This will be a top sticky post for a day or two – new stories appear below this one.
In the over 7,000 published stories here on WUWT, I have never used the word “liar” in the headline to refer to CRU and the Yamal affair. That changes with this story.
I’ve always thought that with CRU, simple incompetence is a more likely explanation than malice and/or deception. For example, Phil Jones can’t even plot trends in Excel. In this particular case, I don’t think incompetence is the plausible explanation anymore. As one commenter on CA (Andy) said
“I suspect the cause of all this is an initial small lie, to cover intellectual mistakes, snowballing into a desire not to lose face, exacerbated by greater lies and compounded by group think. “
Given what I’ve witnessed and recalled from the history of the Yamal affair with Steve McIntyre’s latest investigation, I’m now quite comfortable applying the label of “liar” to the CRU regarding their handling of data, of accusations, and of FOIA.
In my opinion, these unscrupulous climate scientists at CRU deserve our scorn, and if UEA had any integrity, they’d be reprimanded and/or shown the door. But as we’ve seen with the handling of the Muir Russell sham “investigation”, key questions to key players weren’t even asked about key points of evidence. For example, Muir Russell didn’t even bother attending the one interview (April 9) in which Jones and Briffa were supposed to be asked about paleoclimate. So UEA/CRU will probably just try to gloss this over with another lie too. – Anthony Watts
McIntyre: Yamal FOI Sheds New Light on Flawed Data
Phil Jones’ first instinct on learning about Climategate was that it was linked to the Yamal controversy that was in the air in the weeks leading up to Climategate. I had speculated that CRU must have done calculations for Yamal along the lines of the regional chronology for Taimyr published in Briffa et al 2008. CRU was offended and issued sweeping denials, but my surmise was confirmed by an email in the Climategate dossier. Unfortunately neither Muir Russell nor Oxburgh investigated the circumstances of the withheld regional chronology, despite my submission drawing attention to this battleground issue.
I subsequently submitted an FOI request for the Yamal-Urals regional chronology and a simple list of sites used in the regional chronology. Both requests were refused by the University of East Anglia. I appealed to the Information Commissioner (ICO).
A week ago, the Information Commissioner notified the University of East Anglia that he would be ruling against them on my longstanding FOI request for the list of sites used in the Yamal-Urals regional chronology referred to in a 2006 Climategate email. East Anglia accordingly sent me a list of the 17 sites used in the Yamal-Urals regional chronology (see here). A decision on the chronology itself is pending. In the absence of the chronology itself, I’ve done an RCS calculation, the results of which do not yield a Hockey Stick.
In today’s post, I’ll also show that important past statements and evidence to Muir Russell by CRU on the topic have been either untruthful or deceptive.
The Relevance of Yamal
The Yamal chronology is relevant both because, since its introduction in 2000, it has been used in virtually all of the supposedly “independent” IPCC multiproxy studies (see an October 2009 discussion here) and because it is particularly influential in contributing an HS-shape to the studies that do not use bristlecones.
IPCC AR4 Box 6.4 showed the eight proxies which have been used the most repetitively (this wasn’t its intent.) Of these eight proxies, Briffa’s Yamal (labelled “NW Russia”) is shown with the biggest HS blade, larger even than Mann’s PC1 (labelled here as “W USA”). See here) and tag yamal.
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Figure 1. Yamal Chronology in IPCC AR4 Box 6.4. Labelled as “NW Russia”
In previous posts, I’ve satirized the “addiction” of paleoclimatologists to bristlecones and Yamal as, respectively, heroin and cocaine for climatologists. (In pharmacological terms, upside-down Tiljander would be, I guess, LSD, as the psychedelic Mann et al 2008 is indifferent as to whether proxies are used upside-down or not (cue Jefferson Airplane‘s insightful critique of Mannian statistics.)
Although Yamal and Polar Urals had been long-standing topics at Climate Audit, they first attracted wide attention in late September 2009, when measurement data became available for the three “regional chronologies” of Briffa et al 2008 (Taimyr-Avam, Tornetrask-Finland and Yamal).
The 2008 Taimyr-Avam and Tornetrask-Finland networks were dramatic expansions of the corresponding networks of Briffa (2000), but the Yamal network, which was already much smaller than the other two networks, remained unchanged. Analysis of the previously unavailable Taimyr data showed that Briffa had added measurement data from several Schweingruber sites into the Taimyr-Avam regional chronology (a point not mentioned in the article itself.) Since there were a number of Schweingruber sites (including Polar Urals) in a similarly sized region around Yamal, it seemed almost certain that CRU would have done a corresponding regional chronology calculation at Yamal.
This raised the obvious question of why. Ross posed the question in a contemporary op ed as follows:
Combining data from different samples would not have been an unusual step. Briffa added data from another Schweingruber site to a different composite, from the Taimyr Peninsula. The additional data were gathered more than 400 km away from the primary site. And in that case the primary site had three or four times as many cores to begin with as the Yamal site. Why did he not fill out the Yamal data with the readily-available data from his own coauthor? Why did Briffa seek out additional data for the already well-represented Taimyr site and not for the inadequate Yamal site?
The question applied not just to the Khadyta River site in the original CA post, but to Polar Urals and other nearby sites. These questions resulted in considerable controversy at the time. CRU protested their innocence and posted a lengthy response on October 29, 2009, denying that they had ever even “considered” use of the Schweingruber Khadyta River site, discussed in contemporary Climate Audit posts. In a submission to Muir Russell, they later denied ever re-appraising their Polar Urals chronology.
The Climategate dossier was released in November 2009, a few weeks after the Yamal controversy. As Fred Pearce observed in The Climate Files, the Climategate dossier begins with Yamal and ends with Yamal. Pearce also observed that the word “Yamal” occurs more often than any other “totem” of the disputes, even more than “hockey stick”. Nearly all Climategate documents with unbleached dates were copied after my Yamal posts and Yamal measurement data dominated the earliest documents.
The Climategate dossier revealed that CRU had, after all, calculated a Yamal-Urals regional chronology as early as April 2006. (CG1 – 684. 1146252894.txt). The present FOI request referred to this email.
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Read the entire story at Climate Audit here. It is a MUST READ for anyone who has been following Climategate.
My sincerest congratulations to Steve McIntyre for the perseverance to finally get this issue brought into the sunlight.
UPDATE: New visitors might need a primer for this story –
YAD06 – the Most Influential Tree in the World by Steve McIntyre
Sept. 30, 2009
http://climateaudit.org/2009/09/30/yamal-the-forest-and-the-trees/
I’ll have to digest what Steve has written, but if it makes Anthony release his hope that “The Team” is incompetent rather then criminal, it must be good!!!
The headline needs correcting. It’s the Climatic Research Unit. REPLY: Fixed thanks -A
If only CRU had used their powers for good, instead of evil…
Sheldon Cooper is right: graduate schools should do a better job of screening out potential supervillains. 🙂
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Big_Bang_Theory#The_Codpiece_Topology_.5B2.02.5D
I’ve said it before elsewhere and I’ll say it again: When a party produces errors consistently to its own advantage, the chances that they are true errors dimish with each case.
At first sight I was shocked to see ‘liar’ in the headline. Not WUWT style at all. Will now read the piece but I have great trust Antony’s insticts.
Steve :
>> At first sight I was shocked to see ‘liar’ in the headline. Not
>> WUWT style at all. Will now read the piece but I have great
>> trust Antony’s insticts.
… let’s hope they are as sound as his instincts !
Some newer readers here might be needing a little context. Start here:
YAD061 – the Most Influential Tree in the World by Steve McIntyre
Sept. 30, 2009
http://climateaudit.org/2009/09/30/yamal-the-forest-and-the-trees/
REPLY: Good point, I’ll add that. -Anthony
“Liars” in a post.
It’s pushing the envelope (= “go beyond commonly accepted boundaries”), but a necessary move to keep the boilers stoked.
Perhaps someone (with more gravtitas than myself) will draw this article (and its headline) to the attention of the UEA (not that I am for one moment suggesting that it might pass unnoticed) suggesting that they may wish to protect the reputation of the University.
Then we could look forward to an interesting FOI in a month or two to assess how these allegations are being handled…
I have just read Steve’s article twice. An excellent piece of research, no wonder UEA did not want to release any of this data.
The term “Liars” might be a little on the strong side, “purveyors of deceit, manipulation and misinformation” might be a little more appropriate.
It will be amusing to see what our regular alarmist contributors have to say about this.
I would like to see Steve get stuck into Crutem4 to see what he can uncover in the way of deceit, manipulation and misinformation.
Having read Steve McIntyre’s article there can be no denying that the University of Easy Access’ CRU is populated with pathological liars and that the Climategate ‘investigations’ by their pals were nothing more than a dishonest whitewash.
I am getting bored. The globe can be getting warmer or colder, but the idea that the human contribution from burning carbon fuels has anything to do with it is not only IMHO the biggest political and intellectual fraud ever – but so says the IPCC itself: http://cleanenergypundit.blogspot.com/2011/10/west-is-facing-new-severe-recession.html. The ongoing discussion pro and con is becoming akin to the scholastic argument as to how many angels can dance on the head of a needle. Which is, of course, exactly what is intended to achieve worldwide disorientation away from the actual IPCC aims of their monetary and energy policies – and bringing a whole, if not all, of science into disrepute. Even the UK Royal Society has become Lysenkoist.
One wondering if the fact the CRU and so forth openly lied repeatedly in both the press and Muir Russell. Riding Muir Russell hard is probably the best course of action since he might take offense to having been lied to…. or more his reputation being dragged through the mud because he fall for such lies. Muir Russell may show some backbone or maybe not play the willing martyr like some other people have. Is their a chance or way for someone to file ethics complaints against him?
CRU on the other hand couldn’t care less and they are in for coverup mode pretty much since climategate broke. Its doubtful any amount of public pressure will have any effect on them.
Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive
I had a lot to say, but not sure this is the place to say it (so going to just leave a brief synopsis). Basically, the science part of the battle is basically for all intensive purposes over, and what is left is the political battle for the most part. Sure, there is always going to be the science angle to an extent, but its the same argument over and over again between warmists and sceptics.
We know that the worst of the warmists are liars, and we knew this after climate-gate. They could have been truthful at any point even before then, but after that point was the time for them to come forward and clean their conscience. CRU is just one part of it of course, but there are other spots and other scientists involved in the team portion who told porkers to the media after climate-gate and we can pretty much count on this to continue. So this changes nothing really.
Its the same story as before, what are we going to do to restore science to its rightful state? Going through the normal channels has not worked and I do not believe it will. Perhaps this is something to discuss at some point, ideas that are legal mind you and honest, I don’t want to be part of anything that is illegal, involves lying or anything of that nature, but there must be an honest way to see justice done.
The trouble with falsehoods, as my mum always used to remind me – is that they usually get found out in the end.
