misrepresent, to hide, to subdue and subvert opposing opinions and research, is not honest scientists with legitimate differences.
And thanks for the reply Willis, I appreciated that.
Did you ever think about taking whatever data you could find on their sites, doing an analysis, coming up with a completely different result and then just saying you used their data as provided?
Surely they would have has to ask what data you used and then publicly rebutting it with the actual data they used?
I find nothing hysterical in the tone. Science just have to be passionate at times – especially when lies are so blatant and liars are so arrogant. Thanks, W.
Damned by faint praise indeed.
A remarkable and enlightening post Mr. Eschenbach, if the numpties in the CRU had shown even half of your commitment to accuracy, politeness and more importantly open and universal publishing of results, then doubtless the whole AGW balloon would have been pricked long ago.
I can reserve no sympathy for Jones and his sorry crew, though, I firmly retain the [now faint] hope, that some of this recalcitrant ‘sixth form’ cabal will eventually, have to undergo a thorough examination and to answer stern questions, at least in a Parliamentary inquiry, better yet – in a British court of law.
If you believe Willis’ views are over the top, you should hear mine sometime. These people have responsible for the theft of hundreds of billions of dollars from the taxpayers of the world. It is a heist of unimaginable proportion. It involves thousands of people who draw regular paychecks based solely on this issue. Entire corporations are founded on it. People are starving to death because of it. We are burning up food to power our cars so we can get to work. It is, in my opinion, a crime against humanity. These people are thieves of the worst sort. They take advantage of people’s sincere desire to help their neighbor by creating an issue out of whole cloth and then appealing for billions in spending to mitigate what may not be a problem at all.
These people will eventually go down in history as the greatest scam the planet has ever seen. For over 20 years I have been hearing “we have only 10 more years to save the planet”. How long do they intend to sell that wolf insurance? Those people are pathetic. They are worse than pathetic, they are evil. Told you I was even more over the top than Willis but I believe these people are literally killing people. People freeze to death because they can’t afford heat that they might otherwise afford or starve because they can’t afford food that might otherwise be available.
But unlike Willis, I don’t have any sympathy for Jones or Mann or Hansen. I have a little for Briffa but he still hasn’t come clean in public. Rats, each and every one.
Willis this is not over the top at all. It’s honest, factual, it’s from the heart. The only thing that was over the top was Phil Jones trying to cover his arse and then cover the lies that were covering his arse.
Great letter – best read for a long time but don’t expect a reply.
Thanks Willis you are one of the few!
Let me add a little flavor Willis
Jones request to Mann and Wahl goes out after Palmer has warned him that Holland will appeal.
If Jones believes that his reason for denying Holland is valid he doesnt have to worry about an appeal. Its immediately after they deny Hollands request that Jones requests the deletion of the mails. Making it appeal proof. Even if Holland appeals, they can say that they have nothing.
search all the mails from may 2008 through june-jul
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=2526.txt&search=Jun+2008
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=3483.txt&search=Jun+2008
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=3108.txt&search=may+2008
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=0971.txt&search=may+2008
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=2475.txt&search=may+2008
Proof beyond all doubt that Jones has no integrity whatsoever from Mr Eschenbach.
Is there any person or authority that can sack and/or prosecute Jones for his lies and deception?
So, the end result is that one of the worlds most utilized temperature analyses cannot be replicated. If all the data is available, it can’t be tied to a specific location, making it and the gridding process useless. And, as we know , somehow this data is shared/copied/plagiarized with the other global databases, leaving one megabyte cesspool of maggot infested B.S.
W. Is this the state of the science?
@LevelGaze says: November 27, 2011 at 1:25 am
“…. I reckon that quite a few folk will consider your letter a touch over the top, maybe getting uncomfortably close to the hysterical in tone.”
You’ve gotta be kidding. I read Willis’s piece with awe at his equanimity, diplomacy & tact. Just be reminded that real people are hurting and even dying as a consequence of policy decisions based on Jones’s dogma, incompetence and malice
@willis
I agree entirely with your sentiments and your frustration. In your position I would feel the same.
But, if the purpose of an Open Letter is to get others in powerful positions to read it, then I fear you have a bit more work to do.
The letter is too long and goes into too much detail for, for example my MP – who is a Cabinet Member and has some influence at government level – to read it.
For these folks you need a brief summary with all the main points (4 or 5 at most) that can be put on a single side of A4. With an appendix that she can give to aides to delve into the detail if felt worthwhile.
Back in my selling days, we called this ‘the elevator pitch’. By chance you get in the lift with the Chief Exec of your hot prospect and he idly says ‘Hi…how are things going with you’. You have thirty seconds only to lay out why your proposal is good for his business and what he must do to make it all happen. And gain his commitment to do it.
It sure concentrates the mind (and the selling skills) to practice that a few times. Suggest that you give it a whirl on this one.
And btw – if I were PJ I would ignore this letter. There doesn’t seem to be any need for him to take any action. You must force his hand in some way.
Overall however I am a great admirer of your work. This piece just needs some more blood sweat and tears to make the impact you want.
BW LA
Nice demolition job.
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public…
Climate Science? Certainly politics.
Peter Miller says:
November 27, 2011 at 1:09 am
But it seems to me that when ANY goverment goes to war, they will implement “the end justifies the means”. Because they want to win the war.
Some examples showing that even our best friends do it, should illustrate this;
The U.S; Dropping a nuclear devise over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The Great Britain; Night bombing of large german cities with phosphourus bombs.
They will argue that it was neccesary under the circumstances, and I have difficulties arguing with that. They were the passive part, being attacked, and responded. But….then, that proves that….“the end justifies the means”…..
For the common woman and child being burned alive, it would look like an evil act. For the perpetrator, it was neccessary. Brings you straight into the philosofical question on “what is evil” ?
Hey Willis Eschenbach
Your writings are absolutely spot on. Just one thing though, I disagree totally with you if you will
let Phil Jones and his ilk get on working like scientists. They should be banned totally from having anything to do with climate science.
Your case appears airtight to me and the charge should be “mendacity” in all its unpleasant dimensions.
The angrification of Willis’ blood is clearly visible and rightly so.
I was mortified whilst reading this because it reminded me of a lecture from my late dad upon a misdeed of mine as a teenager. I was stunned and in shock whilst hearing my dads words as if in an echo chamber, the lights in the room seemed to have dimmed considerably around the edges.
It’s an experience that I hold vividly to this day (some 38 years later) and I would hope Phil Jones, whilst reading Willis’ letter, experiences the same sensations I did all those years ago.
For what it is worth, I think you have written a great letter Mr Eschenbach. It will be interesting to see what, if any, reaction you get. If I was the subject of your letter and knew that I was innocent, and that my rebuttals were accurate, I would be issuing a writ immediately. I suspect no writ will be forthcoming from Dr Jones from which we can all draw our own conclusions.
Many thanks for your efforts.
In my profession I have seen many people in the courts of justice or in other hearings pleading cases which should never have got that far. Early in an issue they make a small mistake, they tell a white lie, they then have to use a bit more resources to prop up their deceit, until, as Willis has pointed out, the deception is the issue which becomes the catastrophe. Sadly we may never know in the absence of so much data, how robust Phil’s conclusions were, or in fact how much good science was embedded in the confusion. And that is a tragedy for all of us. The difficulty for me personally as a lay person in this area of science, is who to trust. I’ve rapidly learned who not to trust and who’s data or commentary is damagingly biased, but who to trust? Who genuinely informs the debate in an objective and scientific manner? Is it possible to be such a person?
Ah, it’s all been taken out of context.
Prof. Phil Jones and Alice”:
W.
Have you considered writing the school newspaper?
http://www.concrete-online.co.uk/Home.aspx.
<>
New International Version (©1984)
“An evil man is snared by his own sin, but a righteous one can sing and be glad.”
I sincerely trust that today or in the near future, you will be truly glad, Willis. Until this is “settled” once and for all, I weep for humanity! [And that’s not hysterical either]!
Great article, Willis. If I’d been jerked around to the same extent by Phil Jones and company, I’d have every bit as much anger as you do. And my writing on the same topic definitely would have been over the top. I say: Bully for you! For telling it like it is, and for keeping your cool to the extent that you have.
Say it like it is Willis.
Mosher:
If Jones believes that his reason for denying Holland is valid he doesnt have to worry about an appeal. Its immediately after they deny Hollands request that Jones requests the deletion of the mails. Making it appeal proof.
Absolutelyl, completely, utterly incorrect. His belief on the subject is irrelevant, the law prevents him from deleting materials specifically to avoid FOI requests. It doesn’t matter if one request denial was “appeal proof”, others for the same material won’t be.
I’m wondering who from the AGW cabal is going to be the first to break away? I’m guessing it will be either someone younger that could still have some career ahead of them, someone who hasn’t been too tarnished by their elders’ misdeeds. Or it could be an elder member who could retire and repent at the same time thus saving some small part of their reputation. Because let’s face it we are not far from meltdown, it only needs that last straw to break the AGW camel’s back.
After reading the Climategate e-mails all weekend I am struck by the tone of emails coming from Phil Jones. He really comes across as a first class a$$. He doesn’t seem to be that nice of a character. I didn’t get that feeling from most of the other folks.
Looks like jeff ID has found something more serious than hide the decline
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2011/11/26/456-5/#more-12663
No! Willis letter is not over the top in any way.
In fact from an ordinary citizen, a layman when it comes to science, Willis is far too polite.
When I see the economic and social trauma, the dividing of whole societies, the unbelievable waste from governments pouring whole nation’s resources into crazy alternative energy schemes that haven’t a hope in hell of ever providing energy reliably and at an affordable price, when i hear a rapidly increasing number of stories of people on low incomes no longer being able to pay their energy bills or as was put recently, “do they eat or heat as they can’t afford both”, then I see full on deliberate criminality and fraud at it’s worst as a few very influential so called scientists quite deliberately distorted, corrupted, hid data and doubts and lied to the leaders of most nations on earth in an attempt to elevate their own arrogant importance, influence, power and wealth whole all the time cynically claiming they were helping to save the planet.
And worse is that there are so many so called scientists of other disciplines out there who are apologists for these criminals and who in their comfortable academic existence seem to have no connection with the reality of the diabolical and traumatic effects that these frauds and liars have had on our western societies and particularly on the poorest in those societies .
As a citizen and layman I am getting damn angry at the unbelievable arrogance and malfeasance and sheer stupidity, the ongoing and totally cynical manipulation of other scientists, science editors, IPCC research, governments, media and the science trusting public by this group of so called climate scientists, all now revealed as the blogsphere wades through those new e-mails,
And it is mine and millions of other citizens like myself whose taxes have been used to pay for every single damn cent that these b*******s took for themselves and every single damn cent that governments, who were manipulated and convinced by this cabal of fraudulent idiots, raised and spent and forced onto their citizens, economy and business destroying policies and taxes to thwart what now turns out to be a non existent threat all based on a tangled mirage of lies and fraud, of catastrophic global warming which even these fraudsters admitting privately amongst themselves, was a non event..
I’m angry and getting angrier I suspect I am far from being alone!
Brilliant piece of writing, Willis. Yes, as others have said it is rather long (and perhaps you could, as suggested, also publish a shorter summary for media digestion) but it had me immersed all the way through. I found your tone remarkably reserved (almost as much so as your frustrated email requests for data!) – I suppose we can only imagine that kind of language you have screamed to the heavens in private. And it wouldn’t surprise me if there were one or two forehead-shaped dents on your office wall. Vindication is a wonderful thing, but we are still a long way from justice. Thanks for fighting.
Wicked good.
Willis I think you were quite restrained . Phil Jones lied and it looks like he can’t replicate his results because he has lost them. That is not a scientist, it is a lying, stupid, self centered, idiot.
Sorry “them” means the data.
They really are in a bind aren’t they. There is a golden opportunity to thoroughly go through the weather records and sort them out and it would provide Phil and Co with a great deal of work. Just one problem – that work cannot be undertaken by them without first admitting that there are problems with the weather records and that they have known there are problems with the weather records for a long time.
They are in no mood to give up the advances they have made into the policymaking arena in the last 20 years yet they could have completed that work by now if they hadn’t spent so much time defending work they know is being promoted as a gold standard when it is not. Not least because they have spent the last 10 years saying ‘we’ve only got 10 years to save the planet’.
The same goes for the problems of peer/pal-review. So much effort, advantage and money has been invested by them in their brand of pal-review being seen as the most kosher one that they cannot be the ones to reform it.
This is all a bit inconvenient.
Latimer Alder says (@ 2:26am) that the letter is too long.
I vehemently disagree. As ‘they’ say, the devil is in the details.
A great deal of the problem with this entire scam is that legislators and policy makers do not take the time to understand what they are talking about, before creating legislation and authorizing damaging and costly rules and regulations, (Nancy Pelosi: We have to pass the bill in order to know what is in it).
We are talking about science here, not marketing a new laundry detergent. Sound bites and 30 second commercials cannot begin to explain to anyone, let alone a ‘law maker’ what has been occuring with respect to the AGW scam (or conspiracy?) for the last several decades.
If individuals cannot take the time to inform themselves, then, as applies to countless commenters from the Huff Post to all of the Warmista web sites, as well as the ruling class, they should just STFU.
The more damning detail we have, the better. Keep it coming, Willis.
Phil Jones is not the only one, and now we need others like Willis Eschenbach, to sort the rest out.
Willis – I will not add to the comments of others and of yourself, as these already state what has truely happened.
However, I have one observation and one question.
The basis of all science is replication.
If a piece of research cannot be replicated it is not supported, not confirmed and so is thrown away, discarded, forgotten as if it has never been.
So ——————
As the raw data on which the CRU index has been based, is mislaid, lost, cannot be provided on request.
Then —————-
Surely ALL the research on which it has been based must also be discarded, binned, thrown away, witdrawn from publication.
Where do we go from here now?
That’s my question.
“And yeah, it’s likely a bit over the top…”
No, it’s not. This is NOT about Willis Eschenbach’s feelings. This is SCIENCE you are defending.
In my book, this item is up there with Victor Hugo’s ‘J’accuse!’. I wonder if it will be cited in classrooms as an example of how scientific ethics should self-correct in 100 years time….
Like the old saying ” What a tangled web we weave, when we attempt to deceive”. Thanks for for holding his/their feet to the fire.
Excellent post and letter Mr.E.
“You could have told me the truth. But no, you decided to lie to me. And as with Nixon and Watergate, and with Clinton’s impeachment, it’s the cover-up that always brings the real trouble, not the original misdeed.”
Willis, relax!
When the history of this saga is written your name and place in it will never be forgotten.
However, other than your regular fans, I doubt many skeptics will read this vindictive and long-winded open letter to the end, let alone Phil Jones.
If you want to help current readers and future historians alike by providing some useful context, it might be best to follow the more restrained and dignified examples set by Ross McKitrick and Steve McIntyre in Climate Audit right now.
Jones says
For the other (Eschenbach) I can’t produce a simple list with the information he wants. As I said I can produce a list of the sites we currently use. I think this would take about an hour to do. It isn’t as simple as it sounds as I need to go through the list of stations in the database and extract those not used – which involves using 2 other files.
Willis Is this all you wanted or are you saying that wanted all the data associated with each site?
If its data then it is the NMOs that have it, and presumably can supply it on request.
For CRU to store the raw data that presumably you require I once did som sums:
Most early records would have been on paper. Perhaps one sheet/month?
1000 stations (out of perhaps 5000)for 50 years to 1980s (i.e. the first record produced in the 1930s on average)
Making no allowance for dividers for filing or shelves etc. Just the paper:
50 years
12 months/y
1 A4 sheet/month
1000 Stations
5 cm/ream (measured)
500 sheets/ream
21 width A4
29.5 height A4
sheets total 600000
reams 1200
height 60 metres
volume 3.717 cu metres
Taking this a step further
using 80 gsm paper
total area 37170.00 sq metres
total weight 2.97 tonnes
You hit the nail squarely on the head with this statement:
But in any case, only scientists with something to hide need privacy to have a “free and frank discussion” about science. Honest scientists have no reason to hide their views. Honest scientists discuss these scientific issues on the web in the full light of day. Why on earth would someone need privacy to discuss the intricacies of the climate models? Do you really have to go into a closet with your best friend to speak your true mind about atmospheric physics? Is it true that you guys actually need some kind of ‘private space’ to expose your secret inner ideas about the factors affecting the formation of clouds? From my perspective, these kinds of private discussions are not only not what is needed. This two-faced nature of you guys’ statements on the science are a large part of the problem itself.
All you need do is look through the response to both releases of email. Many of the “final nail in the coffin of AGW” type of statements make great play about disagreements. If the general populous (and policy makers) were informed about scientific methods, then this would be o.k.
However, agendered politicians would grasp at these signs of disagreements and use them to show that the science shows nothing.
With AGW the future of the human race is being decided. There can be no 100% prediction of certainty of the future (obviously) so do we live on the side of caution or do we say “I want my standard of living, let the future sort out the troubles (if any) I have caused”
University of East Anglia Job application.
A varied role, applicants should be experienced with delaying Freedom of Information requests. Responsibilities will include data mis-management, and the applicant should be able to invent new methods of data manipulation, destruction and total loss.
Applicants should be able to demonstrate a reliable and consistent approach to e-mail deletion, although some training will be given.
Applicants with a track record of duplicity and obfuscation are particularly welcome at this juncture. Similarly, applicants will be expected to cooperate with a slimey assortment of pal reviewers, BBC journalists, Politicians and Alan Titchmarsh.
Anyone familiar with Excel or Matlab need not apply as any graphs produced will automatically slope up towards the right.
Closing date to be announced shortly.
Thanks Willis, good stuff and well stated.
I recall that Jones in an interview a few months back said that he had contemplated suicide over the Climategate 1 storm.
CG2 looks a lot worse for him in my opinion and Willis’ letter is applying a great deal of squirm to Jones. I also recall Jones saying that statistically the global temperature set has shown no warming since 1998.
Jones will be the pip that squeaks as he will no longer contemplate dying for the cause.
This is destined to become a classic I think.
I don’t understand why/how LevelGaze thinks it could be interpreted as bordering on “hysterical”. Its a comprehensive, well deserved put down and Willis was much much kinder than I would have been in similar circumstances.
This also highlights a very important aspect to confront the knee-jerk “out of context” people with: namely that some of the specific accusations being made against the team *can only make sense IN context* – usually the context provided by someone like Willis whom they are discussing within said emails. It makes the “out of context” excuse nonsensical.
