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
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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”.