NOTE: Thread #1 (the original still available here) has gotten unwieldy due to size. Many browsers can’t complete the load now. So, I’m starting this second open thread on the issue and moving all updates here. It will remain a sticky post for a few days like the original. New posts will appear below this one – Anthony
UPDATE62: 12/6/11 12:01 AM Some results from a recent survey of IT professionals lead me to speculate on a direction for a “whodunnit” for Climategate 1 and 2.
UPDATE61: 12/5/11 9AM Mann o Mann, it seems the hockey stick was based on “questionable statistics” according to email 2383. Others discussed this.
UPDATE60: Out of context comes understanding – a collection of contextual quotes from Climategate 2.0
UPDATE59: It seems that WUWT graphics have found their way into lectures at the University of East Anglia, first alluded to in a UEA Climategate 2 email where Phil Jones got it wrong. Happy to help.
UPDATE58: 11:55PM PST 12/3 The Weekly Standard summarizes Climategate II in a cover story titled Scientists Behaving Badly Part II. WUWT is featured prominently.
UPDATE57: 8:45 AM PST 12/2 The Team makes a call to get a PhD thesis revoked of a skeptic they disagree with. Only one problem (besides the ethics) their scientific basis is bogus.
UPDATE56: 8AM PST 12/2 Climate Science and “The Cause”
UPDATE 55: 12AM PST 12/2 Dr. Kevin Trenberth can’t seem to tolerate a dissenting idea, and suggests a scientist at the National Hurricane Center be fired.
UPDATE54: 5PM PST 12/1 Steve McIntyre talks with Andrew Bolt about Climategate 2 in this video interview
UPDATE53: 9AM PST 12/1 Apparently a kid and his science fair project can invalidate the core premise of Mike Mann’s hockey stick, according to his dad, who happens to be an NCAR scientist.
UPDATE52: 11PM PST 11/30 BOMBSHELL Steve McIntyre has discovered more evidence of “hide the decline” and it’s worse than we thought.
UPDATE51: 7PM PST Tying WWF, UEA, Fenton Communications and “commissioned research” all together
UPDATE50: 1:15 PM PST 11/30 The genesis of RealClimate.org seems to have been found. Surprisingly, the BBC’s Roger Harrabin seems to have been involved in the genesis meeting.
UPDATE49: 10:00 AM PST 11/30 While not email related, just as Climategate breaks David Suzuki commits an egregious propaganda error second only to the 10:10 video where kids are blown up for not going along with carbon reduction schemes at school. He’s targeting kids and Santa Claus at Christmas – Santa’s home is melting.
UPDATE48: 9:20 AM PST 11/30 Dr. Phil Jones on the “lack of warming” -he may need a backup plan.
UPDATE47: 9AM PST 11/30 Fudge factor collection in the emails, or is climate modeling a social issue?
UPDATE46: A look at UEA/CRU’s email infrastructure and email systems in general suggests that the “deleted” emails to/from Phil Jones and others at CRU probably still exist and can be subject to FOIA.
UPDATE45: 1:30PM PST 11/29 If there was award for clueless timing, this would win it no contest: Penn State to lecture on “climate ethics”
UPDATE44: 9AM PST 11/29 Mike Mann reprises the role of Captain Queeg in The Cain Mutiny when seeing de Freitas being vindicated by the publisher of Climate Research (see the update in the article).
UPDATE43: 8AM PST 11/29 An Excel Spreadsheet with Climategate 1 and 2 emails ordered chronologically should be helpful in determining that supposedly missing”context”
UPDATE42: 7AM PST 11/29 The CRU crew says: “what we really meant was…”
UPDATE41: 4AM PST 11/29 James Padget schools Steve Zwick – Guide to Defending the Indefensible. Some people just can’t handle Climategate.
UPDATE40: 12AM PST 11/29 Penn State has the same “look the other way” problem with Climategate as they did with the Jerry Sandusky scandal.
UPDATE39: It seems “vexatious” is Dr. Phil Jones favorite new feeling word after summer 2009.
UPDATE38: Severinghaus says Mike Mann didn’t give a straight answer regarding why trees don’t work as thermometers after 1950
UPDATE37: Climate sensitivity can’t be quantified with the current data according to NCAR’s Wigley, with paleo data – even less so.
UPDATE36: Dr. Chris de Freitas responds to the ugly attempt by The Team at getting him fired.
UPDATE 35: “Stroppy” Dr Roger Pielke Sr. shows just how much a “old boys network” the peer review process is.
UPDATE34: More internal dissent of the hockey stick. Mann tries to beat down the concern over “hide the decline” while not letting the dissenting scientist know there was a decline.
UPDATE33: Gobsmacking! Rob Wilson proves McIntyre and McKittrick correct in an email to colleagues at CRU, showing that when random noise time series are fed into Mike Mann’s procedure, it makes “hockey sticks”. The confirmation that M&M is right never leaves the walls of CRU.
UPDATE32: 9:30PM PST 11/27 BREAKING – Canada to pull out of Kyoto protocol. Another Climategate fallout ?
UPDATE31: 4:30PM PST 11/27 BOMBSHELL An absolutely disgusting string of communications that shows the tribal attempt at getting an editor of a journal fired on made up issues – all because he allowed a publication that didn’t agree with “the Team”. This is ugly, disturbing, and wrong on every level.
UPDATE30: 9:45 AM PST 11/27 Newsbytes. Major crack in the warming wall at the UK prime minister’s office. BBC in collusion with Climategate scientists.
UPDATE29: 9AM PST 11/27 The saga of the missing station data at CRU and the “pants on fire” defense of it as told by Willis Eschenbach. Dr. Phil Jones is between a rock and a hard place, quite.
UPDATE 28: 1:30PM PST 11/26 An email shows the UNFCCC considers activists an essential tool saying “…organized and deeply committed environmental activism has long been an important part of the UNFCCC process…”
UPDATE27: 7AM PST 11/26 Climategate 2 features prominently in WUWT’s newest feature “Hits and Misses”
UPDATE26: 2:50 PM 11/25 Two separate examples show obstruction and collusion by members of “The Team” to prevent any dissenting science from being properly considered by the NRC in 2007.
UPDATE25: 2PM 11/25 Keith Briffa asks another colleague to delete email to avoid FOIA
UPDATE24: 1:30PM 11/25 New Climategate 1/2 combined search engine here
UPDATE23: 9AM PST 11/25 via bishop-hill, strange infighting:
#4101 – Edward Cook tells Phil Jones that Mike Mann is “serious enemy” and “vindictive”. Mike Mann had criticized his work.
Apparently Mann went “a little crazy” over a paper showing the MWP exists.
Details here
UPDATE22: 11AM PST 11/24 Am unsurprising admission from a BBC environmental reporter to Dr. Phil Jones that they really have no impartiality at all (ho ho) when it comes to climate issues.
UPDATE21: 9:50AM PST 11/24 “FOIA2011″ and Climategate – A Chinese-POTUS connection?
UPDATE20: 9:30AM PST 11/24 World renowned climatologist Phil Jones can’t even plot a temperature trend line in Excel. I’ve offered a solution that WUWT readers can help with.
UPDATE19: 9AM PST 11/24 Gail Combs finds some disturbing connections between the Team and The World Bank
UPDATE18: 1:45PM Scott Mandia, aka “Supermandia” wins the award for the silliest climategate rebuttal, ever. It’s like stupid on steroids.
UPDATE17: 12:55PM PST 11/23 Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. has an excellent piece on “Gatekeeping” related to Trenberth and the Pielke-Landsea hurricane paper and the IPCC. You may recall Landsea resigned from the IPCC over this. Pielke says: “The gatekeeping of the IPCC process is abundantly clear, and the shadowy suggestion that they can find out who the reviewers are from another colleague is a bit unsettling as well.” Trenberth looks particularly bad here.
UPDATE16: 11:30AM PST 11/23 Insider scientist at CRU says our “reaction to Mike Mann’s errors was not particularly honest” – story here
UPDATE15: 7:50AM 11/23 Ric Werme found an email from the late John L. Daly to Mike Mann and the team – it is well worth a read here
UPDATE14: 2:45 AM PST 11/23 Willis Eschenbach offers a guest post here explaining how his FOIA requests went astray. Mr. David Palmer was the Freedom of Information Officer for the CRU at the time. In the newly released emails, he expresses his frustration with the whole procedure.
UPDATE13: 12:05AM 11/23 Craig Stone writes:
I have published a searchable database of the emails at http://foia2011.org
All email addresses and phone numbers are automatically redacted. It’s extremely rudimentary right now, but I’ll be refining the functionality and improving the search capabilities and navigation over the course of the next week.
UPDATE 12: 9:30 PM PST We’ve known for some time that Al Gore made up a bunch of claims in his AIT movie that simply weren’t true. Now this revelation in the new email batch shows that in the case of Kilimanjaro’s disappearing snows, even Phil Jones and Dr. Lonnie Thompson don’t believe global warming is the cause, even though Thompson put out a press release nearly a year ago saying just that. Told ya so. Pants on fire and all that. Anything for “the cause” right?