There’s another great example of this from Ross McKitrick here:
http://climateaudit.org/2011/11/25/a-somewhat-late-response-to-schneider/
“Hiding the data will help the Noble Cause of saving the world from Thermageddon.”
– Why would that be? The data is supposed to show rising temperatures. Wouldn’t that just help the Cause?
– Well, the curious skeptic will just find something wrong with the data.
– And, of course, the database is such a mess, we couldn’t provide it anyway.
The entire science is founded in this. Adjust, Hide, data for the Noble Cause of protecting the Team/the global warmin science community and theory.
– They wonder why we are so skeptical.
Willis, a masterly anaysis and presentation. You could be a very effective Counsel for the prosecution.
Compare all that with what goes on between us in the blogosphere. We all unashamedly do our best in full public view. We slug it out between ourselves taking and giving hits mostly with good humour and the best of us acknowledge errors and adapt our work accordingly to try to get nearer that elusive reality about the climate system.
We need to clear out the dead discredited wood from climate science which means most of the current climate establishment.
Someone with adequate funding then needs to select a group of the foremost sceptic bloggers and create a new ‘Team’ to work in full public view to reclaim climate science and help it to recover from the catastrophic diversions of the past 30 years.
I agree with Latimer Alder here – a little precis required, stating simply what you asked for, what you were told and the behind the scenes reality. Then the whole thing finished off with what you repeated a few times: he lied, lied again, then again. Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading it.
Willis: Almost a polemic! I love your writing so much that I figure I’d have known this was from you even without your name attached. Just, WOW!
And like you, there were emails I wrote in my professional career that I slept on: I usually find that reading something I wrote ‘yesterday’ reads much like I am reading a letter from someone else, and I react to it accordingly, and word-smith it. It’s a good rule to live by (trouble is, it took some time for me to realise it! ).
Well said though!! It needed saying.
This is a good example of what it reads like when people express their grievances in an open and honest way, I wouldn’t call it “over the top”, I’d call it a very sincere letter of expressed disappointment. many probably wouldn’t understand how much of a let-down this is to someone like Willis.
It would be encouraging to see a reply from Phil Jones.
Of course, if Dr. Jones subscribed to the tenets of Fear-Forced (Post Normal) Science, it was his duty to prevent any question of his work which might cause public confusion and delay what he saw as an urgent need to swear off carbon power as a primary source of energy before it was all too late–the issue being so dire that Science must speak with one voice.
Willis it is a real pleasure to read this. I don’t agree with SHx’s comment that this is vindictive – quite the contrary. Many academics have closed ranks to defend him because he is ‘one of their own’, but his behaviour deserves no defence. Undoubtedy he is far from being the first academic to resort to such pettiness and schoolboy behaviour; it does him and his profession no credit and, while there may merit and redeeming features in his science (I say generously), he and his colleagues should be vilified for their behaviour.
Let’s not forget the encrypted files as well, there are bound to be some more nuggets in there which either FOIA will give up or someone will crack.
I guess it should be possible to serve notice on UEA and the Met Office in advance, perhaps through injunction that deleting of emails will be frowned upon. I guess as the police are already involved such deletions are dubious even if they are batting for the Team.
IanH
If I may, I can only commend what Ausiedan has said:
Emphasis mine. And, where do we go from here?
The prosecution rests its case – it appears absolutely airtight! We await the defense…but we’re not holding our breaths. It seems impossible that the defense could adequately explain away the mountain of well-presented incriminating evidence? Guilty as charged! The defendant is declared a pathological liar devoid of honesty, integrity and honor!
Re:Willis Eschenbach says:
November 27, 2011 at 1:37 am
“I thought about toning it down.”
When “mendacity” is charged, the accuser’s voice should be raised and the veins in his neck should be standing out.
Check and……..(wait for it)……………………………………Mate
“Dr” Jones,
I hope you enjoy your Christmas present!
http://www.skepticalhealth.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/PHILJONES.png
Love,
Someone who think’s your full of it.
What a great post Willis. This is exactly what was needed at this point in time. Members of the ‘Team’ and their wailing sycophants now have something they continually claim is missing – context! You and Steve have actually explained much of this in detail over the past few years, but now there are newcomers to this scandal and this is serves as a one-stop shop for orientation to the origin of this madness.
(Although I’ve posted this before, I somehow think it fits perfectly here today, dedicated to Willis …)
————–[video]————–
He wouldn’t be afraid to show his feminine side … if he had one
His mother has a tattoo that reads … son
At museums, he’s allowed to touch the art
————–[video]————–
People hang on his every word … even the prepositions
He could disarm you with his looks, or his hands, either way
He can speak French … in Russian
————–[video]————–
His reputation is expanding, faster than the universe
He once had an awkward moment … just to see how it feels
He lives vicariously … through himself
————–[video]————–
His words carry weight that would break a less interesting man’s jaw
He’s won trophies for his game face alone
He bowls … overhand
It needed saying but what makes me more bloody angry is the plethora of lickspittle proapagandists that continue to cover for these charlatans with their code of silence. No more so than the those on the public teat at the Australian Broadcasting Commission, sad to say still beholden to the Great Global Gruesome Greasum and completely failing ordinary taxpayers in exposing an appalling crime against science and the scientific method.
To appreciate that all you need do is search the words ‘climate change’ on their website and checking the date search to place their plethora of articles in order from latest to earliest and wince for all that was and is noble in the rational pursuit of knowledge and science-
http://search.abc.net.au/search/search.cgi?query=climate+change&sort=date&collection=abcall_meta&form=simple
Scroll through and read the headings and weep for what the Team have triggered in our public institutions everywhere.
.. and answer came there none (I think we can all reasonably expect that outcome). By way of a mild digression, as unsure quite where to post this question: how might the revelations in CG2 affect the progress of the current law suit seeking to liberate Mann’s emails? Are there any legal minds here who might have an opinion?
Willis, you really must read the HARRY_READ_ME.txt file from the first leak. It givers a very clear picture of the meticulous record keeping at CRU.
Here’s a taster from the file:
——————————————
“Here, the expected 1990-2003 period is MISSING – so the correlations aren’t so hot! Yet
the WMO codes and station names /locations are identical (or close). What the hell is
supposed to happen here? Oh yeah – there is no ‘supposed’, I can make it up. So I have 🙂
If an update station matches a ‘master’ station by WMO code, but the data is unpalatably
inconsistent, the operator is given three choices:
You have failed a match despite the WMO codes matching.
This must be resolved!! Please choose one:
1. Match them after all.
2. Leave the existing station alone, and discard the update.
3. Give existing station a false code, and make the update the new WMO station.
Enter 1,2 or 3:
You can’t imagine what this has cost me – to actually allow the operator to assign false
WMO codes!! But what else is there in such situations? Especially when dealing with a ‘Master’
database of dubious provenance (which, er, they all are and always will be).
———————————————
Read the whole thing in the original Climategate files.
Great stuff! Did you email him a copy for the climategate IV archive?
Thanks Willis, but this is personal to me too. These guys’ are trying to send me back to the stone age and really for no reason. A slight warming here or there, greener vegetation over there, I grew up with the nuclear threat but it was real, this is a fantasy of an epic demise. It seems that “Dr. Phil” is really “Dr. Doom”
Dear Wiilis,
Exellent piece (of cake). The problem you are highlighting is that of naïve scientists taken by the nose of people (politicians) with other agendas. In history this is an re-occurring event, with science, as you rightly outlined, as the main victim.
I missed the ABC’s motto scrawled in the top right hand corner. A very apt one under the circumstances- ‘Exercise your Imagination’
An ode to Team science and global warming…climate change…climate vulnerability… etc..
WOW, Willis!!! Excellent open letter!!!
How, though, do you think there is any way possible for these “scientists” to ever return to “public” service?
Under any such circumstance in the REAL WORLD these men would be made to relieve themselves of their positions–in disgrace–over such malfeasant actions.
It is absurd to think we can place any trust in them at any point, ever again.
Moral of the story:
Don’t mess with Willis Eschenbach.
Willis,
We are all in your debt. Thank you for your dogged pursuit of the truth.
Of course Jones has previous in having dodgy research papers published for which the data subsequently went missing!!
The Keenan – Wang affair had Jones right at the centre of this.
‘Wang’s defence to the university inquiry says that he had got the Chinese temperature data from a Chinese colleague, although she is not an author on the 1990 Nature paper.
Wang’s defence explains that the colleague had lost her notes on many station locations during a series of office moves’
As Tom Wigley (formerly Jones’ boss) said to him.
: “I have always thought W-C W was a rather sloppy scientist. I would …not be surprised if he screwed up here … Were you taking W-C W on trust? Why, why, why did you and W-C W not simply say this right at the start? Perhaps it’s not too late.”
Amazing how all this mud has never stuck on Jones and he is still highly regarded in some circles.
Alan
I get really angry with these guys, it seems they are untouchable,
my heartbeat goes up, this must be bad for my health.
So there is a consensus in my family, the science is settled that climatologists are bad for your health.
Willis, isn’t this just flat out illegal, and breaking 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.”
Willis’s characterization of Dr. Jones’ actions reminds me of David Niven’s epiphany in the Bridge Over the River Qwai when he realizes the marvelous bridge he pushed his fellow POWs to construct was going to be a godsend to their Japanese captors. Of course, I don’t ever expect to hear Phil Jones emulate Niven’s famous words: “What have I done!?” Those are reserved for men of high character…
@Willis and Anthony
I think its brilliant to tell the truth flat out to Mr Jones as you do.
One comment though:
It is TRUE that massive piles of unadjusted temperature data seems to be available from GHCN.
Sites: These you can get from both appinsys.com and KNMI, the latter call it “GHCN ALL”, I have tested a number of stations, it seems to be the unadjusted ones.
GHCN has made things a little harder still by LIMITING periods of available data, so therefore, its only a HALF TRUTH that data are available from GHCN.
Non the less, the amount of available data normally are sufficient to recreate original temperatures for several areas, and this is what I have spent half a year doing the last Half year.
RUTI: http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/ruti.php
In the latest writing , just finished, RUTI USA, I have expanded scope to enable a much better understanding of how much temperature data has been adjusted for USA. And how.
http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/ruti/north-america/usa-part-1.php
Wish me luck to make this article be accepted by E&E.
K.R. Frank
A perfectly honorable response Willis, perfect.
Wonderfully and devastatingly put, Willis!
I have a question. I’ve written about this over on one of the few alarmist blogs which doesn’t usually censor me, and received the reply that the UEA-CRU released all the raw station data in July. Here’s an article about it, by the BBC’s Richard Black:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14315747
(The UEA-CRU resisted to the end, but were forced to release the data by a ruling of the UK Information Commissioner.)
Here’s the data that they finally released, half a decade late:
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/station-data/
My question is, have you looked at the data which they finally released, and is it complete, and does this finally settle the problem of the UAE-CRU hiding temperature data?
It is time for the Captain Queegs of climate science to move on because the issues have become too important for them to be left in control as their behaviour has shown they are not fit for the job. Anybody watching the Caine Mutiny feels sorry for Queeg but recognises that the time for his stewartship must pass and make way for people more capable. We can still be grateful for their efforts when the area was not so critical to people’s futures and the issues were easier to manage.
As a layman who however has an immense respect for science and the moral discipline that I see as an integral part of science, I thought your letter was excellent. Restrained, reasonable and factual. Also damming. I remember when I read in Nigel Lawson’s book, An Appeal to Reason, the quote from Jones about not making data available as the intention was to find fault with it, I was truly shocked. That is not how a scientist should behave. It is incredible that some over here (in the UK) are still defending these people.
Note. Professor Jones, paid by the UK taxpayer, in his own words “does not consider himself a public servant”.
I have to agree with him.
Well said Willis. The saddest part of this whole AGW affair is that the ‘”ends justify the means” mentality shown by the pseudo scientists ie. doc jones et al along with a constant barrage of propaganda from the media has made it nearly impossible to convince even scientifically literate people that a fraud has been perpetrated on them. I was taught that in science if you could show one fallacy in a theory such as a broken Hockey Stick Graph then the hypothesis was incorrect.
Hi Wilis
Finding something wrong with other scientists’ data and ideas is an integral part of how science progresses. This requires transparency and access to the data.
Here we may differ a bit: In disciplines where experiments can be replicated nobody asks for other people’s data; one demands that the experimental method is public and confirmation or not comes from a different experiment and analysis on new data. For example, in this latest brouhaha about faster than light neutrinos nobody is requesting the OPERA data to go over them with a microscope. The method is public and people are scrambling in various ways to do new experiments and evaluate their own old data in view of the new claim. On the other hand nobody is requesting the world to do economic harakiri because of the OPERA results. So your statement:
:
I think you are a scientist, and a reasonably good one, who was hard squeezed by two things—the Peter Principle, and Noble Cause Corruption. When you began your scientific career, your sloppy record keeping didn’t matter much. And you didn’t want to be the record keeper in any case, you wanted to do the science instead, but you kept getting promoted and you ended up curating a big messy dataset. Then things changed, and now, climate decisions involving billions of dollars are being made based in part on your data. Disarray in your files didn’t make a lot of difference when your work was of interest only to specialists. But now it matters greatly, money and people’s lives are at stake, and unfortunately you were a better scientist than you were a data manager.
is the relevant one.
Climate data
a:) are not reproducible by a new experiment
b:) The subject has been politicized beyond belief.
Also a note about secrecy: when one believes one has a great new scientific insight, the higher than the speed of light neutrino velocities for example, the people involved in the research are highly secretive because : 1) they do not want their work to be preempted by another group/experiment and/or 2) they want to be sure they have control of the errors/subject before announcing the results. I am sure if we got the OPERA e-mails a lot of secrecy will be bandied about, and it will be normal. Psychologically an extension of the football team mentality which keeps the strategy before the game secret. Scientists are human and have the human traits.
It is b) that is the lynch pin in this mess. The demand for the world to immolate itself i because of a scientific publication, that cannot be refuted by a new experiment, and on which data people are sitting like hens over the clutch.
R Brown says:
November 27, 2011 at 2:12 am
Proof beyond all doubt that Jones has no integrity whatsoever from Mr Eschenbach.
Is there any person or authority that can sack and/or prosecute Jones for his lies and deception?
Yes – the UK Government Department for Education could/should remove accreditation from the University of East Anglia or from the departments involved in climate science and CRU as a minimum and stop any further government grants – as could the US Department of Energy. However, as it appears from the recent release of emails that there is a level of collusion between government departments and UEA/CRU, I would not expect any such action. The families of senior members of the UK government are getting significant sums of government subsidies for windfarms and (to borrow Willis’ phrase) have Noble Cause Corruption and are trying to ‘out green’ the rest of Europe.
This is the area that I find most annoying – if the UK Government (and for that matter the US Administration and the EPA) were to revoke ALL ‘green house’/global warming regulations and taxes since say 1985, the economies of both countries would recover extremely rapidly possibly in months.
It might have seemed like an academic exercise at the time it started but the AGW fallacy has been responsible for many deaths and the destruction of economies. These deaths of pensioners from the cold and children without food are continual – one child dies every 6 seconds from hunger, All based on the scheming self-aggrandizement of a few ‘scientists’ used by the power hungry politicians and bureaucrats.
The letter while good, was essentially a waste of time and effort. I doubt Phil read it through to the end and it will be ignored. What I have garnered from the e-mails and correct me if I am wrong here, is the huge amount of cash provided by the US taxpayer to fund this stuff. The thing to do is to lobby your government’s elected officials to defund this project. Phil has gotten used to blank checks to fund his exotic junkets and media hanging on his every word. The way to hurt Phil Jones is to make sure that his future pronouncements are ignored.
There is, if this article represents the truth, one simple extraordinary conclusion to be drawn:
NO PAPER SUBMITTED FOR PUBLICATION BY CRU SHOULD HAVE BEEN ACCEPTED.
Because it is the rule of science that the methodology from the research paper must allow those ‘skilled in the art’ to replicate the findings.
It is clearly impossible to replicate the findings if those skilled in the art don’t know which measuring stations’ data to use.
They can come up with their own set of stations and publish their own conclusions, but they can’t validate the work of CRU, because they don’t know what data to use.
This doesn’t even address any ‘tricks’ used to modify the data for UHIs or whatever.
The truth to me is very simple: there’s nothing really difficult in analysing temperature data from a load of weather stations, so this obfuscation is about retaining a ‘competitive advantage’ over others in the field. By not revealing the precise mix of weather stations nor releasing the algorithms used to ‘rationalise’ data.
What is going on is that personal competitve battles between academic groupings is interfering with the timely development of public policy.
The scientists are playing by the rules of science, whereas they now need to play by the rules of proper global policy making.
Unfortunately, that is being abused too. By IPCC et al.
Time to start again, me thinks….
Willis, you have made your passion visible.
It was your duty to do so; to yourself, and to us!
The rest of us have witnessed, mostly at a distance, a segment of the scientific community, aided and abetted by powerful organisations, loose its integrity and reduced the public’s trust in every field of scientific endeavour and in the many scientists and engineers who are addressing the real problems that we face in the world.
Without integrity, what future science?
Who else can tell it like is was, if not a man (or woman) on the front line?
I forgot to say: Thank you!
Willis,
Stepping back toward the more fundamental premises of Jones and his associated AR4 & AR5 team of IPCC gamers, I would like to ask the question, “Why do these people need the motivation that they are saving the planet?”
I offer the answer to that ‘why’ question with my thought that they had empty lives as a product of their education. They needed someone to give them a purpose. Look at their education to see why it failed.
Therein lays the source of scientific lemmings like Jones and ‘Team’. The leaders of those lemmings are the ideological environmentalists.
Then ask why are the ideological environmentalists motivated to save the planet. That answer must necessarily to one’s fundamental assessment of the nature of human beings per se.
John
How many papers used HadCrut3 that need to be retracted now, and papers that used them, and so forth? Now I see the urgency behind BEST, they need to backfill the swamp.
If in exchange you offered a short correspondence course on the ‘Excel trend line plotting’, you could have been more successful in your application.
Are we watching a Shakepearean tragedy unfold here? I am reminded of a quote by Macbeth, “I am in blood stepped in so far that should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o’er.”
The UK’s Daily Mail has picked up on those emails I posted, and produced this article. It is rather damning of the cosy links that appear between the BBC and the CRU, including financial transactions, and advice for the BBC on how to ‘spin’ things.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2066706/BBC-sought-advice-global-warming-scientists-economy-drama-music–game-shows.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
Quote:
“Britain’s leading green activist research centre spent £15,000 on seminars for top BBC executives in an apparent bid to block climate change sceptics from the airwaves, a vast new cache of leaked ‘Climategate’ emails has revealed.”