I tend to side with the known error and cover up theory, the defending against release of data and emails is all but admission of guilt, and they have compounded their situation ever since. They will now be hoping that enough time has past for it to be swept under the rug…
IMHO, Jones is not an inherent data falsifier, but is largely incompetent – and should have no ‘standing’ in this field, watching his lack of confidence at the parlimentary inquiry, it was pretty obvious he was following a script. He sold his scientific soul…
As for the UEA, they are a disgrace to all genuine academic institutions in the UK – I feel sorry for any UAE graduates, I’d certainly be keeping quiet if either of my degrees came from there!
Once again this shows that you should never under estimate Steve McIntyre’s determination and never pick a fight with him when extraordinary detail is involved.( I know a few accountants but none of them would get anywhere near Steve on being able to bring the significant amount of detail into such a coherant , well costructed and accurate expose)
If this were research in pharmacology or medicine, let’s say for FDA approval of a new med, would this sort of behavior constitute research fraud?? Do respectable scientists operate this way?? Outside of paleo-climatology would this be considered normal and proper research conduct??
I will forward this post to someone I know at the UEA.
There’s a lot of talk of “liar”.
But what is the actual lie? And who told it?
[ Reply: Perhaps you ought to read the linked article where it is detailed with statements like Again, CRU’s claims not to have “considered” inclusion of Khadyta River (and other similar Schweingruber sites) is refuted by the FOI list. The untruthfulness of this evidence was not commented on by Muir Russell. rather than asking folks to ‘go fish’ for you? -ModE ]
I used the word “liar” nearly five years ago, describing Hansen, when I first learned of the Climate Audit site through a report in the Toronto Star, describing how McIntyre had exposed Hansons “adjustments” of the temperature record. Climate Audit promptly snipped my rash and hot headed comment.
I have always admired Steve McIntyre because he is less hot headed than I am. I have actually learned a lot about controling my temper from his example.
However enough is enough.
Climate Science has had a chance to respond to politeness politely. They failed.
Climate Science has had a chance to admit errors and confess shortcomings. They failed.
Climate Science has been given more chances than I myself ever got in life, and has squandered all those chances, and now is bankrupt.
The question is not whether they are liars. Rather it is what to do about the lie.
In order to face the future we need facts. Lies must be rooted out.
Is there any reason not to apply the terms “research fraud” and “scientific misconduct” to how this paleo-climate data has been (mis)handled by CRU scientists??
I’ve said it before and will say it again, they are without shame!
Putting this into context they are responsible for collating much of the data out there, they are linked to the Met Office and also to the BBC so pretty much control the media and of course it’s their super computer that predicted, wrongly, the warming to come.
When, finally, the rain falls on their parade they will, I guarantee, be shown to be up to their scrawny little necks in stinking mud!
Makes me ashamed to be British!
Well, this headline leaves CRU in a bit of fix.
Either they ignore it and let the rumour grow that they are liars, or they take you to court to sue you.
It’ll be interesting to see the outcome of the former. Particularly whether it affects long-term research funding………
For me, the general rule of thumb is “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity” and coupled with “Intelligence is limited, but stupidity knows no bounds. -E.M.Smith” gives pretty broad coverage.
However….
These are not dumb people. That raises the bar some. Then we have the stark lack of a normal distribution of “error”, that takes a LOT of work. Finally, for me at least, was the incredible degree of whitewash applied when they were flat out caught red handed in deception, self dealing, and various other bad behaviours.
I would have expected termination as most likely, with severe reprimand as the minimum.
Mann got a $5 Million or so grant and UEA/CRU got a “boys will be boys”…
At that point it made sense. These folks have “Top Cover” and are working to a plan. It’s an “operation”, not research.
So yeah, call it deception, call it lying, call it manipulation or any one of a dozen others.
One thing it clearly is NOT: Open and honest science in pursuit of truth and understanding.
So whatever you want to call it, IMHO, it ends up being the same. Malfeasance at best, deliberate deception and manipulation for self dealing gain most likely, fraud can not be ruled out (in the legal sense of the term). When Gleick is in court, with the UEA on the docket too, then I’ll figure there might be some moral fiber around. Until then, it looks a whole lot more like a political put up job…
They are conform towards the political established UNFCCC.
We now at last officially can call the team social liberal or social climate scientist?
This post needs to be put in front of everyone who has even the slightest interest in CAGW or Climategate etc. Sure, the next line of defense will be that it’s just one group of bad apples in science etc. and don’t condemn all climate researchers based upon what is displayed here…… BUT, considering the extent of misbehavior and years of cover-up, it does raise many serious questions about the standards of “climate science” and the effectiveness of “peer review” etc.
I have called them liars, criminals, climate bandits, deceivers etc. It might sound over the top but think about this:
Wire fraud, adjusting past temps, hiding declines, making sure a paper does not get through, attempting to sack editors etc., etc. They are out of control because they never suffer consequences. If they were corporate accountants they would not only be fired but in a cell.
I don’t think it’s Muir Russell who’s the best pressure point. He knew just what he was doing in providing the whitewash, and he’s moved on anyway.
Someone who hasn’t moved on is Acton. No scientist he, but if CRU go down he will go down with them unless he’s cast himself off from them beforehand.
It’s Acton who’s vulnerable, and it’s Acton who might try to salvage something for himself by ceasing to defend CRU before he is forced out in ignominy.
Global weirding continues……It caught on in a flash…
http://fenbeagleblog.wordpress.com/2012/05/06/the-ghosts-of-kamaoa/
The big problem here is that the CRU distributes its data and findings to other academics; who then use such data and findings in their research. The onus on them therefore to have a 100% ‘clean’ record is extreme. If they are found to be at fault (which I think they have been) then a whole wave of dependent research is also at fault. Also a whole wave of grants, donations, gifts, case awards etc have also have been given in error.
The financial implications of this are absolutely enormous, and in the current economic situation any research that is anything other than whiter than white will get cut faster than a egg in a blender.
Why did they do it? Funding of course, they needed to protect their funding source and they wished to maintain their lucrative relationship with government that made it clear from the start what findings they needed confirming, that CO2 causes catastrophic anthropogenic warming. Massive funding and many lucrative sinecures just as long as CRU played the game, was able to fabricate a scientific justification for wholly political aims. At the beginning it seemed cut and dried and case closed and CO2 guilty M’Lud. All that was required was to find proof and confirmation and the organisation that did stood to gain immensely in fiscal and reputation terms.
Now comes the part where the quest for confirmation came into conflict with the paymasters desire for concrete results with which to beat over the heads of the masses to get them to accept the political narrative. It was rush rush, busy busy and faults were hidden or ‘corrected’ or ignored and uncertainties hidden. The temptation to give their paymasters what they wanted was huge, a lot was riding on their corporate ability to just that, deliver the goods. There became an overwhelming urgency to confirm the guilt of CO2 and if they had to cut corners and lie and cheat and deceive and manipulate that became their slippery moral slope and as sure as bears defecate in the woods they slid down that slope like an Olympic skier.
The mechanics are simple to understand and the motives of those involved are even easier to understand if not forgive, in fact it was a sure fire 100% copper bottomed guaranteed certainty that the CRU would end up as little more than a degenerate Lysenkoist joke. All the conditions for it were present, more perfect conditions could not be dreamed of in fact. The only surprise is that people didnt see it coming, that many who did simply connived in an even worse cover up and series of whitewashes. Human nature and money and pressure to please the paymasters and the gamble that they were right anyway so what did a few lies matter?
A perfect epitaph for the CAGW fraud.
People engaged in groupthink do not lie in the same way as the term is commonly understood so counter assertions do not really help and generally only fuel convictions to more unstable levels and more aggressive assertions.The hyperfuss based on human control over global temperatures will fade when a more stable and exciting narrative for climate and its effects will emerge rather than disproof through assertions and counter assertions so it is hope and not fear that will see our race through this rocky period.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/04/the-contextual-collection-of-climategate-2-0-quotes/
The Climategate 1.0 and more recently the Climategate 2.0 emails make abundantly clear that the global warming movement (acolytes call it “the Cause”) is controlled by a cabal closely related to the IPCC that routinely practiced scientific misrepresentation, academic intimidation, and criminal avoidance of FOI requests.
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I guess we can now add “lying” to the above list of transgressions for “the Cause”– not a surprise, given past behaviour.
Thanks again to Steve McIntyre on his hard work and dedication, and to all those at WattsUp.
_________________________________________________
P.S. Here is an interesting article by retired Professor James Rust that helps put this issue into historic context:
http://antigreen.blogspot.ca/2009/09/aryan-physics-revisited-james-h.html
Aryan Physics Revisited: A Comparison of 1930s German Physics and Global Warming Science Today
by James H. Rust, Professor of Nuclear Engineering (ret.)
For more than a quarter century controversy has embroiled the scientific community over whether carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas formed from burning fossil fuels, is causing increased global temperatures with catastrophic consequences. This is also called anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Many supporters of AGW are adamant in their views and refuse to acknowledge the existence of scientists or the science that refutes their views. Some advocates could be described as self-assured, arrogant, and using unflattering terms to describe those who disagree with them.
The possible threat of AGW spawned research funds from the United States government to study climate science. An excellent paper by Joanne Nova titled “Climate Money”
<http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/climate_money.pdf> traces the way money was spent from 1989 to 2008 in the amount of $79 billion. Research supporting AGW was able to generate more money; so the financing system fed upon itself. If initial research proved AGW did not exist, future funding would have ceased. Yet to be reported, the United States economic stimulus funds for 2009 will allocate billions of dollars spent in anticipation of AGW.
Advocates of AGW have had much media attention so many have become household names. Five names are Dr. John Holdren, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology; Dr. James Hansen, Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies; Nobel Prize Winner Al Gore, former United States Senator and Vice President; Nobel Prize Winner Paul Krugman; and journalist Ellen Goodman.
Doctor Holdren co-authored a book Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment in 1977 with Paul and Anne Ehrlich <http://zombietime.com:80/john_holdren>. This book describes means of population control of forced abortions, sterilizations, babies seized from single or teen mothers, etc. During Dr. Holdren’s confirmation hearing before the United States Senate in 2009, it was pointed out he had predicted in 1986 one billions deaths due to AGW by 2020. The question today about Dr. Holdren’s prediction is whether one hundred million will die annually for the next decade or will one billion die during 2019.
Dr. Hansen is a strong advocate for AGW testifying to this effect before the United States Senate in 1988. Recently, Dr. Hansen called for CEOs of fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for “high crimes against humanity and nature.” He testified in the defense of six British conservationists who vandalized a new coal power plant under construction <http://theweeklystandard.com/content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/591lnahj>.