UPDATE11: 4:45PM PST Kevin Trenberth gets all misty eyed and sing-songy at Christmas here
UPDATE10: 4:30PM PST Some thoughts on cracking the big remaining all.7z file here
UPDATE9: 2:25PM PST Josh weighs in with the first satirical cartoon here
UPDATE8: 140PM PST Mike Mann shows his true colors:
email 1680.txt
date: Wed, 29 Aug 2007 12:03:05 -0400
from: “Michael E. Mann”..
subject: Re: Something not to pass on
to: Phil Jones
Phil,
I would not respond to this. They will misrepresent and take out of context anything you give them. This is a set up. They will certainly publish this, and will ignore any evidence to the contrary that you provide. s They are going after Wei-Chyung because he’s U.S. and there is a higher threshold for establishing libel. Nonetheless, he should
consider filing a defamation lawsuit, perhaps you too.
I have been talking w/ folks in the states about finding an investigative journalist to investigate and expose McIntyre, and his thusfar unexplored connections with fossil fuel interests.Perhaps the same needs to be done w/ this Keenan guy.
I believe that the only way to stop these people is by exposing them and discrediting them….
UPDATE7: 1:20 PM PST Phil Jones and Tom Wigley calls another scientist (The former state climatologist of California) a “jerk” for publishing his UHI results.
UPDATE6: 12:08PM PST Here’s an email that collaborates a radio interview I did in Seattle with Thomas Peterson in summer 2007, yes these are 100% real emails, no doubt whatsoever now. More here: Climategate 2.0 – NCDC: “Mr. Watts gave a well reasoned position”
UPDATE 5: 11:00AM PST In a statement, UEA doesn’t deny these emails, but posts about the whitewash investigations of the past, like they matter now.
UPDATE4: 9:45 AM PST I’ve changed the headline from Climategate 2.0 to Climategate 2.0 emails – They’re real and they’re spectacular! with a hat tip to Jerry Seinfeld. The relevance of that headline is particularly interesting in the context of where Dr. James Hansen of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) has his office in NYC.
UPDATE3: 9:25 AM PST – Having read a number of emails, and seeing this quote from Mike Mann in the Guardian:
When asked if they were genuine, he said: “Well, they look like mine but I hardly see anything that appears damning at all, despite them having been taken out of context. I guess they had very little left to work with, having culled in the first round the emails that could most easily be taken out of context to try to make me look bad.”
I’m going to conclude they are the real deal. I’ve posted a BitTorrent link to the file below. One big difference between Climategate 1 and 2 is that in 1, it took days for the MSM to catch on, now they are on top of it.
UPDATE2: 8:45AM PST The Guardian has a story up by Leo Hickman, and this excerpt suggests they may be the real deal:
Norfolk police have said the new set of emails is “of interest” to their investigation to find the perpetrator of the initial email release who has not yet been identified.
The emails appear to be genuine, but this has yet to be confirmed by the University of East Anglia. One of the emailers, the climate scientist Prof Michael Mann, has confirmed that he believes they are his messages.
UPDATE1: 8:20 AM PST These emails have not been verified yet, and this story was posted by one of my moderating staff while I was asleep. Until such time they are verified, tread lightly because without knowing what is behind the rest of the zip file, for all we know it’s a bunch of recipes and collection of lorem ipsum text files. I’m working to authenticate these now and will report when I know more – Anthony Watts
50 updates in a little more than a week! CNN may not like this, but the rest of the world seems to enjoy the theater!
Ah, thanks!
Just left this over at CA but thought it might be able to provide some insight when reading the emails, particularly on attacking skeptical scientists:
Remember the American Association for the Advancement of Scicence from last June: “AAAS Condemns Personal Attacks on Climate Scientists”?
Fun to read in the context of the smears we’ve read from the emails. And one wonders if Mann even read it. My emphasis in italic:
We are deeply concerned by the extent and nature of personal attacks on climate scientists….
…The progress of science and protection of its integrity depend on both full transparency about the details of scientific methodology and the freedom to follow the pursuit of knowledge…
…the scientific community has proven and well-established methods for resolving disagreements about research results.
…Science advances through a self-correcting system in which research results are shared and critically evaluated by peers and experiments are repeated when necessary. Disagreements about the interpretation of data, the methodology, and findings are part of daily scientific discourse. Scientists should not be subjected to fraud investigations or harassment simply for providing scientific results that are controversial…
…The scientific community takes seriously its responsibility for policing research misconduct, and extensive procedures exist to protect the rigor of the scientific method and to ensure the credibility of the research enterprise.”
Not sure if trying to get someone fired, or banned from journals is a “proven and well-established method for resolving disagreements about research results”, but maybe that’s just the “new normal”.
The treatment is impressive and in comparison to two years ago with Climategate 1.0 the “somewhat sceptic” side of the debate has gained in seriousness to the point that the rest of the world must take Climategate 2.0 seriously however much they hate to do so. Anthony’s humble website has been the focal point of climate realists all over the world and been brought to attention to all those, politicians, researchers and activists, who wished such a blog never was taken seriously.
I bet you wouldn’t have minded to have had a google ad for each troll-like-comment now though. :p
Google actually has a scheme that put the ads between comments, so it would be simple enough to place the ad code inside moderated comments. :-()
I’m a world religions scholar, following and participating in the debate for several years, now. Some may find my recent take (click on name) on AGW as a form of Buddhism, “the Four Noble Half-Truths,” an interesting exercise in paradigm-shifting.
Having interacted with some very smart AGW proponents, I always find it amazing, the degree to which the “will to believe” (and confirmation bias) can override mere objective reality.
David Marshall says: November 30, 2011 at 2:27 pm
Having interacted with some very smart AGW proponents, I always find it amazing, the degree to which the “will to believe” (and confirmation bias) can override mere objective reality.
Now, an article on “Confirmation Bias and the 12-Step Program” could be very helpful…
ps some here regard my own piece (click my name) as a kind of 12-step program for recovering warmaholics, I wouldn’t like to claim that but it might have some useful tips and ideas in that direction.
Seems that Nature magazine is smuggly satisfied that Climategate 2.0 hasn’t attracted the media attention that the original did.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v480/n7375/full/480006a.html
As even they acknowledge, part of the reason has to be that climate change is so-o-o-o last decade, but I wonder if it crossed their mind that perhaps it’s more that climate scientists behaving boorishly is no longer considered “news”.
David Marshall says:
November 30, 2011 at 2:27 pm
“I’m a world religions scholar, following and participating in the debate for several years, now. Some may find my recent take (click on name) on AGW as a form of Buddhism, “the Four Noble Half-Truths,” an interesting exercise in paradigm-shifting.
Having interacted with some very smart AGW proponents, I always find it amazing, the degree to which the “will to believe” (and confirmation bias) can override mere objective reality.”
Do you really have a definition of objective reality or did you just not eat your porridge before reaching that conclusion? :p
How to defend the indefensible
(1) ‘Out of Context’
CG-2.0 is adding TOO MUCH ‘In Context’ for all to many in the media. Just make sure that your audience doesn’t know the details and, hey presto, everything is as it says on the
tin – ‘Out of Context’
(2) ‘You shouldn’t be reading ‘stolen’ e-mails’
A double whammy here. Stops some of your audience from sinning and provides a great excuse for those who don’t want to ‘know the context’. ‘I don’t read stolen e-mails’ sounds
much more laudable than ‘La La, I can’t hear you!’
(3) ‘The latest release adds nothing new to the debate’
Another great reason not to look at the CG-2.0 messages for those who either didn’t read the CG-1.0 tranche or chose instead to read the translated/bowdlerised translations.
This leads naturally to number
(4)’Multiple investigations cleared the scientists of any fraudulent or unprofessional behaviour’
Given the background to CG1.0 that CG-2.0 has ‘partially’ added to, AND was AVAILABLE to the ‘investigators’ at the time (but not in the public domain) and the unwillingness of
official questioners to ask probing questions then ‘La La, I can’t hear you’ became unnecessary as ‘La La, I won’t ask you’ rapidly became the favoured approach of these
highly-paid and defendant-friendly inquisitors.
(5) ‘This doesn’t change the Science’
Yes, the investigations did say that sometimes these brilliant but often absent-minded scientists were guilty of less than perfect record-keeping but, nonetheless, their
conclusions are unarguable. We’re all going to hell in a hand basket.TACTIC- when caught out in a big lie- admit to a small one.
But the science has changed. It’s gone from ‘Global warming’ to ‘Climate Change’ to ‘Climate Disruption’ to whatever the PR calls it today. When the e-mails are read, at first
hand, too many of those scientists who created the science FLUNK the ‘SMELL TEST’
Maybe the science hasn’t changed but how can anyone trust the products of those whose actions, ethics and integrity are in the gutter. I unreservedly apologise to those tainted
and soured by the activities of the aforementioned.
(6) ‘and 97% of climate scientists agree. That the 97% equates to one execrably-worded, three question survey of about 10K individuals that got filtered down to 76 ‘Climate
Scientists’ says everything about the politics and zilch about the science. Forgive me for the revelation but I’m dressed more to the ‘natural variability’ side of the argument
than the ‘it was us humans wot done it governor’ extreme and I still reckon my answers would have pushed the 97% up to 99%!!!
