This is a repost from Jeff Id’s Air Vent as it needed the wider circulation that WUWT can offer. I’ve also added the update from comment #9 he refers to.
The Right Kind of People
Posted by Jeff Id on November 28, 2011
UPDATE: Reader Stacey left a bomb in #9 of the thread below.
Long time readers here will recognize this theme, new readers can assume it from the URL I’ve been using. The concept of a complete consensus among humans only occurs when a structure bands them together on an opinion. In AGW science, we know for certain that we don’t really know much, therefore a consensus must come from unscientific pressures. I and many others have maintained that government funding has corrupted the science and systematically eliminated dissent at all levels. It is a self-filtering process (not a centrally controlled conspiracy) which ensures that climate scientists have a nearly singular mindset on global warming and a singular cause to crusade for. Scientists are naturally skeptics as the infighting on truly major issues in these emails shows. Discussions are often had in terms of good and bad people, causes and damage. How is it that a paper causes damage? Much of the malfeasance in these emails focuses on mitigation of damage to the ‘message’.
When publicly funded, leaders know that outward appearance is critical to the mission. In something as big as global warming, the illusion of a perfect consensus must be maintained for the now massive environmental departments and organizations including the IPCC to succeed in their political goals. Probably the single largest message from both climategate releases is the open viewing of the effects this mechanism has on the science itself. Repression of conflicting evidence in exchange for more extreme results.
It is actually humorous reading these guys talk to each other about how skeptics are oil funded and politically motivated followed by the next proposal for 3million euros from the taxpayer. They never seem to notice that the blogs are unfunded or that their cohorts who disagree don’t take oil money and the few who have get values 1/100th of the UEA. There is even an email from Mike Hulme telling greenpeace that the UEA won’t support their extremist attacks on Exxon and a second ‘private’ email telling them that he does. In case you are unaware, Greenpeace has become an openly anti-capitalist group with a stated mission of reigning in capitalism for the purpose of reducing our standards of living. Hulme, and many of his friends, are absolutely political extremists who somehow never seem to notice that they all agree with each other on politics. If you happen to be one who doesn’t agree, well they know how to take care of that little problem.
This first email relates to a paper I haven’t read that very well may have problems, but it shows the filtering process in action. It is a long email but important. I have highlighted a few quotes which help bring my points above into light.
From email #3265
X-Sender: f037@pop.uea.ac.uk
X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.1
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 09:29:22 +0100
To: c.goodess@uea,phil Jones <p.jones@uea.ac.uk>
From: Mike Hulme <m.hulme@uea.ac.uk>
Subject: Fwd: Re: Climate Research
Clare, Phil,
Since Clare and CRU are named in it, you may be interested in Chris de Freitas’ reply to
the publisher re. my letter to Otto Kinne. I am not responding to this, but await a
reply from Kinne himself.
Mike
From: “Chris de Freitas”
To: Inter-Research Science Publisher <ir@int-res.com>
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 13:45:56 +1200
Subject: Re: Climate Research
Reply-to: c.defreitas@auckland.ac.nz
CC: m.hulme@uea.ac.uk
Priority: normal
X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12c)
Otto (and copied to Mike Hulme)
I have spent a considerable amount of my time on this matter and had
my integrity attacked in the process. I want to emphasize that the
people leading this attack are hardly impartial observers. Mike
himself refers to “politics” and political incitement involved. Both
Hulme and Goodess are from the Climate Research Unit of UEA that is
not particularly well known for impartial views on the climate change
debate. The CRU has a large stake in climate change research funding
as I understand it pays the salaries of most of its staff. I
understand too the journalist David Appell was leaked information to
fuel a public attack. I do not know the source
Mike Hulme refers to the number of papers I have processed for CR
that “have been authored by scientists who are well known for their
opposition to the notion that humans are significantly altering
global climate.” How many can he say he has processed? I suspect the
answer is nil. Does this mean he is biased towards scientists “who
are well known for their support for the notion that humans are
significantly altering global climate?
Mike Hulme quite clearly has an axe or two to grind, and, it seems, a
political agenda. But attacks on me of this sort challenge my
professional integrity, not only as a CR editor, but also as an
academic and scientist. Mike Hulme should know that I have never
accepted any research money for climate change research, none from
any “side” or lobby or interest group or government or industry. So I
have no pipers to pay.
This matter has gone too far. The critics show a lack of moral
imagination. And the Cramer affair is dragged up over an over again.
People quickly forget that Cramer (like Hulme and Goodess now) was
attacking Larry Kalkstein and me for approving manuscripts, in
Hulme’s words, “authored by scientists who are well known for their
opposition to the notion that humans are significantly altering
global climate.”
I would like to remind those who continually drag up the Cramer
affair that Cramer himself was not unequivocal in his condemnation of
Balling et al’s manuscript (the one Cramer refereed and now says I
should have not had published – and what started all this off). In
fact, he did not even recommend that it be rejected. He stated in his
review: “My review of the manuscript is mainly with the conclusions
of the work. For technical assessment, I do not myself have
sufficient experience with time series analysis of the kind presented
by the authors.” He goes on to recommend: “revise and resubmit for
additional review”. This is exactly what I did; but I did not send it
back to him after resubmission for the very reason that he himself
confessed to ignorance about the analytical method used.
Am I to trundle all this out over and over again because of criticism
from a lobbyist scientists who are, paraphrasing Hulme, “well known
for their support for the notion that humans are significantly
altering global climate”.
The criticisms of Soon and Baliunas (2003) CR article raised by Mike
Hume in his 16 June 2003 email to you was not raised by the any of
the four referees I used (but is curiously similar to points raided
by David Appell!). Keep in mind that referees used were selected in
consultation with a paleoclimatologist. Five referees were selected
based on the guidance I received. All are reputable
paleoclimatologists, respected for their expertise in reconstruction
of past climates. None (none at all) were from what Hans and Clare
have referred to as “the other side” or what Hulme refers to as
people well known for their opposition to the notion that humans are
significantly altering global climate.” One of the five referees
turned down the request to review explaining he was busy and would
not have the time. The remaining four referees sent their detailed
comments to me. None suggested the manuscript should be rejected. S&B
were asked to respond to referees comments and make extensive
alterations accordingly. This was done.
I am no paleoclimatolgist, far from it, but have collected opinions
from other paleoclimatologists on the S&B paper. I summarise them
here. What I take from the S&B paper is an attempt to assess climate
data lost from sight in the Mann proxies. For example, the raising on
lowering of glacier equilibrium lines was the origin of the Little
Ice Age as a concept and still seems to be a highly important proxy,
even if a little difficult to precisely quantify.
Using a much larger number of “proxy” indicators than Mann did, S&B
inquired whether there was a globally detectable 50-year period of
unusual cold in the LIA and a similarly warm era in the MWP. Further,
they asked if these indicators, in general, would indicate that any
similar period in the 20th century was warmer than any other era.
S&B did not purport to do independent interpretation of climate time
series, either through 50-year filters or otherwise. They merely
adopt the conclusions of the cited authors and make a scorecard. It
seems pretty evident to me that temperatures in the LIA were the
lowest since the LGM. There are lots of peer-reviewed paleo-articles
which assert the existence of LIA.
Frankly, I have difficulty understanding this particular quibble.
Some sort of averaging is necessary to establish the ‘slower’ trends,
and that sort of averaging is used by every single study – they
average to bring out the item of their interest. A million year
average would do little to enlighten, as would detailed daily
readings. The period must be chosen to eliminate as much of the
‘noise’ as possible without degrading the longer-term signals
significantly.
As I read the S&B paper, it was a relatively arbitrary choice – and
why shouldn’t it be? It was only chosen to suppress spurious signals
and expose the slower drift that is inherent in nature. Anyone that
has seen curves of the last 2 million years must recognize that an
averaging of some sort has taken place. It is not often, however,
that the quibble is about the choice of numbers of years, or the
exact methodology – those are chosen simply to expose ‘supposedly’
useful data which is otherwise hidden from view.
Let me ask Mike this question. Can he give an example of any dataset
where the S&B characterization of the source author is incorrect? (I
am not vouching for them , merely asking.)
S&B say that they rely on the original characterizations, not that
they are making their own; I don’t see a problem a priori on relying
on characterizations of others or, in the present circumstances, of
presenting a literature review. While S&B is a literature review, so
is this section of IPCC TAR, except that the S&B review is more
thorough.
The Mann et al multi-proxy reconstruction of past temperatures has
many problems and these have been well documented by S&B and others.
My reading of the IPCC TAR leads me to the conclusion that Mann et al
has been used as the basis for a number of assertions: 1. Over the
past millennium (at least for the NH) the temperature has not varied
significantly (except for the European/North Atlantic sector) and
hence the climate system has little internal variability. This
statement is supported by an analysis of model behaviour, which also
shows little internal variability in climate models. 2. Recent global
warming, as inferred from instrument records, is large and unusual in
the context of the Mann et al temperature reconstruction from multi-
proxies. 3. Because of the previous limited variability and the
recent warming that cannot be explained by known natural forcing
(volcanic activity and solar insolation changes) human activity is
the likely cause of the recent global change.
In this context, IPCC mounts a powerful case. But the case rests on
two main foundations; the past climate has shown little variability
and the climate models reflect the internal variability of the
climate system. If either or both are shown to be weak or fallacious
then the IPCC case is weakened or fails.
S&B have examined the premise that the globally integrated
temperature has hardly varied over the past millennium prior to the
instrumental record. I agree it is not rocket science that they have
performed. They have looked at the evidence provided by researchers
to see if the trend of the temperature record of the European/North
Atlantic sector (which is not disputed by IPCC) is reflected in
individual records from other parts of the globe (Their three
questions). How objective is their assessment? From a purely
statistical viewpoint the work can be criticised. But if you took a
purely statistical approach you probably would not have sufficient
data to reach an unambiguous conclusion, or you could try statistical
fiddles to combine the data and end up with erroneous results under
the guise of statistical significance. S&B have looked at the data
and reached the conclusion that probably the temperature record from
other parts of the globe follows the same pattern as that of the
European/North Atlantic sector. Of the individual proxy records that
I have seen I would agree that this is the case. I certainly have not
found significant regions of the NH that were cold during the
medieval period and warm during the Little Ice Age period that are
necessary offsets of the European/North Atlantic sector necessary to
reach a hemispherically flat pattern as derived by Mann et al.
S&B have put forward sufficient evidence to challenge the Mann et al
analysis outcome and seriously weaken the IPCC assertions based on
Mann et al. Paleo reconstruction of temperatures and the global
pattern over the past millennium and longer remains a fertile field
for research. It suggests that the climate system is such that a
major temporal variation as is universally recognised for the
European/North Atlantic region would be reflected globally and S&B
have given support to this view.
It is my belief that the S&B work is a sincere endeavour to find out
whether MWP and LIA were worldwide phenomena. The historical evidence
beyond tree ring widths is convincing in my opinion. The concept of
“Little Ice Age” is certainly used practically by all Holocene paleo-
climatologists, who work on oblivious to Mann’s “disproof” of its
existence.
Paleoclimatologists tell me that, for debating purposes, they are
more inclined to draw attention to the Holocene Optimum (about 6000
BP) as an undisputed example of climate about 1-2 deg C warmer than
at present, and to ponder the entry and exit from the Younger Dryas
as an example of abrupt climate change, than to get too excited about
the Medieval Warm Period, which seems a very attenuated version.
However, the Little Ice Age seems valid enough as a paleoclimatic
concept. North American geologists repeatedly assert that the 19th
century was the coldest century in North America since the LGM. To
that extent, showing temperature increase since then is not unlike a
mutual fund salesmen showing expected rate of return from a market
bottom – not precisely false, but rather in the realm of sleight-of-
hand.
Regards
Chris
His email exposes not only how he has been attacked but the general weakness of our understanding of extreme warming – which is the real reason for the vehement attacks. In another email (#3052), the correct reaction to this paper was discussed extensively by the ‘in crowd’.– my bold again.
cc: n.nicholls@bom.gov.au, Peter.Whetton@csiro.au, Roger.Francey@csiro.au, David.Etheridge@csiro.au, Ian.Smith@csiro.au, Simon.Torok@csiro.au, Willem.Bouma@csiro.au, j.salinger@niwa.com, pachauri@teri.res.in, Greg.Ayers@csiro.au, Rick.Bailey@csiro.au, Graeme.Pearman@csiro.au, mmaccrac@comcast.net, tcrowley@duke.edu, rbradley@geo.umass.edu
date: Thu, 24 Apr 2003 11:21:50 +1200
from: j.salinger@niwa.co.nz
subject: Another course of Action – Recent climate sceptic research and the
to: Barrie.Pittock@csiro.au, m.hulme@uea.ac.uk, Barrie.Pittock@csiro.au, mann@virginia.edu, Phil Jones, harvey@geog.utoronto.ca, wigley@ucar.edu, n.nicholls@bom.gov.au
Dear All
For information, De Freitas has finally put all his arguments
together in a paper published in the Canadian Bulletin of Petroleum
Geology, 2002 (on holiday at the moment, and the reference is at
work!)