It is worth a full read.
Willis, there’s a word missing in your open letter. It’s “defund”.
I applaud you Mr. E for getting it off your chest without rancor or name calling (calling someone a liar when they are, is not name calling!). I’m with the consensus that it was not bordering on the hysterical. Not even close!
@Steven Wilde says you could be an effective prosecutor and I concur..The depth of your letter fits the profession, however, you are working in the court of public opinion and perception and it could have been pared down a bit that the warmistas and general public might actually read it through. That’s not a criticism, as it is directed to one man but, because you offered it here, I assume you would like the public (more than a few of which are ready and willing to read your words!) to read it as well, and you know the attention span of most people!
One minor correction is needed. At one point you used “our” instead of “your”, I think.
Otherwise, I hope this gets the circulation it so richly deserves!
@Baa Humbug — I know exactly the sensation you describe!! My dad dressed me down one time and I thought I was going to pass out, the shame of being caught so intense! Now that I think of it, a principal, when I was in grade 2 or 3, managed to bring on the same feeling! Amazing what we remember from 60 years ago!
Methinks Jones and Mann et al may never have been subjected to that kind of experience? Or maybe one too many times and they don’t want to go through it again!
‘the polloi’. Oh, very good, Willis.
=============
Good on you, Sir!!!
If I felt I had nothing to hide in my science – This would be the time I’d demand an unbiased international judicial investigation.
I mean…It’s for the cause …………..
pretty nice job, Willis.
here are some suggestions for everyday use that will improve the quality of your discourse:
1- remove all adjectives that do not directly and exclusively modify important points. (do not use innuendo like policy lass whose turgid prose borders on pr0n)
2- remove analogies, metaphors and similes – imagery is not argumentation; it is semiotic and not useful for logic.
3- remove all personal pronouns; use passive voice. find a way. facts don’t derive ab hominem nor do they have gender.
4- do not speculate upon or impute motives (but you can raise such issues by asking – that means use a question mark, usually
do this in all your communications and you’ll sound like the monc.
passion doesn’t require uncontrolled release of energy. that’s for circus and outrage radio.
you are a good thinker. you’re not rush limbaugh.
They lie and they know that they lie, and now we know it too.
ROM says:
November 27, 2011 at 3:40 am
===============
ROM — I share your thoughts.
Willis — A long letter but necessary. However I disagree with any reconciliatory tones that you offered as far as Jones (or any of the others) returning to science. They need to be gone. Bernie Maddoff is in prison for a much lesser degree of a similar type of white collar crime. These clowns are white collar criminals. If this is continued to wash, it will be the end of science and justice. There should be an outcry from every honorable scientist and academic on the planet. The MSM has buried the last bit of their creditibility they ever built in the past. Where are they?
If, as Jones says, this is the way science works, I wouldn’t trust a scientist in the sh*thouse with a muzzle on his face.
I am reminded of the cabin boy who knew where the ship’s teakettle was because he saw it fall overboard.
In my opinion:
This is not over the top.
It is too long – for the WUWT community. A lot of the last third or so is too repetitious.
It is exactly one part that should have been used to censure Phil Jones at the end of the post-Climategate investigations.
And we still can’t replicate the HadCRUT3 dataset.
And here is another curious email. It is email number {120,042,656} .
(How did I manage to pick up such a high number?)
Anyway, Phil Jones is complaining (again) about Professor Courtillot from France, who criticises his data and his computer simulations. So Phil Jones says:
“”
From: Phil Jones
To: Gavin, Mike
Subject: Re: Edouard Bard
Date: Tue Jan 15 14:49:24 2008
Cc:
I know all this is a storm in a teacup – and I hope I’d show your resilience, Mike, if this was directed at me. I’m just happy I’m in the UK, and our Royal Society knows who and why it appoints its fellows! In the Science piece, the two (Prof) Courtillot papers are rejected. I have the journal rejection emails – the other reviewer wasn’t quite as strong as mine, but they were
awfiul.
Cheers
Phil””
Two points here.
a. It would seem that Jones’ appointment to the Royal Society was made for unspecified insider reasons, and not the quality of the science. An interesting comment….
b. Phil Jones was allowed to do a peer review on a paper that criticised his work – and not surprisingly he panned it and got it rejected. Now hold on a minute here, is this not a huge conflict of interest? Who gave Jones the papers to review? And why did Jones accept them, knowing the conflict of interest? And why did he not do an honest review, instead of deliberately rubbishing the papers, to neuter his critic?
This stinks….
As an aside, Prof Courtillot is an accomplished speaker, and presents a very good case against AGW.
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/03/prof-vincent-courtillot-speaks-with-clarity
.
I’m suffering from a touch of information overload, and tend not to read through long posts now. However I made an exception for this one, and boy, am I glad that I did!
An excellent, well written and not at all hysterical letter. Like you and others I doubt that a reply will be forthcoming…
From a none scientific perspective I give you this
again the wordsmith strikes you are an amazing person Willis, while I don’t understand 99+% of the higher math here you are almost always able to explain it down to where I can at least grasp what you are saying and as far as over the top not one bit this should be shouted from the rooftops and we should force every government official to read this twice then explain what it means and if they don’t get it right then they keep reading it until they do understand. (I know not much hope for Pelosi and Waxman and Markey and others but who knows they might be smart enough to learn.)
Mosher: If Jones believes that his reason for denying Holland is valid he doesnt have to worry about an appeal. Its immediately after they deny Hollands request that Jones requests the deletion of the mails. Making it appeal proof. Even if Holland appeals, they can say that they have nothing.
I hope you don’t follow Doc Jones beliefs in regards to FOI, because if you ever do, you may just find yourself in a heap of legal trouble. Phil only got away with it because the statute of limitations had expired by the time his illegal circumvention of the FOI law came to light via climategate 1.0. In otherwords what he believes and what the law requires are two entirely different things.
danj says:
November 27, 2011 at 6:30 am
Sorry…I think you mean Alec Guiness. But good spot.
Please write one to Mr. Mann (as a PSU science graduate, I’m reluctant to call him Dr.)! I’ll revel in that one even more!
An excellent post, thank you. I can’t imagine what is must have felt like for you to read these emails and see your “paranoid fantasies” turn out to be not paranoid enough.
Jones was prepared to dramatically shift the global economy, condemning billions of people to a 19th century lifestyle, in order to cover scientific fraud.
daveburton says:
November 27, 2011 at 6:41 am
The data that was posted was not actually the “Raw data” as it was
Station data file
Header file – as above
Year followed by 12 monthly temperatures in degrees and tenths (with -999 being missing)
So they had already computed the monthly averages rather than the daily average, plus what ever else they had decided to do with it.
Thank you Willis, thank you very much.
I agree with both your tone and substance. I cannot see how we are to tone down our thoughts on what is the greatest scam ever to be foisted on humanity. Well, maybe I’m exaggerating a little, for since the call to build the tower of Babel we have been scammed over and over again.
Your explanation based on the “Peter Principle” and the “Noble Cause Corruption” seems plausible to me, having seen way too many engineers fail as they get promoted into administrative positions. But at least in private industry and commerce they seldom can retaliate by taking over the whole industry to cover up their mistaken backs.
I regret having to work with data (HADCRUT3) so much probably “adjusted” as to have little relation to empirical reality. But even those data are not telling a story that is congruent with a CO2-dominated climate.
Even more, Svensmark’s work, together with climate sensitivity work by Idso, Lindzen, Spencer, and now by Schmittner are telling us much more about the real world we live in.
Inspired writing. Thanks so much, Willis.
In America, we expect answers to Willis’ questions. In Europe and the rest of the world, maybe not so much.
Reports of the global warming crowd have been accepted without proof and used to make law and regulation. When reports are accepted in such a fashion there is no need for brilliance in work so why work and keep records and why improve?
Worse are the actions of pro global warming scientists to denigrate and banish all work that brings their theory into question. Is this below the radar policy and if so how does that affect the next generation of scientists?
John Whitman says:
November 27, 2011 at 7:14 am
Willis,
Stepping back toward the more fundamental premises of Jones and his associated AR4 & AR5 team of IPCC gamers, I would like to ask the question, “Why do these people need the motivation that they are saving the planet?”
I offer the answer to that ‘why’ question with my thought that they had empty lives as a product of their education. They needed someone to give them a purpose. Look at their education to see why it failed.
Therein lays the source of scientific lemmings like Jones and ‘Team’. The leaders of those lemmings are the ideological environmentalists.
Then ask why are the ideological environmentalists motivated to save the planet. That answer must necessarily to one’s fundamental assessment of the nature of human beings per se.
John
====================
I agree with you completely. The following does not apply to your post but is somewhat relevant.
Regardless of the brainwash they have received, they still need to be held accountable. Only then will the other lemmings see that actions have consequences. To be straightforward, intentional deception is fraud. Motivative factors? Try money, fame and recognition, exotic travels, job security, influence, etc. Would they ‘save the world’ at their own expense? I could toss out a couple of analogies, but I will spare the readers of WUWT.
WIllis, a great and strident defense of the scientific method. In science, there is no place for lies. I disagree with one point though, that Jones should just go back to doing climate research. Nay, the man should be expunged and if he won’t go willingly (which would indicate some kind of remorse for his ill deeds) then he should be humiliated into retreat. The idea that ‘we’ would let a conspirator and serial liar go back to working in the same arena is outrageous. His foreknowledge of the inner workings and his relationships with all those around him make him a clear and present danger to all of the virtues that we hold dear. Climate science will not be able to recover any credibility until he is gone. Quite a few others too because; “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” – Churchill
RE: John Whitman: (November 27, 2011 at 7:14 am)
“Willis, Stepping back toward the more fundamental premises of Jones and his associated AR4 & AR5 team of IPCC gamers, I would like to ask the question, “Why do these people need the motivation that they are saving the planet?””
My take on this:
For some time there has been an environmentalist tone to the media which took a step increase with Rachel Carson’s ‘Silent Spring.’ The ‘heroic’ deeds of organizations like Green Peace stand out as a model for doing something significant with one’s life. This leads to a latent environmental radicalization of susceptible individuals, much like those in another society who might dedicate their lives to being martyrs for their religious cause.
It would seem likely that students who have been imbued with the ideals of environmental activism would tend to choose a career related to the environment for their life’s work. In the sciences this is dangerous as it may produce a ‘green’ bias in the work of a whole discipline.
A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections… a mere heart of stone.
Charles Darwin
Willis,
This is an excellent summary of your attempt to obtain information from CRU. Since Phil Jones is one of the key people involved in climate “science,” your open letter to him clearly shows his attempt to hide the fact that he could not support his own conclusions with data. Considering his prominance, This is very damning in itself.
However Dr. Jones is only one of the players on the stage of climate “science.” Some, as shown in the emails, are truly worried about science and are rightfully concerned by mistakes and distortions in key papers used by the IPCC. The emails also show that others like Mann, Santer, Jones, et al behaved like spolied children when their work was questioned. Rather than respond honestly, too many of the “team” members lashed out violently at anyone who questioned their work. Thsi is not the sort of response that one would expect from a scientist, but it is precisely the response one sees on the news from politicians.
Excellent work, and not at all over-the-top in my opionion.
Phil not likely be reading your open letter Willis. He might hear about it – Perhaps in a manner similar to how the team is on records discussing McIntyre.
Something like:
MM: “I hear that Ekenbaker fraud is up to his old tricks again, harassing us and telling lies.”
PJ: “Thanks don’t remind me. by the way, how’s your case going with that evil big oil funded denialist GOP politician from Virginia?”
MM: “We should hire someone to investigate them both!”
Anna V……………. you are wrong. Just plain wrong. Sorry!
These guys started digging their hole in 1988 and have been digging furiously ever since. They have hit a McIntyre stone, McKittrick, Stone a Watts stone and a Willis stone and have kept on digging. The hole is now so big and deep that there is no way out except the courts. That’s why they are buying thick nappies / dyppers by the tonne.
Absolut brilliant, Willis. Många tack!
(=Absolutely brilliant, Willis. Plenty thanks!)
Brgds from Sweden
//TJ
Willis:
Thank you for providing the path taken to aquire a simple data set.
Whether I am a skeptic or not, is not an issue. I don’t understand the reluctance to openly share the data. There may, or not, be something wrong with the methodology, but how would one ever know unless you had the data sets? As an objective person, I would think one would want to share the data sets to provide additional verification of correctness.
By the very nature of the responses of CRU, it shows fear, which shows uncertainty implied.
This is quite distasteful to observe.
jjthoms says:
November 27, 2011 at 4:56 am
Your claims are self defeating. If managing the data was that difficult then the scientists could not have used it as evidence.
Your statement about values Begs The Question (Is Circular). We have to create a science of climate change before we can conclude that we have reason to lower our standard of living for the sake of future generations.
daveburton says:
November 27, 2011 at 6:41 am
Here is a comparison between Hadcrut and BEST for Heathrow Airport for 1975
Hadcrut
1975 7.0 5.1 5.0 8.1 10.1 14.6 17.5 18.5 13.7 9.8 5.7 4.0
BEST
1975 12.7 11.0 9.8 10.8 9.2 11.0 11.9 13.3 10.5 10.2 9.6 10.0
At least the Hadcrut data looks like UK temperatures, which is more than you can say for BEST.
But the Hadcrut data has a lot of UK stations missing comapred to best.
oebele bruinsma says:
November 27, 2011 at 6:01 am
No, these people invented their so-called science then practiced it against the lucid warnings of genuine scientists such as Professor Daly. They were not naive. They knew what they were doing from the beginning.
Frank Lansner says:
November 27, 2011 at 6:35 am
Willis was asking for the data that Jones used; that is, he was asking for Jones’ handiwork. He was not asking for a source from which the data could be extracted.
Willis, great letter. It needs to see the light of public. Perhaps James Dellingpole could do something with it in The Telegraph.
daveburton says:
November 27, 2011 at 6:41 am
Sorry, my mistake that was gatwick Vs Heathrow, here is gatwick Vs gatwick
Hadcrut
1975 7.0 5.1 5.0 8.1 10.1 14.6 17.5 18.5 13.7 9.8 5.7 4.0
BEST
1975 12.2 10.5 9.3 9.6 8.2 9.9 10.6 11.6 9.7 9.4 8.3 8.2
Interestingly hadcrut data for gatwick stops at July 1998 and best continues to March 2010.
A few thoughts.
1. I feel and agree with your anger and recognize your honest attempts at restraint. We find you at the sadly thin leading edge of realscience attempting to strike back at the realpolitik Empire which has eviscerated almost everything science has struggled through over the short time we have had science (Darwin comes to mind, for instance). Lying about data, what has turned into some of the more important data ever from a societal impact perspective, which you either lost or made sure you lost, made sure you deleted, exhorted and conspired with others to delete? Mr. Jones (note I did not use Dr. as a sign of respect to science) stands today as the poster child of the new post-Norm: flexible ethics. And proud of it.
2. Sadly again, Mr. Jones as poster child of Post Normal Flexible Ethics, is but a small piece of the anti-science and antisocial fabric we have come to respect today as not only our perverted peer-review process but the dangerous core of what our public institutions and governments have become. It really does not matter much how corrupt all of it has become and/or will become given that so few can even comprehend much of it. Is this truly as far as we have come as a species?
3. Speaking about how far we have come as a species to this moment in our own evolution we are left to ponder the sort of pride and vindication the Phil Jones and Michael Mann’s of our world are actually experiencing knowing, and having admitted their wrongdoing. Imagine knowing your own mendacity then having it rubber-stamped by commissions and investigations that don’t even consider your malfeasance. Imagine what species of pride and munificence this engenders! Who here could, in a sane state of mind, derive anything, anything at all, remotely equivalent to joy from such a travesty?
4. Willis, reading your letter immediately sent me to the Federalist Papers from which I draw a few quotes:
Number 2 (John Jay): When the people of America reflect that they are now called upon to decide a question, which, in its consequences, must prove one of the most important that ever engaged their attention, the propriety of their taking a very comprehensive, as well as a very serious, view of it, will be evident.
Number 28 (Alexander Hamilton): If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no recourse left but the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government, and which against the usurpations of the national rulers, may be exerted with infinitely better prospect of success than against those of the rulers of an individual state.
5. Keep up the good fight Willis, very inspiring to this scientist.
William
Rigorous, meticulous, conscientious scientists can still make mistakes. Sloppy data record keeping reflects sloppy mindset, sloppy analysis, sloppy interpretation ultimately becoming sloppy science which is unbelievable.
Willis says:
Call me crazy, but for the selfsame reason I don’t want to make it easy for you to hold that kind of free and frank discussions about how to present believable lies to the public about the climate.
What, and destroy Climate Science’s o’so enlightened “method”?
Infinite thanks for exquisitely spelling it out for us and for them, Willis. But when it comes to Postnormal Science’s “method”, spelling doesn’t count, either. It all depends, dontcha know…on what it takes to “win!”
Call me crazy, too, but their idea that they are going to “win” is just another one of their own necessary delusions, Phil.
Willis, your mastery of speech is on the way to Churchillian. Like Monckton.
Your speech has been echoing round my soul all day. This needs to go out widely.
And I’ll come back to respond more when I have a bit more time.
anna v says:
November 27, 2011 at 7:01 am
“Here we may differ a bit: In disciplines where experiments can be replicated nobody asks for other people’s data; one demands that the experimental method is public and confirmation or not comes from a different experiment and analysis on new data. For example, in this latest brouhaha about faster than light neutrinos nobody is requesting the OPERA data to go over them with a microscope. The method is public and people are scrambling in various ways to do new experiments and evaluate their own old data in view of the new claim.”
Your analogy gives far too much credit to Jones and The Team. As Professor Daly explained to the so-called climate scientists, they did not and do practice scientific method. The data points that they gathered take for granted experiments that were never performed. This is clearest in the case of “hiding the decline” that we learned about in Climategate 1. They discovered that their selected tree rings diverged from past records and from thermometer records for forty years after 1960. Rather than publish this important finding about the unreliability of tree rings as proxies, they hid it. Genuine scientists practicing in accordance with scientific method would have undertaken empirical research to discover what caused the decline in tree rings. Those are the experiments that Jones and The Team owed to science but hid from science, from their critics, from their funding agencies, and from the world.
If climate science is to become a genuine science and tree ring proxies are to be used as evidence, it is incumbent on climate scientists to create the physical hypotheses that can be used to explain and predict changes in tree rings as the environment changes over hundreds of years.