(0) jUST ME
I’m called a Denier, far too often for my personal comfort but at least I’m now part of a growing consensus of individuals who share some of my sentiments. Here’s part of this
deniers credo
I AGREE that we’ve warmed since the ‘Little Ice Age – LIA’ of the 19th century. I’m a warmist unlike the Hockey-Stick supporters who, by supporting its findings, deny that there
was an LIA.
I AGREE that CO2 has a warming effect on our planet. Our recent 3% addition to that particular GHG over that of the natural background does seem to have had beneficial effects
such as increased Biomass, longer growing seasons and a distinct lack of ice-fairs on the Thames
I AGREE that computer models do a really good job at projecting what computer models say will happen at Longitude xx, Latitude yy in the year zzzz.
I AGREE that Man has been guilty of degrading the environment with dirty air, poisoned water, contaminated land and extermination of species but, and excuse my french dear
reader, WTF has that got to with CARBON DIOXIDE?
Let’s GET BACK to protecting the environment and tackling the REAL ISSUES rather than stuffing the bank accounts of opportunistic faux-manipulators.
Good to compare Nature’s take with someone that Tamino calls a “talented blogger” (and someone who calls Tamino a “brilliant author”. Seems the back scratching isn’t limited to the Team, it also involves the water boys).
http://mattgbush.wordpress.com/2011/11/25/who-are-the-biggest-sceptics/
(He of the whopping 10 comments. Er, cough, cough…)
including one who perhaps indicates the frustration of the tragically inept:
as you can see from my URL, I’m running a blog Decoding SwiftHack that’s dedicated to, well, figuring out the truth behind the CRU data dumps. My main obstacle is that the .zip files themselves (FOI2009.zip and FOIA2011.zip) aren’t a lot to go on, and I don’t have much information about the cyber-attack beyond what’s available to the general public — since after all I’m not ‘officially’ a policeman, researcher, or reporter working on the case.
I think if someone’s who’s actually tasked with the case can use the resources at his disposal to ask the right questions, we can get way further towards finding the truth
Maybe the UK cops should spread some of the money around? Although it seems they hired this guy’s dumber brother…
1DanydTroll says:
November 30, 2011 at 4:12 pm
Ah, come on… you can come up with a better ad hom attack than that, can’t you? (Or is your name sufficient evidence that it be discounted completely?)
Apparently the whitewashing of the first emails has been successful as I keep seeing more and more of these write-ups clearly showing the author does not understand the significance of these emails,
Climategate RIP (Michael Hanlon, Daily Mail, November 30, 2011)
Will someone please send him two books,
The Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and the Corruption of Science
Climategate: The Crutape Letters
I am appalled, I am not a scientist but interested and rely on the scientists to illuminate me, WUWT has been really informative and I thank all bloggers and authors for the hours of enjoyment I have had reading your posts. My beef is with the unethical stance of the warmist scientists, we the public (or maybe just me) don’t understand half of your models, math and graphs and rely on YOU to give us an objective view . We the public who pay some of your salaries have been mislead and if it were not for Mr Watts admirable site, would be even deeper in a pit of misinformation. I am seriously annoyed.
Now, if this was medicine and people had relied on similar scientific break throughs and research (which then turned out to be falsified) to cure or ameliorate illness, ……..what then?
Someone someplace needs to write a book only about the e-mails and what they mean to honest science. If what we read is the way science really works then we have lied to billions of school children for a century at least.
1Danydtroll… you misspelled your own name this morning and there you are throwing stones.
@Pauline,
The pharmaceutical industry is involved in the same type off science that the warmists are.
http://www.healtoronto.com/big_pharm.html
excerpt:
In June, the New England Journal of Medicine, one of the most respected medical journals, made a startling announcement. The editors declared that they were dropping their policy stipulating that authors of review articles of medical studies could not have financial ties to drug companies whose medicines were being analyzed.
The reason? The journal could no longer find enough independent experts. Drug company gifts and “consulting fees” are so pervasive that in any given field, you cannot find an expert who has not been paid off in some way by the industry. So the journal settled for a new standard: Their reviewers can have received no more than $10,000 from companies whose work they judge. Isn’t that comforting?
This announcement by the New England Journal of Medicine is just the tip of the iceberg of a scientific establishment that has been pervasively corrupted by conflicts of interest and bias, throwing doubt on almost all scientific claims made in the biomedical field.
THE LAST PARAGRAPH SAYS IT ALL.
OT,
NASA’s Dr.Hathaway November prediction still going strong.
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/ssn_predict_l.gif
If you miss Dr. Hathaway recent broadcast (8 days ago) see link further down the post.
Note: This is not Space Admin (NASA) prediction, it is Dr. Hathaway personal view.
How did I do, hmmm ! but on the other hand I use the official NASA’s JPL ephemeris data .
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC7a.htm
1. Global Warming Hoax/Climategate 2.0 In FNC!!!
http://www.youtube.com/user/captainusa#p/a/f/0/wL9rri7jrMs
2. “All that´s necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing.” (Edmund Burke.)
“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. No to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” (Dietrich Bonhoffer.)
3. SAY NO TO GLOBAL WARMING HOAX
SAY NO TO JUNK SCIENCE
SAY NO TO EVIL
John, with respect, your post offers no evidence to support your conclusion, and the link you supplied offers no evidence either. As folks can easily verify, NEJM editorial policies are explicitly the opposite:
As it happens, NEJM is a leading medical journal for publishing articles that expose physician bias.
Saw this on Tom Nelson’s site:
date: Tue, 22 May 2007 12:18:37 +0100
from: “Palutikof, Jean”
subject: RE: Interesting thread on Climate Audit
to: “Phil Jones”
How very unpleasant.
The problem is they are like rottweilers – they never give up. So the best policy from the
TSU point of view seems to me to make it EASIER for them to access stuff, rather than try
to slow them down by stashing it at Harvard/National Met Archives. Then at least we can
get it all out in the open without having to wade through accusations of trying to prevent
them accessing stuff.
Jean
========================
Dr Jean Palutikof
Head
IPCC WGII TSU
Met Office, Fitzroy Road
Exeter EX1 3PB
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)1392 886212
Mobile: +44 (0)7753 880737
Fax: +44 (0)1392 885681
jean.palutikof@metoffice.gov.uk
———————
What does she mean when she writes “by stashing stuff at Harvard”?
Dear Anthony,
This is marginally related to the the subject, but you might be interested:
http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/0,1518,796623,00.html
and as a reminder:
http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/0,1518,505095,00.html
In line with Jones, Mann et al.
Best regards
My correction to the FNC link:
@ a physicist,
The contractual/legal term ‘significant financial interest’ usually has exclusions… Here is an example from a certain university.
Significant Financial Interest. A Significant Financial Interest is anything of monetary value, including but not limited to, salary or other payments for services (e.g. consulting fees); ownership interests (e.g., stocks, stock options or other ownership interests): and intellectual property rights (e.g., patents, copyrights and royalties from such rights). Significant Financial Interests includes the interests of the employee’s Immediate Family.
THE TERM DOES NOT INCLUDE:
Salary, royalties, or other remuneration received from or through the University;
Any ownership interest in an associated entity approved by the Board of Regents under BOR Policy #407;
Income from seminars, lectures, or teaching engagements sponsored by public or nonprofit entities;
Income from service on advisory committees or review panels for public or nonprofit entities; or
Any interest in a business that does not rise to the level of being “significant.” An employee has a significant financial or other interest in a business when the employee and the employee’s Immediate Family own more than an aggregate of 5% equity in a business (and that equity’s market value exceeds $10,000), serve as paid or unpaid officers and/or directors of a business, or receive more than an aggregate of $10,000 income from a business annually.
A financial interest arising solely from investment in a business by a mutual fund, pension or other institutional investment fund over which the employee does not exercise control.
Troll: I’m not sure what you’re getting at — reality isn’t something we define, it’s something we (hopefully) observe. And I only eat porridge 6 weeks out of the year, 3 weeks this year, since I spent the other half in China.
The third IPCC report (TAR) was stashed in hard copy form only at a museum at Harvard that was undergoing renovation–hence was inconvenient and temporarily inaccessible.
This is the letter I will be sending to my Congresscritter and US Senators later today. Unfortunately, my Congresscritter doesn’t have an email address for his constituents – a real failure in this century. Feel free to copy and paste or use whatever you wish. Sorry for the length.
===========================================
Dear Congressman Lamborn (R-CO District 5)
I have currently read less than ten percent of the latest “Climategate” emails, and less than 70% of the previous release. Even so, it has become blatantly obvious that climate “science” is not as settled as many would have us believe, and that the “anthropogenic signal” is neither as strong as it has been portrayed to be, nor as “dangerous” as the “true believers” espouse. The one certainty I have acquired from my readings of these emails and other information is that the Environmental Protection Agency’s ruling that carbon dioxide is a “pollutant” is both scientifically wrong and politically indefensible. Any regulation based upon that ruling is also indefensible.