I have had thoughts also on a further course of action. The present
Vice Chancellor of the University of Auckland, Professor John Hood
(comes from an engineering background) is very concerned that
Auckland should be seen as New Zealand’s premier research
university, and one with an excellent reputation internationally. He
is concerned to the extent that he is monitoring the performance of
ALL his senior staff, from Associate Professor upwards, including
interviews with them. My suggestion is that a band of you review
editors write directly to Professor Hood with your concerns. In it
you should point out that you are all globally recognized top
climate scientist. It is best that such a letter come from outside
NZ and is signed by more than one person. His address is:
Professor John Hood
Vice Chancellor
University of Auckland
Private Bag 92019
Auckland, New Zealand
Let me know what you think! See suggested text below.
Regards
Jim
Some suggested text below:
***************
We write to you as the editorial board(review editors??) of the
leading international journal Climate Research for climate scientists
….
We are very concerned at the poor standards and personal biases
shown by a member of your staff. …..
When we originally appointed … to the editorial board we were
under the impression that they would carry out their duties in an
objective manner as is expected of scientists world wide. We
were also given to understand that this person has been honoured
with science communicator of the year award, several times by
your … organisation.
Instead we have discovered that this person has been using his
position to promote ‘fringe’ views of various groups with which
they are associated around the world. It perhaps would have been
less disturbing if the ‘science’ that was being passed through
the system was sound. However, a recent incident has alerted us
to the fact that poorly constructed and uncritical work has been
allowed to enter the pages of the journal. A recent example has
caused outrage amongst leading climate scientists around the
world and has resulted in the journal dismissing (??).. from the
editorial board.
We bring this to your attention since we consider it brings the
name of your university and New Zealand into some disrepute. We
leave it to your discretion what use you make of this
information.
The journal itself cannot be considered completely blameless in
this situation and we clearly need to tighten some of our
editorial processes; however, up until now we have relied on the
honour and professionalism of our editors. Sadly this incident
has damaged our faith in some of our fellow scientists.
Regrettably it will reflect on your institution as this person is
a relatively senior staff member.
********************
>
>
> At 16:19 17/04/03 +1000, Barrie.Pittock@csiro.au wrote:
> >Dear all,
> >
> >I just want to throw in some thoughts re appropriate responses to all
> >this – probably obvious to some of you, but clearly different from
> >some views expressed. This is not solely a reply to Phil Jones, as I
> >have read lots of other emails today including all those interesting
> >ones from Michael Mann.
> >
> >1. I completely understand the frustration by some at having to
> >consider a reply to these nonsense papers, and I agree that such
> >replies will not get cited much and may in fact draw attention to
> >papers which deserve to be ignored.
> >
> >2. However, ignoring them can be interpreted as not having an answer,
> >and whether we ignore them or not, there are people and lobby groups
> >which will push these papers as ‘refereed science’ which WILL be
> >persuasive to many small or large decision-makers who are NOT
> >competent to make their own scientific judgements, and some of whom
> >wish the enhanced GH effect would turn out to be a myth. In our
> >Australian backwater for example, such papers WILL/ARE being copied
> >to business executives and politicians to bolster anti-FCCC
> >decisions, and these people do matter. There has to be a well-argued
> >and authoritative response, at least for private circulation, and as
> >a basis for advice to these decision-makers.
> >
> >3. I see several possible courses of action that would be useful. (a)
> >Prepare a background briefing document for wide private circulation,
> >which refutes the claims and lists competent authorities who might be
> >consulted for advice on this issue. (b) Ensure that such misleading
> >papers do not continue to appear in the offending journals by getting
> >proper scientific standards applied to refereeing and editing.
> >Whether that is done publicly or privately may not matter so much, as
> >long as it happens. It could be through boycotting the journals, but
> >that might leave them even freer to promulgate misinformation. To my
> >mind that is not as good as getting the offending editors removed and
> >proper processes in place. Pressure or ultimatums to the publishers
> >might work, or concerted lobbying by other co-editors or leading
> >authors. (c) A journalistic expose of the unscientific practices
> >might work and embarass the sceptics/industry lobbies (if they are
> >capable of being embarassed) e.g., through a reliable lead reporter
> >for Science or Nature. Offending editors could be labelled as “rogue
> >editors”, in line with current international practice? Or is that
> >defamatory? (d) Legal action might be useful for authors who consider
> >themselves libelled, and there could be financial support for such
> >actions (Jim Salinger might have contacts here). However, we would
> >need to be very careful to be moderate and reasonable in our reponses
> >to avoid counter legal actions.
> >
> >4. I thoroughly agree that just entering in to a public slanging
> >match with the offending authors (or editors for that matter) on a
> >one-to-one basis is not the way to go. We need some more concerted
> >action.
> >
> >5. One other thought is that it may be worthwhile for some authors to
> >do a serious further study to bring out some statistical tests for
> >the likelihood of numerous proxy records showing unprecedented
> >synchronous warming in the last 30+ years. This could be, somewhat
> >along the lines of the tests used in the studies of observed changes
> >in biological and physical systems in the TAR WGII report(SPM figure
> >1 and related text in Chapter 19, and recent papers by Parmesan and
> >Yohe (2003) and Root et al. (2003) in Nature 421, 37-42 and 57-60).
> >Someone may already have this in hand. I am sure the evidence is even
> >stronger than for the critters. That is of course what has already
> >been done in fingerprinting the actual temperature record.
> >
> >Anyway, I am not one of the authors, and too busy (for a retired
> >person), so I hope you can collectively get something going which I
> >can support.
> >
> >Best regards to all,
> >
> >Barrie.
> >
> >Dr. A. Barrie Pittock
> >Post-Retirement Fellow, Climate Impact Group
> >CSIRO Atmospheric Research, PMB 1, Aspendale 3195, Australia
> >Tel: +613 9239 4527, Fax: +61 3 9239 4688, email:
> > WWW:
> >http://www.dar.csiro.au/res/cm/impact.htm
> >
> >Please Note: Use above address. The old >barrie.pittock@dar.csiro.au> is no longer supported.
> >
> >Currently I am working on a couple of books and other writing re
> >climate change and science issues. Please refer any matters re the
> >Climate Impact Group to Dr. Peter Whetton, Group Leader, at
> >, tel.:
> >+61 3 9239 4535. Normally I am in the lab Tuesdays and Thursdays.
> >
> >”Far better and approximate answer to the right question which is
> >often vague, than an exact answer to the wrong question which can
> >always be made precise.” J. W. Tukey
> >
> >
> >—–Original Message—–
> >From: Phil Jones [mailto:p.jones@uea.ac.uk]
> >Sent: Wednesday, 16 April 2003 6:23 PM
> >To: Mike Hulme; Barrie.Pittock@csiro.au
> >Cc: n.nicholls@bom.gov.au; Peter.Whetton@csiro.au;
> >Roger.Francey@csiro.au; David.Etheridge@csiro.au; Ian.Smith@csiro.au;
> >Simon.Torok@csiro.au; Willem.Bouma@csiro.au; j.salinger@niwa.com;
> >pachauri@teri.res.in; Greg.Ayers@csiro.au; Rick.Bailey@csiro.au;
> >Graeme.Pearman@csiro.au Subject: Re: Recent climate sceptic research
> >and the journal Climate Research
> >
> >
> >
> > Dear All,
> > There have been a number of emails on these two papers. They
> > are bad.
> >I’ll be seeing
> > Hans von Storch next week and I’ll be telling him in person what a
> >disservice he’s doing
> > to the science and the status of Climate Research.
> > I’ve already told Hans I want nothing more to do with the
> > journal. Tom
> >Crowley may be
> > writing something – find out also next week, but at the EGS last
> > week Ray
> >Bradley, Mike
> > Mann, Malcolm Hughes and others decided it would be best to do
> > nothing.
> >Papers
> > that respond to work like this never get cited – a point I’m
> > trying to
> >get across to Hans.
> > We all have better papers to write than waste our time responding
> > to
> >drivel like this.
> >
> > Cheers
> > Phil
>
> Prof. Phil Jones
> Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090
> School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784
> University of East Anglia
> Norwich Email p.jones@uea.ac.uk
> NR4 7TJ
> UK
> ———————————————————————-
> ——
>
>
*********************************************************
Dr Jim Salinger, CRSNZ
NIWA
P O Box 109 695
Newmarket, Auckland
New Zealand
Tel + 64 9 375 2053 Fax + 64 9 375 2051
e-mail: j.salinger@niwa.co.nz
**********************************************************
Now even if the paper was bad, you can see the extremeness of the team response to it. I can tell readers from my own experience in publication that even papers with ‘less’ global warming message are forcefully resisted by some. I have also been privy to other paper’s reviews which suffer the forceful gatekeeping as is implied above. If the authors truly did make an honest attempt at publishing as DeFreitas wrote, and it truly was accepted by four reviewers, even if it had a mistake, can you imagine the difficulty they will now have in promotions or acceptance of future work in their field? I wonder if the huge climate funds will still find their way to them or if their proposals will fall on deaf ears?
There are literally mountains of similar emails. So many that I can’t even begin to discuss them. Of course, feel free to copy your own on-topic ones below. If you select the right data as paleoclimate does by standard practice, you get the predicted result.
If you select the right people…..
================================================================
UPDATE: Comment #9 below. Reading his response to Kinne, I think Mike Mann has the same sort of problems Captain Queeg did.
Stacey said
Dear Jeff ID
The following email trail shows the Teams response after having complained about Dr deFreitas they are written to by Otto Kinne who has investigated their complaint and states he is satisfied with the handling of a paper submitted to CR.
They conspire to bring down a commercial organisation because it publishes things they don’t like?
Mann and Hume seem thick as theives and one wonders are they the controlling minds on both sides of the atlantic.
I drew Dr deFreitas’s attention to the following and he did respond you may find him responsive to you.
Sorry how the emails are presented.
Regards
S
date: Thu, 03 Jul 2003 21:27:32 -0400
from: “Michael E. Mann”
subject: Re: Fwd: Climate Research
to: Mike Hulme , p.jones@uea.xxxxxx, wigley@ncar.xxxxxx
Thanks Mike
It seems to me that this “Kinne” character’s words are disingenuous, and he probably
supports what De Freitas is trying to do. It seems clear we have to go above him.
I think that the community should, as Mike H has previously suggested in this eventuality,
terminate its involvement with this journal at all levels–reviewing, editing, and
submitting, and leave it to wither way into oblivion and disrepute,
Thanks,
mike
At 01:00 PM 7/3/2003 +0100, Mike Hulme wrote:
Phil, Tom, Mike,
So, this would seem to be the end of the matter as far as Climate Research is concerned.
Mike
To
CLIMATE RESEARCH
Editors and Review Editors
Dear colleagues,
In my 20.06. email to you I stated, among other things, that I would ask CR editor
Chris de Freitas to present to me copies of the reviewers’ evaluations for the 2 Soon et
al. papers.
I have received and studied the material requested.
Conclusions:
1) The reviewers consulted (4 for each ms) by the editor presented detailed, critical
and helpful evaluations
2) The editor properly analyzed the evaluations and requested appropriate revisions.
3) The authors revised their manuscripts accordingly.
Summary:
Chris de Freitas has done a good and correct job as editor.
Best wishes,
Otto Kinne
Director, Inter-Research
–
————————————————-
Inter-Research, Science Publisher
Ecology Institute
Nordbuente 23,
D-21385 Oldendorf/Luhe,
Germany
Tel: (+49) (4132) 7127 Email: ir@int-resxxx
Fax: (+49) (4132) 8883 [1]http://www.int-res.com
Inter-Research – Publisher of Scientific Journals and Book Series:
– Marine Ecology Progress Series (MEPS)
– Aquatic Microbial Ecology (AME)
– Diseases of Aquatic Organisms (DA0)
– Climate Research (CR)
– Ethics in Science and Environmental Politics (ESEP)
– Excellence in Ecology
– Top Books
– EEIU Brochures
YOU ARE INVITED TO VISIT OUR WEB SITES: [2]www.int-res.com and [3]www.eeiu.org
Nitpick: ‘extremeness’ isn’t in the dictionary, but ‘extremity’ is.
Is tar and feathering and being run out of town Ileagle because if it not.Then please tell me why it has not happened yet
There you have it — The complete subversion of science for a cause. These guys are advocates and crusaders. They aren’t interested in the scientific method or facts. They already know the truth and they just need to rig the process so the results will match their conclusions.