The attitudes of Nobel Prize Winner Al Gore are well summarized by an article by John Dendahl “Nobel Peace Laureate Al Gore is a Threat to Peace” <http://www.therockymountainfoundation.org/algorethreattopeace.html>. Nobel Prize Winner Gore made the statement years ago “the science is settled” on AGW. MIT Professor Richard Lindzen wrote an article in the April 12, 2006 Wall Street Journal titled “Climate of Fear”
<http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220>. In this article Prof. Lindzen wrote Senator Gore in 1992 tried to bully dissenting scientists to agree with his climate alarmism. Later Vice President Gore tried to enlist Ted Koppel in a witch hunt to discredit anti-alarmist scientists.
Nobel Prize Winner Paul Krugman wrote in the June 29, 2009 New York Times his feeling about the June 26, 2009 debate on the Waxman-Markey Bill – “And as I watched the deniers make their argument, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason-treason against the planet.”
Journalist and AGW expert Ellen Goodman wrote “Let’s just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers.”
To illustrate uncivil behavior by AGW advocates is not confined to the United States; a June 16, 2009 meeting between Australian Senator James Fielding, Australian government AGW proponents, and four independent climate scientists is reported by Dr. David Evans <www.joannenova.com.au/2009/06/19/the-wong-fielding-mmeting-on-global-warming>.
Senator Fielding and four independent climate scientists met with the Minister for Climate Change Peggy Wong, Chief Climate Scientist Penny Sackett and Professor Will Steffen to discuss current science on AGW. The government scientists were aloof, self-assured, and created an aura of intimidation. They made no eye contact or shook hands at the end of the meeting.
In another vein, President of the British Science Association, Lord Robert May of Oxford, addressed his association and said faith groups could lead in the policing of human behavior <http://www.guardian.co.uk/2009.sep/07/global-warming-religion> In a plea to enforce climate change, Lord May said, “How better it is if the punisher is an all-powerful, all-seeing diety.”
After WWI, a movement was started to promote accomplishments of German physicists which soon took on racial aspects because these accomplishments were restricted to Aryan or German physicists <www.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeutschePhysik>. Thousands joined this movement and notable members where Nobel Prize Winners Johannes Stark and Philipp Lenard. Naturally, Aryan Physics excluded the works of Jewish scientists; most famous being Albert Einstein.
Many physicists, including Stark and Lenard, joined and became active members of the National Socialist Party. This provided a perfect match with National Socialists views on race. They saw that the works of Jewish scientists were stricken from textbooks, papers could not be published in scientific journals, research funds denied, and finally by the mid 1930s, employment with universities or research institutions terminated. Jewish science was ignored. Supporters of Aryan Physics could be described as self-assured, arrogant, and using unflattering names to describe Jewish scientists. This author strongly states this essay does not imply any connection of advocates for Aryan Physics to the atrocities committed by advocates of National Socialism.
Finally Aryan Physics fell apart because it was recognized the Secrets of the Universe could not be unlocked without use of Einstein’s Theories. For the record, Nobel Prize Winner Stark was jailed for four years after WWII.
A link between National Socialism and Conservatism movements was reported by German historian Uekoetter’s The Green and the Brown: a History of Conservatism in Nazi Germany published by Cambridge Press in 2006. A detailed review of this book was written by William Walter Kay <http://www.ecofascism.com:80/review18.html>. Conservatism movements started in Germany in the late nineteenth century and found easy mixing with National Socialism with their members having memberships in their local groups and the National Socialist Party. Millions of trees were planted in the name of Adolf Hitler.
The behavior of many AGW advocates is remarkably similar to that of supporters of Aryan Physics in 1930s Germany. They ignore entreaties of scientists who disagree with them. They attempt to stifle publications of research papers, obstruct funds for research that challenges AGW, and refuse public debate on the science of AGW.
It is ironic that scientists who question AGW are placed in a similar position as Jewish scientists in 1930s Germany. Their fate is most certainly not as grim. Labelling those who question AGW as deniers implying they deny the Holocaust is immoral.
The mixing of science with forces (such as politics, religion, or advocacy groups) contrary to scientific principles of postulating theories and then using observations to prove or disprove theories have been around since the birth of human thought. Noteworthy is Galileo Galilei being found vehemently suspect of heresy and forced to recant his belief the sun was the center of the solar system instead of the earth in 1634. This setback may have slowed development of astronomy; but did not seriously alter world’s history.
Germany’s experience with Aryan Physics may have cost them, and indirectly Japan, greater harm from WWII. Without Jewish physicists, the Germans were years away from developing an atomic bomb. The scientist who fled Europe in the 1930s insured the United States would successfully develop an atomic bomb in time to force a conclusion to WWII.
Subscribing to AGW may produce a large global impact if nations decide to alter means of energy production because of a perceived belief in catastrophic events due to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide. The proposal to reduce the world’s production of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels in 2050 to fifty percent of the level of 1990 will have negligible impact on global warming or any other climate change. Great economic damage will be done to the earth’s inhabitants with energy shortages and vastly higher energy costs. Undeveloped nations will be doomed to maintaining the same lifestyles as years in the past. All will suffer except those who trade in energy credits and produce alternative energy sources.
Much has been written about the science of climate change and the influence of carbon dioxide. A recent 2009 book Climate Change Reconsidered–The Report of the Nongovernmental Panel on Climate Change <www.nipccreport.org> contains numerous references as current as 2009. The futility of trying to restructure the United States energy production from fossil fuels to alternative energy sources by 2050 is well described by Donn Dears 2009 book Carbon Folly <www.carbonfolly.com>.
A vast amount of material is available to support the thesis of a similarity between militant advocates of Aryan Physics and AGW. Internet reference were given for this essay and those willing to check these references and use available links can have months of reading.
—————-
We’ve read about the hockey CRU
And Phil Jones neck of brass
Now McKintyre’s grabbed the stick
And shoved it up their
Ask no questions, tell no lies
Will the next job for the CRU
Be dishing up the fries?
Sir Ted has got a tricky job
To cover up the mess
“Tell the CRU to shut their gob
We never will confess!”
“Hide the Yamal data
And cover that decline!
Tell the press the Alma Mater
Will carry on just fine.”
But you should know Sir Edward
With all your old boy clout
That when it comes to science
The truth will always out.
Professor Edward Acton Statement on CRU, March 1st 2010 | University of East Anglia (UEA)
Anthony,
I have just searched for the phrase in quotes:
and WUWT is a Google results 5 and even then it’s just your home page that shows. Maybe it’s just my search location and others get differing results.
Well done for pursuing the foia request. Makes me wonder what may lie in the emails encrypted by “foia” and those which Mann is trying to keep hidden from public view.
temp says:
May 7, 2012 at 12:24 am
‘Riding Muir Russell hard is probably the best course of action since he might take offense to having been lied to…. or more his reputation being dragged through the mud because he fall for such lies. Muir Russell may show some backbone’
A comment which brings to mind the phrase “The triumph of hope over experience”.
So if I understand this correctly, it appears that CRU did a tree ring analysis which didn’t give the desired result so denied ever doing the study. Is that it?
“East Anglia Climatic Research Unit shown to be liars”
Now that’s a billboard headline! Pass it on to Heartland.
Jimbo says:
May 7, 2012 at 3:28 am
“Anthony,
I have just searched for the phrase in quotes:
“East Anglia Climatic Research Unit shown to be liars”
and WUWT is a Google results 5 and even then it’s just your home page that shows. Maybe it’s just my search location and others get differing results.”
Here in UK Google now gives 143,000 results.
I’ve come to the conclusion the field of ‘climatology’ is filled with liars OR loons-
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/technology/8463251/dinosaur-wind-altered-climate
If someone called you a climatologist it should be pistols at dawn with such a blatant slur on your honour.
So climate scientists have been shown to be lying fraudsters? Who’d have thunk it?
I thought Nick Stokes from CSI had an enquiring and skeptical mind, yet he appears here refusing to investigate. Goes to show all you see on TV is not correct 🙂
tallbloke says:
May 7, 2012 at 3:22 am
Ha ha ha ha ha ha!
Way to go, Tall Black, You’re a fine bard too! Mostly in ABCB, I see. What a rallying ditty this!
May I suggest a small change, right at the beginning, for easier flow when the beer is flowing?
From:
We’ve read about the hockey CRU
And Phil Jones neck of brass
Now McKintyre’s grabbed the stick
And shoved it up their
To:
We’ve read about the CRU
And Phil Jones’ neck of brass,
Now McKintyre’s grabbed their hockey stick
And shoved it up their a……
Bravo Anthony … It’s now blatantly obvious what the deal is … Stealing people’s money.
By the way, has the US funding of the CRU been restored yet? It was withdrawn after Climategate and when the UEA, after the whitewash, asked to have it restored the US refused while their enquiries were ongoing. I believe it is this and other climate-related funding that helps fuel the CRU’s activities towards alarmism.
The UEA have also been trying avoid a FOI from MP, Graham Stringer, about the amount they spent on PR work after Climategate.
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2012/05/07/uea-waste-112000-on-public-relations-consultancy-during-climategate/
Anthony,
Not all of those scientists who “lied” about what East Anglia’s
CRU and or Briffa were using and hiding in the Russian Yarmal-Ural dendro
data.
An number of the “scientists” and a jounalist or two on this side of the
Atlantic were corresponding, conferencing and even co-authoring with
Briffa et al. One of them even got a flashy International award for being
such a consistantly good liar.
Please don’t let folks think the term “liar” in this instance should be limited to
just those on the eastern side of the Atlantic.
Thanks Anthony W and especially thanks Steve M for steadfast and careful pursuit of the truth; and for such clear explication of what deceptions have been committed, and why they matter.
Just try to find out what an RCS calculation is. Looked at Acronym finder and this is just a few of the more possible and more funny ones.
Revision Contol system
Radar Cross Section
Remote control system
Resource-Constrained Scheduling
Risk Control System (process safety)
Rehabilitation Center of Sheboygan (Sheboygan, WI)
Reserved-Channel Scheme
Rape Crisis Society (Trinidad and Tobago)
Requirements Computation System
Rotating Coordinate System
Reactor Containment System
Relative Consistent System
Regional Crime Squad
Reverse Culture Shock (mental health)
Eventually … having even checked McIntyre’s own site I eventually find:
“A Closer Look at Regional Curve Standardization of Tree-Ring Records”
The irony is that in order to understand this article I had to get help from the UEA!!!
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/Briffa_HB_2008.pdf
Andy says: May 7, 2012 at 4:30 am
“I thought Nick Stokes from CSI had an enquiring and skeptical mind, yet he appears here refusing to investigate.”
Only a distant relative. But I simply asked a question. What could be more investigative?
But I don’t know how far you can get calling people liars if you can’t explain what is the lie.
The problem stems from these people seeing themselves as ‘academics’.
Now – please don’t think that I am tarring all academics with the same brush, but there is a sniffy mindset in such circles that we, out here, are the great unwashed and REALLY shouldn’t have an opinion on matters such as climate, because they are the experts, and we are not. How very dare we question the conclusions which they have come to. After all, two ‘independent’ investigations found no evidence of any wrongdoing, so again, how very dare we question the narrow terms of reference of those investigations – they were set up by parliament, which of course knows everything about everything.