I know you don’t have time to keep up with all the information currently available, and the tons of additional information that is constantly being generated. I do believe, however, that this subject is something that must be dealt with, and that someone on your staff should be tasked with openly, honestly, evaluating this data. There is every indication that not only fraud but slander, libel, and the deliberate destruction or misrepresentation of data has taken place, including such acts at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU).
While it would be “nice” to have a totally reliable, pollution-free, low-cost source of electrical energy, the technology just isn’t currently available, and probably won’t be for fifty years or more. The current Administration’s attempt to force the issue has resulted in extensive fraud, graft, and outright theft, and has failed miserably. We truly do need a national energy policy, but that policy will require that we continue to use oil, coal, and natural gas for the foreseeable future – possibly for another century or more. Nuclear power, especially thorium reactors, may be one key to a carbon-free future, but obviously solar and wind will only be capable of supplying a small percentage of our needs. In the meantime, government action is only delaying our achieving any sort of energy independence and killing jobs.
I’m a disabled veteran with a chronic pain problem, so I can’t be much help with keeping track of this for you. I do recommend, however, that this is something that could be “crowd-sourced” here in Colorado, for little or no cost. I’m sure that there are many others who would be willing to devote a small portion of their time to tracking what is being written about climate science, and keeping you informed. There are also another dozen topics that could equally be crowd-sourced to your advantage, including environment, jobs, the military, infrastructure, and government over-reach. You may also wish to discuss some of these ideas with your colleagues in the House of Representatives.
In the meantime, here are a list of sources that can provide anyone interested with links to both sides of the climate debate:
Honest, open debate
Watts Up with That http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/
Climate Audit/Steve McIntyre http://climateaudit.org/
CO2 Science http://www.co2science.org/
Bishop Hill http://bishophill.squarespace.com/
Bob Tisdale http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/
The Air Vent/Jeff Id http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/
Icecap http://icecap.us/
Dr. Roger Pielke Sr http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/
Climate Skeptic http://www.climate-skeptic.com/
Dr. Tim Ball http://drtimball.com/
Tallbloke’s Talkshop http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/
Jo Nova http://joannenova.com.au/
The Chiefio – E. M. Smith http://chiefio.wordpress.com/
Global Warming Policy Fndn. http://thegwpf.org/
Dr. Roy Spencer http://www.drroyspencer.com/
Dr. Judith Curry http://www.judithcurry.com/
Science & Environmental Policy Proj. http://www.sepp.org/
Science & Public Policy Inst. http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/
“Consensus-driven Science”
Real Climate http://www.realclimate.org/
Sierra Club http://www.sierraclub.org/
Union of Concerned Scientists http://www.ucsusa.org/
Science of Doom http://scienceofdoom.wordpress.com/
Tamino’s Open Mind http://tamino.wordpress.com/
Skeptical Science http://www.skepticalscience.com/
Environmental Protection Agency http://www.epa.gov/globalwarming/
NOAA http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html
Natural Resources Defense Council http://www.nrdc.org/
Sincerely,
Michael A. Weatherford
MSgt, USAF, Retired
Colorado Springs, CO
John, with the help of PubMed and searching for the keyword “bias” it is easy for anyone to locate no less than 361 New England Journal of Medicine articles that analyze sources of medical bias skeptically, analytically, and critically — with full disclosure of potential conflicts of interest on the part of the authors — covering every aspect of medical science and practice.
Thus, your criticisms of the NEJM appear to be poorly grounded in fact. If anything, NEJM is a major public resource for reasoned, fact-based, quantitative skepticism.
I’ve been back home since climategate 2 broke and have been reading about it on my smartphone. From what I have read so far, I think these emails are far more damaging to ‘the cause’ than the first batch. And I wonder if what’s in the encrypted file is even more informative?
I gotta believe that there’s been a lots of incidents of wadded panties the last 10 days or so at organizations like socialistinternational.org, PES, etc…
Heh: From #4509
“date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 08:50:31 -0500
from: Edward Cook
subject: NINO3 SST recon
to: Keith Briffa
I have taken a quick look at that deconstruction of the MBH paper by McIntyre and
McKitrick. They claim to show a number of errors in the data Mike used. I know that you and
Tim have worked with Mike’s data as well. Did you find the same things? I’m just curious.
I don’t plan on weighing in on this mess other than to suggest that Mike, Ray, and Malcolm
are living in glass houses when they criticize the Esper work in the way they do. One needs
to be very careful about criticizing the analyses of others because turn-around is fair
play and payback is a bitch. That is all I have to say.”
1) why would one ask this question unless there is a greater than expected chance of a “yes”?
2) that bold bit in the last para is pretty prescient.
BTW, I did a search for naughty words, it seems that Edward Cook is pretty much the hands down winner…
Hey, how’s Arctic ice doing?
;^)
From Mike Mann – Plausible Deniability:
Part of email 1256735067
At 16:54 27/10/2009, Michael Mann wrote:
thanks Phil,
Perhaps we’ll do a simple update to the Yamal post, e.g. linking Keith/s new
page–Gavin t?
As to the issues of robustness, particularly w.r.t. inclusion of the Yamal series, we
actually emphasized that (including the Osborn and Briffa ’06 sensitivity test) in our
original post! As we all know, this isn’t about truth at all, its about plausibly
deniable accusations,
m
@ a physicist….
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203764804577059841672541590.html?mod=WSJ_hps_RIGHTTopCarousel_1
h/t more soylent green.
The Bolt Report
Which email, is the smoking gun?
Somewhere in the mails must be evidence of criminal acts. PROSECUTE!!!
I’ve just been Climate Censored! :-O (new word?) The Swedish university town of Uppsala’s local newspaper UNT ”disappeared” my Monday 28/11 skeptical commment, then put it back after my complaining and has now deleted it again!
http://www.unt.se/debatt/skarp-klimatmalen-1547082.aspx
Climategate 2.0 emails are a very forbidden subject over here in Sweden. What has Tomas Lohammer got that I haven’t got ??? Here is what I wrote:
———————————————
Jens and Jabob are talking politics not science, consensus not facts. Internationally and in Sweden people are righly getting bored with their doomsday scare stories. See this Newsmill article for a viewpoint opposing Jens and Jacob:
http://newsmill.se/artikel/2011/11/27/klimatskeptikerna-hade-r-tt
Their ”100 scientists against Einstein” argument, or ”200 polar researchers say”, does not change the fact that polar ice varies naturally in 60 year Pacific Ocean cycles, ask NASA and look at the data.
http://www.theclimatescam.se/2011/11/28/inre-och-yttre-pressen-okar-i-sydafrika/
Canada has just pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol, USA and China have pulled out of giving money to the Climate Fund, the Climate Circus is collapsing daily & Jens and Jacob are on Durban’s sunny beaches.
——————-
Maybe I was ”erased” because of linking to disreputable websites 🙂 or maybe it was the non-respectful skeptical tone, maybe the English or maybe I got the weather prediction at Durban wrong. But hey … who really believes they can accurately predict future weather ? … oh wait …;-)
Trenberth is the travesty.
Unquote.
John, the well-written WSJ article that you provided (thanks!) is just the tip-of-the-iceberg … not an iceberg of incompetence and corruption (although these will always be with us) … but an iceberg of huge data-sets and increasingly sophisticated models for explain them.
In retrospect, one of GW Bush’s best appointments was Elias Zerhouni as NIH Director, and it’s well-worth watching Zerhouni’s Roadmap for Medical Research.
For what it’s worth, it’s my strongly held opinion is that Zerhouni’s roadmap underestimates the accelerating pace of medical science, and moreover the WSJ greatly underestimates both the challenges and the enterprise opportunities of assimilating and applying that progress. Indeed, my colleagues and I work as hard and creatively as we can to make certain that even experts like Zerhouni and the WSJ grossly underestimate the pace and scope of today’s medical research challenges and opportunities. You can count on it! 🙂
As for climate change research, it’s not all that different from medical research … in neither case should the pace of progress be underestimated, and neither should the participants be mistaken for saints. 🙂
“Mark Stoval (@MarkStoval) says:
December 1, 2011 at 3:16 am
Someone someplace needs to write a book only about the e-mails and what they mean to honest science. If what we read is the way science really works then we have lied to billions of school children for a century at least.”
No, the emails need to be digested and understood. The narrative that emerges from that understanding then has to be constructed, using the emails as reference points. And then it has to be taken out and shoved down the thoats of our lazy journalists, politicians, and science establishment who never bothered to investigate the AGW conspiracy that has wasted trillions and hurt millions (maybe billions).
Dr Phil to Peter Thorne in 4460.txt
Get me a skeptic, any skeptic, maybe one from Texas!
0363.txt
Jones sure loves to brag about his travels and extravagant meals, doesn’t he?
Jones to Wigley and Santer 2308.txt Now that Pielke has resigned they will be able to ignore him?
So what defines a “proper” journal is apparently who it gets to do its reviews.
1180.txt According to Dr. Clare Goodess, the definition if “astroturfing” in the US is anyone who opposes climate change action through apparent grassroots activity!
Wow.
1214.txt (love this one) Tim Osborn to Briffa:
Also includes a zinger from von Storch to Ritson in the quoted text:
“I am actually not that stupid as you indicate.”