Only a complete ignoramus or a zealot would continually defame their opponents as being funded by big oil without any facts to back it that claim. Ideology is clearly all that matters.
Justice was done (at least partially) in this case, since Jim Salinger, who drafted the letter trying to get Chris de Freitas fired, was himself fired from his job at NIWA, while de Freitas wasn’t.
I wonder if the people who sacked Salinger knew about this incident? It’s probably not related since there was 6 years between sending this disgusting email and losing his job.
WOW. This is really is damning. Ad hominem attacks seem to be the Modus Operandi rather than science for this crowd.
Merriam Webster’s Unabridged: “extremeness: quality or state of being extreme”
Look it up.
Stacey, I’ve also been wondering how to view this as something other than a conspiracy. But that’s what it is. If it doesn’t turn out to be one of the biggest and most costly conspiracies (based on money already spent) in (at least American) history, I’ll be surprised.
What next? Mann gets a set of ball bearings to keep in his pocket?..
This is starting to make me ill.
AGW survived the last Climategate FOIA offering. If it is survives this second offerring: ……we’re all sunk!! Who has the power to pull the plug? What does Newt say about these AGW revelations(which we knew somehow all along anyway)?? My fear, as peace loving people we ‘deniers’ be, that our clout doesn’t amount to a mole hill next to the political power of these operatives.
A pattern of long comments / posts has emerged regarding the latest email release.
This is necessary as things need to be placed in the correct perspective. This has been a long running scam and the ones outed will be claiming things were taken out of context. For those who are truely concerned as to what has transpired, we appreciate the details. We are viewing history in the making and all the details need to be shown.
For those that only wish a summary, perhaps a commenter can summarize in the comments.
Over a hundred years of human progress may be salvaged with the release of these emails.
Thank you, whoever you are! You are welcome to share my food and lodging as without you there may have no longer been any.
This is a key point for me personally for several reasons and is something I have been trying to express myself for quite some time. I happen to have a lot of geology related papers that have some climate information. These are things such as core samples from lakes, bogs, glacial terminations, etc. Some of these contain information such a pollen types and counts that give climate information in that they show in the various strata of these cores what was growing in the general area at the time and the general abundance of these things. I have read papers that show evidence of the MWP in South America and in Africa in addition to evidence of the LIA. For example, one that I was perusing the other day showed evidence of an unusually high number of El Nino events during the time period of the MWP based on what they saw in the pollen and other evidence such as apparent rainfall patterns/amounts of the time.
The thermometer as we know it today was invented during the LIA. The LIA is, as far as can be seen, the coldest period of the Holocene since the Younger Dryas. In other words, it was a really cold period with several solar minima (Wolf, Spörer, Maunder, Dalton) that lasted roughly 500 years. All of our global temperature chronicles record the recovery to more “normal” temperatures (if there is such a thing, maybe more “common” might be a better word) since that time. We are not seeing a warming to above normal temperatures so much as we are seeing a return to more NORMAL temperatures. Also, as far as I have been able to tell, solar activity during the recent past (until the current solar cycle) has been greater than it was during the time we associate with the MWP. The “modern maximum” has been apparently a very active time. The extent to which this makes any difference is up for debate but I just note that here as a point of natural variability that is not human related that could have an impact on things.
It would be sort of like looking at this chart of the Dow Jones Industrial Average:
https://www.google.com//finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=maximized&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1322082000000&chddm=273469&chls=IntervalBasedLine&q=INDEXDJX:.DJI&ntsp=0
But that runup in the DJIA looks quite different in this context:
https://www.google.com//finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=maximized&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1322082000000&chddm=407718&chls=IntervalBasedLine&q=INDEXDJX:.DJI&ntsp=0
What is missing in the AGW debate is context. We have a bunch of people running around making a lot of money by convincing people that if they simply spend enough money on the right thing, they can change the Earth’s climate. Or rather, if they simply spend enough money on the right thing they can STOP or REDUCE the recovery to more normal temperatures. They would want to convince us that this runup in global temperatures is due to us burning fossil fuels. In fact, the numbers they come up with for how much warming we would expect from our burning fossil fuel look amazingly close to the amount of warming we have seen since the end of the LIA. So if you take their logic to its natural conclusion, they are trying to tell us that our burning of fossil fuel is what has brought us out of the LIA. I disagree. First of all, for this to be true, today’s CO2 would have to be able to somehow transport itself into the past and raise temperatures retroactive of its release because when we started the recovery from the LIA we really weren’t emitting much CO2. So how much of today’s temperature levels are natural recovery from the LIA and how much are due to human CO2 release? And how do you tell the difference between CO2 emitted from a coal seam fire and CO2 emitted from a coal power plant? They can’t even really quantify how much of the CO2 with the fossil fuel “signature” is even actually released by human activity and how much is natural from such things as global coal seam and gas pit fires.
To hear them tell it, ALL of the temperature increase from the LIA must be due to human caused CO2 emissions. Why do we want to go back to the LIA? And the LIA wasn’t the only time this happened, either. There were cold periods during the Roman Empire that caused great migrations of people. Why did the Visigoths migrate South from Sweden? Why did the Vandals migrate South from the Baltic? Because it got too COLD there!
They would also claim the MWP doesn’t exist and say they can’t find the tree ring signal for it. We don’t NEED a tree ring signal, we have chronicles of the time that report what was being grown and where it was being grown. We know that in many places in the Alps, Scandinavia, Greenland, and other places, some things that were being grown in various locations can not be grown today because it is still too cold in those places. “The Cause” would write this off to local circulation changes. Problem is that we see evidence for the MWP in Alaska, the Sierra Nevada, the Great Basin, South America, and Africa, too. And to top it all off they have picked some arbitrary fairly recent period to represent “normal” temperatures when that recovery from the LIA might not even be complete yet. Heck, it might take the oceans another few hundred years to fully recover at depth and so they are going to be rising as the water undergoes thermal expansion and they will also release more CO2 as it warms at depth.
Now if word were to get around that maybe what we are seeing is a natural recovery of temperatures from what would happen to the careers of “The Cause” and the cash streams at their institutions? How might that change? My guess is “Career Change” and “Cash Flow Change” are stronger forces than “Climate Change”.
Slight of hand, indeed!
The team is cattier than the Local ASPCA. And contains less integrity.
I would also draw attention to email 1625 in which Phil Jones discusses the possibility of seeking to put pressure on myself and Don Keiller by contacting our Heads of Department. Utterly disgraceful behaviour on his part.
Typo: it’s ‘reining in’ not reigning. Great piece, I just wish there was some way for regular folk to read stuff like this.
oops, too picky I am
Usually I have easier targets,
such as parameter for perimeter
‘area’ instead of about 50 real words
or ‘wealthy’ instead of ‘productive’.
Mann seems to be the malevelant religious leader. The most vocal and the most severe attacks. If he was a true scientist, he wouldn’t need a blog to defend his zeal. True science is ambivalent. The facts and conclusions fall where they may.
It’s not ‘hide the decline’ this time, it’s ‘hide the truth’.
Perhaps Mann is more like Captain Ahab:
“To the last, I grapple with thee; From Hell’s heart, I stab at thee; For hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee.”
Mike Mann and his bunch of cronies need to be fired and all of their papers reviewed. We are wasting billions on carbon nonsense when we should be spending it on environmental projects that have ‘real’ impacts on people’s lives.
Since these “boys being bad” have abandoned science for ideology and faith, they have cross the line between logos and mythos. Climatic Mythos is just another form of religion as is Climatic National Socialism. We need to take a lead here from the religions movements, science offers to guidance. I believe the practice is called Shunning.
It really is an echo chamber. I was listening to a BBC radio program in the car last night, called “Material Worlds,” which was discussing how scientists give risk assessments to policy makers. As it turned out, Sir John Beddington – UK Gov scientific advisor – was a guest on the show. When he was talking about his advice to the UK government over the Fukushima reactor disaster, he was completely objective, and presented a very low risk profile, and did not advise evacuation of UK citizens.
Then he got onto the subject of Climate Change. It was as if the first John Beddington had disappeared completely. He began to attack the media for allowing what he called a “token” skeptic to appear on tv or newspapers. According to Beddington – and he spoke emphaticaclly – there is a total scientific consensus that humans are changing the climate, primarily through the emission of greenhouse gases. In his opinion, it is unacceptable for a skeptic to be allowed a public voice, because it “spreads disinformation and misleads the public.” He was concerned that the uncertainties inherent in climate knowledge was being used as an excuse to take no action. He sees skeptics as not only wrong, but also dangerous because they “mislead the public” and provide excuses for not taking action.
What a mindset! It’s no wonder that the Team talk about being “outraged” when a paper that does not support the narrative is published. They infer that such papers must be “junk” and that editors who publish them are “unscrupulous” and dangerous because they spread “misinformation”. A vendetta must be launched against such individuals to preserve their message of salvation. Indeed, salvation is the right word, since they are react in the exact same way as the 17th century puritans reacted to the idea of witches.
@crosspatch says:
November 29, 2011 at 10:19 am
I am no scientist but, when the co2/agw myth began to catch on, was enough of an historian to already know a broad outline of the climate history of the last 8000 years or so. That was enough to make me a sceptic from the beginning. All the subsequent evidence I’ve read/heard/watched on both sides (sometimes having to hold my nose at the stench or grit my teeth) has reinforced my initial reactions and opinions. The emails now continue to prove how corrupted science has become through this fallacious, pernicious belief system – and, sadly, how gullible and unenquiring most people are. Thank you crosspatch for an excellent summary, especially the classical references and the Dow Jones comparison diagrams. Goths and Vandals do it for me.
“Extremeness” is in the the New Oxford American Dictionary which is included with Mac OX Lion. It also is in the Oxford Dictionary of English which is also included with the Mac. I do wish however, that the English majors here would take their spelling and grammar corrections to a blog on language.
In 5163.txt we have Overpeck explaining that certain political aspects of the “NRC vs IPCC reports” seem worthy of “some extra effort” because apparently it “will likely have enormous political potential.”
I would like to hope that the two climategates would bring an end to what must go down as one of the worst human-caused global threats to the economy, the freedom, health and well-being of the world (I used to bemoan the horrific damage to science but it takes a far back seat now to my larger concerns. It can’t be repaired anyway in the current “climate”). I think this whole AGW mess is a form terrorism -or worse- at least terrorists believe in their tormented minds they have a moral justification- the AGW “community” is simply arrogant, self serving, greedy and prepared to destroy the world for gain. I think politicians need to be thoroughly educated on all this stuff by some moral statesmen (they still exist I hope?) and they should be made aware that elections aren’t far off and we are not going to be gently turning the other cheek.
Wikipedia this morning asserts:
The Soon and Baliunas paper had been sent to four reviewers during publication, all of whom recommended rejecting it. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soon_and_Baliunas)
While de Freitas’ email asserts:
The remaining four referees sent their detailed
comments to me. None suggested the manuscript should be rejected.
Somebody is not telling the truth. It might not be kind to suggest that it’s the Wiki writer. So I won’t.
One of the most zealous members of “The Cause” seems to be Stephen H Schneider at Stanford, by the way. 0451.txt is interesting when discussing FOIA stuff in the US.
But folk seem to be missing the point that the Team tactic worked. After the editors quit, and the publicity settled down, the impact kept the relevant journals in line and under the Team thumb until this year, when it became necessary to get another editor to humiliatingly apologize and be fired (Wolfgang Wagner) as a way of reminding folk out there who remains the boss.
My take on the story is here at:
http://bittooth.blogspot.com/2011/11/climategate-2-more-unethical-team.html
Wanna bet that when the dust settles on this one that the editors of the various journals will take the same message home as they did last time.
I would also put out that the notion of smoothed data can be very misleading. For example: during the LIA weather was extremely variable. Periods with very early frosts and freezes (sometimes in August, wiping out entire crops) were often interspersed with years having very hot summers. A tree ring study is never going to pick up a year with a warm June / July but an early frost/freeze in August. In fact, it might show just the opposite. It might show increased growth that year when it was overall a very cold year. Smoothing data can allow you to overlook extremes. For example, in a 100 year period during the LIA, how many extremely poor growing seasons were there compared to the latest 100 year period? You can’t tell that with “smoothed” data. You can only see some sort of average over time. They seem to intentionally pick ways to find the trends they are looking for and go to extremes to eliminate any trends they don’t want to show as that apparently will “confuse” policy makers.
If Briffa were contracted specifically to show just how bad the LIA was, I would bet he could produce output that looks completely different.
George Orwell interview re: 1984. Apropos!
@crosspatch says:
November 29, 2011 at 10:19 am
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Many share your view that all we are observing is nothing significantly more than miltidecadal natural variation as the Earth rebounds from the LIA.