CET for 1975
6.8 4.4 4.8 8.3 9.9 14.7 17.4 18.7 13.5 9.9 6.3 5.3
Hadcrut 1975
7.0 5.1 5.0 8.1 10.1 14.6 17.5 18.5 13.7 9.8 5.7 4.0
BEST – are air temperatures for the air-con into departure lounge (11+- 2 degree C)
12.7 11.0 9.8 10.8 9.2 11.0 11.9 13.3 10.5 10.2 9.6 10.0
Stephen in Awe of Anthony says:
November 27, 2011 at 7:27 am
Are we watching a Shakepearean tragedy unfold here? I am reminded of a quote by Macbeth, “I am in blood stepped in so far that should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o’er.”
___________
I, too, have been thinking of Macbeth. I think that I entitled an essay for a high school English final, “To o’er leap the banks and shoals of time”. Macbeth certainly is a timeless tale of ambition, with many parallels to the present situation. To think how much time and effort has been wasted just trying to get the data, when a release of just the metadata, as sloppy and embarrassing as it might have been, would have turned attention to how best to analyze the data.
Round about the caldron go;
In the poison’d entrails throw.—
Toad, that under cold stone,
Days and nights has thirty-one;
Swelter’d venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot!
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
The IntelligentVoter’s Guide toGlobal Warming
http://www.quadrant.org.au/Intelligent%20Voters%20Guide.pdf
Politics has led to crude sloganeering. Australia’s proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme is a misnomer. It is a scheme to reduce carbon dioxide, not carbon. Carbon in the form of airborne soot is a pollutant. Carbon dioxide is not.
I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming the matter is already settled … the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world … – Michael Crichton
Richard Lindzen has pointed out that much of the radiative effect of carbon dioxide emissions has already occurred. The next 100 ppmv added by mankind will have only about half the effect of the first 100 ppmv. The scientific case for a strong AGW effect is weak.
Adaptation to adverse climate change, if and when it does occur, may be the best and only viable strategy.
If this letter is “defamation of character” Dr Jones could easily sue for a large sum of money in the English High Court. I don’t think he will and that will prove that Willis Eschenbach is right in substance. I wonder how Dr. Jones will explain his inaction to his fellow scientists and particularly Dr. Mann who is not shy to sue if he decides to ignore it.
Please forgive the typo:
“As Professor Daly explained to the so-called climate scientists, they did not and do practice scientific method.” Should contain a second ‘not’: “did not and do not practice scientific method.”
It was obvious, from the “Harry read me” file of Climategate 1.0 , that the University record-keeping and database organisation was in a complete mess.
I can understand how – you start off with a few files which are OK for supervising your own work and a research student or two, but then … the world’s records pile up at your door … no professional records management, or the will to acquire any … And a hypothesis which turns into The Cause …
Understandable. But still reprehensible.
Good letter.
But about the following: Gene Wahl admitted that he destroyed emails at Michael Mann’s behest.
Didn’t Gene Wahl admit that he destroyed emails after Michael Mann forwarded Jones’ email without comment? I think it’s splitting hairs, because I think that forwarding the email without a dissent or warning constitutes an implicit endorsement; but the legal case may disagree with me, as may other people.
steven mosher says:
November 27, 2011 at 2:10 am
Thanks, Mosh. I knew the broad strokes but not the detail.
w.
Too bad that Jones won’t (I’m sure) do an “Oscar Wilde”, where he sues for libel and opens himself to be be proven in court as a liar. And fraudster, if his behaviour was responsible for pulling in research monies.
All of this, as you point out, was unnecessary. So much of our trials and tribulations have such an unnecessary beginning. Hubris, thy name is man! (Jones or the other man).
Willis’ brilliance has been on display here so many times that the certainty of his talents and integrity is a model for what Jones and the Team should have & could have been all along.
This open letter by Willis is what potentially millions of people would say if they could.
It’s people like Willis and the millions he speaks for who are preserving hope for mankind.
Even with the enormity this institutionalized global (AGW) wrong over right has become, Willis, Anthony and others are showing us no wrong is too big to overcome.
However, I do have one complaint. Willis is too kind.
Suggesting Jones fess up and then go “work on your science in peace” is like suggesting a child killer fess up and get back to day care.
Perhaps that is over the top.
But Jones et al have long ago swayed so far from the path of science righteousness that there is no longer any acceptable return path.
Perhaps Phil can escape incarceration and work on something in the isolation of his basement, at his own expense, but academia must provide replacements for Jones who are acceptable.
He has disqualified himself forever.
Oso Political says: Latimer Alder says (@ 2:26am) that the letter is too long.
I vehemently disagree. As ‘they’ say, the devil is in the details.
A great deal of the problem with this entire scam is that legislators and policy makers do not take the time to understand what they are talking about, before creating legislation and authorizing damaging and costly rules and regulations, (Nancy Pelosi: We have to pass the bill in order to know what is in it).
I agree with you, Oso Politico. I think Willis Eschenbach did good work to write out the letter in its fullness, with all detail. The small amount of repetition was useful.
Phil is between a rock and a hard place.
The stalling is to keep some validity of his work intact. How many years has he made excuses?
He cannot prove his scientific assertion, being unable to come up with the documentation, so he’s left with opinion.
If a specific tree is said to fall in the forest, and there is no documentation to find the tree that fell, is the account accepted fact or opinion?
Wow. Just wow.
Put them in jail already!
stephen richards says:
November 27, 2011 at 8:40 am
“Anna V……………. you are wrong. Just plain wrong. Sorry!”
Anna V writes from experience and makes good sense therefrom.
”
Theo Goodwin says:
November 27, 2011 at 9:06 am
Willis was asking for the data that Jones used; that is, he was asking for Jones’ handiwork. He was not asking for a source from which the data could be extracted.
”
Ok, but are not the “unadjusted Hadcrut” = Unadjusted GHCN ?
Far most of the stations used by Hadcrut can be found in unadjusted GHCN.
I may be wrong (!) but are not hadcrut adjustments done to unadjusted GHCN data??
K.R. Frank
Willis,
I like others was mesmerized by your post. Too long? No, it wasn’t long enough. I would have stayed mesmerized for a post at least twice as long. Over the top? Not to my way of thinking. I have little sympathy for people (even otherwise good people) who do more harm than good in the name of a “cause.” I agree with ROM [November 27, 2011 at 3:40 am] when he writes I’m angry and getting angrier[.] I suspect I am far from being alone! My response to ROM is: “I can personally guarantee that you’re not alone.”
sHx says:
November 27, 2011 at 4:53 am
Yeah, sHx, if I were feeling all dignified and restrained, that would be great advice. But I’m not.
And while it certainly would be more productive to be all calm and peaceful about this, and I thought about cutting the intensity level of my writing way way back to make it appear that I was calm and peaceful about the question … well, that would be kinda deceptive since I don’t really feel that way, wouldn’t it?
Now that’s a venial sin to be sure, but in a posting about Phil Jones lying to me, my conclusion was that it was a sin that I was unwilling to commit.
So I left it like it was, because although (as you correctly point out) a short, snappy, restrained, and dignified response might have achieved more, this way it is a very accurate rendering of my thoughts and feelings. I figured if I needed the elevator speech version, I’d boil this essay down to size.
Thanks for your thoughts,
w.
Willis:
Excellent statement of the events and circumstances that skeptics find remove all credibility from the current “state of the art” climate science. In fact it is not state of the art anything, it is a shoddy mess, that would get a failing grade in most any reputable high school or junior college, let alone graduate level courses.
As your professors and teachers drilled into your head a thousand times, if you cannot show your work, your method cannot be demonstrated to be sound, therefore your conclusions are unreliable. You may have gotten the right answer for the wrong reason, you might have gotten the right answer because you cheated off your classmates paper, but more than likely your conclusion is flawed or flat out wrong, and without the ability of the teacher or some other person to step through the process your followed, there is absolutely no way to find the flaw and correct it.
You get an F and get to do it all over again with proper documentation, and restate your hypothesis and logic and what the falsifiable conclusion must be for your work to be correct.
The chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and in this case the “science” of climate science simply does not exist because it fails in every fundamental prerequisite to be considered science.
The original unmolested source data does not exist (cannot be reproduced on demand). How it was manipulated (molested and abused) cannot be explained or defended in detail, so the processed data has absolutely no provenance and is untrustworthy. The practitioners of that processed the data, have consistently lied and misrepresented the facts, so the only logical conclusion of an independent observer is that the data, computations and conclusions are far more likely to be lies than the true honest outcome of a valid and methodical process based on established scientific principles.
In short the entire edifice is untrustworthy and of no value, and none of its conclusions can be trusted to be valid!
(although some of them might be valid — but we have no way to determine which if any of them have any thread of truth or legitimate scientific basis. They may have accidentally gotten something right for the wrong reason)
Well written and a document that should be seriously examined in every professional ethics class taught at college level.
Larry
Frank Lansner says:
November 27, 2011 at 6:35 am
Wish me luck to make this article be accepted by E&E.
Good luck, Frank. Imo, you’ve done some great work for WUWT and at your site. Back to basics!
Everyone seems to be accepting of the idea that the statue of limitations has run out on these blatant violations of the FOIA and other infractions. However, isn’t there a caveat, concerning the non-application of the statue of limitation, when the tort is ongoing.
Seems to me that the violation is still ongoing therefore the statute’s clock has NOT started. Some Brit legal opinion is necessary and prudent. GK
Not only scientists need criticism. As a young lawyer, I always appreciated education as to my mistakes. So I would not make the same mistakes again. A mind open to criticism (constructive, preferably, but any old kind) is a mind in the process of formation. Close off the opening to criticism and the mind stagnates.
IPCC QED.
Hey Willis,
I do like the substance of the letter, but in my experience, and I have made this mistake myself, when you are telling someone something they don’t want to hear or don’t care about, then you need to be concise.
Your post was over 5000 words.
I think linking to specific emails and briefly explaining what happened would’ve made the message more likely to reach its intended audience. It was also a bit repetitive at some points.
I’m afraid old chap that you are writing letters for an age when they were delivered by horses rather than electrons ;).
Michael in Sydney says:
November 27, 2011 at 1:52 am
Did you ever think about taking whatever data you could find on their sites, doing an analysis, coming up with a completely different result and then just saying you used their data as provided?
Surely they would have has to ask what data you used and then publicly rebutting it with the actual data they used?
One of the new emails reveals Mike Mann laughing with his pals how MacIntyre had used ‘the wong data’ from the confusing jumble of a server he had told him it was archived on…
JPeden says:
November 27, 2011 at 10:15 am
…
“Good luck, Frank. Imo, you’ve done some great work for WUWT and at your site. Back to basics!”
Back to basics, you say: Exactly.
Im a software engeneer full time, ave been so in 14 years, so its VERY tempting to try out some code etc. on for example Unadjusted GHCN, but this approach is simply nonsense.
But you CANT use math, a model nor code to get useful data out of a dataset that has been systematically manipulated. I hope some day all good sceptics understands this.
Back to basics.
You have to FIRST understand best possible : Which data series tells a real story and which doesnt? What geographical area do they represent? Before such analysis, any mathematical approach is waste of time and can only yield the results that a manipulated GHCN data pile is designed to yield. (And then we look stupid too…)
So, back to basics, yep, spot on!
K.R. Frank
Great!!
I wish I had the skills to write such a comment.
Luckilly others have and write it.
Harry
Fascinating stuff Willis – well argued, documented and written. It just flows.
But – like others, I would expect …..crickets…. He doesn’t even view you on his playing field. You guys are from different worlds: Consummate Brit, advisor to Princes and Presidents and egalitarian American Cowboy.
I think you give him too much credit on the Nobel Cause angle. I think his responses are more easily explained by a Gentleman invested in a stratified societal hierarchy exacerbated by an Ivory Tower pecking order. THAT framework – not the Noble Cause – must be preserved at all costs. Its anathema for him to consider otherwise.
So, finally I find out why the Norfolk Police aren’t investigating Jones et al for possible breaches of the data protection act and the foia. It turns out that there is a statute of limitations in those cases. In other words you can break the law, blatantly admit you broke the law, and as long as neither come to light until after the statute of limitations has run out, then you didn’t break the law.
In other words the law is an ass.
And yet the Norfolk police are apparently still investigating the leak / hack of the emails. Presumably no statute of limitations applies there.
Great, I live in a country where the law is an ass.
If Cameron and Huhne’s plans for co2 restrictions and windmills come to fruition then the UK will enter an economic death spiral along with Australia and the US following along with their $15 trillion debt. Perhaps one eventual upshot of all this is if society self destructs under the double whammy of near total financial and social collapse and near Maunder style climate that a future society might come out of it with a more balanced set of laws.
Doubt it somehow. If temperatures don’t get severe for any period of time and the EU, UK, US partially sort out their economies then we’ll no doubt all go back to business as usual.
Always assuming of course that temperatures go up after the forthcoming minimum. Which Landscheidt predicted the timing and depth for back in 1983 (?). I guess nothing drastic will happen yet, as obliquity is only 400 years further on out of it’s 20,500 year trip than it was back in the 1600’s. Not enough to make any difference ?
Willis;
My understanding from the correspondence is that the key individuals you conversed with regarding the FOIA requests were lawyers.
If so, have you considered filing a complaint with their professional association?
I’m not as up on British law as I am on Canadian and US law, but on this side of the pond, wilfully collaborating with a client to destroy evidence and/or prevent lawfull access to evidence is grounds for disciplinary action up to and including disbarment. In some scearios it is actually a criminal act punishable by jail time.
The heat is on, and I for one would like to see the heat applied from as many directions as possible. Mind you, you would potentially be making that lawyer very wealthy. Once disbarred s/he’d have no reason not to write a tell all book that I’m rather certain would be a best seller.
Strong and to the point. Well done.
Dr. Phil should be very careful about his current batch of responses as other emails may come to light.
Why bother with peer review? The man is lost.
Even more deplorable than the behavior of Jones (and certain others) was the blatant whitewashing by the committees set up to investigate Jones et al. By pretending to investigate and summarily exonerating him, they condoned Jones’ behavior and gave the team a sense of invulnerability. Did they not even entertain that foia.org was clever enough to hold back additional emails?
Incrediblle and amazing. This post is “Gefundenes Fressen”.
@davidmhoffer:
more like consiglieres than lawyers
Willis;
I agree with your response to various critics in that the emotion in your letter is well justified. Similarly, the detail is justified because, as the saying goes, the devil is in the details.
That said, there is some repitition in your letter, and from a factual perspective, you’re advice to Jones as to how he got himself into this position and what he should do about it adds little to the facts and the order of events. If I may suggest, would it be possible to write a concise summary that would follow the open letter itself?
My reasoning is that this is a PR war. I can’t see the average reporter wading through the details of your open letter and turning that into an article. To win the war, the skeptics need well written but concise material that reporters can easily grasp and incorporate into their own articles.
If you are having trouble keeping the emotion out of it, I recommend getting a kitten. It isn’t possible to be angry with a purring kitten sleeping in your lap.
Willis,
You deserve every bit of praise you’ve received in this matter.
Jones should be sacked immediately.
It’s just that simple.
C. D.
dfbaskwill says:
November 27, 2011 at 8:05 am
Been there, wrote that, last October …
w.
Jimbo (quoting Jones)
“Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”>>>
That line has always killed me. Can you imagine trying to write a disaster movie in which the hero, privy to information about a looming disaster that will costs hundreds of thousands of people their lives, runs to the authorities and the media, begging them to listen, and when asked how s/he knows the impending disaster is real, responds with:
“Why should I tell you when you’ll just try and find something wrong with it?”
Yup, that’ll convince the authorities you’re not a doomsday profit for sure, and they’ll drop everything to evacuate a few million people on your say so.
Truth is stranger than fiction. Much stranger.
Jones and the people at UEA responsible for the so-called investigation (whitewash) should all be sacked / resign.
The tax payers of this country expect a higher standard of ethics than these public servants have shown. They should certainly go.
Vinaka vakalevu, Willis. Well said!
A note of warning to those searching the tranche of emails for any particular name, or phrase using the ecowho.com grepper, you may have returned only a portion of what you are looking for.
When searching the FOIA emails via Ecowho.com for”Eschenbach”, it returned for me only 3695 and 1305. However, when searching the downloaded FOIA email directory using Google’s desktop search thingy, a search for the same name returned a total of 17 emails. So be aware that more than one method may have to be used to extract all information on your desired subject.
@davidmhoffer, Dr. Pratt had an interesting way with kittens (totally ad libbed I’ve heard):
Forked tongue climate scientist???
From the founder of a residual oil extraction company.
When I came to this passage
I couldn’t help myself as I read that last line. I unintentionally went “aaaakkk??!!!”
As in WTF.
Yes, we all have known for some time that Phil Jones’ archiving of data was pathetically inept. But to have someone on the inside even say those words
Is amazing and stupefying. So, Jones’ massive shortcoming was outed, at least within their own circle. And even within that small circle, didn’t Jones feel like a blithering incompetent?
It is obvious that Mr Palmer was trying to do his utmost to fulfill the requirements of FOIA, and we need to give him due credit – at least up to the point where Willis lets CRU off the hook by backing off.
These emails Willis is using here are as close to the level of “hide the decline” as we’ve seen so far in the Climategate II emails. Jones’ explanations are as exceedingly dim as the “hide the decline” explanations of two years ago.
It seems a good chance that “delete the emails” may become the new “hide the decline.”
Well done Willis.The warmistas display the same arrogance as [SNIP: a bit of a mischaracterization and it opens the door to a discussion Anthony would prefer not take place here. -REP] Almost 500 years later and we have a “cause” with alleged scientists telling us the world is warming by mankinds own actions.I fail to see any difference between these two bigotted ideas.
Christopher Booker in today’s Telegraph summarised the fate of the UK economy due to successive governments policies due to these “scientists” and it looks very,very bleak. These people are very dangerous.
gnomish says:
November 27, 2011 at 7:39 am
In general, I would say that I agree with number 4.
Regarding the other three, you’re perhaps right for yourself, gnomish, but not for me. Unfortunately, by the time I had twisted my writing to fit your rules, it would scarcely be recognizable.
And more to the point, I generally find that my honest straightforward expression of what I truly think, feel, or believe is the most effective expression.
Now, I could express that in the passive voice as you suggest. Let me try.
The problem is that while I can defend the first statement, which is about the way that I express myself, I cannot defend the second. Using the passive voice inescapably turns it into a general statement that is not, or may not be, generally true.
In addition, I dislike the passive voice because of the denial of personal responsibility. If I write that “I believe that …” then I’m behind that statement. If I say “It is believed …” I take no personal responsibility.