Some of these might have already been pointed out, I can’t keep track of what has been posted about in this and the earlier thread. I hope it is ok to post the emails I happen to find interesting as I filter them with various searches.
Jones to David Parker and Thorne 2117.txt
So once you refuse to release data to one person, I guess that becomes your justification for releasing it to anyone else in the future. Otherwise, “we” would look stupid.
pauline says:
December 1, 2011 at 1:43 am
I am appalled,….
Now, if this was medicine and people had relied on similar scientific break throughs and research (which then turned out to be falsified) to cure or ameliorate illness, ……..what then?
_____________________________
I hate to tell you Pauline but the rot has gone all the way through the science community. The fact that societies like the American Chemical Society et al have “officially” agreed to support these buffoons is the outward sign of the rot. Now we are starting to see the nastier side.
Scientists’ Elusive Goal: Reproducing Study Results
“This is one of medicine’s dirty secrets: Most results, including those that appear in top-flight peer-reviewed journals, can’t be reproduced….
There is also a more insidious and pervasive problem: a preference for positive results….
Adds Atlas’ Mr. Booth: “Nobody gets a promotion from publishing a negative study.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/02/team-ugliness-an-call-to-get-a-skeptics-phd-thesis-revoked/#comment-816357 or
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203764804577059841672541590.html
”The FDA has found “widespread falsification” and “manipulation of equilibration samples” at Cetero research from 2005 to 2010. The fallout could affect dozens of drugs and companies…”
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505123_162-42849261/fda-finds-falsification-of-drug-trial-results-affecting-dozens-of-companies/
Dutch psychologist falsified dozens of papers; suspended from university
”A Dutch psychologist has admitted making up data and faking research over many years in studies which were then published in peer-reviewed scientific journals….
This university psychologist has admitted that he falsified numerous studies in an effort to meet the academic demand to “publish” and to “perform” and was subsequently suspended from his position at the university. While this is worthwhile news in and of itself, it raises a question regarding the validity of the subject of psychology. If a psychologist must falsify dozens of studies to either prove his hypothoses or to make his studies more impressive or publishable, the implication is that there is something not quite right with the subject of psychology.
This raises a second concern: How many other university/research psychologists are presenting falsified research?”
http://psychcrimereporter.wordpress.com/2011/11/14/dutch-psychologist-falsified-dozens-of-papers-suspended-from-university/
Part of the underlying cause:
The Shadow Scholar
I wonder if some of the crappy papers critiqued here at WUWT were written by this guy???
Mark Stoval (@MarkStoval) says:
December 1, 2011 at 3:16 am
Someone someplace needs to write a book only about the e-mails and what they mean to honest science. If what we read is the way science really works then we have lied to billions of school children for a century at least.
__________________________________
Book on Climategate 1.0
Climategate: The Crutape Letters [Paperback]
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1450512437?ie=UTF8&tag=wattsupwithth-20&link_code=as3&camp=211189&creative=373489&creativeASIN=1450512437
Also
The Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and the Co… by A.W MONTFORD
http://www.amazon.com/Hockey-Stick-Illusion-Climategate-Independent/dp/1906768358/ref=pd_sim_b_1
The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nat… by Roy W Spencer
http://www.amazon.com/Great-Global-Warming-Blunder-Scientists/dp/1594033730/ref=pd_sim_b_3
The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the world’s top Climate Scientist by Donna Laframboise
http://www.amazon.com/Delinquent-Teenager-Mistaken-Worlds-Climate/dp/1466453486/ref=pd_sim_b_6
There is a saying in medicine “The plural of anecdote is not data”, and to my knowledge (and I would be happy to be corrected) there has been no systematic study of whether positive-outcome climate-change research fares better in peer review than negative-outcome.
It would surprise no-one, however, if such a study were to find appreciable climate-change reviewer bias, for the simple and sobering reason that reviewer bias is commonplace in mathematics, science, engineering, and medicine as a whole. The following two high-quality studies of peer review bias are readily found on PubMed: “Testing for the presence of positive-outcome bias in peer review: a randomized controlled trial” (Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (American), 2007) and “Commercially funded and United States-based research is more likely to be published; good-quality studies with negative outcomes are not” (Archives of Internal Medicine 2010).
Paradoxically, the deplorable prevalence of bias throughout mathematics, science, and medicine ensures that cherry-picking instances of bias in climate research uncovers little or no useful information, since similar instances will be found similarly often by similar cherry-picking in every scientific enterprise examined.
How then do mathematics, science, and medicine progress? Surely not article-by-article, since it has been evident for several centuries that every field of math, science, engineering and medicine is afflicted by innumerable articles that are boring and/or and/or badly reviewed and/or simply wrong and/or fraudulent. The four keys to progress instead are replication, prediction, inspiration, and consilience. For example, one climate-change article with a hockey-stick graph means relatively little, but the progressive accumulation of climate-change hockey-sticks accretes confidence.
Climate Science, regarding the ClimateGate II e-mail collection and the actions and correspondence they self-reveal, this vid’s for you:
“BEST OWN GOALS CAUGHT ON TAPE”
.
The gift that just keeps giving 🙂
dear A physicist,
Your attempt to bring reason and nuance to a feeding frenzy of cherry picking and wild speculation are unappreciated. Please go back to whatever boring world of rational thinking you came from.
Latest Australia November anomaly -0.08 haha
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/month/aus/summary.shtml
Cant wait to see Roy Spencer data bet about 0.00C
It seems these cretins at the Australian BOM are trying to avoid giving just an average temp. It gotta be maximum or minimum average idea being to show that the minimum average was above aberage but the maximum average was normal! God help Australian Science
@ Gail Combs,
I caught this on a financial blog and thought you both would find this interesting.
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/reader-question
Global warming hype kills jobs:
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=47882
And signs of Junk Science:
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=3974#more-3974
I’m overwhelmed by all the new names showing up in these emails. Does anone have a who’s who or some other guide? I’d love to see their relationship with the IPCC.
Bob Watson on CH4 : we are going to see temperature rise by 4 or even 5 degrees C.
(mind you, he has grown lot of facial fur in readiness for the new solar ‘grand minimum’
Thought you or your readers may be interested in what my analysis of the emails discovered:
http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/17684
1706.txt they discover a paper that says Greenland isn’t warming now but did warm considerably in the 1920’s!
And then they spend some effort into attempting to dig out the review notes to find stuff wrong with the paper because apparently it goes against the meme.
3499.txt in the quoted text:
When Mann says he’s made a “small” mistake, it might be a good “dig here” sign.
And who would “the wrong people” be?
A physicist says:
December 2, 2011 at 6:47 pm
Do you mean like the following…?
“We have multiple lines of evidence, i.e. sea ice melting, glaciers retreating, flora fauna migrating, stratosphere cooling, extreme weather increasing, snowfall rducing etc etc”
Congratulations, WUWT just hit 1,000,000 visits since Climategate 2 was exposed.
I was curious about the breadth of dissemination so I checked your page hits for the last twelve days. As I was checking you hit 1 million visits.
http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats&s=s36wattsup&r=35
WUWT and its contributors have done a wonderful job reviewing and publicising these important glimpses into the inner machinations of the religion of “climate science.”
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=0880476729.txt&search=Endorsements
“Dear Eleven,
I was very disturbed by your recent letter, and your attempt to get others to endorse it. Not only do I disagree with the content of this letter, but I also believe that you have severely distorted the
IPCC “view” when you say that “the latest IPCC assessment makes a convincing economic case for immediate control of emissions.” In contrast to the one-sided opinion expressed in your letter, IPCC WGIII SAR and TP3 review the literature and the issues in a balanced way presenting
arguments in support of both “immediate control” and the spectrum of more cost-effective options. It is not IPCC’s role to make “convincing cases” for any particular policy option; nor does it. However, most IPCC readers would draw the conclusion that the balance of economic evidence favors the emissions trajectories given in the WRE paper. This is contrary to your statement.”
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=0876437553.txt&search=Endorsements
“Mike, Rob,
Sounds like you guys have been busy doing good things for the cause.
I would like to weigh in on two important questions —
Distribution for Endorsements —
I am very strongly in favor of as wide and rapid a distribution as possible for endorsements. I think the only thing that counts is numbers. The media is going to say “1000 scientists signed” or “1500
signed”. No one is going to check if it is 600 with PhDs versus 2000 without. They will mention the prominent ones, but that is a different story.
Conclusion — Forget the screening, forget asking them about their last publication (most will ignore you.) Get those names!”
Yes, that is what I mean: the point is scientific conclusions are drawn from a review of all the available information; in medicine this process is formalized as meta-analysis. In general there is no expectation that all the evidence will point in the same direction; in medicine such unity almost never occurs.
It’s worth noting too that relative to other scientific disciplines, fundamental physics at present imposes only relatively light constraints on medicine, whereas in other disciplines considerations of thermodynamics, quantum physics, celestial mechanics, stellar evolution, heat transport, etc. are very solidly grounded in fundamental physics and mathematics. Climate science is a middle-of-the-road case, in which observation and experiment are comparably important to fundamental physics and mathematics.