I seem to recall that ‘Vukcevic’ often makes this point based upon the CET data set (the longest instrument data set on record). He often pastes the following graphs (or similar) set out at:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-100-150-100.htm
and
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CETt.htm
As the recent email release shows, there was someone within the Team who was alive to the possibility that the present warming may be nothing more than natural multidecadal variation and he also appreciated that in which case ‘they will kill us’
Douglas DC said on November 29, 2011 at 10:08 am:
JC: Is that chromium steel in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?
MM: Hey baby, why don’t you Warm Up some more? I got a nice Hockey Stick for you to examine.
JC: Aw Mickey, everyone knows you use your Special Tree Extract to make that stick work.
MM: No way! This stick is 100% tree free, I promise! It’s all natural, completely truthful, and peer-reviewed as authentic!
JC: Now Mickey, I might be willing to help out “the cause” if you’ll be honest with me, but the only way you’re gonna get your busted hockey stick rising sharply up at an alarming rate, is if you stare at that dirty Tiljander stuff until you can’t tell if it’s upside down or not.
Well how many times do I have to say it; Dr John Hood is NOT the Vice Chancellor of the University of Auckland; he IS either the Chancellor, or the VC of Oxford University.
Professor Stewart McCutcheon IS the Vice Chancellor of the University of Auckland.
Why are these guys using such errant paleo-information to try and roast Dr Chris de Freitas; not to mention Dr Sallie Baliunas, and Dr Willie Wei Hock Soon at Harvard…. Many many years ago, I actually had a letter published in the Harvard Business Review. Oddly it was germane to “alternative” Energy Sources; or even alternative energy schemes.
I wonder if that letter would ever bubble to the surface, in one of these witch hunts.
The one “not telling the truth” is Wiki. Have you not heard of William Connolly?
Yes, Jim Salinger was our very own unsavoury would-be James Hanson, and did great damage to New Zealand climate science before he was fired from NIWA in 2009. He appealed his firing, but the outcome upheld it. Reading between the lines, it’s clear that NIWA surveyed his emails as part of their case for upholding dismissal, and I expect this very email played a considerable role in revealing his lack of professionalism and recklessness with leading NZ institutions.
His doctoral thesis was a shambles of unjustifiable adjustments of NZ temperature, and should never have been allowed. But an unfortunate trait of me-too-ism in NZ got him through, as NZ scientists naturally assume that overseas scientists are onto valid trails, so NZ was all too ready to climb on board. So Salinger took over and fiddled while NZ climate science burned from the fires that he had set. Today, NIWA has still not extricated itself from the hole they helped Salinger dig. Good riddance to bad rubbish, and I hope NIWA fix up the damage soon — New Zealand’s actual unadjusted temperature record shows no warming at all over 150 years, and it’s long overdue for NIWA to set the record straight.
Tom T. At very first glance at your post, I read ‘extre-meme-ness’. Somehow, hyphen-free, it seems a fitting addition to the lexicon. 😉
If you think that The Cap N Trade Scheme was/is a Money Skimming Scam . . . it’s not the only one . . .
In my opinion, it is all over this ‘wonderful’ Internet we have . . . if you need a clue check out all the job recruiters there are . . . . especially when there are so few jobs . . .
Then do some research on how much say . . . the Military pays to contractors per “man hour” . . . and then check out the take home pay per “manhour” of the person who is actually doing the work is . . . . .
I think you will find that there is a huge disparity . . . .
The same thing is happening in the private sector only to a more dangerous degree . . .
In my opinion, it is all over this wonderful Internet we have . . . .
An example: The Employment picture is so dismal to me because you can not apply for a job without giving your “Secret” Social Security number to every Joe and their brother . . . . and therein lies the basis for all the identity theft going on . . . not to mention the fact that the State site only runs you in that wonderful wheel of recruiters . . . . . so that you best investigate the terms of service and what you are agreeing to when you use the site to apply for any job . . .
And when you do you will think twice about applying for the job . . .
And I even hesitate to bring stuff like this up because to me . . . it just seems to spread . . . .
Jim Salinger is an interesting fellow with an interesting climate history:
http://www.climateconversation.wordshine.co.nz/2011/10/one-mans-mission/#more-11719
George E. Smith, according to Wiki, Dr. Hood was the VC of UofA at the time of the writing these emails.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hood
richard verney says:
Richard I looked at the graphs that Vukcevic did you linked to. They did not line up. Please take a look at 1760 and the other matching end points as well.
crosspatch says:
November 29, 2011 at 11:38 am
“I would also put out that the notion of smoothed data can be very misleading.” (partial quote)
=================
I read in another post/comment (have read too many to relocate) of a science class teacher (definately not so called climate science) placing one hand in 40 degree water and the other on 100 degree water and stating that the average was 70 degrees and therefore comfortable.
Another way to look at that would be if the wind was calm in the morning and calm in the afternoon but a class 5 tornado crossed your location, could you say the average weather was slightly breezy?
George E. Smith, John Hood left Oxford a while back. He wasn’t terribly popular during his time here.
Thanks, Crosspatch:
“Global Thawing” would seem be a more appropriate term than “Global Warming”.
There has got to be something illegal within The Team’s antics. PROSECUTE!!!!!
@Bill Parsons says:
“Merriam Webster’s Unabridged: “extremeness: quality or state of being extreme”
Look it up.”
These colonial pamphlets may have their place, but for a definitive pronouncement I prefer to go to the source. This is what the OED says:
EXTREMENESS (ekstri-mnes) [f as prec + -NESS]
The quality or fact of being extreme.
1530 in PALSGR 212/1 1609 Tourneur Sir F Vere 481 “By extreamnes in another kind..” 1727 in Bailey Vol II 1839 Poe Fall House Usher Wks 1564 1 306 “the extremeness of the folly” 1891 Pall Mall G 28 Dec 3/2 “The extremeness of its critical position may be judged…” etc
Pardon me for not reproducing the proper notation or giving full references – I only have the Compact to hand, and my eyes and fingers are not what they once were. But it appears that the word has remained essentially unchanged on both sides of the Atlantic for around 600 years – and of how many words can we say that? 🙂
Dave Summers (Heading Out) says:
November 29, 2011 at 11:30 am
But folk seem to be missing the point that the Team tactic worked. After the editors quit, and the publicity settled down, the impact kept the relevant journals in line and under the Team thumb until this year, when it became necessary to get another editor to humiliatingly apologize and be fired (Wolfgang Wagner) as a way of reminding folk out there who remains the boss.
My take on the story is here at:
http://bittooth.blogspot.com/2011/11/climategate-2-more-unethical-team.html
Wanna bet that when the dust settles on this one that the editors of the various journals will take the same message home as they did last time.
====================
Are you the same ‘Heading Out’ that posted on the ‘Oil Drum’ during the Horizon incident? If so, I thank you for the most informative knowledge on wells and drilling. Please reply if so as I may use your posts as a reference in my future employment search.
Yes, I helped found The Oil Drum, and yes we thought (for a very short while) that we might give WUWT a run for the money in terms of popularity during the Deepwater Horizon incident.
For a variety of reasons (explained back in december 2008) I left the editorial board of TOD (in a situation now eerily familiar) and founded my own site (Bit Tooth Energy) where I amuse myself having put populations to all the stations in the contiguous US and now looking at the correlations that I find, and which demonstrably exist for latitude, elevation and population. (I did it state by state, and they are listed at the site). Still cross-post the Tech Talks from BTE to TOD, now dealing with the reality of individual country production prospects.
George E. Smith; says:
November 29, 2011 at 11:50 am
Well how many times do I have to say it; Dr John Hood is NOT the Vice Chancellor of the University of Auckland…
———-
Apparently John Hood was the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Auckland from 1998 to 2004 (when he went to Oxford), i.e., during the time of these emails.
Stuart McCutcheon was appointed Vice-Chancellor in January 2005.
While I was debating a local AGW advocate about S&B he responded with this.
“Thirteen of the authors Baliunas and Soon cited in the paper refuted her interpretation of their work, and several editors of Climate Research resigned in protest at a flawed peer review process that allowed the publication.”
http://www.desmogblog.com/sallie-baliunas
I searched a couldn’t find anything backing this up. Is there anything?
The Hockey Team and all it’s camp followers are sure making some seriously heavy weight enemies with the release of these mails. And it is inevitable that some of those who have been so openly slandered will at some time find themselves in positions and situations where they will be able to take their long nurtured revenge, particularly as the whole rotten structure of CAGW and the corrupt science surrounding it is already well along the road to it’s creaking collapse into an ignominious pile of scientific, moral and ethical filth and garbage.
Stock up on popcorn!
richard verney says:
November 29, 2011 at 11:44 am
…………..
Thanks for the mention. Currently I am researching ‘natural variability’ but to make a credible progress I needed a good spectrum analysing software, and finally got there. Checking out the global temperature’s spectrum, I think that Dr. Scafetta may be misled by a poor quality FFT software in promoting the ‘60 year cycle’.
Here is what I have come up:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Spectra.htm
No sign of 60 years, but there is something more like Gleissberg cycle somewhere around 70 years.
I have attached the relevant data table (50-90 year section).
Dear Jeff
The Team, Monbiot and Bob Ward go in to bat against Martin Durkin whose programme The Great Global Warming Swindle was broadcast in the UK. They start the batting before the film is aired.
I don’t want to clog up the post and I am not sure if the correspondance between Jones and Ward is not just as interesting. Ross McKittrick is mentioned in that post.
A search of the emails using Mr Durkins name throws up even more which I have listed and used key words phrases. Sorry I mean’t to keep the post short. I am sure you or others will be able to put this into context.
Mann is a bully frightened to go on the programme but happy to scheme behind the scenes, ever it was thus.
The following is Mann and Monbiot I have posted this at The Guardian and it was censored. Funny though Monbiot is very quiet at the moment?
More of Mann’s tricks 🙂
An extract from email 1427:-
“This has to do with a denialist-leaning documentary being filmed by
Martin Durkin for Channel 4 TV in Britain. I saw that you had written
about Durkin before in the Guardian, and was hoping that you might
potentially have some interest in exposing this latest disinformation
effort.”
Other emails key words:
2063 Jones and Ward
2176 Phil Jones says Durkin is an obnoxious B********
2402 McKittrick is proposing to cause trouble
4142 Mann says right wing hack Martin Durkin Monbiots all over him
4772 Sir John Houghton suggested I contact you
EMAIL NO 1427
date: Sun, 28 Jan 2007 09:11:32 -0500
from: “Michael E. Mann” <
subject: [Fwd: Re: info about upcoming documentary]
to: Phil Jones
Hi Phil,
Please see Monbiot’s attached message. Do you have any further
information about when Channel 4 might be planning to air this?
Thanks in advance for any info,
mike
—
Michael E. Mann
Associate Professor
Director, Earth System Science Center (ESSC)
Department of Meteorology Phone:
503 Walker Building FAX:
The Pennsylvania State University email:
University Park, PA 16802-5013
http://www.met.psu.edu/dept/faculty/mann.htm
Message-ID: <45BCAEE7.3070102
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2007 09:10:47 -0500
From: "Michael E. Mann"
Reply-To: mann
Organization: Dept. of Meteorology, Penn State University
User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.9 (Windows/20061207)
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: g.monbiot@
Subject: Re: info about upcoming documentary
References:
In-Reply-To:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Dear George,
Thanks so much for your message, this one got through just fine. I don’t
have any idea when they plan to air this. The two messages I forwarded
(the first from Durkin’s assistant, the second from Durkin) are the only
ones I received. All I know is that they were still prepared to shoot an
interview when they contacted me a little more than a week ago. So I
suspect this must be at least a month or more away from airing.
Its possible that Phil Jones of UEA knows more. Phil mentioned to me
that he had also heard from them months ago. Will double-check w/ Phil
and get back to you w/ any information.
Thanks again so much for pursuing this,
Mike
g.monbiot
> Dear Michael,
>
> for some reason my emails don’t seem to have got through to you – I’ve been
> having some problems with my server. Please let me know if you receive
> this. I’m intending to mention Durkin’s latest tomfoolery in my column in
> the Guardian on Tuesday. Do you have any idea when Channel 4 intends to
> broadcast it?
>
> With my best wishes, George
>
> Original Message:
> —————–
> From: Michael E. Mann mann
> Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 08:17:33 -0500
> To: g.monbiot
> Subject: info about upcoming documentary
>
>
> Dear Mr. Monbiot,
>
> My previous attempts to reach you (through the Guardian and your
> monbiot.com email) have failed, so I’m hoping this email address
> (courtesy of George Marshall) does make it through.