There is another important aspect in Steve McIntyre’s new article, namely that there is much left unsaid about the coherence of the NW Russian proxy data and what has been left unsaid may cast doubt on the HS shape and/or the overall relevance of dendro-data to paleoclimatology.
There are not too many people I would genuinely fear as an intellectual opponent, but Steve McIntyre would be top of that list.
When they come to write the history of this period, Steve McIntyre will be the hero. And Hansen and Jones the villains.
Now the question is: Will anyone in the media cover this, or does it remain a “non-story”?
Skiphil says:
May 7, 2012 at 1:33 am
“Is there any reason not to apply the terms “research fraud” and “scientific misconduct” to how this paleo-climate data has been (mis)handled by CRU scientists??”
I guess you could make the claim that the work was so bad it did not even constitute research or science. It denegrates scientists everywhere to call what the hockey team ‘climate scientists’ do science.
Another example of the basic insanity of this ‘issue’. Is science ever going to prevail? Or are we – with the fifth column assistance of Heartland – doomed to be drowned out by the voices of unreason? And if so, where will it end?
Lying is the only effective tool of trade for the professional snake oil salesman….
Excellent work by Steve Mc and all the others that have devoted so much personal time to these financial crimes. Climate science is finished and I agree with benfrommo May 7, 2012 at 12:53 am; now we are faced with the political battle to rhetorically kill this fraudulent movement. For this reason I believe the heartland billboard, as an example, is a necessary tactic in this battle. Some of us on the side of truth and honest science will need to be out at the tip of the political spear. A sharp point, laced with linguistic poison must be thrust into the breast of the criminal climate science organism. This climate science political organism must perish in order to restore scientific accuracy and the public trust in science. The public at large must be made aware of these climate science crimes by relentless and multi pronged media messages.
Gkell says:
May 7, 2012 at 3:17 am
People engaged in groupthink do not lie in the same way as the term is commonly understood so counter assertions do not really help and generally only fuel convictions to more unstable levels and more aggressive assertions.The hyperfuss based on human control over global temperatures will fade when a more stable and exciting narrative for climate and its effects will emerge rather than disproof through assertions and counter assertions so it is hope and not fear that will see our race through this rocky period.
———-
Very thoughtful but, it will never be fixed until the gatekeepers admit their “wrongdoings” and research money rerouted to “real science.”
.Gkell says:
May 7, 2012 at 3:17 am
The hyperfuss based on human control over global temperatures will fade when a more stable and exciting narrative for climate and its effects will emerge rather than disproof through assertions and counter assertions so it is hope and not fear that will see our race through this rocky period.
What “rocky period”? The current interglacial?
There are still believers! Where our thoughts are small his thoughts are put into government policy by the EPA and enforced with fines. Maybe all built on the blade of a lie but real to all of us little people.
“Obama spoke of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden and ending the war in Iraq. He contrasted himself from Romney on multiple issues: setting a timetable to end the war in Afghanistan, women’s issues, tax cuts, health care, education, financial regulation, energy and climate change.”
http://www.neontommy.com/news/2012/05/obama-begins-reelection-campaign-ohio-and-virginia
Guess I’ll just leave a copy of what I left at CA, a comment which I’m sure will be shortly snipped-again.
“Roddy is right about one thing. It doesn’t make any difference. The IPCC does not care. The high falutin’ academies do not care. Andy Revkin does not care. The Team doesn’t care what you say anymore. Your best efforts have led to naught. They operate with impunity. You’re a tiger, but a toothless one.”
Steve McIntyre is capable of many things but is really only interested in counting the angels on the head of a pin. Most people on both sides are like that, participating for the sheer compulsive pleasure of splitting hairs.
UAH?
y’all might want to mosey across to the good bishops site to read a very succinct version of the history of Briffa and Yamal …
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2009/9/29/the-yamal-implosion.html?lastPage=true#comment5708195
Fraud is conscious bias. Human beings also introduce unconscious bias in line with their beliefs. Bias which they are not even aware they are introducing, which is why double blind studies are used to eliminate bias.
Climate science has failed to design these controls into their studies, leading to biased results. However, having been found out on this point, they have then consciously tried to hide the flaws in their work.
It is this cover-up that has damaged climate science in the eyes of the public, which has led to every increasing skepticism not only of climate science, but of all science.
Even to this day the temperature data is being routinely adjusted without the necessary controls to eliminate unconscious bias. This renders the results worse that useless, it renders them misleading and thus dangerous for setting policy.
Sorry to bring in a note of irrelevance to this excellent topic. On the 3:00pm news on BBC Radio 2 the newscaster announced that Liverpool University have carried out a study that claims that dinosaurs emitted over 500,000,000 tons of methane which caused global warming,millions of years ago. So now, as well as AGW, we having FDIGW (Farting Dinosaur Induced Global Warming). Even the newscaster was laughing, you just couldn’t make it up!!
Jimbo says:
May 7, 2012 at 3:28 am
“Anthony,
I have just searched for the phrase in quotes:
“East Anglia Climatic Research Unit shown to be liars”
and WUWT is a Google results 5 and even then it’s just your home page that shows.”
The hits before that are commercial sites full of search engine optimization, but at least they link to WUWT. Commercial re-bloggers… I gotta try that myself 😉 – looks like easy money.
Meh, if you’ve seen one larch, you’ve seen Yamal.
But Steve is a rock that rocks.
I have considered them “liars” since Climategate 1.0, but my usage of the word includes deceit by semantic games. Intent matters.
This is a further indicator why AGW activist ‘scientists’ are fighting FOI releases tooth and nail. Going forward it seems fair to assume that they are more concerned about covering up shoddy, biased and outright fraudulent work instead of protecting themselves from the trifling work of extracting and publishing the data basis of their papers. On the other hand if scientific publishers would require them to come up with that material as a prerequisite for publication in the first place we’d be all better off.
Simple Summary
I have created what I hope is a simple guide to this accusation of lying and posted it on my blog. I would appreciate it if someone who is more familiar with RCAs and other relevant TLAs and FLAs could check it for me.
[For your (future) readers’ convenience, you will likely gather more readers if you chose to post your work here (rather than just advertise your work here). Or at least, post a good summary here showing your readers why they should make the effort to go to your columns posted elsewhere. Robt]
Midwest Mark says:
May 7, 2012 at 6:17 am
Now the question is: Will anyone in the media cover this, or does it remain a “non-story”?
======================================================================
No they won’t.
Way to complicated to try to make a 30 second story about.
Peter Miller says:
May 7, 2012 at 12:06 am
…..The term “Liars” might be a little on the strong side, “purveyors of deceit, manipulation and misinformation” might be a little more appropriate….
________________________
When the “deceit, manipulation and misinformation” is critical for providing green politicians ammunition for political maneuvering, monetary gain, and major disruption of all the economies in western civilization, I think the term “Liar” is mild.
What is needed now is a MSM expose of this to show the world that those at CRU are unable to tell the truth because they had to lie to cover up other lies. It should have the alarmist camp in total panic so I would expect a barrage of flak coming from RC and it’s denizons.
The scientific equivalent of Ted Kaczynski’s committed malthusian activism? Heartland was only pointing out what alarmists do to skeptics, but their satire got a little closer to a “fit” with this information. Sweet old Ted felt justified in doing something he knew to be totally wrong because he was committed to a cause too. This looks like they knew they were killing the science in their scientific propaganda, but felt it was justified. And it wasn’t just Dr. Mike.
In the Blue Ridge Mountains of Yamal
On the trail of the lonesome pine
In the pale moon shine our graphs entwine
Where he lost his data and I hid mine
Oh, Phil, you’re over the hill
Like the pine I am lonesome for you
In the Blue Ridge Mountains of Yamal
On the trail of the lonesome pine
Coincidently, I received a request for data on May 2, 2012 @ 6AM in my time zone. The data request was for data published in 1994.
By circa 11:30AM that morning I had written back to the individual telling her how to download the data. I’ve excised part of the email for privacy reasons for the sender of the original email.
Note that I wasn’t awake and fully functioning at 6AM. I was 1000 miles from my laboratory at the time, and these are data I hadn’t touched in over 15 years. The total size of the archive was about 135 MB, and comprised over 1100 files. I did this without IT help, and in the middle of preparation for a large field exercise I was involved in.
I’m not claiming that this was a heroic effort either, it wasn’t. IMO, It just the due that other researchers are afforded when they ask for data associated with publications that are paid for by taxpayer money.
Nobody can tell me that it would be a particularly onerous task for CRU to gather a much smaller data set, with far fewer files and send it to McIntyre. Indeed the route they have chosen is far more costly, as well as being totally unethical, which IMO is the norm for academic practice in that field.
Indeed, why would any honest scientist not welcome scrutiny from other individuals? Is not the purpose of science to advance knowledge and understanding rather than to merely publish data that support a particular political agenda?
This is exactly what needs to be done. We need to focus on the perpetrators of the AGW scam. We need to show where they are raking in money, awards, fame, etc. We need to make it so obvious that even the MSM will eventually have to cover it.
If billboards are going to be used, then this should be the kind of stuff that should be shown. Yes, it’s hard to get the message across in a single billboard, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be tried.
Why is the University of East Anglia still an accredited institution?
So, anything from the CRU should be withheld any “benefit of the doubt”.
If it smells like, looks like, and flows like a cesspool: It is a cesspool.
I think I’m no longer just “skeptic”; I have progressed to “opponent”.
Look at what’s happened in Europe: death by windmill; how CRUel!
Nick Stokes – “But I don’t know how far you can get calling people liars if you can’t explain what is the lie.”
Reading comprehension issues Nick, or just redirecting?
Mybe it can all be explained by an enlarged Amygdalae ;
http://www.bps.org.uk/news/how-city-living-changes-your-brain
Cause and effect;
Too many symposiums in UN meetings regarding Global Warming leads to a larger Amygdalae, which again leads to a larger “Chicken Little” effect. This leads to more meetings.
A clear positive feedback.
Repaired by; Stop all UN meetings, all workshops. Everything. Isolate Climate scientists.
And with regards to the IPCC report:
“In an interview with The Times Robert Watson said that all the errors exposed so far in the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) resulted in overstatements of the severity of the problem.”
For the rest, see
http://www.redicecreations.com/article.php?id=9940
Jimbo says:
May 7, 2012 at 3:28 am (Edit)
Anthony,
I have just searched for the phrase in quotes:
“East Anglia Climatic Research Unit shown to be liars”
and WUWT is a Google results 5 and even then it’s just your home page that shows. Maybe it’s just my search location and others get differing results.
—————————————————
It’s number one now and a direct link to the article.
Err Nick, read the piece, then come back and apologise and you will be allowed to play with the big boys again. If you don’t you will have to play on your own.
The Nobel Prize should be scraped and a new award should be created to which those critical for this reformation should be acknowledged and lauded for their efforts. I hope History recalls this as the point in time where science was saved. Well done Gentlemen.