For the above reasons two of the weakest forms of skepticism are (1) criticism of cherry-picked observational data and (2) criticism of cherry-picked personalities — these contribute essentially nothing to scientific understanding (per the examples given earlier).
Accordingly, two of the strong forms of skepticism are (1) criticism of observational data sets in their entirety and (2) criticism of the fundamental mathematics and physical theory that interprets these data sets.
Needless to say, the practice of strong climate change skepticism is at least as challenging as the practice of any other variety of climate change research. Strong skepticism is becoming harder-and-harder to practice as observational data and fundamental theory both improve; that’s why strong climate change skepticism is seldom seen nowadays.
I think that, as well as searching for e-mails that show how bad these (15-20?) guys behave and how they slag outsiders, it might be useful to expose those e-mails where they slag each other – make it easier for them to see who their real friends are,
A physicist:
You remind me of an old phonographic record being played by a well worn pick-up needle. There is information there but it is so distorted and noisy that it is useless.
To be effective, why not just publish examples of those E-mails that show science being performed competently, with a proper skeptical approach inside the scientific method. They should exude professionalism and honesty. Show us the emails you are so proud of. It would be a pleasure to read. GK
CG2 has certainly given a boost towards WUWT hitting 100 million pages views before the New Year 🙂
Another academic fraud: http://badnewsfromthenetherlands.blogspot.com/2011/11/university-hides-academic-fraud.html
It has also become known this month that a senior researcher has resigned at the medical center of the university because the collection of his data was unverifiable.
which reminds a lot about… Jones? Others?
Because of world bank (and central bank involvement), here is a little gem I picked up.
http://physicsoffinance.blogspot.com/2011/10/federal-reserve-corruption.html
Interesting links…..
There’s not much reason to think that the most recent decade of climate-change research differs significantly from the previous 18 decades. That is, the history of fallible human being slowly gaining deeper understanding of earth’s climate.
As for the CRU emails, not even the people who wrote those emails have seen them in their entirety. Only one person has seen them all: the unknown person who stole them, a person who for unknown reasons, is incrementally releasing unknown portions of them, those portions being of unknown accuracy, redacted according to unknown criteria, in service of unknown objectives.
To me, the most striking and unexpected aspect of the emails released, is how little information they convey regarding earth’s climate. A plausible hypothesis is that the main redaction criteria is simply this: release no CRU emails that convey any substantive information about earth’s climate.
As for why that would be anyone’s redaction criterion, your guess is as good as mine.
A physicist says:
“… the unknown person who stole them…”
Only a True Believer would say that. First, there is zero evidence that anything was stolen; what’s missing? When something is stolen, it’s gone. And those emails were paid for by the public. They are public property.
The emails were copied, obviously by an insider with access. If an outside hacker had copied the emails he would have simply dumped them online en mass, instead of selecting which emails to post. A lot of work went into sifting through some really huge files. What benefit would the fictional hacker get out of all that work, and waiting two years to release the second tranche?
Whoever posted the emails did it to show the rampant corruption within the climate industry. Scientific misconduct is revealed throughout. Many years of temperature data were fabricated out of thin air, and the result always showed alarming rises in temperature.
The person who put the Climategate emails online for the world to see did a great public service. We’re at the point now that the public believes by a wide margin that the climate clique is fabricating data and lying for money. For them, things can only get worse from here.
5100.txt us apparently WWF coordinating with UEA on how climate “scientists” should respond to a WWF climate statement.
john says:
December 3, 2011 at 5:22 am
@ Gail Combs,
I caught this on a financial blog and thought you both would find this interesting.
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/reader-question
_____________________________
WEIRD, I go with the guy who said the FDA would have conniption fits.
manny says:
December 3, 2011 at 7:44 am
I’m overwhelmed by all the new names showing up in these emails. Does anone have a who’s who or some other guide? I’d love to see their relationship with the IPCC.
__________________________
Just toss their names into a search engine with climate included. That is what I do.
AJStrata says:
December 3, 2011 at 12:00 pm
Thought you or your readers may be interested in what my analysis of the emails discovered:
http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/17684
_________________________________
Thanks AJ, I loved you analysis of the error in the temperature data BTW and have it bookmarked.
Raymond says:
December 4, 2011 at 12:12 pm
Another academic fraud: http://badnewsfromthenetherlands.blogspot.com/2011/11/university-hides-academic-fraud.html
It has also become known this month that a senior researcher has resigned at the medical center of the university because the collection of his data was unverifiable.
which reminds a lot about… Jones? Others?
__________________________________________________
Boy the cases of fraud and other problems in science are coming out of the woodwork this fall!
Dutch psychologist falsified dozens of papers; suspended…. http://psychcrimereporter.wordpress.com/2011/11/14/dutch-psychologist-falsified-dozens-of-papers-suspended-from-university/
According to the US FDA, Cetero Research, a North Carolina based CRO, allegedly produced fake clinical trial documents and test results over a period of 5 years.
http://www.clinicalresearchsociety.org/2011/07/28/fda-says-cro-cetero-faked-trial-data-pharmas-may-need-to-redo-tests/
Scientists’ Elusive Goal: Reproducing Study Results
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203764804577059841672541590.html
Mention of “the invaluable WUWT” you might enjoy if you haven’t seen this yet!
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/climategate-part-ii_610926.html
Humour ?
http://www.theonion.com/articles/report-global-warming-may-be-irreversible-by-2006,26808/
Bob Woodward says sitting next to Al Gore is ‘taxing, unpleasant’
http://thehill.com/capital-living/in-the-know/197355-bob-woodward-sitting-next-to-gore-is-unpleasant-
excerpt:
Woodward offered up another tidbit from the conversation with his dinner companion. The investigative reporter asked the politician, more than five years after leaving office, how much the public knows about what went on during the Clinton administration. Gore replied, “One percent.”
Woodward admitted that revelation made him feel a bit icky, saying, “I kind of died inside and have to confess to having an unclean thought.”
He then dug a little deeper, asking Gore, if the former VP were to write a memoir, how much Americans would know then. Gore retorted, “Two percent.”
A spokeswoman for Gore had no comment.
I now ask myself what happens with Carbon Derivatives and those that deal in them if something similar to MF Global happens.
Let’s Make The Clawback Risk REAL
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=198650
excerpt:
One of the forum members pointed out something that was obvious to me when I wrote this morning’s Ticker, but might have gone over your head.
I want to make absolutely sure it doesn’t go over your head because if you’re wrong about this you could lose everything in your bank and investment accounts — every single dime.
FDIC / SIPC insured or not.
Recently Bank of America transferred a bunch of derivatives into their banking arm. “A bunch” means somewhere around $80 trillion worth.
Now pay very careful attention, because part of the bankruptcy “reform” law in 2005 placed derivative claims in front of depositors in a business failure – including a bank failure.
What JP Morgan is claiming in the MF Global case is that the derivative trade (which is exactly what a “Repo to Maturity” trade is – it’s a derivative) is entitled to preference in the case of MF Global over those who had cash there for safekeeping either as a margin deposit or just as free cash as you would hold free cash in a bank.
If a major bank blows up this very same claim, supported in existing Bankruptcy Law with the changes signed by George Bush in 2005, will be used to steal the entirety of your bank account, and if you detect the impending blowup shortly before it happens — say, 90 days before — you’re still exposed to the risk through clawback!
MangoChutney says: December 4, 2011 at 12:37 am
Oh, but – in context – MangoChutney, this is much worse than you might have thought:
The climate consensus coordinators’ cookbook
Is this really true?
http://uddebatt.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/anthony-watts-what-have-you-done/
Is this still going on, I thought you’d have moved on to something more interesting by now rather than this non-story…
REPLY: Only a non-story to you, and your opinion of it being a non-story doesn’t count unfortunately – Anthony
Mark Stoval, the following is quite a good report on the Climategate 1.0 emails, explaining their meanings and putting them into context.
http://www.lavoisier.com.au/articles/greenhouse-science/climate-change/climategate-emails.pdf
I wonder whether the same author will write something for Climategate 2.0 ?
SteveE,
Judging by the thousands of comments which are still continuing, readers of the internet’s Best Science site obviously want to learn more about the total corruption of climate science by a small clique of self-serving connivers. What I would like to know is: why are you carrying water for them? What do you get out of it? Or do you just like being their water boy?
It’s very difficult to decipher WUWT’s arcane conspiracy theories spun out of 14-year-old emails — no two of these theories are alike.
In contrast, it’s very easy understand the latest findings of climate science, which affirm with ever-greater strength that AGW is real and serious.
It’s becoming clear too that a Republican presidential ticket that picks two-of-three from Romney, Gingrich, and Huntsman will — once the primaries are over — gently inform its conservative supporters that the climatologists were right all along.
Under these circumstances, it’s not clear what brand of skepticism WUWT should pursue. The present WUWT practice of simply ignoring 21st century climate science is not strong skepticism.
A physicist,
Do you still live in your mom’s basement, with no contact with the outside world?? That link is written by the serial liar Grant Foster [tamino] and the odious Rahmstorf of email infamy.
The abstract preposterously claims: “The adjusted data show warming at very similar rates to the unadjusted data, with smaller probable errors, and the warming rate is steady over the whole time interval.” Steady?