>
> This has to do with a denialist-leaning documentary being filmed by
> Martin Durkin for Channel 4 TV in Britain. I saw that you had written
> about Durkin before in the Guardian, and was hoping that you might
> potentially have some interest in exposing this latest disinformation
> effort.
>
> I am forwarding messages from Durkin and his assistant, which I’m
> forwarding separately.
>
> I hope to hear back from you.
>
> best regards,
>
> Mike Mann
>
>
—
Michael E. Mann
Associate Professor
Director, Earth System Science Center (ESSC)
NZ Willy
Dont expect NIWA to change any time soon.
They used Salinger as a lead author in their defence of the supposed NZ temperature record. This was completed about this time last year, about a year after they fired him.
Clearly Salinger is still part of the NIWA team, but as a consultant rather than as a salaried staff member.
hum says:
November 29, 2011 at 12:32 pm
…………..
I have substituted previous three with a single graph so you can see the transitions clearly
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-100-150-100.htm
NIWA have set the record straight in my eyes anyway. In the wake of the departure of Salinger, NIWA reconstructed the NZ temperature record afresh from raw data. And having read through this carefully I think they’ve done a pretty darned good job. The reconstruction shows a step increase in average NZ temperature in the 1950’s of about a degree.
It is true that unadjusted temperatures show no increase. What seems to be the case however is that at each move the new instrument tended to track colder than the previous one. The increase in the overall record has resulted from adjustments made at the boundaries to bring them into alignment. From what I can see of how these adjustments were made they’ve done just about the best job of aligning the measures humanly possible. The detail of this calculation is open – I’d say these were fairly and properly done. No thumb on the scales here.
One question which occurred to me however as I read through it, which NIWA does not really address, is the question of why it should be the case that at each move the new instrument tended to track colder. One hypothesis is that a move of instrument is often prompted by the old site becoming unsuitable, and unsuitable sites tend to show warmer temperatures. Under this reasoning it might not be too surprising that after each move the new instrument will tend to show colder temperatures.
If this were the case however then there is a danger that adjusting the record to bring instruments into alignment at the boundary might result in a series which simply stacks a sequence of UHI warmings on top of one another giving an overall series showing significant spurious overall warming. You could call this idea “magnified UHI” since the warming measured could be greater than the UHI warming at any one site.
I found this initially an attractive hypothesis in the abstract. However on closer examination of the specific individual NZ instrument records I am dubious that the reasoning applies in this case. Furthermore NZ temperatures in the reconstructed record do closely track SST in the local region (as you’d expect in a place with a marine temperate climate). And I just can’t bring myself to believe that sea surface temperatures are an artifact of any kind of Urban Heat Island effect, magnified or otherwise.
No – it looks to me like NZ really did undergo warming – a step change of about a degree in the 1950’s. I find it interesting that nobody much noticed at the time. At least I have a good excuse – I wasn’t born then. Over my lifetime NZ temperatures have been fairly static.
Crosspatch, my personal favorite study of the MWP was the finding of its effect in the reconstruction of the IndoPacific Warm Pool, the largest body of warm water in the world. It found temperatures which were in the range of today’s. Not only that but it was published by Woods Hole. http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=7545&tid=282&cid=59106&ct=162
The resignations from Climate Research were largely political theater (rather like OWS). This is a long extract of the Kinne response to the events:
Resignations. Inter-Research sincerely regrets the
resignations of Hans von Storch, Clare Goodess, and
Mitsuru Ando. Hans von Storch has done more than
most other members of the CR Editorial Board. Since
1994 he has increasingly been a powerful motor promoting
the journal’s development. CR has been close
to his heart. I am very grateful to him and recently
appointed Hans as CR Editor-in-Chief (EiC). He
accepted as of August 1, drafted an Editorial and proposed
that all mss be submitted to him. His Editorial
text draft has drawn both positive and negative
responses from editorial board members. It was criticized
that the EiC’s functions as proposed by Hans
would amount to a devaluation of editors and reviewers.
Hans’ proposal could not assure unbiased high
quality ms selection in view of the widely diverging
expertises of authors, reviewers and editors. Further
Hans made several statements that did not represent
the views of all editors; he did not consult with several
editors while speaking in their names.
I wanted the editorial by Hans von Storch to be published,
but with a green light from the Editorial Board.
Hence I asked Hans not to rush the editorial, to consult
with the Editorial Board and to publish a revised version.
Hans did not like this and decided to resign only
a few days after I had appointed him.
No Editor-in-Chief can organize a better and
broader basis for quality control than that practised by
IR. No single scientist can judge the quality of all mss
submitted to a journal with a wide scientific scope such
as CR.
http://www.int-res.com/articles/misc/CREditorial.pdf
This was all theater. Hans didn’t want to negotiate or play some diplomatic role. He wanted full control of the mss process, so he could reject stuff at will (i.e. ‘skeptical’ views). He didn’t want to play well with others, just resign in a huff in order to damage the rep of CR
And it is important to bear in mind this was all over an article which was a literature review of previous paleo lit. Their conclusion based on the literature was that the last decades may not have been the warmest in 1000 years….and that was too much for the Machine to tolerate
juanslayton November 29, 2011 at 11:26 am
quote
Wikipedia this morning asserts:
The Soon and Baliunas paper had been sent to four reviewers during publication, all of whom recommended rejecting it. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soon_and_Baliunas)
While de Freitas’ email asserts:
The remaining four referees sent their detailed
comments to me. None suggested the manuscript should be rejected.
Somebody is not telling the truth. It might not be kind to suggest that it’s the Wiki writer. So I won’t.
unquote
If one follows the link one finds that the founder of Wikipedia is asking for contributions to carry on the work. Whenever I see one of his pleas I remember how WC has been allowed to dominate one particular entry and, to be honest, Mr Wales, before I contribute I think you should get a grip.
JF
“There are literally mountains of similar emails.”
Somewhat off-topic, I know – but this is a pet hate of mine. Can we please stop this misuse of the word “literally?” Unless someone can tell me where there “literally” are mountains of emails?
It’s not my field at all, but if it was… I would do a complete forensic psychological analysis of ‘The Team’ and their ‘Cause.’ That would make for some interesting reading. Two or three of the top ‘players’ would make very interesting subjects on their own.
Anybody here up to that task, or know of somebody that might want to make a splash as a grad student or post doc somewhere?
No sign of 60 years, but there is something more like Gleissberg cycle somewhere around 70 years.
The isn’t enough data there to say with any confidence as 130 years has only enough time for one complete 70 year cycle (and most of a second one). I would need to see the same thing with about 300 years of data to have any confidence in it (250 years at a minimum). What does a longer run of CET only show?
I decided to send an email to the ‘scientists’ listed in the email exchange telling them they should be ashamed of their behaviour. Surprise, surprise! They all failed, so I guess they have all changed their addresses to avoid such approbation.
That CSIRO should be part of this nasty business is appalling.
Dear Jeff Id
In the email below Mann is libelling Professor Carter and Dr de Freitas. Would his employer be happy with this disgusting behaviour. Also Jones is asked if he has any advance info and Real Climate will gear up?
From: “Michael E. Mann”
To: Phil Jones
Subject: Re: See the attached
Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2007 11:17:58 -0500
Reply-to: mann@psu.edu
Phil,
I’ve seen this junk already. Look at the co-authors! DeFrietas, Bob
Carter: a couple of frauds. I dont’ think anyone will take this seriously…
Do you have any advance knowledge you could pass along that would help
us gear up to do something on RealClimate? I assume that there will be
no surprises in the paleoclimate chapter, but I haven’t seen the final
draft. Any hints you can drop would be great…
thanks,
mike
Phil Jones wrote:
>
>> Mike,
>
> You’ve probably seen this. We are slated about p189/190.
> I hope this doesn’t come up at the final IPCC meeting in
> Paris. I’ve nothing to worry about anyway. I wish they
> wouldn’t keep going on about it.
>
> The press release after Paris from WG1, by the way will be Feb 2.
> You might like to gear up Real Climate for the week after. Only the
> SPM will be available then. The chapters come later as you’ll know –
> I’ve heard June mentioned. CUP are doing them again.
>
> Cheers
> Phil
>
This is the message I sent, that bounced.
To all of you,
As an Australian I am appalled at your unscientific and
underhand behaviour, especially those of you at CSIRO which used to be a
bastion of truth, but has been revealed as corrupted by chasing money to
push an agenda rather than objective and precise science.
You should all be ashamed
M.A.Vukcevic says:
November 29, 2011 at 1:27 pm
tTry 71.6 years
crosspatch says:
November 29, 2011 at 2:37 pm
) I would need to see the same thing with about 300 years of data to have any confidence in it (250 years at a minimum). What does a longer run of CET only show?
I have substituted the 1880-2010 CET with the 1659-2010, and it is devastatingly clear that 60 year period has completely disappeared. If dr. Scafetta is about I can email whole file which for the CET has 800 data points between 10 and 150 years.
link:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Spectra.htm
@Brian Cooper says:
November 29, 2011 at 10:09 am
“This is starting to make me ill.”
You know, I was having the same exact thought this evening as I was reading the recent posts. When I got to your statement I thought “Exactly! That’s exactly what I’m feeling”
All this is really turning my stomach. How in the world isn’t there an investigation into this crowd? The fact that the world turns a blind eye is really sickening.
Interstellar Bill: ; – )
Dodgy Geezer: Hmmm. Something Churchillian about that syntax… Or is it Johnsonian? But that’s a story up with which we shall not put!
Minor typo:
> Greenpeace has become an openly anti-capitalist group with a stated mission
> of reigning in capitalism
That should be reining, not reigning.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/reining
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/reigning
You know, I just had an idea while reading this garbage (from the Team, not the excellent piece by Jeff Id). Two things came together 1) I really recognized firmly that this gang (or team) tries to unify and force others out of their positions or destroy journals because they don’t agree and 2) I liked the Quiz in http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/lying.htm (thanks Werner Brozek for posting). Where option c) is: “Drop everything, including secrecy and profit, and devote yourself to saving the human race”
Can we, as the taxpayers, say that we refuse to allow another dollar from our pockets go into funding this research…which only keeps fiddling with the models and keeps projecting warming due to human reliance on fossil fuels, and that all those funds (every cent) should rather be invested in research that would actually be useful, like renewable fuel research, improving batteries, improving solar panels, explore different modes of transportation, improving insulating properties, .anything that would actually fix the “problem”. (now I don’t believe there’s a problem, but if my taxes are to be spent I don’t want them wasted on trying to prove the supposed problem. …spend it on something useful).
The money spent on actually reducing our reliance on fossil fuels would go so much further than continually funding this crap from “the team”. And they shouldn’t mind at all because it will be supporting their “cause”. And it won’t hurt the taxpayer at all because we’re already paying it out. We just would redirect that money away from the Team and onto something else that would purport to fix this “warming problem” thereby creating a moral highground that they couldn’t argue against. In fact they should help argue for redirecting funding from their crap research into something useful.
Yes, I happened to notice the change in the graph 🙂
So now if we add up those wavelengths into a composite signal, well, all of them starting with, say, the roughly 34-year peak and each peak of longer wavelength with its amplitude proportional to its energy component, we should be able to see how things play out. Of course we can’t know easily where we are as far as the phase relationship of all of these (can’t know where they were in their phase at initialization) we can play out several hundred years of that signal and I will bet some surprises will pop out when things line up just right. I will bet some very warm and some very cool periods show up.
Thanks!
I point again to David Viner’s email (#0059). This email is from 1999 and was passed on by Viner to everyone at CRU. An excerpt:
Please bring YOUR ideas to us! What do you think would be the most effective
way to radicalise the UN agenda and protect the climate from our current economic
and political systems? There are plans for a team to work in USA on a parallel
campaign.
The project should begin by the end of the 1999.
I guess we know who the ‘right kind of people’ are, eh? This email comes from eyfa.org, an activist organization in Europe.
http://eyfa.org/
crosspatch says:
November 29, 2011 at 3:35 pm
So now if we add up those wavelengths into a composite signal, well, all of them starting with, say, the roughly 34-year peak ……………… and I will bet some surprises will pop out when things line up just right. I will bet some very warm and some very cool periods show up.
It has been done
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-NVa.htm
And I would trust that projection more than the bill of goods these people at CRU are trying to sell us. Anyone with any background in signal analysis will be able to understand what is going on there. I would even be willing to bet there are some longer period signals we just don’t have enough data to find yet but will over the next several centuries.
Thanks, again.
How about this email thread in which they discuss attacking skeptical Italian scientist Antonino Zichichi because he is a **gasp** Catholic? Apparently their science was so indefensible that they felt the need to attack the man over his religion, rather than his science. Ironically, one of the emailers suggests the need for a science purity panel, akin to the Spanish-Catholic Inquisition.