Now I understand M Manns fight against FOI.. there could be emails showing that he knew of the lies, and thus he is open to charges of financial fraud when he applied for grant monies.
Nicky has fallen silent. He is awaiting instructions from RC.
I agree with the sentiment expressed that anything that pushes Anthony beyond his usual boundaries is good, or at least good reading. Calling a spade a spade is a good thing.
Mr. Watts,
How DARE you brand our esteemed gentlemen at the CRU liars?
These are the noble men who formulate the data that enables our world famous Met Office to predict our dry Aprils, and, er, our barbeque summers, and, er, er, …….
Oh, bugger ……
Maybe they’re just suffering from battle fatigue, Anthony? After all, if you believe that the Heartland Institute could suffer “battle fatigue” and just make a “mistake” (as you told the Washington Post) because a single 2-page fake memo would lead them to put up an offensive billboard, why won’t you believe that the theft of thousands of emails from CRU could do the same to these guys?
Steve,
Would it be possible to share a bulleted summary of what just happened? The detail is great but I have lost the conceptual thread, I think, and now I cannot repeat what I have read here, If I can’t repeat it, that means I don’t understand it anymore. I have too long been away from the details. Maybe that is why the CRU and UPen have been stalling…they hoped that we’d loose track.
Someone did a summary of the Peter Gleick events to clarify. So that kind of thing would be helpful. Anyone?
Hmm Scottish Skeptic just did one….Thanks
Philip Bradley says:
May 7, 2012 at 6:04 am
There are not too many people I would genuinely fear as an intellectual opponent, but Steve McIntyre would be top of that list.
When they come to write the history of this period, Steve McIntyre will be the hero. And Hansen and Jones the villains.
___________________________
I certainly hope so. Unfortunately history is written by the winners not the losers and “they” have Money, Political Power, the Education System and a stranglehold on the Propaganda Machines ERrrr Mass Media. We only have the internet and word of mouth.
The debate over the character of Richard the Third come immediately to mind.
MANGAN: “Roddy is right about one thing. It doesn’t make any difference. The IPCC does not care. The high falutin’ academies do not care. Andy Revkin does not care. The Team doesn’t care what you say anymore. Your best efforts have led to naught. They operate with impunity. You’re a tiger, but a toothless one.”
Steve McIntyre is capable of many things but is really only interested in counting the angels on the head of a pin. Most people on both sides are like that, participating for the sheer compulsive pleasure of splitting hairs.
Well, Mr Mangan, you have just made it clear that you believe the “academics”, the Team and Revkin etc do not care about the truth. In that you are 100% correct.
It’s a shame because many people, far far better than those names above, have sacrificed blood and treasure in order that the truth be revealed. And your lot have squandered those sacrifices – for what? Free holidays in warm places and some grant money. Sad.
Phil C says:
May 7, 2012 at 10:55 am
“…why won’t you believe that the theft of thousands of emails from CRU could do the same to these guys?”
1. The emails were not a “theft”
2. Climategate was not a one-time event. It was an ongoing conspiracy to game the peer review/journal system, and defraud the taxpayers
3. Heartland did nothing dishonest
But nice try, and thanx for playing.
The official “party line” re CRU and their data handling, research integrity, etc. is expressed at Wikipedia and will be highly resistant to correction:
“….Some climate change sceptics and bloggers asserted that a number of the leaked e-mails contain evidence that scientists had conspired to manipulate data[20][21] and to keep scientists who have contrary views out of peer-review literature.[22][23] The controversy was also known as “Climategate”.[24][25] All these accusations were denied by CRU spokepersons, and the CRU’s researchers stated that the e-mails had been taken out of context and merely reflect an honest exchange of ideas.[26][27] In 2011, a new analysis of temperature data by an independent group, many of whom had stated publicly that they thought is was possible that the CRU had manipulated data, concluded that “these studies were done carefully and that potential biases identified by climate change sceptics did not seriously affect their conclusions.””
Phil C says:
May 7, 2012 at 10:55 am
Maybe they’re just suffering from battle fatigue, Anthony? After all, if you believe that the Heartland Institute could suffer “battle fatigue” and just make a “mistake” (as you told the Washington Post) because a single 2-page fake memo would lead them to put up an offensive billboard, why won’t you believe that the theft of thousands of emails from CRU could do the same to these guys?
You don’t want to see do you? All of us skeptics became active AFTER we saw what CRU etc were doing, wrecking Science and national economies and decent scientists’ livelihoods for their own pockets and promotions. Climategate happened AFTER the nasties were written in the emails.
Whose pay are you in?
I have always said that I found the various Climategate enquiries as like a version of the satirical British TV programme ‘Yes Minister’. By that I meant the twists and turns of the plot, the attempts to disguise the truth to save the Govts face by all sorts of devious means, and the constant over riding theme of kicking difficult or controversial subjects ‘into the long grass.’. As more and more of the Climate gate back story is revealed the similarities to the programme become ever more striking
http://www.yes-minister.com/episodes.htm.
tonyb
My Wikipedia quotation above is at this link, at least until they get around to revising it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit
It will also be “interesting” to see if all the journalists and pundits and “reports” which whitewashed the Climategate emails will get around to revising these tired assertions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_e-mail_hacking_incident
Public opinion and political fallout
Jon Krosnick, professor of communication, political science and psychology at Stanford University, said scientists were overreacting. Referring to his own poll results of the American public, he said “It’s another funny instance of scientists ignoring science.” Krosnick found that “Very few professions enjoy the level of confidence from the public that scientists do, and those numbers haven’t changed much in a decade. We don’t see a lot of evidence that the general public in the United States is picking up on the (University of East Anglia) emails. It’s too inside baseball.”[129]
The Christian Science Monitor, in an article titled “Climate scientists exonerated in ‘climategate’ but public trust damaged,” stated, “While public opinion had steadily moved away from belief in man-made global warming before the leaked CRU emails, that trend has only accelerated.”[130] Paul Krugman, columnist for the New York Times, argued that this, along with all other incidents which called into question the scientific consensus on climate change, was “a fraud concocted by opponents of climate action, then bought into by many in the news media.”[131] But UK journalist Fred Pearce called the slow response of climate scientists “a case study in how not to respond to a crisis” and “a Public Relations disaster”.[132]
Very helpful Scottish Skeptic, thanks. The chart is priceless.
Mike Magnan:
Or put another way he has things he’s interested in (“compulsive pleasures”) and things he is not. How every human of him.
Nonetheless had CRU provided the data to him when they should have, the science would have progressed as a result. Instead, they’ve chosen to obfuscate when possible and to spend far more money than would have been required simply to be cooperative in the process. Same goes for Michael Mann.
That’s the real take home message: They lied, they dissembled, they distorted truth, and for all of their detractors, they had at least two apologists trying to explain to us why what they did was right.
I just love this quote from the Climatic Revision Unit
“Any assessment of the merit of the work should be based upon a final, approved version of the data.”
Thanks to Steve McIntyre, we have a very good idea of which version of the data is “final” and “approved”.
To assume that these guys strive to be honest is wrong. Their own words, over and over again, have telegraphed their lying ways, plain as day.
Many of the quotes that we have are from before the internet, done in small gatherings or small publications in which they thought their words wouldn’t reach the full public arena. The internet made it easy to broadcast their true intentions. They call the public the “little people;” and because the public plays a role in democracy, these little people are to be duped and deceived, not respected. Do we need any more proof than the following quotes?
Liar Liar Pants on FIre Quotes:
“It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.” — Paul Watson, co-founder of Greenpeace
“We have to offer up scary scenarios… each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective and being honest.” — Stephen Schneider, ipcc author, 1989
“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that .. the threat of global warming.. would fit the bill…. the real enemy, then, is humanity itself….we believe humanity requires a common motivation, namely a common adversary in order to realize world government. It does not matter if this common enemy is a real one or….one invented for the purpose.” — Club of Rome
“The only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe.” –Daniel Botkin, Chairman of Environmental Studies at UCSB
“Isn’t the only hope for this planet the total collapse of industrial civilisation? Is it not our responsibility to ensure that this collapse happens?’” –Maurice Strong, UNEP Director
“We’ve got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing …” — leftist Senator Tim Wirth, 1993
“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony… climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.” — C. Stewart, Canadian Minister of the Environment
The worst of this Lie or misleading of the truth by the UEA is that others will use this “truth” on which to base their research. Believing that they are “like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants”
when they are in fact built on a lie. I remember the “Martian Canals” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_canal, not a lie but an honest mistake that was taken as a fact for many years.
This “lie” is not an honest mistake
andrewmharding says:
May 7, 2012 at 7:13 am
…. On the 3:00pm news on BBC Radio 2 the newscaster announced that Liverpool University have carried out a study that claims that dinosaurs emitted over 500,000,000 tons of methane which caused global warming,millions of years ago. So now, as well as AGW, we having FDIGW (Farting Dinosaur Induced Global Warming). Even the newscaster was laughing, you just couldn’t make it up!!
________________________________
Now there is a really great Heartland billboard. Maybe Josh could help.
Thank YOU, Mr. McIntyre!
Your persistence is paying off in the sweet vindication of the truth! We all owe you a substantial debt of gratitude, for your unwavering pursuit of the facts.
I’m struggling with distilling this entire topic down to an easily understandable summary that my state and federal representatives can understand, as well as friends and acquaintances! I’d like to use this in an educational presentation to illustrate three things:
1) The UN-IPCC assertion of man made global warming is founded in both bad science and willfully deceitful science.
2) Spending trillions of dollars and disrupting the world economy based on these bad and fraudulent assertions of pending disaster must cease now.
3) Given the endemic, deceitful collusion revealed by recent and continuing FOIA data releases, all ‘climate science’ must be subjected to full disclosure of their comprehensive data sets, computer models with code, fundamental assumptions, data suppression or rejection, and statistical methods. Full disclosure applies for both peer review phase and post publication, for any climate science paper/thesis to be considered for publication or use as reference within a published thesis or journal article.
I don’t think McIntyre’s extensive revelations on the climate science corruption can be reduced to a 1 minute ‘elevator speech’, but I am striving for a 5 minute summary with links to the supporting data for the key points and a reference list for additional reading. If other WUWT participants have thoughts on an educational briefing package for this topic, I’d like to hear from them!
I’ll be off line until later today (I took a day of vacation to enjoy this ’till now rare, beautiful 70F day, here in the GreatNorthWet!).
MtK
Here are a couple more good primers for people new to this story:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/8/11/caspar-and-the-jesus-paper.html
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2009/9/29/the-yamal-implosion.html
“In the over 7,000 published stories here on WUWT, I have never used the word “liar” in the headline to refer to CRU and the Yamal affair. That changes with this story.”
We’ve known that AGW is a fraud for many years. What took you so long, Anthony?
