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.
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?