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=1555.txt
April, … “a science purity panel” Muggles need not apply for any climate studies.
Some insite into Mike Mann…in his own words:
Email #4666 is far too long to copy here, but you have to read it. Mike Mann ripping into Anne Jolis from Wall Street Journal Europe for simply asking him some questions for a news article.
Here are two bits:
“I’m sad to report that the tone of your questions suggests a highly distorted, contrarian-driven view of the entirety of our science. The premise of essentially everyone of your questions is wrong, and is contradicted by assessments such as the IPCC report, reports by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, etc.”
and the threat:
“Misrepresenting the work of scientists is a serious offense, and would work to further besmirch the reputation of the Wall Street Journal, which is strongly been called into
question in the past with regard to the treatment of climate change.”
April, I did not see the science purity panel you reference. Could you point it out as I only saw a call to have an ethics meeting, such as Penn state is doing, which is great because it will draw attention to their previous whitewash.
I feel ill from reading this stuff. These guys are really, really creepy. This is like Nazi bookburning, only worse. Then it was in public for all to see. Now we have to scour this email trail to see just how dark these men are, and that they will do their able best to secure their views as the only ones acceptable. Brrrr-rrr. The public expression? This Ethics gong-show from Penn State. They are so bloody arrogant.
DCA:
“Thirteen of the authors Baliunas and Soon cited in the paper refuted her interpretation of their work, and several editors of Climate Research resigned in protest at a flawed peer review process that allowed the publication.”
…..
I searched a couldn’t find anything backing this up. Is there anything?
Wikipedia gives this reference to support that claim:
http://holocene.meteo.psu.edu/shared/articles/eos03.pdf
I think this thread is the story that has legs. Soon and Baliunas are good scientists and good people with honourable intent, making an important scientific point that everyone can understand. They get the first flush of Mann’s blitzkrieg (Godwin can stuff it here).
The other side of feeling sick is strengthening the committment to fight for what is right. To use our ingenuity. Our cunning. Our knowledge. Our collective, distilled wisdom and power. Prayer. Positive thinking. Speaking Truth to Power, as the Quakers say. Keeping on looking for Whatever Will Work. Not wasting time on anything else.
As Pasteur said, “Chance favours the prepared mind”. Have a 12-step program ready to offer “defectors”. Be prepared to handle 200,000 emails efficiently and effectively. Each time I hit another sickening piece of news, it sharpens my resolve to get a wiki going.
I’ve seen the level of Joe Public’s scientific literacy rising, in following MSM responses. Also the level of awareness of the fraud, the level of awareness of the importance of courtesy and debate, and the level of skills to undermine and expose the corruption and force a return to justice. We have further to go still, but we can do it, if we can work together and use our resources efficiently.
A question: Is that 100 year cutoff a limitation of your spectrum analysis software? The reason I ask is because it seems to me that there is another component possibly in there with a period of 700 or more years. I wonder if there is enough data for it to be picked up.
Here’s the membership of the Gang of Thirteen from the EOS article: Mann, Amman, Bradley, Briffa, Jones, Osborn, Crowley, Hughes, Oppenheimer, Overpeck, Rutherford, Trenberth, Wigley.
Looks like the usual suspects. Should have been a step forward for CR.
Well isn’t that a convenient piece of circular logic. As they had great influence in the production of the IPCC report and much of it is their work, they can’t point to it as an external validation of their work, but they do. My response would have been along the lines of “nice try, pal”.
David L, that 4666 is a doozie. If that’s a brief reply, I’d hate to see Mann in a state of verbosity
I think a good besmirching from “Doctor” Mann might be more a badge of honor. If I were the WSJ, I think I would give it notice on the masthead.
The Wall Street Journal — Besmirched by Michael Mann!
Hey, maybe we can get a “Smirch”andise page going on Cafe Press or something. Smirch for sale!
Shameful. Infamous. A hideous violation of scientific and personal ethics.
“Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.”—CG Jung
The more I think about it, the more I like the Smirchandise thing. Coffee mugs maybe with key quotes from the climategate emails. Maybe start with a t-shirt that says “Misrepresenting the work of scientists is a serious offense.” on the front with a particularly damning quote on the back.
I like that Mann has no problem whatsoever misrepresenting the work of scientists whose results are counter to his hypothesis.
Dave Summers (Heading Out) says:
November 29, 2011 at 2:22 pm
=============
Thank you for the reply. Not to distract from WUWT, I will visit your site. Your coverage of the Horizon incident on ‘theoildrum’ was excellent. Continued eyesonu!
In regard to misrepresenting the work of scientists it might be pertinent to note that Phil Jones is revealed as equally guilty of that particular scientific crime. He writes (in e-mail 31 of the current series):
But in her seminal book on The Little Ice Age, what Jean Grove actually said was:
But then she had died in 2001, so I suppose he didn’t expect any rebuttal.
Many years ago in an undergrad humanities class –I needed to have a “well-rounded” education– I fiercely defended the notion that the hard sciences were superior to the liberal arts and soft sciences because they had certain built-in checks to arrive at the truth: peer review, falsifiability, rigorous statistical methods, etc.
Seeing this disgusting chain of e-mails more suited to a high school clique than the impartial and noble pursuit of knowledge I can only conclude that I was wrong.
M.A.Vukcevic says:
November 29, 2011 at 3:46 pm
crosspatch says:
November 29, 2011 at 3:35 pm
So now if we add up those wavelengths into a composite signal, well, all of them starting with, say, the roughly 34-year peak ……………… and I will bet some surprises will pop out when things line up just right. I will bet some very warm and some very cool periods show up.
It has been done
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-NVa.htm
============
@ M. A. Vukcevic and crosspatch
Thank you M. A. Vukcevic.
I’m glad this has been done. I tried to do the same a year or so ago and ended up with lots of handwritten graphs of differing cycles but not complete enough to put all together.
This is something that one with greater knowledge and resources than myself needed to to do in depth. A composite of signals could be like a rabbit in the hat.
Search the archive for ‘Boehmer’ to see the pressure that Phil Jones put in on Hull University to get them to rein in Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen. And he gets a result.
What a nasty man he is turning out to be.
@ M. A. Vukcevic
I should have added that I also was trying to include the PDO, solar, and other cycles all into one overlapping composite. I drew the cycles that I could find at the time to look at possible / probable overlaps but I was only trying to prove to myself and would have just added to ‘my vast wealth of useless knowledge’. Other issues / projects caused me to drop the ball. Maybe someone else can find the rabbit.
The climate conmen seem very much like the usual gutless nerds online who pack stalk and pack defame people, the only real difference being that the climate decepticons have paying daytime “jobs” (albeit only evolutionary deadend work for the dole Uni jobs).
The entire Climategate “CRU” should be hanged from lamp posts, with damning quotes from these emails prominently displayed below them for all to read. This isn’t the first time Science has gotten ugly, but this IS the first time the entire civilized world has been threatened with destruction to satisfy the vanity of a bunch of hypocritical ########s. I will be emailing a few congresscritters weekly until there’s an investigation of the so-called “science” behind CAGW, and especially the EPA’s “assessment” that CO2 is a “pollutant”. I urge the rest of you to do the same. If we pound them loud enough, long enough, something will give.
“It is actually humorous reading these guys talk to each other about how skeptics are oil funded and politically motivated followed by the next proposal for 3million euros from the taxpayer. They never seem to notice that the blogs are unfunded or that their cohorts who disagree don’t take oil money and the few who have get values 1/100th of the UEA.”
I concur, the hypocrisy here is ridiculous. Below is a summary of the fossil fuel industry’s involvement in “climate science”…
—— Forwarded message follows ——-
To: ???@igc.topica.com
From: “Bill Hare, CNE” ???@diala.gl3
Subject: [can-talk] IPCC Chairman: Pachauri in, Watson out
Date sent: Mon, 22 Apr 2002 13:05:25 +020 ???
Send reply to: ???@diala.gl3
Organization: Greenpeace
[ Double-click this line for list subscription options ]
Dear Can colleagues
This note covers the outcome of the IPCC Plenary concluded on Saturday in Geneva in relation to the Chairmanship position. Many other decisions were taken and these will be covered in a subsequent note this afternoon or tomorrow.
As many of you would have seen from press reports over the weekend the IPCC has voted Dr Pachauri of India into the position of Chairman of IPCC. Dr Robert Watson was outvoted in a secret ballot on Friday afternoon – Pachauri 76; Watson – 49; and Goldem berg – 7. As far as we can determine based on the expressed or inferred voting intentions, the vast majority of African countries voted heavily for Pachauri as did all the OPECs, several LatinAmerican countries (Venezuela, Peru and Chile), Japan and some other Asian countries (India plus others). Voting for Watson were all of Europe except Russia, China, Canada, NZ and probably Australia plus a collection of Asian countries and a few small island states present. For those present it was certainly the ugliest and most vile IPCC meeting ever.
Pachauri in the end refused any role for Watson, a gesture of indecency not seen before in the IPCC and entirely against the spirit of the IPCC since it began and all that it has stood for in all of the times past. The fossil fuel industry was crawling all over the process it seems from beginning to end: and the beginning it seems was a long time before the plenary itself and has involved a few senior UN officials acting in extraordinary a partisan ways.
Speaking personally, whatever view one takes of Pachauri the manner of his victory and the forces so blatantly and we strongly suspect immorally, behind the campaign to get him elected, are very likely to haunt his tenure of the IPCC and probably the IPCC itself. In terms of body language at the meeting Pachauri spent an inordinate amount of time in consultation with Don Pealrman and others associated with that camp and were overheard on numerous occasions plotting and scheming on how to use rules of procedure to bring on a vote and to keep Watson out should Pachauri win. He was too engaged with such discussions to talk with NGOs on Saturday.
Objectively there were clear concerns from a group of developing countries over Watson and his behaviour in the past as well as the concern for this to be the turn of developing countries. The latter position of course was spearheaded by the USA in its pre Plenary diplomacy throughout
Africa and Asia, it seems. In this context proposals for a Co-Chair arrangement were dismissed as tantamount to suggesting that developing country scientists were inferior to developed country scientists. Inaddition to the election of Pachauri as Chair the Working Group co-chairs were apppointed and overall there is a very strong and credible line up. Drs Solomon (USA) and Qin (China) were appointed to WGI on Science, Drs Canziani (Argentina) and Parry (UK) to WGII on Impacts and Drs Davidson and Metz (NL) for WGIII (as befor e).
It is anticipated by most that Pachauri will not pay as much attention to the details of the IPCC as Watson or Bolin before him and hence the strength of the WG Chairs will be very important. In relation to Pachauri himself it is apparent that many concerns were expressed as to an apparent conflict of interest between his position as IPCC Chair and position on the board of the Indian government’s oil company. I feel he will need to resolve this soon.
Some in industry are saying that Pachauri’s election means that the IPCC and governments are distancing themselves from the IPCC TAR and from Watson. This is wrong but is obviously a pre-determined message and the possibility of running such a message is likely one of the reasons that many big US industries supported Pachauri and the reason why he got such high profile support from the OPECs. Already one government has had to ask him to come and address this issue soon because their business associations are spinning the election this way . As to the NGO approach, we have to work to make sure that damage to the IPCC is limited as a consequence of this affair whilst ensuring that its integrity is maintained over time. My gut feeling is that industrial and political forces supporting Pachauri and upon whom he so visibly relied (in addition to his own government) will not rest and nor will they be interested in free lunches. We need to tell Pachauri that he should be at least as accessible to NGOs as his predecessors were, and not just to big industries.
I will limit my remarks here.
Cheers
Bill Hare
Visiting Scientist
Attachment Converted: “c:\eudora\attach\EM letter general1.doc”
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Professor Trevor D. Davies
Dean, School of Environmental Sciences
University of East Anglia
Norwich NR4 7TJ
United Kingdom
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=3150.txt&search=exxon
Shell
From: “Mick Kelly”
To: ???@uea.ac.uk
Subject: Shell
Date: Wed, 05 Jul 2000 13:31:00 +010 ???
Reply-to: ???@uea.ac.uk
Cc: ???@uea.ac.uk, t.o’???@uea.ac.uk
Mike
Had a very good meeting with Shell yesterday. Only a minor part of the agenda, but I expect they will accept an invitation to act as a strategic partner and will contribute to a studentship fund though under certain conditions. I now have to wait for the top-level soundings at their end after the meeting to result in a response. We, however, have to discuss asap what a strategic partnership means, what a studentship fund is, etc, etc. By email? In person?
I hear that Shell’s name came up at the TC meeting. I’m ccing this to Tim who I think was involved in that discussion so all concerned know not to make an independent approach at this stage without consulting me! I’m talking to Shell International’s climate change team but this approach will do equally for the new foundation as it’s only one step or so off Shell’s equivalent of a board level. I do know a little about the Fdn and what kind of projects they are looking for. It could be relevant for the new building, incidentally, though opinions are mixed as to whether it’s within the remit.