As a child of the 70’s with a vivd memory of Watergate, I am usually jaded by the use of “gate” in describing scandals. However, the CRU and the Nixon adminisration are showing major similarities, where a paranoid major coverup followed a relatively minor screw-up. Both are explained by “Deep Throat’s” famous quote: “Follow the Money”.
It was bound to happen; it was just a matter of time. And I believe Mann is next. The Tin Man cannot be happier than I am.
So… all the warming is due to their pants being on fire?
The people who have to take the lead now are places,, “Where the Money is Located”.
The U.S. Congress/U.S. Tax Payer Money…
One place where there might be someone with the wisdom and courage to lead is The U.S House Science Committee, Chairman Ralph Hall (R) Texas. 1-202-225-6673
The Science Committee phone number is 1-202-225-6371.
Get the staff there to listen and review the facts set out on this thread, they then will hand it off to the Congressman and others. They will like to “look smart” to their bosses.
It is not normal for any member of Congress to listen to U.S. regular people, the norm is for some paid lobbiest to do the contact. But it is what it is. We must do what it takes. Use human nature on them.
Dear Profeesor McIntyre and Mr Watts
I was pointed to this site some years ago by Christopher Booker and have followed the saga of ‘Global Warming’ with avid interest since then. ‘Thank you’ seems to be such an inadequate response to the work this and other sites do (Bp Hill, Jo Nova, Donna LaFramboise, Hilary Ostrov to name but a few) to nail the truth. I am amazed by your dedication to the cause of exposing the apparant fraud behind the ‘science’ to which we are exposed on an almost daily basis and can only endorse the comments I have read above. I am no scientist and much of what I read here is way above my head but the truth will eventually prevail due to the efforts of people like you. Many thanks.
The Climategate emails showed these “climate scientists” were frauds, cheats and charlatans. And that is giving them the benefit of the doubt! For what they have foisted on humankind, Nuremberg type trials are in order. Many of you are far to lenient towards these people.
Jay Davis
To misquote a syentist at the UEA CRU:
“Oooh, we do tell some whoppers, don’t we?”
Thanks, Anthony, for calling a spade a spade and a huge thank-you to Steve McIntyre for his tireless pursuit of the truth throughout this continuing saga.
The short film clip of Vice-Chancellor Acton of the UEA posted above should be a reminder of his (and his university’s) mealy-mouthed perfidy.
I’m confused about this YAD06 tree as a proxy. How does its tree-mometer reading correlate to the temperature record of Yamal in general? Looking at its chart it seems like it was generally as warm there back in the mid 50’s and through the 60’s as it was in the 90’s?
jayhd;
For what they have foisted on humankind, Nuremberg type trials are in order. Many of you are far to lenient towards these people. >>>>>>>>
I find it difficult to convey my anger and furstration regarding the CAGW cheer leaders and the harm they have done to humanity, that is a step too far. There is a vast difference between shoddy science knowingly foisted upon us in return for grants and fame, and rounding people up and systematically exterminating them on the basis of their parentage.
IF you wish to pursue a legal route, I can suggest that a criminal investigation would go nowhere in any event. You are asking governments to prosecute the work they paid to have done. They’ll simply sweep it under the rug. No one indicts themselves.
A class action law suit on the other hand might have some legs. But I doubt the investment which would be required to launch and win one would be made by any legal firm given that the people being sued simply don’t have the personal assets to go after to make it worthwhile.
There are some matters that the legal system does in fact fail on, and this is one of them.
Yep. Sloppy initial work. Then groupthink. Then small fibs, then larger fibs to cover. Then “it doesn’t matter”.
And Science dies a little…
Well done Steve M and Anthony,would love to see the look on Manns and Jones face as they read this,fancy a big meeting at CRU in the morning,boy wouuld i like to be a fly on the wall.wonder if they’ll sue or not……
Can’t understand your fascination with East Anglia or its polytechnic.
Whilst (sorry Willis) searching for “East Anglia Climatic Research Unit shown to be liars”, I came across this post Copenhagen article .
http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/story.html?id=78aa4157-da68-4596-859a-a7e49a6207ae
and, as we shall see in Part II on Monday, now threatens to consume one of the scientific pillars of climate science.
Can’t find Part II
Zac, seriously?
Mike M,
If YAD061 had been left out of Briffa’s cherry-picked proxies, there would have been no hockey stick shape at all.
EM Smith, you said it all.
I have not doubted for a minute since climate gate II that eventually the wheels would fall off and someone would trip over the smoking gun that proved that there was intentional malicious manipulation of the truth going on.
The conclusion was reached on the weight of the evidence even before this information came out. It was clear that the long term consistent pattern that always caused corrections to go one way, and “errors” were always in favor of the “cause” had become a statistical monstrosity. The odds that that many issues, decisions, corrections and errors all favored their preferred outcome made it abundantly clear that something was seriously amiss.
The only question was as mentioned above, the motive. Were they stupid, arrogant, careless incompetent, malicious or just blind to the facts due to their belief system. Unfortunately the only conclusion I can draw is they were not any one of the above but all of the above. The worst sort of sociopaths that have intentionally tried to scam the world and did not give a flip how many people they destroyed in the process. They have ruined careers, skimmed trillions of dollars from the economies of the world, starved the poor, wrecked the business plans of the innocent that got in the way of their con job, caused unemployment on historic scales, destroyed life savings, wrecked retirement plans on a grand scale and near as I can tell, could care less about the wreckage they have left in their wake as their scam cut through the worlds institutions.
They have almost single highhandedly destroyed the reputation of science, turned government into a farce, and made the main stream media laughing stocks and indirectly also made them irrelevant. Their actions and the resulting media white wash became the driving force behind the open source media of the blogosphere which try as they might they cannot control. This is perhaps the only positive outcome of this tragic comedy.
Congratulations, you will likely go down in history along side the great scams and bubbles of history, and perhaps like Ponzi have your names attached to the worst sort of intentional abuse of power through tainted science, statistical abuse and misuse. Along with the use of your never ending stream of propaganda which has corrupted an entire generation of children with your nonsense.
Larry
What will the IPCC do in their next report?
They NEED the hockey-stick – it is a fundamental part of the argument. What else can they adduce to show that we are living in ‘unusual times’?
SOMEONE on the warmist side is going to have to fight this. Otherwise IPCC will be left with a big hole. Should be interesting…
I can’t help but wonder what the “other shoe” a/k/a the Mann FOIA is going to have in it. He no longer works at Penn, so he wont have to resign if it turns out poorly for him.
Should be interesting.
Discrediting Yamal is major – it is the equivalent of a checkmate because non-dendro reconstructions are largely based on the upside down Tiljander series, which is even more embarrassing to warmers than Yamal. Hence the silence …
I’d like to specifically exclude Paul Dennis from any opprobrium attached to UEA and from any hard conclusions directed toward certain scientists of the UEA Climate Research Unit.
Paul is an honest and first class scientist who has acted with honor and integrity throughout the entire shameful mess involving Phil Jones and the UEA brass. For example, Steve McIntyre described Paul refusing to be bullied by the UEA and calling for freer access to data. One hopes to one day read an interview, where Paul tells of his experiences at the UEA during this time of intellectual tyranny.
davidmhoffer says:
May 7, 2012 at 1:07 pm
So… all the warming is due to their pants being on fire?
In the distant past, it was due to lightning striking dinosaur methane emissions and causing fire.
sarc
Zac says:
May 7, 2012 at 4:05 pm
Can’t understand your fascination with East Anglia or its polytechnic.
_____________________________
The I hope you read Larry’s comment.
Dodgy Geezer says:
May 7, 2012 at 6:07 pm
What will the IPCC do in their next report?
They NEED the hockey-stick – it is a fundamental part of the argument. What else can they adduce to show that we are living in ‘unusual times’?
SOMEONE on the warmist side is going to have to fight this. Otherwise IPCC will be left with a big hole. Should be interesting…
_______________________________
It has just been done. They corrupted Christy and Spencer’s data so it now aligns with the climate models. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/07/trenberth-takes-on-uah-satellite-data-in-a-new-paper/
A formal peer reviewed rebuttal from Christy and Spencer will never have a chance of getting into the next IPCC report. I am sure that was carefully planned.
Which proxies are used upside-down ? I don’t get what you mean by that. Are you saying the physical graph is rendered upside-down? Could someone explain in layman’s terms?
REPLY: Go to Climate Audit and search for Tiljander in the search box, a wealth of info there – Anthony
I guess I will echo a couple of the posts above. I have been following the saga for a while – have read The Hockey Stick Illusion, and check out WUWT on nearly daily basis. But I am not expet in this technical area and frankly I cannot interpret the article and all the related posts and conclude there has been lying. Is there some way to describe the sequence of events is one place, and so help us non-experts understand?
Dodgy Geezer says:
May 7, 2012 at 6:07 pm
Ironic that the signature of their movement is an icon of the frozen north. Ironic, but quite appropriate.
Werner Brozek says:
May 7, 2012 at 7:11 pm
davidmhoffer says:
May 7, 2012 at 1:07 pm
So… all the warming is due to their pants being on fire?
In the distant past, it was due to lightning striking dinosaur methane emissions and causing fire.
>>>>>>>>>>>>
So… you’re saying that dinosaur’s wore pants and lit their own farts using lightning bolts? Seems far fetched to me. Not as far fetched as scientists presenting, with a straight face, a temperature reconstruction based 50% on a single tree…. and getting away with it…. even though what they did is now public…. that would never happen either….
hmmmm…. so what kind of pants do you think the dinosaurs wore? Denim? Or corduroy?
I just find it appropriate.
Thanks to Henrik Svensmark we know the cosmic ray \ low level cloud mechanism. Thanks to Piers Corbyn, Dr. Abdussamatov and others we know that solar behavior is giving us a disastrously cold climate with 2014 being a kind of crunch time. I suppose that if this was the old west there would be serious repercussions for the liars but likely they will only keep their ill gotten gains. The thing is, as Robert Felix has said for some time, long before the ice gets built up we will be fighting in the streets for food. We need serious agricultural and energy resource adaptation going on, even if it is merely a “Little” Ice Age.
Is this a fair summary for newer readers ?:
The Yamal data produced a hockey stick shape but other data (arguably more reliable) did not.
The other data was ignored and the Yamal scenario presented as the best evidence available.
It was then denied that the other data had been considered but the Climategate emails reveal that it was.
If correct, that is worse than simple error or incompetence and needs to be explained to the public in simple terms in every climate change article from now on.
@jayhd. “The Climategate emails showed these ‘climate scientists’ were frauds, cheats and charlatans.” Here’s a related comment I left at: http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20120507/television-meteorologists-climate-change-skeptics-weather-global-warming-john-coleman-james-span-joseph-daleo
There’s talk about the “problem” of meteorologists not going along with the supposed consensus. Yet you could just as easily see it as a problem that climate scientists, or at least the younger ones, are like a solid, virtually unanimous block in their support of AGW. No deviation, marching in goosestep. This unbroken unanimity is puzzling, considering the richness of the debate, and how easy it would be to play devils advocate.