Regarding analogies, similes, and metaphors, I once described a setup where models fed into other models, and then other models, then finally back as input to the first model as being “recursive enough to make Ourboros weep with envy.” Sorry, but I will not strip my writing of that kind of metaphorical imagery.
Indeed, at its base language is nothing but simile and metaphor. There is no way to remove it. If you removed all analogies, metaphors, and similes from the language, you know what would be left?
Mathematics. Which is fascinating but ultimately inadequate for carrying on a discussion.
I am aware that passion can be expressed in many ways. And I can only agree that I am a good thinker, and that I’m not rush limbaugh, thank goodness, but conflict-of-interest rules require that I add that I am far from unbiased on those two questions …
Finally, if you think what I wrote was an “uncontrolled release of energy”, read it again. Then read a number of the other comments saying they were surprised at my restraint. My writing can be fairly described in many ways. However, “uncontrolled” is not among them. I think long and hard about how I present my ideas. I choose my words with great care. I revise and rewrite until I am satisfied. I write with a clear purpose in mind. I consider how my words will be received.
As a result, I may be wrong, even wildly so, but uncontrolled?
Thanks for your comment,
w.
@willis
‘I figured if I needed the elevator speech version, I’d boil this essay down to size.’
You *do* need the elevator pitch version if you want all your hard work to actually influence uncommitted/agnostic people as well as making you feel better. To get it into the MSM, eg Delingople at the Telegraph or Benny Peiser in his GWPF news summary or to influence our Graham Stringer MP, you need to put it in a form that they find appealing and digestible.
You need to do the work for them so of the zillion and one things they get told about every day, yours is the one they remember and do something about. And for that you need a short snappy message…backed up by as much detail as you like. If you don’t like the idea of the elevator pitch, call it a ‘Summary for Policy Makers’ or something.
This has one more rather hideous implication. Is it really true that nobody can reproduce HadCrut3? Not even the people that originally published it? There is, nowhere, the computer code and data used to generate it with the provenance of the data indicated?
If true, that isn’t a matter to publish here. It is a matter to publish in a letter to the editor of Nature (and the other journals). How many papers in Nature have referenced this temperature reconstruction? I would strongly recommend that you rewrite this open letter in a form suitable for publication and submit it to Nature as a letter, with the subtext from the climategate emails in place just as you have them. Ask — nay, demand — that Jones et. al. pony up the code, the data, the provenance and demonstrate that they themselves can reproduce their own result or ask that they publicly retract it. Request that the journal make as a prior condition for acceptance of any future papers on climate research the simultaneous publication of all code and data used to create said result. Point out that the only defense against confirmation bias in climate research is an entirely open process, one that no longer permits the kinds of abuses revealed by the climategate emails to occur, hidden under wet rocks by some mistaken idea that good science can publish claims without evidence, results without methods, that good science does not have to be defensible and reproducible in a critical process of not just “peer review” to publication, but the ongoing affirmation of both methods and data afterwards.
rgb
And I have to agree with ‘gnomish’ a little. However passionately you feel, people of influence are going to be very wary of anything that smacks too much of a personal nature. Many of them have legal training and will be most strongly influenced by the strength of the actual case, not the strength of the way it is expressed. Andrew Montford’s excellent book is no less persuasive by being written in a neutral tone. Letting the facts speak for themselves is very powerful.
On a personal note, I very nearly lost a lucrative business opportunity because I was unwise enough to write in a very expressive and passionate style for an audience for whom this was completely inappropriate. Luckily a wiser and calmer head that I stall had the sense to ask to review it pointed out that I should be writing to impress the senior management of the client, not for my drinking chums in the saloon bar of the Dog and Duck. I rewrote and the contract was secured.
Willis,
your post is not over the top enough. People are dying because food is being put into fuel tanks instead of people’s mouths. Thousands are dying due to fuel poverty each year in the UK, high food prices and so on. These climate bandits are a bunch of very dangerous people who are killing innocent people every day. The ICC should spend less time focusing on Arab countries and looking a little closer to home.
DDT ban proved a great ‘success’ so why not CO2?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/oct/19/fuel-poverty-2700-victims-winter
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2430252/
Is it true that the U.S. feeds one quarter of its grain to cars?
Doug in Seattle says:
November 27, 2011 at 8:38 am
He will most definitely read it. WUWT and ClimateAudit at a minimum are required reading for anyone seriously interested in the climate, if only to keep abreast of what the “enemy” is doing.
w.
I’m surprised you referred to him as Dr. Jones in your communications with him. This charlatan may have received a Doctorate at some time in the past, but he is clearly unworthy of the title, given his ignorance of (or contempt for) the scientific method.
Willis, you have brilliantly set up the case to convict Jones of his crimes, yet you wish to allow the perpetrator to continue to ply his trade in science in the future: ” So in lieu of acknowledging what you’ve done wrong, please just go and work on your science in peace, Dr. Jones, and leave the denials of wrongdoing to those who haven’t done wrong….I’m sure there must be some small part of climate science left that is not already “settled”, something that you could profitably investigate.”
He is now not capable of being rehabilitated. He has destroyed his career in science and should be prevented from continuing to be anywhere near it. He has already “profitably investigate”(d) climate science and has used lies, subtrefuge and deception to continue that profitable “investigation”.
I greatly appreciate your letter, and feel for the vast amount of frustration that you must have experienced dealing with this bunch. But to let Jones continue to be incvolved in science is beyond the pale, and is, I believe, too magnanimous (and perhaps dangerous for society) for you to suggest.
Quite right; one of the curses of our age is the bureaucratic passive in such craven circumlocutions as “a mistake was made.” Instead of taking personal responsibility—“I made a mistake”—or attributing blame elsewhere—“one of my scientists admits he made a mistake”—the error is suggested to have been some natural occurrence, “a mistake, like some freakish storm, just, somehow, shimmered into spontaneous existence”.
Steve Oregon says:
November 27, 2011 at 9:43 am
I couldn’t disagree more, for two reasons.
The first is that I don’t trust Dr. Jones, but fortunately trust is not an issue in science. I don’t think that E=MC2 is correct because I trust Einstein. I think its true because lots of really brilliant folks have been unable (to date) to falsify it, and because atom bombs actually explode. Trust is not even in the equation.
So Dr. Jones scientific contributions stand or fall on their own. Which is why I encouraged him to return to the science and leave off the protestations of innocence.
Second, I truly don’t see Dr. Jones as the enemy who should be punished. I don’t see him as a bad person. For me, he’s just another poor fool who got seduced by the dark side. “Come to the dark side … we have cookies …”. I laugh about it, but I’ve been caught by Noble Cause Corruption myself so I find it hard to get all punitive about it.
And yes, I understand as well as anyone the cost of his beliefs to the poor of the world. He and the other AGW scaremongers have driven up energy costs around the planet. Higher energy costs don’t hurt them, they’re failed serial doomcasters but somehow they get government grants whether they are right or wrong, they can buy plenty of energy.
It hurts the poor. And history will judge the results of their machinations harshly.
But that is not a measure of some kind of “evil intent” or something on their part. It is a measure of their blindness and their addiction to groupthink. It is a measure of their hidden guilt at being the development winners, the ones with the money and the food, because little else makes sense to explain their actions. It is the measure of the depth of their quasi-religious fervor about a fantasized climate Eden, the shaft of the hockey stick where “once it never rained ’til after sundown”, all of which was ruined when man ate the fossil-fuel-fertilized fruit …
But that addiction to some Edenic climate myth to replace the lost Christian mythos … would you throw a man in jail for such a crime? Perhaps it’s because I’ve been incarcerated, but I wouldn’t want Phil to be tossed in durance vile for his actions.
More to the point, that kind of vindictiveness would make me no better than he is. Not my style. I do not want him punished. I want him neutralized.
Thanks,
w.
I want to second what Latimer Alder and others say above. Willis, you know I have been a long-time admirer of your eloquent and yet pithy writing. But I agree with others that you need to get an ‘elevator’ version into the MSM. Perhaps the Wall Street Journal, which has proved to be open-minded about climate science and Climategate in the past? Or at the very least, as someone suggested above, send it to the UEA student paper. Dr. Jones should somehow be made to acknowledge his mistreatment of your requests (and those of others) for information regarding the source data.
No passive voice is needed. This is a speech contortion introduced by science writers which sanitizes the relayed information of personal involvement and diminishes the apparent immediacy of scientific responsibility for errors. Your passion is not over the top. Crosspatch (November 27, 2011 at 2:04 am) got the magnitude of what these people were doing exactly right:
These people have [been] responsible for the theft of hundreds of billions of dollars from the taxpayers of the world. It is a heist of unimaginable proportion. It involves thousands of people who draw regular paychecks based solely on this issue. Entire corporations are founded on it. People are starving to death because of it.
In a world where the appearance of truth has to be based on science, it was scientists who provided the ultimate justification for governments, NGOs, quangos, and environmental extremists to extort money from hapless and misinformed taxpayers and donors to agencies who thought they were helping the greater good and ‘saving the world’ – not lining the pockets of misanthropes. Scientists must bear the responsibility for their role in Europe’s economic melt-down, and deaths from starvation, elevated electricity prices, or environmental activism in Africa and elsewhere due to the climate mitigation policies based on their ‘science’.
I thin Ross McKitrick’s piece would fit nicely into this mess… talking about ethical practices..
http://www.thegwpf.org/images/stories/gwpf-reports/mckitrick-ipcc_reforms.pdf
TheGoodLocust says:
November 27, 2011 at 10:25 am
I know you mean it that I should be more concise, and you are right, there was some repetition in the final part that somehow I couldn’t get rid of, it kept creeping back in … sigh.
But in fact I take your comment as one of the better compliments I’ve received in a while.
w.
I’ll come out and say it – by his own words Phil Jones has shown he is evil – anyone who is “cheered” by the death of someone who was obviously his intellectual superior (John Daly) is EVIL.
No more needs to be said except you should choose who you wish to side with carefully.
Hitler was evil and evil chose his side – look at the cronies and compare their moral “worth” – doing anything to win is evil and deserves condemnation – even if they had the slightest chance of being right – which I will not concede without some data and I know that will never happen.
Willis, you are a central figure in this drama and I think you needed to say this, in your own words. To me, this is less of an open letter and more like a victim’s statement at a trial. You are the aggrieved party and the treatment you have received by UEA is scandalous. I’ve criticized your (sometimes) hyperbolic rhetoric in the past, but in this case, you are clearly justified. The real question is: has the notion of justice been so corrupted by politics in the UK that there is no man or woman in a position of power who will step forward to pursue this?
Willis
not for me to tell you how to write a letter. As it happens I like your style. Suggest you send a copy to the Vice Chancellor at UEA and you might also send a copy to Jason Lewis at the Sunday Telegraph who seems to be taking a bit of an interest
see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/8469883/Lobbyists-who-cleared-Climategate-academics-funded-by-taxpayers-and-the-BBC.html
regards
Wilis,
After digesting your rant its shows a methodical and systematic approach to FOIA request avoidance. I think you will find that this behavior is far reaching and in every corner of the Climate Change crowd.
What ever happened to ethical and moral based science? is it dead? I think this is a systemic problem, one not limited to a very few. corruption knows no boundaries, rich or poor…..
Bill
Thanks Willis for speaking for me to the climate change cabal. Many of us have repeatedly written letters in our minds to the self appointed leaders of the climate catastrophe with less restraint and with juicier expletives. Few could have said it better. While this behavior of Dr. Jones is contrary to my view of what is ethical in scientific research, it is not necessarily contrary to the ethics that governs the American culture as controlled by the mass media.
An example is the current media frenzy over the sexual abuse of young athletes at the Pennsylvania State University. Mike McQueary witnessed abuse in real time but failed to respond directly by intervening on behalf of the victim. Recently, W. Briggs wrote this on his BLOG, Statistician to the Stars, He commented about the media’s rationalization of Mr. McQueary inaction, stating that anyone under similar circumstances would have walked way from the crime rather than get involved in stopping the attack. Of course the media are wrong.
I find a parallel to Dr. Jones’ response to the requested data. Rather than tell the truth he opted to hide the truth. The crime committed by Jones to camouflage the truth about uncertainties in the data is so large it pales compared to McQueary’s weakness. The billions of dollars spent to maintain a hoax about AGW and the lives lost because the money needed to feed starving people was spent to line the pockets of carbon bankers. His weakness is reflected in their real view of the global warming uncertainties as reflected in the e-mails from Climategate II.
The cover up by the members of the climate cabal is a manifestation of post-normal science that has been discussed at length in this BLOG. My concern is that the culture of the scientific community is shifting away from normal science towards the ends justify the means. This cabal is just one example that is being manifested these days in fields such as medicine, economics, and pharmaceuticals. Where are the checks that prevent post-normal science from taking hold? It doesn’t appear that there are any checks on scientific endeavors to prevent competent scientists from falling prey to the pressures to make the science fit, especially from the media itself. Even when the untruth comes out it has no impact. Dr. Jones and his co-conspirators have not been held accountable yet. If FIOA had not leaked the truth, no one would know.
When Willis Eschenbach writes from the heart, he writes most effectively. I keep handy a link to a wonderful post of his on Judith Curry’s blog from last July: http://judithcurry.com/2011/07/25/a-scientists-manifesto/#comment-90161
It is a sad commentary that even Curry doesn’t dare answer Willis’s question in that post: “What should my scientific response be when a prominent scientist says ‘Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it.’ ?”
W – well said, sir!
I agree with Latimer.
Righteous anger is indeed appropriate.
Rosco says:
November 27, 2011 at 12:47 pm
No, no, and no. Phil doesn’t even begin to rise to the level of evil. That’s a couple of orders of magnitude above what Phil could possibly achieve. He’s a house imp, not Asmodeus.
w.
Willis, since they won’t tell you what stations are used, why not play their game on them.
Cherry pick stations that show the world is cooling.
When they complain, well, you know what to do 😉
Ouch.
In the absolute best meaning of the word. Ouch, indeed.
Doesn’t look “out of context” from this angle!
Thank you for endeavouring to save (hundreds of) millions of energy users paying unnecessarily-high electricity bills inflated to pay for ‘green’ subsidies.
If (CRU-UEA) don’t know which data belongs to which station, then surely anyone can carefully select appropriate ‘matches’ to prove absolutely anything? [And truthfully quote CRU-UEA as source?]
Latimer Alder,
I have to agree with you. I started to produce an article for my Climate pages and ended having to just put up a link to Willis’ article.
Not that I did not enjoy reading the long of it, I’d like to have the short.
Dear Mr Eschenbach,
you have well expressed yourself in regards to the failings of UWE. If Dr Jones contends that the remarks are slandorous he will no doubt sue in the English Courts. If however no response is forthcoming then the statement stands. In England the Miranda equivalent is “You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence”
I agree with other correspondents that condensing your concerns into a 12 point summary ( as Martin Luther once nailed some other conceits) would be more effective as an indicment of sloppy conjecture purporting to be science.
crosspatch says:
November 27, 2011 at 2:04 am
If you believe Willis’ views are over the top, you should hear mine sometime. These people have responsible for the theft of hundreds of billions of dollars from the taxpayers of the world…..
_________________________________
Crosspatch, I am with you all the way. The thought of the death of Friday Mukamperezida, an ill young boy who was burned alive in his home. The thought that the World Bank, Al Gore, and UNIVERSITY ENDOWMENT FUNDS are AT THIS MOMENT gathering to profiting off the misery and starvation of babies makes me see RED.
This is pure evil and I hope that Phil Jones has nightmares each night of babies burning and babies starving and old folks freezing to death because that is what all his grant money has actually bought not science.
Might I suggest you use this letter as the basis for a book on this topic? I would volunteer to help with any background research that might be helpful, as I’ve written several blogs about the Chicago Carbon Credits Exchange, and have a graduate degree in a “hard” science. Feel free to send me an email, this is terribly important stuff.
At any rate, thanks for sharing this email exchange.
Many good comments, but, it’s all yours, Willis, and I wish it gets legs.
Willis,
Thanks for the feedback in November 27, 2011 at 12:28 pm
I understand and can’t disagree with your rationale.
But my thinking was more of a scales of justice approach.
Perhaps because I am unfamiliar with his career accomplishments, but I find it difficult to accept that the weighing of Dr. Jones’ scientific contributions against his role in damaging science, tips the scales in favor of his “return to the science”.
In your opinion is it a close call? Or is it an unnecessary judgement?
My impression is Dr. Jones has exhibited far too much participation in the dark activities and that whatever his scientific mind has to offer can be provided by many other honorable people.
So while I concur that incarceration would be vindictive, would you agree that Dr. Jones’ return to science should be limited to his own means? Where he would at least have the opportunity to add to the benefit side of the scales.
Peter Miller says:
November 27, 2011 at 1:09 am
But it seems to me that when ANY goverment goes to war, they will implement “the end justifies the means”. Because they want to win the war…..
For the common woman and child being burned alive, it would look like an evil act. For the perpetrator, it was neccessary. Brings you straight into the philosofical question on “what is evil” ?
__________________________
And the international banks profit from lending to both sides…..
Wars are expensive.
The ONLY reason to fight a war is if you are going to gain more resources/land than you spend or if you are protecting your land and resources. When Bankers introduced fiat currency/fractional reserve banking this completely changed the game. Now politicians/bankers/corporations can get fat off the tax payer money used to fund the war and hide the actual cost from the tax payers using inflation.
The ignorant masses are given other reasons for the war such as religion or weapons build up or what ever but this is what actually goes on behind the scenes. It is why the printing plates for Congressman Lindbergh’s book “Why Your Country Is at War “ was destroyed by federal agents in 1918. Source
“Second, I truly don’t see Dr. Jones as the enemy who should be punished. I don’t see him as a bad person. For me, he’s just another poor fool who got seduced by the dark side. “Come to the dark side … we have cookies …”. I laugh about it, but I’ve been caught by Noble Cause Corruption myself so I find it hard to get all punitive about it.”
Willis, as much as I appreciate the passionate synopsis, I think you are part of the problem, as well as the solution. Jones didn’t get “seduced by the dark side”, he is the dark side. He and his collaborators, the media dilettantes, the corruptible politicans, the poseurs, all of them. It is you who are seduced, not Phil Jones. Jones is a player who is getting caught out. The only way to fix this is to hold him accountable – make him squirm, make him talk, make him spill his soul about the contacts, the promises, the incentives , the nuances, nudges and winks that have characterized what can only be described as an enormous global fraud perpetrated against ordinary folk around the world. He’s not the biggest player nor the most egregious, but he is front of the house taking a bow in a chorus line longer than anything produced by Riverdance. They all need to be held accountable, and they all need a room in the gaol.