From that, you make the leap to politics, assuming that scientific skeptics are basing their conclusions on the presidential nomination process! Are you nuts?! There have been scores of comments here from folks on the liberal/left side of politics who completely reject the CAGW claims.
Maybe you should just relax, grab a comic book, and call up to your mom to send for some pizza. Because you’re not making any sense posting here.
[snip – over the top – Anthony]
Smokey and gnomish, with respect, every investor contemplating the risk-level of bonds for coal-fired power plants having a 20-40 year payout, and every admiral foreseeing arctic naval strategy in coming decades, and every politician crafting national and global energy policies, will be analyzing for themselves the reported climate-change trends … and it’s not self-evident (to me) that WUWT’s present style of skepticism contributes in any substantial sense to that analysis.
a physicist,
Thanx for that graph showing that the planet is still emerging along the same trend line from the LIA. Note that there is no acceleration in the natural warming trend, and that there was only minuscule anthro CO2 emitted in the 1880’s.
By shooting yourself in the foot with that graph, you’ve shown definitively that CO2 is a non-issue. As a matter of scientific fact, more CO2 is better. There is no downside at current or projected CO2 levels. Any honest, competent physicist would know that.
If you think this is a “non-story” why are you wasting your time on it? most of the rest of us think it is a story, or we would not be wasting precious time on it.
Don’t you love the noblesse oblige that have so much time to waste?
With respect, Smokey, every investor contemplating the risk-level of bonds for coal-fired power plants having a 20-40 year payout, and every admiral foreseeing arctic naval strategy in coming decades, and every politician crafting national and global energy policies, is aware of analyses that conclude the opposite.
Prediction: future political platforms and national energy policies, for liberals and conservatives alike, will follow fairly closely the foresighted model set over the past 20 years by Republicans for Environmental Protection (REP). And it is evident that Newt / Jon / Mitt already are taking measures to break this news gently to their supporters.
a physicist,
Please stop posting those “what if” links. If you are a real physicist then you know there is no empirical, testable evidence showing global harm due to human CO2 emissions. None.
Therefore, CO2 is ipso facto harmless. Further, CO2 is beneficial. There is ample evidence showing increased agricultural productivity due directly to enhanced CO2 levels. Citations and charts on request.
Should the natural warming trend from the LIA continue, millions of acres of new farmland will be opened up in places like Mongolia, Canada, Greenland and Siberia. In a world where one-third of the population subsists on less than $2 a day, a 2° – 3° rise in global temperature would be highly desirable, and a net benefit to the biosphere.
A rise like that seems unlikely. Sea levels are rising at the rate of only a few inches per century, indicating that more global warming is not lurking around the corner. And of course, the CO2=CAGW conjecture has been empirically falsified by the planet itself. After a ≈40% rise in [harmless, beneficial] CO2, there has been zero acceleration in the [natural] global warming trend.
Please try to think for yourself, and refrain from posting model-based nonsense written by people with a vested financial and professional interest in promoting climate alarmism. They are not credible, nor is the climate pal review process. If you’re going to link to something, link to unadjusted, verifiable data. Like your chart. I liked that. It fully supported the fact of natural global warming, and produced no eveidence that CO2 has any measurable effect.
OK the smokey -vs- “a physicist” war is getting old – both of you stop
Interesting events over the last 2 days…..
Schwarzenegger to GOP 2012 field: Move green-energy debate past Solyndra
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/197115-schwarzenegger-to-gop-2012-field-move-green-energy-debate-past-solyndra
Berkshire Buys $2 Billion Power Project in Buffett Solar Bet
http://news.businessweek.com/article.asp?documentKey=1376-LVTXLI6KLVRB01-7GR2GKJ41M22OSLLJAANOMEGT9
Now, Warren Buffet bought into Bank of America (BAC) awhile back,
http://dailybail.com/home/warren-buffett-i-dreamt-up-bank-of-america-deal-in-the-batht.html
which left everyone quite perplexed. Now we find out that BAC had moved their Merrill derivatives over to the Banking arm of BAC, Leaving the taxpayers at rick for those derivatives.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-27/bank-of-america-derivatives-transfer-attracts-lawmaker-scrutiny.html
In an earlier post here on this thread,
john says:
December 6, 2011 at 9:18 am
I cited that the MF Global situation give preferential treatment to derivatives and leaves depositors at risk, including clawbacks in case of failure. We know that the Global Warming Fraud is a financial scam and derivatives are the biggest part of it.
Photo of the day:
http://media.nowpublic.net/images/e4/5/e4594d60413a45a3aa6d436d4ae5bac0.jpg
This series is interesting
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=1516.txt&search=wealth+of+others
What exactly does “help the strawman along” mean?
Ben M @ <a href=http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/30/climategate-2-0-emails-thread-2/#comment-815816
He’s talking about Steve McIntyre, not himself.
You think differently? How do you prove it? You can’t. A good example of the whole email shebang – quotes assumed to carry meaning when they are actually ambiguous, or, in many cases, belied by the context.
In the previous thread people were telling me that the emails’ meanings were obvious, when I saw them as equivocal (at best). I realize now that my ‘mistake’ was to not assume the authors were all liars and cheats in the first place. If I had only read the emails with that assumption, I would be on the same page as the skeptical commenters here.
Here’s the link to the ‘plausibly deniable accusations’ email exchange.
http://assassinationscience.com/climategate/1/FOIA/mail/1256735067.txt
In fact, it’s pretty obvious that he’s referring to McIntyre et al. At least, that reading is far easier to support than the alternative. Eg, who, amongst the players, is making accusations? Clearly it’s McIntyre, who has been the clear antagonist/on the offensive in the debate up to the time of the writing of these emails.
Andrew @ http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/30/climategate-2-0-emails-thread-2/#comment-817208>here
It’s possible that the first week of December (first week of summer) was colder than the 29th coolest November in Australia. The East coast has been hit with near-winter temperatures, rain wet and wind. I’ve not seen anything like the weather in Sydney for this time of year. People are wearing jumpers (sweaters)! Just returned from the Sunshine Coast where I had to abandon scuba diving due to the inclement weather. The locals couldn’t believe what they were seeing. Summer? I want my money back.
Barry, the available data suggests that you are likely to be warmer soon.
It means that the authors of the emails are conspiring to push a distorted (strawman) agenda in the upcoming IPCC report. This snippet shows for a fact that not only are the players in this drama pushing falsehoods, they are also completely and cynically aware that they are doing so. Their deception is deliberate and they are quite candid with each other about it. No longer can it be said that they are merely susceptible to groupthink. Here is rock solid evidence that they are intent on misleading the public and policy-makers of the world.
(Now that I’ve made this interpretation, based on nothing but what I imagine a skeptical reader would like to think the text means, it will likely be promulgated throughout the ‘skeptic’ blogosphere as a highly perceptive analysis)
December global temperatures from 1928: no change.
Give it up, Barry. Even if the Mann/Jones clique is given the benefit of the doubt whenever conceivably possible, there is still overwhelming evidence that those fakirs were trying to game the system for their own benefit, to commandeer the climate peer review process through threats and intimidation, to conspire with at least one FOIA officer to reject an FOI request without allowing the other side to be heard; they admit privately that their claims are essentially baseless, and the statistics used were worthless. By and large they succeeded in many of their efforts. Only CG-1 and CG-2 turned over the rock and exposed what was underneath.
The question is, why are you carrying water for those self-serving charlatans? What do you get out of it? Is being their water boy compensation enough? Or is there more to it than that? You are deliberately avoiding the truth of the matter: this is not about science, it is about self-aggrandizement, monopolizing research funds, ostracizing skeptical scientists, conspiring to attack those who simply had a different scientific point of view, artificially inflating the number of papers in their CV, etc., etc. There’s more, much more. But as a True Believer you refuse to see it. Orwell called it “doublethink”.
[snip. Anthony said stop it. ~dbs, mod.]
Smokey,
I’m looking at studies for the science, and context for the emails. The former is what matters. the latter is just gossip.
In the other thread, and no doubt soon to be repeated in this one, commenters contrived to redefine words, misrepresent, shift goal posts and other rhetorical tricks to wish away some basic facts.
To whit:
If all millennial reconstructions done by Michael Mann were removed from the scientific literature, the majority of studies still conclude that the Northern Hemispheric temps of the last two decades were likely warmer than similar periods in the previous 1 – 2 thousand years.
Whether or not one has a problem with these other papers, this is nevertheless a fact.
Millennial reconstructions that use non MXD proxies, or that use non-tree ring proxies, likewise come up with similar conclusions.
In light of this, the continued focus on the emails, with ambiguous language mulled over ad nauseum, speaks of a political interest, not a scientific one. Because once you look at the wider body of literature on millennial reconstructions, the issue is moot.
It’s more profitable to mine for gold than for dirt.
barry says:
“If all millennial reconstructions done by Michael Mann were removed from the scientific literature, the majority of studies still conclude that the Northern Hemispheric temps of the last two decades were likely warmer than similar periods in the previous 1 – 2 thousand years.”