The problem is that far from being unbiased and impartial, climate scientists, at least the post 1990 vintage, had to agree with the AGW theory in order to be acccepted into their doctorate programs. So, today, climate scientists represent little more than a rubber stamp for AGW.
Thus the inescapble conclusion is that climate scientist cannot be considered an independent, unbiased, credible source of information… on climate.
Surely this is a huge story from posting above “He no longer works at Penn, so he wont have to resign if it turns out poorly for him” refering.to Mann?
Stephen Wilde;
This latest lie was exposed by an FOIA request by my reading of the article.
And someone should explain what the term “considered” meant in this context. My read of it is that they looked at the data from other proxies and discarded it, mostl likely becaue it didn’t show the hickey stick pattern they were after. Then the lied about having “considered” it, pretending that they’d never quantified the results of that data. But they did, and it didn’t match Yamal, so they quietly filed it somewhere they hoped nobody would ever find it.
My problem with this is that it isn’t by far the largest lie. Taking 12 trees from Siberai, and statisticaly weightng one of them to accouint for 50% of the result, and then declaring this accurate for the last 1,000 years, on a global basis no less, while shrugging off the divergence problem that discredited tree ring data in the first place that shows up in almost all tree ring data since 1960, pretty much discrediting the approach altogehter….Thesse are even bigger lies than simply gathering some contrarey data and then trynig to bury it can claim it was never looked at.
Harsh word, “liars”. I probably still wouldn’t use it, but I’ll admit that’s a stylistic choice.
As a general observation, the most damaging lies told are ones talented people tell themselves in a tough spot. That’s regrettable from a personal damage POV. . . but exponentially more so when one is supposed to believe the fate of the race depends on it.
Remember…
When playing the IPCC shell game, always watch for the Mann behind you trying to pick your pocket.
Can’t wait for the investigative MSM journalists to tear down the CRU once they get wind of this. It will be carnage!
@Gail Combs
What will the IPCC do in their next report? They NEED the hockey-stick – it is a fundamental part of the argument. What else can they adduce to show that we are living in ‘unusual times’?
_______________________________
It has just been done. They corrupted Christy and Spencer’s data so it now aligns with the climate models….
They have put a ‘claim’ out. – I can’t see how they can justify it without a lot of discussions which they do not want to have.
I suspect that their best bet is to solely use GISTemp. That, of course, brings its own problems. But I think everyone should be raising the Divergence problem in every paper, and actively investigating pre-1970 ‘corrections’….
Pat Frank says:
May 7, 2012 at 7:03 pm
I’d like to specifically exclude Paul Dennis from any opprobrium attached to UEA and from any hard conclusions directed toward certain scientists of the UEA Climate Research Unit.
Seconded. I’d like to add the CRU founder Hubert Lamb who realized IIRC that he’d made a mistake in appointing Tom Wigley. And there is another scientist there I’d like to exclued as well, but I cannot remember his name.
“Warmist” treering proxy temperature evidence is falsified directly by local thermometer records.
– the conclusion of this piece of mine on Yamal, which was posted here thanks to Anthony and Jeff Condon, very shortly before Climategate.That, and its two companion pages, are nice picture-rich introductions/additions to the Yamal story.
And now here’s my poem of yesterday from TT. Think the Three Witches from Macbeth “double double toil and trouble…”
Siberian Weird Sisters Song
Hoxy poxy
Sproxy proxy
Docksy clocksy
Brokesy hockeysticks
Ask us no questions
We’ll tell you no lies
Treering peering
Data fearing
FOIA nearing
Courtly hearing
Ask us no questions
We’ll tell you no lies
Golden fame
Nobel claim
Skeptics to blame
oh shame oh shame
Ask us no questions
We’ll tell you no lies
IPCC
palmy greasy
tricky precis
easy peasy
Ask us no questions
We’ll tell you no lies
Science corrupt
Data obstruct
FOIA no luck
oh dear oh dear
Ask us no questions
We’ll tell you no lies
Poor Tony and Steve! You work so hard with this stuff and yet all the media wants to hear about is who has abandoned the HI next. State Farm is the latest to pull funding, I believe.
All hail Peter Gleick!
This brings science into utter contempt. It’s shameful.
The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee examined various issues following climategate and in march 2010 produced a report entitled “The disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia”.
The report included specific sections on Transparency and Dishonesty.
Under Transparency is the following exchange with Jones:
“Graham Stringer: You are saying that every paper that you have produced, the computer programmes, the weather stations, all the information, the codes, have been available to scientists so that they could test out how good your work was. Is that the case on all the papers you have produced?
Professor Jones: That is not the case.
Graham Stringer: Why is it not?
Professor Jones: Because it has not been standard practice to do that.
Graham Stringer: That takes me back to the original point, that if it is not standard practice how can the science progress?
Professor Jones: Maybe it should be standard practice but it is not standard practice across the subject.”
The Committee concluded that transparency should mean that “scientists should take steps to make available in full their methodological workings, including the computer codes. Data and methodological workings should be provided via the internet. There should be enough information published to allow verification.”
Under Dishonesty the Committee stated:
“Critics of CRU have suggested that Professor Jones’s use of the words “hide the decline” is evidence that he was part of a conspiracy to hide evidence that did not fit his view that recent global warming is predominantly caused by human activity. That he has published papers—including a paper in Nature—dealing with this aspect of the science clearly refutes this allegation. In our view, it was shorthand for the practice of discarding data known to be erroneous. We expect that this is a matter the Scientific Appraisal Panel will address.”
Given the failure of the UEA to provide the data requested in response to Steve McIntyre’s FOIA request until being forced to by the Information Commissioner, it is clear that the UEA are not complying with the Committee’s opinion as agreed by Phil Jones that data, codes and all information needed for verification should be made available as “standard practice”.
The data which has now been obtained and which appears to be evidence of dishonesty calls into question the Committee’s conclusions about the honesty of the CRU whereby they were led to believe that data which didn’t fit the hockey stick/CAGW hypothesis was discarded on the dubious grounds that it was “erroneous“.
The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee should now examine witnesses under oath if possible, especially Jones and Briffa, on the findings of Steve McIntyre in order to establish whether previous testimony to the Committee and other Enquiries was untruthful.
The Committee has a duty to ensure that taxpayer’s money is properly accounted for within their remit. Should they look impartially at these latest developments and find that the CRU/UEA had wilfully distorted scientific results to create a CAGW scenario enabling the CRU to obtain additional, extensive and unjustified research funding, the matter should be referred to the UK police.
The MSM should be all over this story as it threatens to topple the absurd CAGW doomsday predictions and all the self appointed hierophants, politicians and gullible dupes who have worshipped CAGW and poured billions of our money down the CAGW drain.
But sadly I won’t hold my breath……….
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/387/38705.htm#a11
http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-archive/science-technology/
You left out the word malicious. This isn’t science it’s politics; motive is all and stratified.
But there’s wiggle room (for “interpretation”) in those larger lies. On this issue, Steve’s “nailed” them–he’s got them dead to rights. This is a simple, black/white matter that politicians and prosecutors can understand. Many politicians in the UK are secretly skeptical of the climate Cassandras and have been looking for a brush to tar them with. This will do it. (It’s like nailing Al Capone for tax evasion, which was easier to prove than his other offenses.)
Incidentally, in the immediate aftermath of Climategate I argued with Brendan H that more scandalous material would come out and would cause snowballing skepticism. It’s taken longer than I thought, but this is what I had in mind.
Mike Mangan says:
May 7, 2012 at 6:51 am
Guess I’ll just leave a copy of what I left at CA, a comment which I’m sure will be shortly snipped-again.
“Roddy is right about one thing. It doesn’t make any difference. The IPCC does not care. The high falutin’ academies do not care. Andy Revkin does not care. The Team doesn’t care what you say anymore. Your best efforts have led to naught. They operate with impunity. You’re a tiger, but a toothless one.”
Steve McIntyre is capable of many things but is really only interested in counting the angels on the head of a pin. Most people on both sides are like that, participating for the sheer compulsive pleasure of splitting hairs.
—————————————————————————–
Mike Mangan, when you have made one tenth of the contribution that Steve McIntyre has, not only to the integrity of science, but also to educating people about science and statistical analysis through his blog, you will be considerably older than you are now – and hopefully a lot wiser.
Most people who read his blog can never aspire to his level of expertise, but an awful lot of them have learned a great deal from it. And remember, he gives up his own time and gains nothing from it, unlike the overpaid, tenured, pampered, globetrotting incompetents and liars he has exposed.
Daffy Duck has a brief but eloquent expression for my opinion of you, Mr Mangan.
“I’d like to specifically exclude Paul Dennis from any opprobrium attached to UEA and from any hard conclusions directed toward certain scientists of the UEA Climate Research Unit.”
Honest enough to be the leaker of the “Climategate” emails?
BIgCityLib rightly points out how effective Gleick’s activities have been in getting funders to withdraw their support from Heartland.
Why no charges against Gleick?
There are reasonable grounds for both reparative and punitive damages.
re: rogerknights: “But there’s wiggle room (for “interpretation”) in those larger lies.”
As always, that’s exactly the problem, and it’s what allows Nick Stokes to question the ‘lie’. UEA continued to say ‘we didn’t consider it at the time ‘. That doesn’t mean they hadn’t previously done work comparing or combining data sets. Same problem with saying ‘they didn’t have the time’, because well heck they had only done preliminary work between the two sets.
Unless somebody comes up with an e-mail showing that ‘CRU did consider using the wider data set at the time ‘ then there’s no proof they lied. I would say it easily rises to definition of a lie by omission, but of course Nick will say it doesn’t. They’re just so busy, they didn’t have the time to consider more data. Good data analysis is one thing but time is money.
Climate Audit gets to be a bit above layman terms, so let me attempt to summarize. Someone here please correct me if I’m wrong.
The proxies are responsive to things other than temperature. To filter out these other things, Mann et al. weighted the proxies by their match with thermometer records. A strong match is assigned a weight near 1.0, while a very poor match is assigned a weight near zero. The proxy-derived temperatures are multiplied by these weights, added, and averaged. The higher weighted proxies thus dominate the final result.
If the proxies are poor proxies for temperature this method will produce a hockey stick no matter what the past temperature really was. The proxies which best show recent warming will dominate and align to create the blade, while the past temperature anomalies from the proxies where there is no thermometer record to compare to will average out to zero.
However, in the case of Mann et al. the weighting does not bottom out at zero. A proxy that shows cooling where the thermometer record shows warming can receive a negative weight. Thus the temperature derived from that proxy is effectively turned upside down before being added into the final average. That was the case with at least one proxy from the Tiljander series.
drobin9999 says: May 8, 2012 at 6:21 am
Unless somebody comes up with an e-mail showing that ‘CRU did consider using the wider data set at the time ‘ then there’s no proof they lied.