Willis, I think the saying goes something like this “all it takes for evil to prosper is for good men to do nothing”…… Thanks for DOING something :)…..
“Absolutelyl, completely, utterly incorrect. His belief on the subject is irrelevant, the law prevents him from deleting materials specifically to avoid FOI requests. It doesn’t matter if one request denial was “appeal proof”, others for the same material won’t be.”
you miss the point utterly
Jones and palmer both fear an appeal. they know it is coming
Morever, Jones is on record saying that if he is ever order to turn material over he will
destroy it frst
What Jones is doing is making the decision appeal proof.
THAT IS, if Holland appeals and WINS, they will then say that there are no mails.
ew-3,
At the very least the HADCRUT3 data is cooling, at a paltry -0.5°C (-0.9°F) per century, but cooling. Not good, but will it keep? I doubt it, coming out of a cold episode, as we are now.
See http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1980/to:2011.75/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1980/to:2001/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2001/to:2011.75/trend
Willis, my friends and I have the torches and pitchforks ready, where do you want us to assemble?
Seriously though, your letter is great, as are a lot of the comments. It’s too long to send as is to my Congressman and others, but I’ll send them a synopsis. I may just be Polly-Annish about this, but I think there’s a chance the elections next November might bring in enough conservatives to the House and Senate (and hopefully the Presidency) to stop all this CAGW crap in the U.S., at least as far as regulating CO2 goes.
Thank you Willis for a truly superb open letter. You have certainly covered all the bases but I agree with those who suggest the a shortened version might well be very useful, I also agree with those who suggest you should and it to the Vice-Chancellor of UEA and to the Daily Telegraph. To have maximum effect an open letter needs ot widely disseminated.
I disagree with those who suggest your letter is “over the top” since it is in a way nothing other than unvarnished truth.
Willis
Ignore everything gnomish has to say about style, except the bit about adjectives, you tend to over use them a bit. Avoid the passive voice, as you do. Metaphors and analogies are the meat of good persuasion if well used. Its a fine line. You do not want to end up sounding like the supercilious moncktopus.
You do angry american just fine, perhaps a bit too much self righteous indignation. But that’s you.
I thought it was a fine letter.
RE: Willis Eschenbach says: (November 27, 2011 at 1:17 pm)
“No, no, and no. Phil doesn’t even begin to rise to the level of evil. That’s a couple of orders of magnitude above what Phil could possibly achieve. He’s a house imp, not Asmodeus”
Quite right, he probably still views himself as suffering the ‘stings’ and arrows of an outrageous fortune, perpetrated by people too selfish to see the ‘Truth.’ A larger wound might be his realization of the scientific blunder that he helped to foster—all with the best intentions, of course.
I don’t know if anyone else has noticed this, but Willis’ tale does provide context for a document from the FOIA2009 release. This is from the jones-foiathoughts.doc file.
Options appear to be:
1. Send them the data
2. Send them a subset removing station data from some of the countries who made us pay in the normals papers of Hulme et al. (1990s) and also any number that David can remember. This should also omit some other countries like (Australia, NZ, Canada, Antarctica). Also could extract some of the sources that Anders added in (31-38 source codes in J&M 2003). Also should remove many of the early stations that we coded up in the 1980s.
3. Send them the raw data as is, by reconstructing it from GHCN. How could this be done? Replace all stations where the WMO ID agrees with what is in GHCN. This would be the raw data, but it would annoy them.
I was looking back through some of the FOIA2009 documents after Willis first described his exchange with David Palmer when I saw this file. It seems to mesh perfectly with the story.
The beauty of this whole expose is that it really doesn’t matter if the conspirators delete the e-mails prior to climategate1.0 as apparently all have been preserved in the as yet unencrypted final release.
It can be safely assumed that they stopped using their work computers for their cabal communications post 2009(?).
Willis,
what if they HAD the data and, as he stated he would in the emails, DESTROYED IT rather than turning it over? He seems to have been willing to illegally destroy emails, why not the data?
Also, has anyone ever seen the copies sent to the FRIENDS of Phil to see if they were better organized and more responsive to your request? I don’t remember anyone talking about having seen those copies?
“An open letter to Phil jones…”
Is there any other kind?
Good grief! This stuff doesn’t pass the sniff test of a 6th grade science lab.
Thanks Willis…keep clenching your teeth into this monster…
steven mosher says:
November 27, 2011 at 2:42 pm
“You do angry american just fine, perhaps a bit too much self righteous indignation. But that’s you.”
Now there are some cultural differences. I read Willis as principled, honest, frank, straightforward, lacking in cunning, lacking in duplicity, plain spoken, and as possessing several other characteristics that I expect to find in Americans. I find this combination of traits to be highly virtuous.
I realize that others see things differently. John Kerry would probably point out that Willis is loyal.
That is a powerful put down among some American elites.
I do not see self righteousness. Don’t you have to uphold your own peculiar beliefs as a standard for others to be self righteous? Willis does not do that.
The picture used in this article is out of date. Phil has a newer picture on his bio page at UEA, he’s sporting quite an advanced comb-over, he just can’t be honest about anything.
http://www.uea.ac.uk/env/people/facstaff/jonesp
Latimer Alder says:
November 27, 2011 at 11:46 am
@willis
‘I figured if I needed the elevator speech version, I’d boil this essay down to size.’
You *do* need the elevator pitch version……
You need to do the work for them so of the zillion and one things they get told about every day, yours is the one they remember and do something about. And for that you need a short snappy message…backed up by as much detail as you like. If you don’t like the idea of the elevator pitch, call it a ‘Summary for Policy Makers’ or something.
___________________________________________
Willis I love your letter but I have to agree with Latimer Alder. You need a short one to two paragraph summary placed at the top of the article with the supporting text below. This is how I was taught to write my reports for Upper Management in industry.
The people we want to target, our representatives in government, are very busy so the concise grabber intro followed by the supporting argument is critical.
This brings me to my second point. Can we use your letter as a supporting argument in our letters to our Congress critters, members of parliament?
Willis, if you do a condensed version, please put in some dates. As I looked through what you had posted, I kept wondering when things happened. Even just a month and year would be nice.
Thank you for the information of which I am much obliged, Thus reinforcing the corruption of scientific data, and the media revealing this as unquestionable truth.
Having followed the ban on smoking in the UK since 2006 I have a good understanding as how these peple in power will minipulate the populace by telling lies to further a social engineering plan.
The only hope is UKIP, as we (I joined in 2008) are the only major party who are speaking the truth and will not allow the political elite using the media to create control of people through subjecting them to mass hesteria by prounouncing, incorrect various data which fits in with their social engineering plan.
Congratulations – this letter is a masterpiece.
Willis !
I understand your sympathy for Jones , but he IS a liar, and they HAVE simply made the whole thing up.
Long ago, I didn’t believe in karma. But over the years, I’ve seen it in action. It’s a slow process for internal rot to reach the surface. Michael Mann’s Penn State is only beginning to see karma in action, a direct, if slow, result of their cover-up of child rape. There are indirect consequences to be paid, too. A thousand corrupt whitewash panels won’t stop the course of internal justice, of karma. “The moving finger writes and having writ, moves on. Nor all thy piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line.”
Nick Stokes says: “An open letter to Phil jones…” Is there any other kind?
Yes, but you wouldn’t be capable of understanding.
Regarding the issue of “free and frank discussion” as the reason to delete emails. From what I have read, these scientists need to learn how to have free, frank, and professional discussions. I work in a corporate environment and I have technical discussions with colleagues frequently. While we may disagree, we refrain from making inappropriate, perjorative, sniping, gossipy comments because that is, quite simply, not professional. The scientists need to learn that same kind of professionalism in their work-related email conversations.
@london247
You write of UWE, when I think you mean UEA.
The University of the West of England has no connections in this affair. The culprit(s) ply their trade at the University of East Anglia.
It’s like reading emails from Bobby Bonds and Roger Clemons about Steroids and Spitballs.
OOps I meant Barry Bonds, not Bobby.
Willis, though this was something you were personally involved in… you speak for many of us.
Thank you for your dogged pursuit of the truth. Your efforts are much appreciated.
Gail Combs says:
November 27, 2011 at 4:02 pm
Regarding your first point, you and Latimer are right. I need to boil it down for an abstract and put it at the top, for those that can’t be bothered. If I get inspired before I get distracted, I’ll do that … oooh, look over there, shiny …
Regarding your second point, I have long encouraged anyone who wishes to freely circulate, reproduce, copy and use any of my words or graphics as you will. I toss my thoughts and images on the electronic winds, and let them travel as they will. They are messages in bottles cast into the dark sea of awareness. And although I’m as happy to get credit as the next man, one rule of thumb for my life is that I can accomplish anything if I don’t care who gets the credit.
Thanks, good to hear from you,
w.
PS—My no copyright, credit optional policy leads to some odd corners. Not long ago I saw something on an aggregation site about an interesting pie chart about the sources of electric power. So I went and took a look … it was my own chart from a WUWT post, used as unattributed evidence for their own argument … gotta love it. Hey, the chart showed the truth about how much electricity comes from each power source. It’s just the facts. You get to draw your own conclusions from those facts. I’m happy to provide them, and glad that they are receiving wide circulation, as I think they are important facts.
Is this really another post complaining that specific data wasn’t spoonfeed to the writer? Why is there an expectation that everyone should drop what they are doing in order to spoonfeed data to those unwilling to gather it themselves?
sceptical doesn’t have a clue. TRANSPARENCY is an essential component of the scientific method. It allows skeptics [the only honest kind of scientists] to replicate experiments.
Providing the data, methodologies, metadata and code online is as simple as a few mouse clicks. The fact that the alarmist clique refuses to expose their claims to testability shows that they have no confidence in their conclusions.
sceptical needs to give that some thought.
I’ll accept that Jones did not and does not have evil intent. Nevertheless, in order in part to cover his malpractice, he was willing to lie, suppress critics, manipulate data, and corrupt the scientific enterprise. The consequences of that malpractice, that lie, that cover-up was a set of policies that would have retarded material progress for billions of humans. It may be the most selfish set of actions any human has ever committed. I’ve having a hard time figuring out why it’s not a crime against humanity. Sorry your children froze last winter after the unicorn methane plant didn’t pan out. Turns out the whole “Warming” thing was a cock-up on our part; not to worry, we’re fine.
The Green movement has to be stopped. They are responsible for more deaths in the third world than Neapoleon, Hittler, and Pol Pot put together. They have managed to do this by manipulating the public with a delusional science.
Contractor, guide, coral expert, crack amateur scientist… now I see “incarcerated” above. I want the book. Oh, enjoyed the letter.
sceptical says:
Are you for real? Did you actually read Willis’ open letter?
I think “no” in both cases.
Excellent work, Willis! We are all very appreciative I’m sure. Regarding this:
You are much more generous to Jones than I would be! Precise record-keeping is the foundation of all science. Where would we be in Genetics if Gregor Mendel hadn’t kept precise written records and calculations of the genetic expression from cross-breeding pea plants? Other examples of record-keeping abound….Darwin, DaVinci, Galleleo etc.
I view Jones and his ilk as the most dangerous kind of “scientist,” motivated by their own personal agenda as opposed to married to truth. I have no use for them whatsoever. You, sir, are a scholar and gentleman, and credit to this discourse. Best, C
sceptical says:
November 27, 2011 at 7:50 pm
No.
I am unaware that anyone has that expectation. Why do you believe such an expectation exists?
w.
PS—In a more serious sense, sceptical, science works because people don’t trust each other. We believe scientific claims because a number of scientists have tried to falsify them, and have failed.
One part of doing this is replicating what the original scientist did. To do that, it’s necessary to know exactly what data the original scientist used. It’s not a question of being “unwilling to gather it”. It is a question of Dr. Jones revealing what data he used. He didn’t gather it either, that was done by the National Weather Services of a host of countries. But for anyone to be able to say if Dr. Jones made any mistakes, it is first necessary to find out what data he used.
This is what Dr. Jones refused to reveal. It turned out he couldn’t reveal it, his data was in too much disarray, he didn’t know what data he used.
CRS, Dr.P.H. says:
November 27, 2011 at 10:12 pm
Thanks, CRS. Generally I agree with you. My point is that Jones is not an evil or a bad man. He is a weak and bumbling man. There are many folks out there that are more dangerous.
w.
Keith W. says:
November 27, 2011 at 2:56 pm
Very interesting, Keith. I hadn’t noticed that. I don’t see a date on the document. It certainly could be related to my FOI request. If so, it must be from a time before Jones realized that he didn’t have complete station lists or complete data.
I say that because one would expect them to do either option 1 or 2, or maybe even 3, although 3 would involve a fair bit of work. But in the event, they didn’t do any of the listed options. Instead, they shucked and jived about it, and finally admitted that they couldn’t deliver. So this must be from before he realized that.
w.
February 2nd, 1993, is it?
Location: Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania Time 6.00 am. ?
It’s worse than you think…….
“Also, he (Willis) fails to realise that GHCN and NCAR are databases and the ultimate source of all data is the respective NMS in the country where the station is located.
Even GHCN and NCAR can’t say where they got their data. They will say it comes from each NMS, but they know (and I do) that some comes from scientists in the country.
So, what he’s asking for isn’t possible – not for UEA (and not for GHCN and NCAR as they are not the original source). ”
Climategate2 No 5194
At this writing there are 256 posts, which mean Willis, there are 256 people around the world that have your thoughts, I would think that 99.9% agree with you 100% and P.Jones is not somebody you would want your kids to know, types, (he is not a people ) of his ilk need to go back in time and have there heads removed.
Poking around the emails I found this in 1599 which, given the traffic, may have surfaced already:
Draft letter from Met Off to Stuart Harmon:
“We are not in a position to clarify which data sets have been provided under such terms and which have not as records were not kept. ”
How Phil Jones handled it:
“Here’s an email from your Press Officer to ours about a letter from a Stuart Harmon.
I modified the intended reply a little and this went back to Dave Britton a few days
ago via our press officer.
I said the bit about records not being kept should be removed…”
Excellent post Willis!
I am hoping that you or a WUWT reader might have kept a copy of the original web page for Jones’ “Cherry-picked phrases explained”
It was first put up on 23 November 2011 but the page properties tell us the current page was modified on 25 November. The Google cache picked up the current page just before 8pm on 25 November. Does anyone have a copy or cut and paste record of the page as it was before 12:43 pm on 25 November, when I posted a comment about it on BH?
Last night, I did a search on CNN to see if there was any mention of Climategate 2.0. There was none. Meanwhile, there were stories on Miley Cyrus, a pizza vending machine and a Virgin Mary sighting.
It looks like the MSM is going to boycott this this story.
Mr. Eschebach,
Good letter, too long.
While your complaint deals with scientists ducking a legitimate request for data there is a related privacy issue that may need to be considered.
How do you propose scientists discuss ground breaking theory when there is a real possiblity their ideas may be poached?
Your ordeal with Jones et.al only serves to highlight this related issue. Your insistence on open and transparent discussion of scientific issues is apprpopriate – but it seems to me there is a case to be made for private discussions of ground breaking theory.
If you push the transparency issue too hard there may be unintended consequences in this legitimate privacy issue.
Kind regards, Andy Wehrle
HadCRUT3 is updated every month. So how could it be anything but a lie that they do not have a list of the the sites that are used to construct it?
Excellant post putting things into proper context? Very harsh but very fair.
Willis this may seem a very stupid question especially considering the amount of reading I do here and elsewhere. Has the data ever been released or is it still lost?
If so the man is not only a liar but incompetent unless of course it was lost accidently on purpose?
Dear Mr Moderator
Some times I post from an Iphone and the posts don’t appear. Could there be a technical reason for this?
[Reply: You should contact your iPhone service provider. Moderators only separate legitimate comments from spam, and apply the site Policy. ~dbs, mod.]
Dear Willis Anthony and Moderators
It is me quoted by MSFODB above and I now reproduce below the whole trail however this is worth noting also :-
“Our FOI person has ruled that if we get an FOI request from Harmon we can treat it as vexatious! I’m
surprised that your press office have bothered to reply to it”
I think a letter to the Information commissioner is appropriate?
Don’t take it personally Willis they lied to me also?
date: Wed Sep 9 09:26:25 2009
from: Phil Jones
subject: RE: Freedom Of Information
to: “Thorne, Peter (Climate Research)”
Peter,
Good luck with John and hopefully you’ll get to see him. If you do and he wants to talk
to me, then arrange a time to call him or vice versa – at home or here. John probably won’t
want anything via email.
I’m here today ad tomorrow, but in London for a UKCP09 meeting tomorrow.
I’m in Geneva on Mon-Weds next week at an IPCC D&A meeting. Peter Stott will likely be
in Geneva.
Cheers
Phil
At 09:12 09/09/2009, you wrote:
Sounds like a whole barrel of laughs. I hope to have booked John at 11 today but taht is
hopee rather than expectation. At least his diary said he was free then …! We’ve also
had something through parlimentary channels from a MP in Bromsgrove I think. It was
whilst I was off sick. I am chasing that down and will advise if it adds anything new to
the mix.
—
Peter Thorne, Climate Research scientist
Met Office Hadley Centre, FitzRoy Road, Exeter, EX1 3PB.
tel. +44 1392 886552 fax. +44 1392 885681
[1]http://www.hadobs.org
___________________________________________________________________________________
From: Phil Jones [[2]mailto:p.jones@uea.ac.uk]
Sent: 09 September 2009 09:04
To: Thorne, Peter (Climate Research)
Subject: FW: Freedom Of Information
Peter,
Here’s an email from your Press Officer to ours about a letter from a Stuart Harmon.
I modified the intended reply a little and this went back to Dave Britton a few days
ago via our press officer.
I said the bit about records not being kept should be removed. Our FOI person has
ruled that if we get an FOI request from Harmon we can treat it as vexatious! I’m
surprised that your press office have bothered to reply to it.
Also attaching another thing I got for amusement. This one was sent to the President
of the AGU (Tim Grove) and also to Alan Robock. Alan persuaded Tim to ignore it and gave
him some of the background. I wasn’t aware that Alan was so up to speed with all this –
good that he was. The funny thing is that the person in Cornwall sent me a hard copy
which arrived last week. He sent me a copy plus the letter he’s sent to the Pope. This
letter is up in the CRU coffee room. The attachments are amazingly complex and
ridiculous.