That’s wrong, of course. First, tree ring proxies are so weak as to be unusable for temperature measuring. They are unreliable because other factors such as precipitation, fertilization, CO2, etc., have a much greater effect on annual tree growth than temperature.
Dr Loehle used eighteen peer reviewed non-tree ring proxies to show that the MWP was warmer than the modern warming period [source].
There is ample evidence of a warmer MWP – and of even warmer events previously during the Holocene, such as the Roman Warming and the Minoan Warming periods. Simply making an [incorrect] claim shows the weakness of the alarmist cause. Upon request, I’ll provide more links, charts and citations. Or you can visit Dr Roy Spencer’s site, where he shows essentially the same thing.
Smokey,
Yep, Craig Loehle. I think I named him last thread as having an alternate view. His view, from the 2008 correction to his 2007 paper, is that the peak of the MWP was 0.07C warmer than 1992. His reconstruction actually only goes to 1935 (this was what he discovered before issuing the correction – he thought his data went to 1980), but he splices on the instrumental data anyway (don’t we hate it when they do that?) and does a 29-year smooth up to 1992. MBH99, of course, suggested it was likely that the 90s (not just the first 2 years) was warmer than any other decade during the MWP. Loehle’s paper doesn’t really speak to that, but if we extend his splicing further to the end of the 90s, then it would appear his correction corroborates…. MBH99 – that the 90s were likely (not definitely) the warmest decade in the last 1 – 2 thousand years. Here’s the money quote:
barry, no one will ever convince you, as a True Believer, of anything no matter what the evidence. Villages, graveyards, etc., are still being found as the permafrost continues to melt in places like Greenland. To any rational observer that indicates that the land was warmer during the MWP. Then it froze during the LIA. It still has not thawed back to MWP levels; far from it. TonyB has documented countless similar examples from the historical record.
The CG emails show widespread skepticism over Mann’s bogus MWP reconstructions. And Dr Deming reported a conversation in which he was told, “We’ve got to get rid of the MWP!” You may not be trying to ‘get rid’ of it, but against all the evidence you simply cannot accept the fact that the MWP was as warm or warmer than today. The global temperature has risen from 288K to 288.8K over the past 150 years. Geologically speaking, that is nothing. Past temperatures have risen 15°C or more in less than a decade, with no change in CO2. And Ice Ages have occurred when CO2 was much higher than it is now. Facts are pesky things, aren’t they?
Despite facts showing that it was warmer during the MWP, your mind is made up and closed. You never respond to the fact that both hemispheres also show that there were even warmer periods prior to the MWP, when CO2 remained very low. And on time scales from months to hundreds of thousands of years, rises in CO2 always follow temperature rises. Where is your god now?
You cannot accept those facts, barry, because by accepting them you will then have to admit that the current CO2=CAGW conjecture is falsified. And there goes your belief system. That would have disastrous consequences to someone ruled by cognitive dissonance.
That is not to say that the current natural warming cycle is not happening. But it is just a continuation of the natural warming trend since the LIA. If CO2 has an effect, it is too small to measure; it is down in the noise. There has been no accelerated warming, therefore the CO2=CAGW conjecture is wrong. But you still believe in it, despite all the contrary facts. Accepting those facts is too horrible to contemplate. It means scientific skeptics are right, and the alarmist contingent is wrong. Can’t have that, can we?
Sen. Barbara Boxer running scared:
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/197815-boxer-to-climate-deniers-you-are-endangering-human-kind
@barry says: December 7, 2011 at 6:09 pm
Apparently you do not know what a strawman is. A strawman is a distortion of your opponents position to one that can be easier to debunk. It has nothing to do with what THEY are pushing. It has everything to do with what they want others to think their opposition is pushing.
BTW Smokey, Jo Nova posted the uncorrected graph from Loehle 2007. But she wrote the article in December 2009, more than a year after Loehle published his corrections.
She also publishes a graph and labels it “Huang & Pollack 1997” (overlooking the name of the third author, Shen), but it is actually a Monckton-made graph based on their 1997 paper. As they explained in a later paper (2008), “present day” in their 97 paper refers to the end of the 19th century. They flatly state their 97 paper cannot be used to compare 20th century temps.
They were the first two things I looked at. I didn’t bother going any further.
Your sources are consistently awful. Unlabelled graphs, mislabelled papers, mischaracterised work, anecdote instead of data crunching, heavy non-science rhetoric, lazy article writers, and now the propagation of obsolete work that has even been eschewed by the author!
You have to start referencing the literature directly. These media/blog sources you cite are of abysmal quality.
PhilJourdan,
I know what a straw man is, and also that it is a two-word phrase. However, I was pretending to be a climate skeptic when I wrote that paragraph and gave myself much more license than normal to make things up.
If your interest in this rises above pedantry, here is the inspiration for my extemporising. You may either try to interpret what was actually meant, or take a flight of fancy as I did.
In an earlier comment here I made reference to derivatives and the illustrious MF Global problem.
john says:
December 7, 2011 at 12:28 pm
MF Global was a derivatives trading company that recently filed for bankruptcy losing over a billion dollars which cannot be found. Renewable energy derivatives are increasingly being used to mange risk.
http://www.risk.net/energy-risk/news/2129252/renewable-energy-companies-increase-derivatives-survey
This morning, Karl Denninger at The Market Ticker, published an eye opening article which pointed out something very important with respect to derivatives and the UK.
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=198790
excerpt:
“But there’s a difference between earning on your funds and securities (which brokerages do all the time) and stealing your assets. The latter occurs when the law is circumvented — whether legal or not.
And it appears that it was — UK laws appear to contain no limits on the amount of hypothecation or re-hypothecation that can take place. MF Global thus appears to have transferred client assets outside of US jurisdiction where they were then subject to much looser — effectively zero — in the way of risk controls!
But the underlying means by which this escaped surveillance is the same means by which both Lehman and Enron blew up — the use of off-balance-sheet vehicles to hide total risk exposure…”
I just caught the tail end of it, but Glenn Beck was reading the CGII emails over the air this am.
PhilJourdan,
Was your comment being misunderstood? I know that I never seem to get anything but baseless opinions. That’s why I post corroborating links with my comments. Here’s one from Dr Roy Spencer showing the series of events that took place by the same dishonest historical revisionists found in the CG-1 & CG-2 emails.
There is a well documented and systematic conspiracy to ‘get rid of the MWP’. Why? Because with the MWP being as warm, and most likely warmer than now, the repeatedly falsified CO2=CAGW conjecture takes another hit. Prof Richard Lindzen of MIT explains what is going on behind the scenes – and it isn’t science.
Apparently you do not, as it is EITHER a 2 word or one word phrase. However if you are talking about creating a “strawman” argument, it is one word. So you not only do not know what you are talking about, you are a bad pretender.
Phil,
your advice surprises me. I straight away googled “strawman argument“. The merged version, which I’ve seen hither and yon, gets far less hits, but I was surprised it got as many as it did. It is most certainly not the case that the words are meant to be joined whenever attached to ‘argument’. I’d guess that this (vernacular?) usage has become popular on the internet, which promotes dialectical discourse and the brandishing of logical fallacies and their names. ‘Ad hom’ is another good example of internet popularization of a phrase used in logic (and it’s usage is often inappropriate).
In the email, it was a single word, and capitalised. I surmise that the word has meaning amongst the authors that is not common usage. Within the context of the email exchange, no sense can be derived from its common usage.
There is no such thing as a “one word phrase.” The concepts are mutually contradictory. Name-calling tends to reflect more on the name-caller, wouldn’t you say?
I have touched a bit on derivatives associated with renewables (and managing risk) and feel compelled to share this. Canada is ramping up its renewable portfolio and things are about to get ugly…..everywhere. London seems to play a central role.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/why-uk-trail-mf-global-collapse-may-have-apocalyptic-consequences-eurozone-canadian-banks-jeffe
excerpt:
As readers will recall, the actual office that blew up the world the first time around, was not even based in the US. It was a small office located on the top floor of 1 Curzon Street in London’s Mayfair district, run by one Joe Cassano: the head of AIG Financial Products. The reason why this office of US-based AIG was in London, is so that Cassano could sell CDS as far away from the eye of Federal regulators as possible.
Many browsers can’t complete the load now. So, I’m starting this second open thread on the issue and moving all updates here.
Following up on my comment
john says:
December 7, 2011 at 12:28 pm
Glad this is getting some exposure for what it is.
Another Sweet deal for Buffett – Who pays? You do!
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/another-sweet-deal-buffett-–-who-pays-you-do
john,
Thanks for that link. Being a California resident, I can already feel their conniving fingers digging deeper into my pockets.
@Smokey,
You’re welcome. I was able to pick up a trail that went cold with a certain climate gate e-mail. I am now anxiously awaiting for more releases and am following a few new leads. There is a lot of movement now in the renewables sector, most of it is well connected rent-seeking, revolving door crony fascism. In all probability there is a lot of insider trading is going on, but the regulators are e too busy watching porn or recently, defer investigations to others because it is too difficult for them to investigate it.
They are running the clock out while the industries are busy policing themselves.
“Enron can neither be created nor destroyed, it just changes form”.