Regards
Mick
______________________________________________
Mick Kelly Climatic Research Unit
University of East Anglia Norwich NR4 7TJ
United Kingdom
Tel: 44??? Fax: 44???
Email: ???@uea.ac.uk
Web: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/tiempo/
___________________________________
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=0962818260.txt&search=shell
From: “Mick Kelly”
To: ???@uea.ac.uk, ???@uea.ac.uk
Subject: Shell International
Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 13:05:29 +010 ???
Reply-to: ???@uea.ac.uk
Mike and Tim
Notes from the meeting with Shell International attached.
Sorry about the delay.
I suspect that the climate change team in Shell International is probably the best route through to funding from elsewhere in the organisation including the foundation as they seem to have good access to the top levels.
Mick
______________________________________________
Mick Kelly Climatic Research Unit
University of East Anglia Norwich NR4 7TJ
United Kingdom
Tel: 44??? Fax: 44???
Email: ???@uea.ac.uk
Web: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/tiempo/
______________________________________________
Attachment Converted: “c:\eudora\attach\shell.doc”
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=0968691929.txt&search=shell
Exxon-Mobil
From: John Shepherd <???@soc.soton.ac.uk
To: Mike Hulme <???@uea.ac.uk
Subject: Re: BGS, Esso, & CV for Tyndall bid
Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 17:37:30 +000 ???
Mike
BGS are now on board, so please leave them in the text : I have drafted a letter for David Falvey to sign and sent it. I hope we shall get it back in time…
The Esso (Exxon-Mobil) situation is still promising, but they’re having to get clearance from HQ in the USA (my best contact retired (with cancer) just a few weeks ago, so we’ve had to work around the new CE, to whom all this is news…). They know the deadline and will do their best for us.
Finally, my short informal CV is attached, as requested.
Hope the drafting is coming together well.
John
Attachment Converted: “c:\eudora\attach\JGS_CV_informal.doc”
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=0951431850.txt&search=exxon
From: John Shepherd <???@soc.soton.ac.uk
To: ???@uea.ac.uk
Subject: Re: ESSO
Date: Wed, 24 May 2000 13:00:43 +010 ???
Cc: Mike Hulme <???@uea.ac.uk
Trevor
I gather you’re going to collect the free lunch(?) with Esso ! I agree witrh Mike’s analysis : i.e. there’s room for some constructive dialogue…
See you on the 1014 from Ipswich (0940 from Norwich), for a kick-off at 12 noon ??
John
At 14:07 19/05/00 +010 ???, Mike Hulme wrote:
John,
It will be Trevor on the 19th for ESSO – too tricky for my schedule. I will pass the Esso booklet onto Trevor.
Esso have selectively quoted to (over)-emphasise the uncertainties re. climate change, but at least they have moved beyond denial and recognise that potential unknown long-term risks may require tangible short-term actions. Seems to be some room for negotiation over what research needs doing. I would think Tyndall should have an open mind about this and try to find the slants that would appeal to Esso. Uncertainty and risk analysis and C sequestration may be the sort of things that appeal.
See you Wednesday,
Mike
At 16:23 10/05/00 +010 ???, you wrote:
Mike
Despite my efforts Esso have gone firm on 19th (to fit the schedule of their man from the USA). Can you decide between you who should come (I suggest one is enough) : it’ll be lunchtime somewhere in London. I shall be travelling from Ipswich (it’s my week for the Aldeburgh Festival) so we could possibly meet on the train there ??
Copies of the Esso booklet arrived yesterday and are now on their way to you… I read it last night and wrote “misleading” and “wrong” in the margins in quite a few places !
John
At 10:04 05/05/00 +010 ???, you wrote:
John,
I can make a London lunch on either 19 or 20, but with a strong preference for 20th. Trevor could also make both days if necessary. By then we will have got further with the Tyndall contract so it would useful to talk with Esso (do you have a copy of the Exxonmobil booklet referred to?).
Let me know how this proceeds,
Mike
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=0959187643.txt&search=exxon
Enron (It’s interesting that there’s no follow up emails to the chain below, but then again Enron went bankrupt less than 3 months later…)
date: Mon Sep 17 10:17:17 2001
from: Keith Briffa
subject: RE: Climate Research at The University of East Anglia
to: “Jean Palutikof”
I am interested but happy for you and Phil to meet with him/them . If a visit to CRU is requested , I would be happy to take part in a general discussion.
Thanks
Keith
At 10:11 AM 9/17/01 +010 ???, you wrote:
Does anyone have a strong desire to meet him? Otherwise, I guess Phil and I can handle it.
Phil – do you want me to reply?
Jean
—–Original Message—–
From: Hamilton, Tony [[1]mailto:???@enron.com]
Sent: 14 September 2001 19:31
To: ???@uea.ac.uk; ???@uea.ac.uk; ???@uea.ac.uk;
???@uea.ac.uk; ???@uea.ac.uk
Subject: Climate Research at The University of East Anglia
Dear Sirs/Madam,
I am a senior specialist in statistical forecasting and meteorology with the research group at Enron Europe Ltd., based at Grosvenor Place, London. As you will know energy demand and supply is heavily dependant on climate, weather and weather forecasts. Also, increasingly, global energy demand and supply depends on climate and weather around the whole northern hemisphere.
Our devoted weather research and synoptic forecasting team based in our Houston office, and myself here in London, are extremely interested in the potential for collaborative University-University and University-Industry applied research projects, particularly between joint US/European research institutes and ourselves. We are interested in all aspects of Meteorology from new ideas in theoretical atmospheric physics through more practical aspects such as short-range deterministic forecasting, medium-range ensemble forecasting and long-range seasonal/climatic forecasting and analysis. My colleagues from Houston (who are currently planning visits to research institutes on the US side in the near future) will be in London in early November and I would very much like to set up an introductory meeting with the heads of the research groups at The Climatic Research Unit to introduce ourselves to you and discuss possible areas of mutual research interest.
If this is something that you would be interesting in setting up, or if you can direct me to a more suitable group or individuals at The University of East Anglia, please let me know and we can hopefully arrange a date for sometime in early November. I am currently in Houston, but hope to be able to return to London early next week depending on the current tragic situation here in the US. I can be contacted by email in the meantime.
Look forward to the opportunity of meeting with you in the near future.
In confidence,
Tony Hamilton
_______________________________________
Dr. Tony Hamilton
Senior Specialist, Meteorology and Forecasting
Weather Research
Enron Europe Ltd.
Enron House
—
Professor Keith Briffa,
Climatic Research Unit
University of East Anglia
Norwich, NR4 7TJ, U.K.
Phone: +4 ???-1603-593909
Fax: +4 ???-1603-507784
[2]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa[3]/
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=2241.txt&search=enron
British Petroleum (BP)
date: Wed, 24 Jun 1998 09:45:57 +010 ???
from: “Measures, Jane”
subject: FW: Briefing paper
to: ‘Mike Hulme’
Mike
Just between meetings and have picked up some quick feedback from Simon on our BP HSE team. Pleased to see how positive they are and what do you think of the suggestion?
Regrds
JAne
Jane Measures
BP
Britannic House
Tel. +44 ???
Fax. +44 ???
E mail ???@BP.COM
———-
From: Worthington, Simon
Sent: 24 June 1998 09:08
To: Measures, Jane
Cc: Thomas, Charles; Grezo, Charlotte AB
Subject: RE: Briefing paper
Jane,
This is really good – balanced clear and concise, covering a wide area well.
When completed I would like to get it in to a format to go out to our climate change list as a briefing paper and to all HSE managers – would this be OK with Mike of course we would quote him as the author.
Simon
Simon Worthington
Environmental Policy Adviser
Group Health, Safety and Environment
The British Petroleum Company p.l.c.
Britannic House, 1 Finsbury Circus, London EC2M 7BA
Tel. +44 ???Fax. +44 ???
———-
From: Measures, Jane
Sent: 24 June 1998 08:42
To: isobel; Russell; Thomas, Charles; Waumsley, Lorraine;
Worthington, Simon
Subject: FW: Briefing paper
Jane Measures
BP
Britannic House
Tel. +44 ???
Fax. +44 ???
E mail ???@BP.COM
———-
From: Mike Hulme[SMTP:???@uea.ac.uk]
Sent: 23 June 1998 22:51
To: Measures, Jane
Subject: Re: Briefing paper
<<File: bp.briefing.doc
Jane,
Attached is a nearly complete briefing paper on the science of climate change. Two topics remain to be completed. It is incredibly hard to condense such a wide-ranging and complex topic into such a format. I hope this is what you had in mind.
I will have a go later today at drafting one of these topics in terms of information sources.
Your feedback would be welcome before I progress much further.
Mike
At 11:40 16/06/98 +010 ???, you wrote:
Mike
Can you give me a ring please as I’m getting no response from your
telephone number.
Many thanks
Jane
Jane Measures
BP
Britannic House
Tel. +44 ???
Fax. +44 ???
E mail ???@BP.COM
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=4264.txt&search=Petrol
<strong Industrial and Commercial Contacts</strong
From: Mike Hulme <???@uea.ac.uk
To: ???@umist.ac.uk
Subject: Re: industrial and commercial contacts
Date: Mon Jan 10 17:01:32 2000
Simon,
I have talked with Tim O’Riordan and others here today and Tim has a wealth of contacts he is prepared to help with. Four specific ones from Tim are:
– Charlotte Grezo, BP Fuel Options (possibly on the Assessment Panel. She is also on the ESRC Research Priorities Board), but someone Tim can easily talk with. There are others in BP Tim knows too.
– Richard Sykes, Head of Environment Division at Shell International
– Chris Laing, Managing Director, Laing Construction (also maybe someone at Bovis)
– ??, someone high-up in Unilever whose name escapes me.
And then Simon Gerrard here in our Risk Unit suggested the following personal contacts:
– ??, someone senior at AMEC Engineering in Yarmouth (involved with North Sea industry and wind energy)
– Richard Powell, Director of the East of England Development Board
You can add these to your list and I can ensure that Tim and Simon feed the right material through once finalised.
I will phone tomorrow re. the texts.
Cheers,
Mike
At 20:30 07/01/00 BST, you wrote:
dear colleagues
re: List of Industrial and Commercial Contacts to Elicit Support
from for the Tyndall Centre
This is the list so far. Our contact person is given in brackets afterwards. There is some discussion on whether we should restict ourselves to board level contacts – hence Dlugolecki is not board level but highly knowledgeable about climate change. I think people such as that, who are well known for their climate change interests, are worth writing to for support. There may be less value in writing to lesser known personnel at a non-board level.
SPRU has offered to elicit support from their energy programme sponsors which will help beef things up. (Frans: is the Alsthom contact the same as Nick Jenkin’s below? Also, do you have a BP Amoco contact? The name I’ve come up with is Paul Rutter, chief engineer, but he is not a personal contact]
We could probably do with some more names from the financial sector. Does anyone know any investment bankers?
Please send additional names as quickly as possible so we can finalise the list.
I am sending a draft of the generic version of the letter eliciting support and the 2 page summary to Mike to look over. Then this can be used as a basis for letter writing by the Tyndall contact (the person in brackets).
Mr Alan Wood CEO Siemens plc [Nick Jenkins]
Mr Mike Hughes CE Midlands Electricity (Visiting Prof at UMIST) [Nick
Jenkins]
Mr Keith Taylor, Chairman and CEO of Esso UK (John
Shepherd]
Mr Brian Duckworth, Managing Director, Severn-Trent Water
[Mike Hulme]
Dr Jeremy Leggett, Director, Solar Century [Mike Hulme]
Mr Brian Ford, Director of Quality, United Utilities plc [Simon
Shackley]
Dr Andrew Dlugolecki, CGU [Jean Palutikof]
Dr Ted Ellis, VP Building Products, Pilkington plc [Simon Shackley]
Mr Mervyn Pedalty, CEO, Cooperative Bank plc [Simon Shackley]
Possibles:
Mr John Loughhead, Technology Director ALSTOM [Nick Jenkins]
Mr Edward Hyams, Managing Director Eastern Generation [Nick
Jenkins]
Dr David Parry, Director Power Technology Centre, Powergen
[Nick Jenkins]
Mike Townsend, Director, The Woodland Trust [Melvin
Cannell]
Mr Paul Rutter, BP Amoco [via Terry Lazenby, UMIST]
With kind regards
Simon Shackley
So “the fossil fuel industry was crawling all over the [IPCC Chair selection] process” and the UEA was in bed with every oil company they could get in contact with, but those of us who are skeptical of the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming narrative are supposedly in the pocket of big oil? The hypocrisy, it burns, unleaded of course…
– Cross-posted at the Vent
David, can you not read? Here it is.