McIntyre has appealed here and that is going through the process. Two others have
appealed as well – academics at Anglia Ruskin University and one at Oxford. I have been
meaning to check up on the Oxford one, and may send it on.
Cheers
Phil
From: “Dunford Simon Mr (MAC)”
To: “Jones Philip Prof (ENV)”
CC: “Gook Susan Mrs (MAC)” ,
“Palmer Dave Mr (LIB)”
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 2009 15:45:51 +0100
Subject: FW: Freedom Of Information
Thread-Topic: Freedom Of Information
Thread-Index: AcocbS5xHTGcjyXjTgefRcdwsOHSfAOnaKpAAAHNl8A=
Accept-Language: en-US, en-GB
X-MS-Has-Attach: yes
X-MS-TNEF-Correlator:
acceptlanguage: en-US, en-GB
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 01 Sep 2009 14:45:48.0250 (UTC) FILETIME=[E4DBDBA0:01CA2B12]
Hi Phil
The Met Office would like our comments about a reply they plan to send to Stuart Harmon
– see below. Could you let me know asap if you are happy with it. I wonder if the line
about records not being kept is unnecessary? And I notice they are not saying that we
hope to provide some of the data in the future.
I attach the agreed UEA statement as a reference.
Over to you… (they’re in a hurry by the way).
Cheers,
Simon
Simon Dunford, Press Officer,
University of East Anglia,
Norwich, NR4 7TJ.
Tel:+44 (0)1603 592203
[3]www.uea.ac.uk/comm
A PREMIER RESEARCH AND TEACHING UNIVERSITY
2009 “What Uni” Student Choice Award winner and 2nd amongst mainstream English
universities in the National Student Survey
World top 200, European top 100, UK top 30 (Times League Table 2010)
Norwich: fourth highest cited UK city for science, thanks to the University and our
Norwich Research Park partners.
___________________________________________________________________________________
From: Britton, Dave [ [4]mailto:Dave.Britton@metoffice.gov.uk]
Sent: Tuesday, September 01, 2009 3:18 PM
To: Dunford Simon Mr (MAC); Richards, Chris
Subject: RE: Freedom Of Information
Simon, Chris
Please see the email below that I plan to send the Stuart Harmon. Do you have any
issues/clarifications.
A quick response on this would be very much appreciated.
Cheers
Dave
___________________________________________________________________________________
Stuart,
Firsty, I am sorry that I have not responded sooner. Unfortunately I have been away
from the office for the last 3 weeks or so.
The Met Office and CRU are not in a position to release this data under FOI or otherwise
as we have obtained some of the data from scientists and institutions on the
understanding that this station data will be be publicly released, mainly as some of the
data has a commercial value. We are not in a position to clarify which data sets have
been provided under such terms and which have not as records were not kept. As a result
we cannot release the data where we have no authority to do so and any such release of
data could damage relationships with data providers
The Met Office uses the data solely and expressly to create a gridded product that we
distribute without condition.
I hope this helps
Dave
From: STUART HARMON
To: dave.britton@metoffice.gov.uk; dave.britton@metoffice.gov.uk
Sent: Tuesday, 28 July, 2009 11:51:56 PM
Subject: Freedom Of Information
Dear Mr Britton
I am preparing an article on the freedom of information act and would request your
comments on why the Met Office is unwilling to release temperature data and methodology.
Provided to you is a link to Mr McIntyres web site
[5]http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6623.
The article I am proposing is to be based on the unintended consequences of abusing the
freedom of information act to prevent the release of information.
In summary I pose to posit the following:-
1 The reason for not releasing information is to hide information which will be
embarrassing. I will use the MP’s expenses to illustrate.
2 Another reason is because the organisation is incompetent.
3 The organisation is politicised and manipulates data to create an intended result.
Should the organisation subsequently be guilty of any of the above the unintended
consequence of not releasing data is that the organisation will bring British science
into disrepute. Which is not in the national interest.
Best regards
Stuart Harmon
Your post now has a direct Instapundit.com mention.
@dbs
Reply: You should contact your iPhone service provider. Moderators only separate legitimate comments from spam, and apply the site Policy. ~dbs, mod.]
Thanks for the response and my second apology to you for using Mr Moderator 🙂
Modern science, fearing God, used to thus be certain there was such a thing as absolute truth to be had because of Him.
Postmodern pseudo-science is certain there’s an absolute truth that there are no absolutes, and they’re absolutely sure of it. The difference between this and the oldest profession is insignificant.
“Andy Wehrle says:
November 28, 2011 at 5:21 am
While your complaint deals with scientists ducking a legitimate request for data there is a related privacy issue that may need to be considered.”
There’s no related privacy issue to be considered, other than an argument over redaction of some third parties. Courts have upheld all over the place that there is no expectation of privacy in emails sent by employees on systems that don’t belong to them.
From The King and I. Says it all.
Anthony, does this help any at all?
http://foia2011.org/index.php?id=5722
How dare Phil Jones not respond to a long, rambling, and rude post from a nobody with no credentials or credibility!
I meant Willis…not Anthony.
Does this CG2 email help?
http://foia2011.org/index.php?id=5722
mandas shows his ignorance. Willis has published multiple peer reviewed papers. That gives him the same credibility and credentials as others. So run along back to pseudo-skeptical pseudo-science for some better talking points, mandas.
Willis, thank you for speaking out the hearts of many of us.
But do ponder about aiming the arrow to hit the target, and as I’m sure you know, love not hate trains the aim well. In this respect you could take lessons in style from FOIA themselves. Their README is a masterpiece of concise and just statement.
Your own words at November 27, 2011 at 12:28 pm are also good.
mandas says:
November 28, 2011 at 2:39 pm
First, mandas, welcome to WUWT.
Next, for starters, as I said above, “I have no expectations as to whether [Jones] will reply.” So your “how dare Phil” screed makes no sense. Perhaps you are surprised that he did not answer. I’m not. An honest man might have replied. I had no expectations that Phil would. Were I his advisor, if he’s not willing to ‘fess up, I’d advise him not to answer my post, but instead to put his head down, focus on his science, and not stick his head over the parapet until the shooting dies down …
As to whether I am a “nobody with no credentials or credibility”, well, let’s take that a piece at a time. Rather than being a “nobody”, first, unlike you, I sign my own name to my posts … perhaps you’ve mistaken me for some anonymous poster. But I’m more than a man willing to sign my words. I’m the guy who wrote the first FOI request to CRU, the first link in the long chain that led to Climategate. I was a principal actor in Climategate, not merely an onlooker like yourself.
In addition to my involvement in Climategate, I have written several peer-reviewed scientific papers as well as unreviewed opinion pieces on the climate which have been published in a variety of scientific journals. I have been quoted in newspapers around the world, from the New York Times to the UK Telegraph to the Australian Sun. I was interviewed by the UK constabulary regarding the series of events I described above. I correspond regularly with some of the top scientists in the field.
I am also very well-known as an independent climate researcher and commentator on all things climate. By “very well-known”, I mean that my work is read regularly by scientists on both sides of the climate aisle, if only to keep up with what the ‘skeptic enemies of The Cause’ like myself are up to. By “very well-known”, I also mean that in the last year, my blog posts have attracted over three-quarters of a million page views.
And you are …?
Second, was my post “long” and “rambling”? Guilty as charged, your Honor. I’m describing a long, disjointed, rambling set of interactions that stretched over six months or so. Plus, as I also pointed out above, I’m somewhat over-passionate about it because to me, it’s not theory—it’s personal. Jones lied to me, not to you. So yes, long and rambling.
Third, is my post “rude”? I’m not sure how to answer that, mandas. When a man in authority lies to your face, is it “rude” to tell him he is lying? Because as far as I’ve been able to discover, there is no polite, courteous way to tell a man he’s talking out of his … fundamental orifice. It always comes out sounding just like “you’re lying” … and it has to because unfortunately, that was the rude truth of the matter. Phil lied, and there’s no polite way to say that.
And that is the problem. I couldn’t avoid being rude … because the truth was rude. It may not look like it, but I was actually trying to be nice to the guy, and if you look above, I’ve already been busted by a number of posters for just that egregious flaw in my character.
Anyhow, stick around, there’s always more to learn here.
w.
Lucy Skywalker says:
November 28, 2011 at 4:19 pm
Lucy, thanks for the support. However, your post is curious to me. I thought that their README was a very confusing document, with many quotes from the emails that would be quite unintelligible to the lay reader.
In addition, they opened with this:
Let me take this piece by piece. The first two lines are statements of where we are. I find these kinds of statements to be very deceptive. What is much more important is, which way are we going. Yes, it is true that over 2.5 billion people live on less than $2 per day … but it is also true that the number of people living on $2/day is currently at the lowest percentage of our population in history, and the percentage is still falling. For me, that is a much more relevant statistic. We’re winning the war on poverty, more slowly than anyone might wish, but we’re winning. That should be the starting point of any discussion, rather than doom and gloom. It needs to be the starting point because if you start with the assumption we are losing the fight, then we need to try something different. But if we are winning the fight, we have a very different task, to find out what is working and to increase and support it. So the starting point for such discussions is crucial, it defines the possible paths.
Next, they say one dollar can save a life, the opposite is also true, and … and what? Perhaps the conclusion is that a dollar spent on the climate madness is a dollar not spent on saving a life. Perhaps the conclusion is that we should find the dollars that are destroying lives and send them elsewhere. But is either of those their point, or is it something else? I don’t know.
Next they say that “Poverty is a death sentence.” Say what? If so why isn’t half the planet dead? Hey, I have worse news than that—life is a death sentence. And I have even worse news yet—unfortunately, far too often poverty is not a death sentence at all. Instead, it is a nearly inescapable curse of lack of fuel for cooking and heating and repeated illnesses and lack of food and rags for clothing and no medical care and no education and no clean running water and no opportunities and too many kids to feed them all no matter how long and hard you and your husband work, a curse that lasts a lifetime, sometimes until people wish they were dead. But a death sentence? No way.
And what about “Nations must invest $37 trillion in energy technologies by 2030 to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions at sustainable levels.” As far as I know, nobody has a clue how much it would cost to stabilize emissions, so the FOIA guys are just pulling numbers out of their danker regions. That number is meaningless. And what is their point? That we should spend the money because we need to stabilize CO2, because it’s only two trillion per year? That we should not spend the money? Does it mean that it is a huge amount of money and we should do something else? They don’t say. They just pull a number out of their … hats and it’s supposed to mean something.
That intro is followed by all the quotes, fascinating to me but unintelligible and perhaps even misleading unless you know the context and the subject matter and the speaker and the intended recipient … and most folks don’t know those.
So anyhow, Lucy, I guess beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder. If I could command the world’s attention with a “README” file as the FOIA folks did, it would look nothing like that. Given that they had no less than two years to work on their README statement, I though it was a third-rate, shabby offering and a huge blown opportunity. With some thought and some imagination and some graphics they could have had that file reproduced around the world, not just read by specialists. I thought their “README” file totally missed the mark.
And yes … YMMV …
My best to you, Lucy, thanks for your thoughts.
w.
thanks for a seriously considered reply, Willis.
language abuse is so common today that apparently it has been forgotten by some what the nature of it once was. once it was used for thinking.
the distinction of H. sapiens is that he has language. language is composed of words. words have definitions. if it has no definition it is not a word. proper use of words allows validation, falsification – it makes logic possible.
the adaptive significance of language is that it recapitulates the virtues of evolution – but as applied to information. by means of language, ideas can be stored, they reproduce in the minds of their hosts, are modified by mutation – but overnight rather than over eons, and the standard by which they are measured is equally analogous: as the fit survive, truth persists.
language is not ‘all similes and analogies’ – those are inadequate and cannot substitute for a definition because they are always both incomplete and incorrect on more facets than what they are intended to illustrate (note the word ‘illustrate’ rather than ‘explain’)
while other animals certainly use sounds, gestures and even body parts to communicate, this is completely distinct from language and receives the label ‘semiotics’. this is a form of signalling that lacks specificity and with which it is impossible to perform logic. odors are part of the kit, too.
E.g.:
“climate denier” what does this semiotic utterance have in common with language?
there is no logical meaning to be derived on the syntactical level, is there?
yet the utterance is barked and grunted by demagogues who seek refuge from reason and influence over the weak minded.
no reply required. if you get something out of it, it will probably trickle down to me. 🙂
[Moderator’s Reply: Bill, I presume the suggestion was in jest, which would be highlighted by a “/humor” type notation. More seriously, are you sure you want to give out that much information about your location? -REP]
Latimer Alder says
“The letter is too long and goes into too much detail for, for example my MP – who is a Cabinet Member and has some influence at government level – to read it.
For these folks you need a brief summary with all the main points (4 or 5 at most) that can be put on a single side of A4. With an appendix that she can give to aides to delve into the detail if felt worthwhile.”
Willis Eschenback is a renaissance man of letters who has just written a scientific enquiry classic. Boswell’s essays weren’t written in pointform and neither were Byron’s poems. Expecting Willis to condescend to the intellectual pygmies that so infest the political as well as scientific fields is to collaborate further to the dumbing down of science, as if that hasn’t happened enough already.
(typo corrected)
Latimer Alder says
“The letter is too long and goes into too much detail for, for example my MP – who is a Cabinet Member and has some influence at government level – to read it.
For these folks you need a brief summary with all the main points (4 or 5 at most) that can be put on a single side of A4. With an appendix that she can give to aides to delve into the detail if felt worthwhile.”
Willis Eschenbach is a renaissance man of letters who has just written a scientific enquiry classic. Boswell’s essays weren’t written in pointform and neither were Byron’s poems. Expecting Willis to condescend to the intellectual pygmies that so infest the political as well as scientific fields is to collaborate further to the dumbing down of science, as if that hasn’t happened enough already.
And what about “Nations must invest $37 trillion in energy technologies by 2030 to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions at sustainable levels.” As far as I know, nobody has a clue how much it would cost to stabilize emissions, so the FOIA guys are just pulling numbers out of their danker regions. That number is meaningless. And what is their point? That we should spend the money because we need to stabilize CO2, because it’s only two trillion per year? That we should not spend the money? Does it mean that it is a huge amount of money and we should do something else? They don’t say. They just pull a number out of their … hats and it’s supposed to mean something.
It means this:
“Poverty is a death sentence”
– http://ampedstatus.org/senator-sanders-poverty-is-a-death-sentence-cuts-6-5-years-off-life-expectancy-video/
“Over 2.5 billion people live on less than $2 a day.”
– http://givewell.org/international/technical/additional/Standard-of-Living
“Every day nearly 16.000 children die from hunger and related causes.”
“One dollar can save a life” — the opposite must also be true.
That’s as far as I’ve got – not my idea, someone mentioned in a discussion that ‘it seemed obvious that these were in quotes’ and found one of them on google, but didn’t give any info on it, iirc. “the opposite must also be true” looks like personal comment.
Myrrh says:
November 28, 2011 at 9:26 pm
Thanks, Myrrh. I should have thought about googling them. I’m still in mystery about why those were chosen and what they mean.
Appreciated,
w.
You’re welcome Willis, I looked at them and thought how stilted they sounded if he was doing a summary of points why, but completely missed registering that they were in quotes.. 🙂 Thinking about it now, he begins with references to real life facts and figures that are, quite frankly, horrific, I’m assuming the ones I haven’t found are of same ilk, and ends with a truly immense amount amount that ‘they’ claim will be needed to “stabilize” carbon dioxide, and then adds: “Today’s decisions should be based on all the information we can get, not on
hiding the decline.”
I think he, the “we” of the readme, are simply trying to point out that there are real concerns in the world, the people in real need, and that this money deemed necessary to spend is on something ‘hide the decline’ shows could be a non-problem.
What I’m finding more and more grotesque is the push for this big spend by ‘environmentalists’ comes with utter disregared for the effects this will have on real people, real lives, to the extent that there’s a whole cult of ‘genocidal thinking as norm’ behind this, and yet the majority greenies can’t seem to see how disastrous this is. We’ve had pointed out recently in various discussions the manipulations of the World Bank et al in using this carbon trading to land grab and murder opposition in Africa, I’m so hoping that someone in Durban reminds them of South Africa’s energy policy – to get cheap energy to all their population – is because it’s the people who matter.
Given his response to perfectly reasonable FOIA requests I wondered how would Phil Jones would go about submitting a proposal where funding was involved and which needed to be justified? The NERC Consortium Bid in 2009 is an example:
4007.txt –
Thu Oct 16 14:03:19 2008
“Dear Keith and Phil,
I don’t know whether you remember but some time ago I contacted you
regarding a NERC Consortium bid looking at past climates over the past
millennium. I was wondering whether you might still be interested?…
Professor Chris Turney”
2711.txt from Phil Jones to Chris Turney et al dated Mon Aug 10 15:27:37 2009:
” I can’t see how better proxy reconstructions are going to help constrain
the models with the carbon cycle feedbacks. This must be related to better forcing
histories, but how do we know we have these right? Can we somehow say from proxy/model
comparisons that if they don’t agree that well that it is down to the forcing, the model
physics or the proxy data? If we could reduce the dimensionality of the problem then this
might help. Volcanoes are a high-frequency response, so should be doable with shorter time
slices. Solar and carbon cycle feedbacks are more low-frequency, so harder to constrain.
I seem to floundering a bit….”
5262.txt Phil to chris et al on Fri Aug 21 13:55:23 2009
” Perhaps then, we don’t need the models in the consortium bid.
Just putting together all the proxy and instrumental data would be enough. It will be difficult
to sell, but it would be extremely useful for the whole community. The proxy data center at NCDC
(Boulder) does this but doesn’t rate the proxies. They just make the series available….
” Better quantified reconstructions should eventually lead to reductions in climate
sensitivity, but it will be a long process….”
“Andy Wehrle says:
November 28, 2011 at 5:21 am
“While your complaint deals with scientists ducking a legitimate request for data there is a related privacy issue that may need to be considered.”
Paul Coppin says:
November 28, 2011 at 9:00 am
“There’s no related privacy issue to be considered, other than an argument over redaction of some third parties. Courts have upheld all over the place that there is no expectation of privacy in emails sent by employees on systems that don’t belong to them.”
Paul, It appears you missed my point. I understand and agree that there should be no expectation of privacy in emails. Makes sense to me. I understand that when I push the send button my email may go around the world and be read by people I’ve never met. I understand that a FOIA request should NOT be handled cavalierly. I agree that Mr. Eschenbach was treated cavalierly and has a right to his anger. But all of that anger is focused post FOIA request.
I’m suggesting that If we push the idea of transparency post FOIA it may bleed into the pre FOIA phase of research. Before a major discovery is announced there is a great deal of collaboration that goes on between trusted colleagues. But that collaboration is guarded for fear of a less scupulous peer stealing one’s idea and claiming it for their own.
If we successfully demand tnasparency in all things scientific – both pre and post FOIA will we have accomplished something useful?
Regards, Andy Wehrle
Andy Wehrle says:
November 29, 2011 at 7:22 am
Good question, Andy. In fact, the authors of the FOI Act saw this question coming. In both the UK and the US acts, there are specific exemptions for the things that you mention—research work and their products, uncompleted work, unpublished work, unannounced results, and the like. In fact, I seem to recall UEA folks somewhere in the emails proposed that since the HadCRUT project was not “finished” (and never will be as it is updated monthly) that it should be protected from FOI requests on that basis alone …
But in any case, there are exemptions for the “pre-announcement” phase of science you discuss above, so your fears are groundless if these laws stay in place.
w.
Thanks for the legal feedback Will. Let’s hope the laws remain intact.
Phil Jones might have started out as a dedicated honest scientist, we dont know. And the members of the Nixon administration might have started out as honest public servants. But it is quite apparent what Jones has become, a lying politicised hack. He should be fired immediately, and somebody who everybody recognizes as honest replace him. No matter how much experience and knowledge he may have, he lacks the fundamental requirement for a responsible scientist, honesty and respect for truth.
The fundamental requirement for any valid scientific study is replicability. Since the original data apparently does not exist, or at least not in a form that can regenerate the study results from publically available raw data, replication is impossible. All results should be thrown out, and they should start over from scratch, with all data, and the algorithms used to process it, each step of the way, being available to the public.
And this is the “incontroverted scientific truth” that they kept throwing in the face of any “deniers”.
Willis thanks for that spirited reply. I agree with you to a large extent but in two details not.
(1) I took the first four statements as something over-simple yes but roughly agreeable to the vast majority warmist or skeptic, a good kickoff point for debate, as you’ve just showed. And I firmly believe we have to start off acknowledging where we are, to get to where we want to go. But I agree with, eg, of course we are better off than before, Lomborg has that right.
I myself wrote here awhile back “Living is dangerous, it always ends in death” – hey I have a feeling I wrote that to you in response to your “hitchhiking to a party” story… hehe
(2) “Nations must invest $37 trillion in energy technologies by 2030 to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions at sustainable levels.” I thought this fifth statement was tongue-in-cheek, taking the consequences of AGW belief to its logical financial conclusion – but not professing to believe it it – or maybe looking to do so which again can stimulate debate, the much-missing debate between warmists and skeptics.
I liked the overall brevity, and of course all of us saw the relevance of the quotes. A head piece to catch everyone, followed by key details.
Willis, I didn’t see all this clearly when I wrote before. Thanks for making me look again.
Willis Eschenbach, ” He didn’t gather it either, that was done by the National Weather Services of a host of countries.”
So the data was available to you to be able to construct a temperature history with or without Dr. Jones help. Have you found significant differences from Hadcrut in your construction?
REPLY: Jeez you’re clueless. Explain how we do that when CRU can’t even match the list of stations they use to their own dataset. Replication requires using the same procedures, like here: http://brohan.org/philip/job/crutem3/docs/ You can’t just randomly pick stations you “think” CRU used.
– Anthony
Willis said:
“Let me take this piece by piece. The first two lines are statements of where we are. I find these kinds of statements to be very deceptive. What is much more important is, which way are we going. Yes, it is true that over 2.5 billion people live on less than $2 per day … but it is also true that the number of people living on $2/day is currently at the lowest percentage of our population in history, and the percentage is still falling. For me, that is a much more relevant statistic. We’re winning the war on poverty, more slowly than anyone might wish, but we’re winning. That should be the starting point of any discussion, rather than doom and gloom. It needs to be the starting point because if you start with the assumption we are losing the fight, then we need to try something different. But if we are winning the fight, we have a very different task, to find out what is working and to increase and support it. So the starting point for such discussions is crucial, it defines the possible paths.
Next, they say one dollar can save a life, the opposite is also true, and … and what? Perhaps the conclusion is that a dollar spent on the climate madness is a dollar not spent on saving a life. Perhaps the conclusion is that we should find the dollars that are destroying lives and send them elsewhere. But is either of those their point, or is it something else? I don’t know.
Next they say that “Poverty is a death sentence.” Say what? If so why isn’t half the planet dead? Hey, I have worse news than that—life is a death sentence. And I have even worse news yet—unfortunately, far too often poverty is not a death sentence at all. Instead, it is a nearly inescapable curse of lack of fuel for cooking and heating and repeated illnesses and lack of food and rags for clothing and no medical care and no education and no clean running water and no opportunities and too many kids to feed them all no matter how long and hard you and your husband work, a curse that lasts a lifetime, sometimes until people wish they were dead. But a death sentence? No way.”
Superb analysis.
Well done Willis.
Anthony, I do have a clue, at least enough of one to know that the data was available to be able to create a construction of temperature. Others have done this including recently by BEST. The results are in general agreement with those from UEA. It seems anyone looking to question the UEA temperature record had ample data available to do so. The results could be and have been replicated.
Good work Willis,
I agree with those commenters who said to start over and build a new base from unadjusted data, then publish it along with references to the data sets. Overtime a refined product will result.
Policyguy
sceptical says:
November 29, 2011 at 3:13 pm
You are conflating verifying their results by doing what they did, with building a new global temperature reconstruction like BESt did (a “construction of temperature” as you call it). Certainly the latter could be done.
To do the former, however, requires knowing exactly what data they used. Without that information, you can’t verify if they did what they said they did. And that was the information that they couldn’t give me, because they didn’t have it.
Thanks,
w.
Well… what an incredible letter! It says it all, doesn’t it!
Firstly, he’s not Dr Phil Jones to me. To me, he is simply a disgrace to his academic qualifications. I’ll just call him Lucky Phil, for that is what he has been… very lucky indeed to get away with his sins.
Now you’d think that in order to minimise the damage being done to what’s left of the reputation of UAE, the Vice Chancellor of UAE would have informed Lucky Phil to seek alternative employment. But that’s not how it works today in Britain. Far easier to hold mickey-mouse inquiries that clear Lucky Phil of any wrong doing. Far easier to maintain the lie in order to allow the IPCC to maintain the rage rather than acknowledge it is in fact a broken and corrupt organisation.
Who says this sort of corruption only happens in third world countries… like Bangladesh, Nigeria and Kenya?
Mr Eschenbach,
Fantastic article, and one that should be aired in with the general public.
sHs: as one who had never heard of Willis Eschenbach before, therefore cannot be considered a regular fan, I was tranfixed throughout by his calm, reasonable, readable manner.
gnomish: I suggest your put your own presentational style in order before lecturing others about theirs.
Regrettably, my patience ran out about two-thirds of the way down these responses, but I did note that none seemed to be in disagreement with you.
w. “You are conflating verifying their results by doing what they did, with building a new global temperature reconstruction like BESt did (a “construction of temperature” as you call it). Certainly the latter could be done”
Don’t multiple global temperature series verify the work of UEA? If verification was your goal in requesting data from UEA, why were the specifics you were requesting necessary?
sceptical says:
November 30, 2011 at 6:07 am
There are two other climate datasets out there. They differ from each other as well as from the HadCRUT reconstruction. Since all three are different, a minimum of two of them (and perhaps all three) may be wrong. BEST, in turn, is different from all three of them. If we could “verify CRUs results” using the other three it would already have been done.
Two points about that. In science, before starting off to build something from scratch, it is extremely valuable to look at what’s already built and see if they made any errors. To do this, you take what they say is their data, and run it through the exact procedures they used. If you end up with their answer, then at least we can be clear that they have followed the claimed path. That shows that they haven’t made any stupid addition mistakes, or used radians instead of degrees, or that kind of thing.
To do that analysis, though, brings me to the second point. Science progresses by people checking each others work. In part this involves checking their procedures and data. And the only way that you can do that is to have access to the procedures and data.
You need to understand that these datasets used (ice core records, tree ring records, temperature records) are for the most part not duplicatable. I can’t go out and measure temperatures in 1922. So if I want to understand whether Phil Jones made any errors in the way he dealt with the 1922 temperatures, I have to have access to his data. No other way I can do it.
w
Willis Eschenbach, i understand what you are saying. My point is that the data for your example of 1922 temperatures was available to you with or without the help of Phil Jones. It seems the better way to check the robustness of CRU or any of the temperature sets would be to do what BEST did using the same data which was available to you and come up with your own analysis. Repeating verbatim what CRU has done offers nothing new. Perhaps a mathematical error could be found, but with the agreement between the different temperature sets it seems any error would be fairly insignificant. To me, it seems that what a group such as BEST has done does more to advance science than an audit of CRU could. Do you believe the difference between CRU temperatures and others are significant enough to warrant concern about errors?
Willis, you wrote this above to Gail Combs: Regarding your first point, you and Latimer are right. I need to boil it down for an abstract and put it at the top, for those that can’t be bothered. If I get inspired before I get distracted, I’ll do that … oooh, look over there, shiny …
What you do, you do with great energy and focus. I have reread this entire thread, in reverse order. I see no reason for you to revise what you wrote. Dr Jones acted badly, both deceitfully and contrary to the public interest. He deserved a rebuke, and your letter is well done, thorough and clear. Dr Jones has surely heard of the letter by now. Sorry to sound like a sycophant, but I’d say pursue the next shiny that catches your attention.
sceptical says:
November 30, 2011 at 12:02 pm
Thanks, Skeptical. The problem is, the data wasn’t available. That’s the point. Until Phil tells us which of the 33,000 station data files he actually used in 1922, neither you nor I can access that data. Sure, all of the data is out there somewhere. But it’s like me saying “I’m thinking of a number from one to ten. What is it?”
All of the data are “available to you with or without my help”, you have access to the numbers from one to ten, so what’s the problem?
The problem is the same as with Phil. Until we know which stations he was thinking of regarding 1922, there is no way to match them up with the data. That is what makes the data unavailable.
And in fact, at the end of the day the problem wasn’t that I couldn’t access the data used to build HadCRUT3. As the emails make very clear, the problem was, Phil Jones himself couldn’t access the data, or even tell me where I could access the data.
Finally you ask, “Do you believe the difference between CRU temperatures and others are significant enough to warrant concern about errors?”
My beliefs are immaterial. Until the data is available (that is to say until we know which data he used) we can’t even determine if there are errors in Phil’s work or not, much less see if they significantly affect the results.
The point is science, skeptical, not this particular case. In science, if you can’t access the data behind someone’s claims, they are apocryphal—we simply don’t know if there are errors in their work or not, because we can’t check their figures. We can run similar figures, which will tell us something, but we cannot determine if or where they’ve made mistakes. That’s why transparency is vital and crucial to the scientific enterprise—without transparency, without access to the other man’s data and code, there’s no science possible.
w.
Willis Eschenbach, I appreciate your time in responding to my postings. I still fail to understand why the exact stations used would be necessary. Wouldn’t the best way to advance understanding be for one to do what BEST did and try to determine how best to weigh the data available. With the different temperature series available, I fail to see how an audit of CRU temperatures helps to advance the science. Shouldn’t that be the point?
sceptical Submitted on 2011/11/30 at 9:53 pm
I’d like to spare Willis the irritation of dealing with this. Listen, [snip] and fathom this: the first step, the very first step, is to make sure that the researchers did everything right… take their data, their methods and their calculations and make sure there is nothing wrong. That is the FIRST step. What is there about that you fail to understand? Why should anyone recreate a series before the first series is validated? [snip].
[COMMENt: thanks, Robert. I’ve removed the insults, they seemed un-necessary. People learn things in different ways and at different speeds. “sceptical” seems to be making an honest attempt, he appears to be trying to understand what’s happening. Please cut him some slack. Thanks, -w.]
@martoz
I wouldn’t disagree that Willis has produced a fine piece of writing. Perhaps in future years it will indeed be seen as a classic and quoted approvingly by historians.
BUT, if you want it to be remembered s not just a good piece of writing but as a serious influence on affairs, then I suggest that it needs to be written in a way that makes it easy for those we wish to influence to accept it. And for busy politicos that means short bullets that they can easily absorb. You may not like these guys you may wish the world were otherwise. You may indeed be so intellectually pure that you don’t condescend to dirty your great brain even with thoughts of how to deal with them. That’s your prerogative.
But if you want things to change, you have to think through the way to give your ideas the best chance and act accordingly.
Being right but ignored may appeal to the van Gogh instinct, but doesn’t get things done.
“In closing, I am certain that if you wish to respond publicly to this open letter, Anthony would be more than happy to post your reply exactly as written. If you think I am mistaken in any part of what I have said, please let me know, and if you are right I will certainly retract any misstatement and correct the record. Until such time, however, what I wrote above is the truth to the best of my knowledge.”
Ummm,…. is Phil Jones a regular WUWT reader? There may be a flaw to all of this.
J Bowers says:
December 1, 2011 at 1:31 pm
Phil and the rest of the folks who want to stay up to date with climate science all read WUWT and ClimateAudit, if only to find out what us bad-boy ‘deniers of the revealed wisdom’ are up to. I know he reads my work because he railed at my writing in one of the Climategate emails, and gave one of my posts as a reason why he wouldn’t release the raw data.
In addition, I’m quite sure that if he didn’t notice it, someone will have pointed it out to him. My writing does a lot of things, some good, some bad, but “goes un-noticed” is generally not one of them. I had nearly a million page views over the last 12 months … so yeah, Phil has read it.
w.
This reminds one of Senator Joseph McCarthy who on numerous occasions held up a piece of paper (sometimes pink) and claimed “I have right here the names of 100 [or 500, or several other values] Communists working today in the State Department”. It is amazing how far he got without ever actually producing the names.
Equally amazing is how far Phil Jones has gotten without ever producing his data. I guess the AGW crowd just tapped into the Zeitgeist of the post Cold War industrialized societies. Who needs proof when people are saying what you want to believe?
——————–
Peter Miller says:
November 27, 2011 at 1:09 am
[ … ]
Anyhow, five bucks says you won’t get a response to your letter, which I found to be one of the most damning and well argued pieces of literature I have ever read.
———————–
Sir: you are far too timid: only $5 — less than the cost of one new CFL bulb? I’ll bet $50 — donated to the charity of Willis’ choice — that no response will be forthcoming from Phil Jones. After all, even if on the almost unimaginable chance I lose the bet, I’m virtually assured $50 in entertainment value watching Willis demolish the reply.
Willis: please reassure me your favorite charity is not Greenpeace, else I must reserve the right to make my donation in the form of CFL blubs.
Robert E Phelan, the series has been validated. It is in agreement with other independent series. This is why I don’t understand what Mr. Eschenbach was hoping to do with the specific data he was after. It seems to me a better validation would be for him to run his own series using the stations and weighting he considers best.
sceptical says:
December 1, 2011 at 6:20 pm
sceptical, I’m not trying to construct a new temperature reconstruction. I’m trying to determine if Dr. Jones made any mistakes in creating his temperature reconstruction.
This mutual examination of the claims and the results of other scientists is an essential part of science. In addition to the obvious benefit of finding hidden errors, it also prevents duplication. If I can verify that someone has not made any mistakes in their reconstruction, and I can find no fault with their data and their logic, then there is no need for me to “run [my] own series”.
So before cautious scientists go haring off to do their own reconstruction … they first examine the work of others to see if a new reconstruction is even necessary. And the only way to examine Dr. Jones’s work is for him to be transparent about his data, methods, and code.
Thanks,
w.
PS—There are a variety of similarities and a variety of differences between the three main published global reconstructions (GISS, GHCN, and HadCRUT). I’m not sure what you mean by “validated”.
What Willis Eschenbach described was a clear and utter breach of the Access to Information Requirements of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) Aarhus Convention. There is NO STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS with regard to the availability and accuracy of information on the environment.
It seems that the Information Commissioner failed to deal with the issue. Note paragraph 19 of the UK Environmental Information Regulations, which implement the information section of the Aarhus Convention.
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2004/3391/pdfs/uksi_20043391_en.pdf
This doesn’t surprise me as I have also been dealing with a similar failing of the Information Commissioner on a wind farm project in Scotland and this is now leading to a formal complaint to the relevant Section of Defra (Department of Environment, Food and Regional Affairs), which is responsible for matters related to compliance with the Aarhus Convention.
The issue here is that if Defra fail to deal with the matter professionally, then the way is clear to lodge a complaint (Communication) to UNECE Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee and have it examined in an internationally binding legal tribunal (remember the Convention is part of EU law and is a Treaty between the EU and the UN). While Willis Eschenbach is presumably a US Citizen, this is not relevant with regard to exercising his Rights under the Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters. See Article 3 (9) of the Convention: http://www.unece.org/env/pp/treatytext.html
There have already been quite a number of cases taken at the UNECE Compliance Committee against the UK.
http://www.unece.org/env/pp/pubcom.html
(Obviously Communication ACCC/C/2010/54 against the EU is another important one!). The Compliance Committee meet again in a week or two and then their next meeting is scheduled for mid March. It would be possible to close out the issue above and formally send it in as a Communication. This would certainly stir things up and it’s also free!
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2004/3391/pdfs/uksi_20043391_en.pdf
@sceptical – It is readily apparent from the ClimateGate email trail that the AGW community has perverted the peer review process by deliberately obstructing those with contrarian opinions. They publish only in friendly forums, whose editors will select their fellow believers as reviewers.
Yup – the data’s been validated! Mike validates Phil’s data, Phil validates Tom’s data, Tom validates Tim’s data, and Tim validates Mike’s data, and around and around they go. Move along, nothing to see here! Challenges and dissenting opinions cause them to close ranks and squash the offending party. These individuals have invested their identities and their livelihoods in this issue, and like most people with that much at stake they’ve lost all objectivity, as is readily apparent from their emails.
It’s about time those charlatons were detained at her Majesties pleasure, it would certainly please me.
Willis, you lie like a rug. You say 3 times you’ve “made your peace” with his original lies and incompetence. It ain’t, and shouldn’t ever be, true. >:)
We’ve been in the era of computer disks and server files for a couple of decades now. The excuses about “losing notes in office moves” etc. are just flat-out risible nonsense prevarication. What kinds of notes are they supposed to have been? Handwritten comments and spreadsheets? Tables filled out by typewriter?
Gimme a break.
Your little malaprop (profit for prophet) is actually a good phrase for what is going on with Greensc**s. Profiting from doomsday BS put out by The Team!
Heh.
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