“……..I am convinced that an International Committee on Ethics in Geo-Sciences is needed.
Indeed either we do not answer their attacks or we lose time and money doing it. The third solution is an official statement telling what the members of such a Committee of Ethics think about irresponsible statements by such anti-CO2 fellows.”
There is no mention of a “meeting”, only a new committee, complete with the authority of capitalisation. A purity panel. The new committee’s motto might as well be, “Only those scientists who support our science are ethical. All other science is unclean.”
For my liberal friends!
Disgusting stuff, nothing to do with Science (truth finding) and all with pride (ego bolstering).
So far, my favorite emails are the
Damascus email: http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=3408
Childish idiots in charge of the world: http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=2336.txt
Scientists are people,too. http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=5174.txt
The global warming scientists are as evil and conniving as I suspected, which is very scary. This is only what they say to one another, who knows the depths of their character?
AGW is not a religion, it is a CULT … the “religion” descriptor lends it too much credence.
We must only refer to it as a CULT.
I have sent the following email to my Federal Member of Parliament in respect of CSIRO and BoM employees involvement in this scandalous affair:
“I write to you as a supporter and resident in your electorate.
In recent days a fresh scandle in respect of leaked emails termed Climategate 2.0 has erupted in the blogosphere … widely reported by Anthony Watts at WUWT [ http://wattsupwiththat.com/ ] and locally by Joanne Nova at JoNova [ http://joannenova.com.au/ ].
It is absolutely appalling to note the involvement of Australian employees of the CSIRO and BOM actively conspiring to have a fellow scientist, Dr Chris de Freitas, of the University of Auckland removed from his employment for the reason that he does not support their views on catastrophic anthropogenic climate change madness.
This makes me ashamed of being an Australian that my fellow citizens, paid for with my taxes, should behave in such an unethical manner. It draws the integrity of the CSIRO and BOM into disrepute and soils its (once) good name … it is a shameful reflection on Australian society and these individuals and their employer organisation should be called to account.
The CSIRO and BOM government employees involved in this shameful act are identified by their email addresses at the CSIRO:
n.nicholls@bom.gov.au, Peter.Whetton@csiro.au, Roger.Francey@csiro.au, David.Etheridge@csiro.au, Ian.Smith@csiro.au, Simon.Torok@csiro.au, Willem.Bouma@csiro.au, Greg.Ayers@csiro.au, Rick.Bailey@csiro.au, Graeme.Pearman@csiro.au
There may well be others, the names of which can be found through an examination of the material at the above mentioned blogsites.
I bring this matter to the attention of the Opposition with a view to seeking a Senate enquiry into the behaviour of these individuals and the role of both CSIRO and BOM in perpetuating the scandalous cult of Global Warming.”
I urge all Australians in on this blog to do likewise.
CynicalScientist says: “It is true that unadjusted temperatures show no increase. What seems to be the case however is that at each move the new instrument tended to track colder than the previous one. The increase in the overall record has resulted from adjustments made at the boundaries to bring them into alignment. From what I can see of how these adjustments were made they’ve done just about the best job of aligning the measures humanly possible.”
However, there is a hidden assumption here, that the old instruments gave consistently accurate reading throughout their history. As you say, it is odd that the new instruments always read colder than the old. Maybe it’s because the old instruments slowly read hotter as they aged, like the glass thermometers flowed or something (glass is known to flow over long times). If the old instruments did drift, then the boundary adjustments would have wrongly decreased the old temperatures (100yo) back when they were right.
This has become like a serial show. Will someone come up with a final conclusion about these scientists? We all partly know what’s going on, there’s no point in dragging this.
crosspatch says:
November 29, 2011 at 5:13 pm
A question: Is that 100 year cutoff a limitation of your spectrum analysis software? The reason I ask is because it seems to me that there is another component possibly in there with a period of 700 or more years. I wonder if there is enough data for it to be picked up.
No, it is not cut –off, but I think that anything longer than 1/3 of the data time line is not precise enough, but if you wish to push it there is a peak at 570 but I wouldn’t put any money on it.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CETsp.gif
>>
NZ Willy says:
November 29, 2011 at 11:11 pm
glass is known to flow over long times
<<
It depends on what you mean by “long times.” The idea that glass flows over a timespan of a few centuries is an urban myth. The Medieval method of making glass panes was to blow a bubble and spin it into a disk. Panes cut from these disks were thick on one side and thin on the other. Glaziers would normally place the thick end down. Sometimes a pane with the thin side down would be found.
One glass expert said if glass flowed this quickly since the twelfth century, then glass in Egyptian tombs would be in puddles.
It turns out that glass needs to be above 350 °F to start showing effects from gravity. It would take a lot of global warming to reach that temperature.
The actual time period for glass to flow under normal temperature conditions would be on the order of 10^32 years. That’s more the age of the universe cubed–a very long time indeed.
Jim
@Bill Parsons says:
“Hmmm. Something Churchillian about that syntax… Or is it Johnsonian? But that’s a story up with which we shall not put!”
Johnson, I fear! He would never forgo the opportunity for a gratuitous insult (for which I must apologise in retrospect) if he thought it might make his comment a little more striking. While Churchill tended to insult as part of the flow of a speech – and hence have a reason, since the insult would be part of the structure.
Ideally I would prefer my syntax to be Chestertonian. But my brain isn’t good enough. The bad workman always ….!
As a retired scientist, of no great repute I hasten to add, I am utterly disgusted with the behaviour of these people. What has got into these guys? How can they forget what they were taught from day one. That scientific research should be open for verification or falsification.
It seems quite clearly that the papers they were concerned with were worth consideration. If the analysis was incorrect then surely this could/should have been the subject of a letter to the journal. It seems that ‘the team’ were either incapable of knowing this or they chose to ignore the issue.
But to plot an end of career for any academic just because he dared disagree with a particular line is a vile and disgusting act. Almost inhuman.
I am afraid that Professors Mann and Jones together with most of ‘the team’ appear to be mean, small minded, vindictive and extremely bitter little people. Frankly they should be stripped of any honours received due to their climate change work. And be transferred to other lines of research.
The title of this should have included “Gatekeepergate”, a self-referencing indictment of corruption, influence peddling, and with a strong and lingering aftertaste of Chicago mob tactics. Missing entirely from the Consensus Gang is any individual that stands apart, willing to rein in the gang’s radicals. No moral compass, no temperate hand on the brake. A train, out of control, owning the track ahead.
wow. what a nice nap LOL
I have enough personal problems now. But someone should write a testament of the clear beauty that the scientific method is built on so that people can compare it to what climate “science” have been reduced to. My thinking is that the public take the consensus argument because they don’t really understand the scientific method, how is came about, or why it’s wonderful thing.
People trust science without understanding why and that is of course not required of the population, and that trust in scientific integrity have been reduced to the function of a gutterpump. I am not a scientist but like to follow it and it makes me so sad to see the scientific method being on trail because of these criminals.
I am and will always be sceptical of all the science I love.
People talk about the death of journalism but I’m afraid it goes deeper. Where are all the prosecutors hiding?
That’s my last word for a while. I am now homeless. Keep up the fight for science guys.
@Peter Stroud says:
November 30, 2011 at 3:53 am
As a retired scientist, of no great repute I hasten to add, I am utterly disgusted with the behaviour of these people. What has got into these guys? How can they forget what they were taught from day one. That scientific research should be open for verification or falsification.
It seems quite clearly that the papers they were concerned with were worth consideration. If the analysis was incorrect then surely this could/should have been the subject of a letter to the journal. It seems that ‘the team’ were either incapable of knowing this or they chose to ignore the issue.
But to plot an end of career for any academic just because he dared disagree with a particular line is a vile and disgusting act. Almost inhuman.
I am afraid that Professors Mann and Jones together with most of ‘the team’ appear to be mean, small minded, vindictive and extremely bitter little people. Frankly they should be stripped of any honours received due to their climate change work. And be transferred to other lines of research.
———————-
Yes….you are correct. The normal scienctific process using peer reviewed submissions to Journals is that people publish what they consider good work. However, conflicts arise and others may publish articles that refute prior work, or folks write letters or communications to the journal. Through this process the scientific truth is able to come out over time. But when people manipulate the process to keep out papers that don’t agree with their position then the entire purpose of publishing is no longer valid. Might as well publish sensational articles in the news paper.
At one time the Journal was the only real way for scientists around the world to share their work and debate. Prior to the internet and even the telephone you had journals and conferences to hash out your work. So people published their work, published their rebuttals, published “communications” and “letters”. It was the vehicle to have the debates. No obvioulsy the Team sees it as a vehicle to present a one-sided view of topics to which they agree. They are really out of control and need to be stopped.
The Team obviously doesn’t understand the purpose of the Journal.
>>
M.A.Vukcevic says:
November 29, 2011 at 1:27 pm
Currently I am researching ‘natural variability’ but to make a credible progress I needed a good spectrum analysing software, and finally got there. Checking out the global temperature’s spectrum, I think that Dr. Scafetta may be misled by a poor quality FFT software in promoting the ‘60 year cycle’.
<<
I’m not an expert in Fourier transforms–my background is EE. We were trained to use Fourier and Laplace transforms. One requirement is that the superposition principle must apply. That’s how you can separate a signal into its component parts, apply a transform to the parts individually, and then combine them to obtain a complete result.
Unfortunately, the superposition principle can only be applied to linear systems. Fortunately (for EE’s), electrical systems are described by linear differential equations, so the superposition principle applies. EE’s are justified in using all those linear mathematical tools.
Many (if not most) physical systems are nonlinear. That means that many (if not most) problems in physics cannot be solved with those linear based tools. However, what happens is that many (if not most) of those problems are almost linear or have linear regions. The assumption of linearity then allows use of those linear tools.
Notice that the accuracy of solutions to problems derived from assumptions of linearity depends on how close to linearity those problems really are.
Chaotic systems are nonlinear by definition. Weather and climate are chaotic systems and do not necessarily lend themselves to solution by Fourier transforms. But you probably already know this.
Jim
From article…”many others have maintained that government funding has corrupted the science ”
From real life… Government funding corrupts everything it touches. Period!
Jim Masterson says:
November 30, 2011 at 9:22 am
I concurr with your remarks about superposition of sinusoidal components being an exclusive property of LINEAR systems, which the climate system clearly is NOT. There is even a more basic signal-analysis gaffe, however, in using the raw periodogram (magnitude of FFT coefficients) to analyze and predict empirical data. It is the tacit assumption that the data is strictly periodic, with a period that is an integral multiple of the record length. That is far from the case with RANDOM temperature signals, which contain a continuum of spectral components that are NOT harmonics of the available record length. Such components are smeared in FFT analysis over the whole interval of baseband frequencies, thereby invalidating simplistic notions of predictabilty via sinusoidal extension. This common misconception has lead many non-specialists into the self-deception that they are producing scientifically sound predictions. Proper prediction of random signals requires far more sophisticated tools (e.g., Wiener or Kalman-Bucy filters).
And the Team continue trashing de Freitas.
Over at RealClimate, in the comments following their ClimateGate thread we have this exchange:
“561.But when a single editor makes it a habit, or a journal (like E&E) becomes a regular conduit for that kind of thing, the reputations of the editor and the journal are going to suffer.
You seem to be using as a justification for the actions against Frietas that he, and thus the journal, was habitual in its errors. Could you provide examples of these bad practices that CR had committed prior to the S&B paper of 2003 that would lead you to believe he, and CR, should be subjected to such behavior at that time?
[Response: Funny you should ask… – gavin]
and links to this piece:
http://www.desmogblog.com/skeptics-prefer-pal-review-over-peer-review-chris-de-freitas-pat-michaels-and-their-pals-1997-2003
Proving that de Freitas persisantly published papers Gavin didn’t agree with and so he deserves to lose his ediotorship and his job at Aukland University.
Jim Masterson & sky
I agree with the above comments, the FFT analysis is inadequate, and I have abandoned its use. I use specially tailored software which in principle sweeps data set with Sin/Cos functions calculating correlation factor in the process. Results can be considerably different as you can see here:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Spectrum.gif
not only in the amplitude for the relative power (FFT) and the correlation factor for the alternative, but also for the number of frequencies tested (compare 20-40 year period) for the same data-set.
to juanslayton — the wikipedia mention of four reviewers advising rejecting the soon and baliunas paper had a reference, to this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/02/hacked-climate-emails-flaws-peer-review which says: “They concluded that their colleague de Freitas had ignored the anonymous advice of four reviewers to reject the paper. ”
So … it’s not the wikipedia writer at fault. However, it would be interesting to see where the discrepancy comes from.