That’s nonsense. Take this example, a kid doesn’t come to school one day. On inquiry they say: “I couldn’t find my shoes”. This could be true … some children may be that daft.
Then the teacher asks: “why didn’t you wear your trainers”.
To which the pupil replies “I didn’t think I could wear trainers”.
This is the situation before the FOI. The UEA were claiming that they didn’t think to use the other data.
But what happens if we then discover the pupil had been seen wearing trainers a few weeks before to school? (without comment from teachers).
Do you then say: they must have forgot they had trainers?
Likewise do we say the UEA had forgot they had data they used in 2006? which they then didn’t use in 2008?
OK, let’s assume they were being honest … did they then behave honestly? Did they admit their mistake when it was pointed out to them or did they pretend it did not happen? Did they constantly change their story, did they suggest those who were questioning them were liars, did they act like someone who did wrong? In all this time, has there been a single plausible explanation? Did they have to be taken kicking and screaming to the FOI commissioner when they gave an explicit commitment to release such information?
Was there an attempt to cover up their actions? Did they e.g. suggest that the paper in question were part of the climategate inquiry, or did they conspire with others to prevent this key paper being examined?
Come on. Fair enough we shouldn’t jump to conclusions, but there comes a point that it would daft not to jump to the obvious conclusion that they lied.
They have been given the time and opportunity to come up with a plausible explanation. They have not, and when all other explanations are excluded, the one that remains is that they lied.
If I may add to Tom R’s explanation, the ‘upside down Tiljander’ proxy refers to the fact that the proxy was derived from lake sediments. It was later discovered by Ms Tiljander, who did the original proxy study, that road and bridge construction early in the past century had overturned the lake sediments.
The lake sediments were corrupted, and completely unusable as a proxy. Ms Tiljander, a postdoc student at the time, informed Dr. Mann of her discovery before he published. Mann used the corrupted Tiljander proxy anyway, because it was essential for producing the hockey stick shape he wanted [Mann later downplayed the importance of the Tiljander proxy. But if it was not important, why would he knowingly use a corrupted proxy?].
The result was what Mann intended: a hockey stick-shape graph, purportedly showing fast accelerating recent temperatures. But when the Tiljander proxy is removed, Mann’s hockey stick disappears.
Michael Mann has once again been deceptive. Mann’08 has been falsified due to his deliberate misuse of the Tiljander proxy. This is not the first time Mann has knowingly misuded data in order to acheive false results. Mann’s original hockey stick chart, used repeatedly by the IPCC, was so filled with errors that Nature was forced to take the rare action of publishing a Corrigendum of MBH99, the basis for the original hockey stick. As a result, the IPCC can no longer publish Mann’s hockey stick chart.
bigcitylib says:
May 8, 2012 at 3:05 am
What an absolutely incredible post.
Smokey says:
May 8, 2012 at 7:30 am
Did Mann not say as well that it didn’t matter which way up his proxies were?
Criticize this thought pattern then: Mann’s entire career (his life’s work and energy and his entire academic and worldwide (fundraising) credibility) are based on his theory of tree-ring growth that:
“An increase/decrease in worldwide temperatures will cause an increase/decrease in tree ring thicknesses” … and so therefore … (if everything else and all other factors are assumed to be the same)
“I can use tree ring thicknesses to back-calculate worldwide average temperatures.”
Further, Mann is determined, fixated, and mesmerized by his theory that:
“An increase in man-released CO2 is driving an increase in worldwide temperatures.”
Can anybody, anywhere, regardless of what their opinions are about CAGW, disagree with those two statements?
If so, then look at two cases:
A. Global Average Temperature (and all other factors!) remain steady, CO2 increases linearly over time since 1950. Tree ring thickness during the growing season increases.
B. CO2 (and all other factors!) remain steady, Global Average Temperature increases linearly over time since 1950. Tree ring thickness during the growing season increases.
How does he separate the influence of CO2 increasing (and causing an increase in tree ring growth by as much as 27%) from temperature increasing over that period? Tree ring widths have increased recently, but how can he tell WHY they increased between CO2 and temperature?
If he has not factored CO2 increases into EVERY recent tree study for EVERY tree specie since 1950, or has over-corrected (or under-corrected) for CO2 increases in growth rates for one or more tree species over that same period, does that not require Mann to “reverse his temperature proxies” to force them to match the recent thermometer record?
For people who want a more accessible explanation of Mann’s statistical parlor tricks, I would suggests Andrew Montford’s book “The Hockey Stick Illusion”. Montford does a good job of detailing how the Yamal and Tiljander tricks work. The reason the Press hasn’t gotten on to is because the math that Mann uses is somewhat sophisticated. Most journalists have simply never encountered math at this level and they are intimidated by it. The short summary is that Mann has invented a variant of a well known statistical tool known as PCA. Mann’s version of PCA has never been reviewed in the statistical literature. McIntyre has demonstrated conclusively that Mannian PCA mines for the presence of hockey stick shapes within the data and then imposes those shapes onto the composite of all data. So if you have thousands of time series (proxies) all showing no trend and you add just one series that has a hockey stick shape to the mix, Mann’s PCA method will output a hockey stick shape as a high order principle component for the entire composite of all proxies. So all Mann needs to do to manufacture hockey sticks from any data is to always include at least one series with a hockey stick shape.
So instead of calling them “scientists”, I suggest “lie-intists”.
I got this from another post.
Aryan Physics Revisited: A Comparison of 1930s German Physics and Global Warming Science Today
by James H. Rust, Professor of Nuclear Engineering (ret.)
I am seeing a lot of posters proclaiming that Mann, Hansen, etc. were ‘peer reviewed’. Who are the peers that reviewed their studies and papers?
Makes me wonder how Hitler would have been treated if he was ‘peer reviewed’?
Not saying the AGW crowd are Nazis, just curious.
grizzlygovfan says:
May 7, 2012 at 8:55 pm
….. The thing is, as Robert Felix has said for some time, long before the ice gets built up we will be fighting in the streets for food. We need serious agricultural and energy resource adaptation going on, even if it is merely a “Little” Ice Age.
____________________________
Oh there is serious agricultural and energy resource adaption going on. The wealthy are shoving the poor off their land at an increasing rate. (ALL resources are tied to land ownership doncha know.) I have been watching this develop with increasing alarm over almost two decades.
WUWT threads:
They had to burn the village to save it from global warming
The ugly battle between rural residents and alternative energy mandates in California
Other References:
A liberal democrat’s presentation at a Tea Party meeting on Agenda 21, the use of Eminent Domain (recent Supreme Court decision allows corporations to use Eminent Domain for forced takings) and zoning for land grabs. My comment listing actual passages from the United Nations that backs up the information in this video – link This video gives the best explanation I have seen of what is going on behind the scenes.
More References
Joannenova: Farmers Fighting for a Fair Go The World Trade Organization Agreement on Ag. and greens are already effecting agriculture in Australia.
Joannenova: EU carbon trading rocked by mass killings… …murders of 23 local farmers who tried to recover land, which they say was illegally sold…. (not to mention a journalist and his partner)
Getting Used to Life Without Food 2011
Barton Biggs: Stock A Safe Haven With Food And Firearms To Protect Against Doomsday Pillagers – BUSINESS INSIDER 2010
Credit Suisse: The Hunt for Land Has Already Started, Farmland investing has gained international attraction over the past couple of years… 2010
Alternative Investment Resource: Rothschild Cashes in by Investing in Farmland 2010
Farm land Grab a collection of articles.
George Soros, Feds Seize Control of America’s Flooded Farmland 2011
US Universities in Africa ‘land grab’: Institutions including Harvard and Vanderbilt reportedly use hedge funds to buy land in deals that may force farmers out. 2011
Pat Frank May 7, 2012 at 7:03 pm —
“For example, Steve McIntyre described Paul refusing to be bullied by the UEA and calling for freer access to data.”
Which Phil Jones had already started to put effort into before Climatgate1. It’s in Nature’s climate blog of August 2009.
Now that its point set match google has been trying to supress this totally; try ” global warming fraud UEA” 0 results
RACookPE’s comment prompted me to note something that is starting to concern me. The world indeed has a major climate related problem. We have many academic institutions, senior academics, governments and otherwise valuable individuals who have been completely consumed by the AGW cult. In addition to which we are about to be swamped by legions of young graduates who were sold a career in “climate change science” on the strength of Mr Gore’s video. Most of these people are not stupid. They have relied on what they thought were impeccable authorities. They were sold a pup. At some point reality will prevail and they will realise they have been had and their “cause” is lost. When an army is defeated in the field as victor you have two options reconciliation or annihilation. But how do we reconcile institutions like the CSIRO or the BOM in Australia. Theses sorts of places were highly regarded and a vital part of our nation yet their credibility has been trashed. Personally I think the CSIRO is a lost cause. Due this mess I think it has less than 50% chance of existing in 10 years. Yet it is not sceptics like me who are going bring them down but those very angry, very hurt and very sad graduates who wasted four years and a lot of money on degrees that people will giggle at (you cannot disguise a diploma when the actual words “Climate Change” are in the title.) These are going to be very unhappy times.
Roger says:
May 8, 2012 at 9:17 am
Now that its point set match google has been trying to supress this totally; try ” global warming fraud UEA” 0 results
——————————
Not that I trust Google the way it carries water for The Cause, but you must have some strange filters on your system; I got 2,540,000 results in 0.30 seconds.
CRU seems to be premeditatedly avoiding the communication of some truths and in the absence of those truths they are purposely creating a fictional narrative that supports the incorrect CAGW presumption of the IPCC leadership.
It looks like more than just lying to me.
John
Ok, maybe it’s just my own ignorance here (if so, someone please enlighten me), but WHY would anyone put any faith at all in ANY tree-ring-based temperature record, no matter how many trees were in the sample, or how widely dispersed they were?
Temperature is far from the only thing that has an effect on tree-ring width. Moisture is at least as important, possibly more important. Rainfall varies dramatically from year to year, and on decadal, centennial, and longer time scales as well. And rivers change course all the time, and some of the water seeps horizontally through the surrounding land, which is why you see trees next to rivers on otherwise tree-less terrains (I wonder if the river near Yamal 06 gradually got closer to the tree over the years, explaining its unusual growth pattern). Then there’s cloud cover (trees need light as well as heat). Nutrient availability (a wild animal taking a leak or a dump next to a particular tree could increase growth for at least a year; what would happen if a GAME TRAIL went right by that tree for a few decades?). And going back for a moment to the meandering of the river, the closer a tree is to a water source, the more likely animals will be to pass near that tree (and leave feces, urine, or rotting fish carcasses behind on top of the roots). There’s volcanic eruptions (combination of light availability and nutrient availability). And especially over the period of time when AGW is supposed to have occurred, there’s CO2 fertilization (we KNOW CO2 has increased in recent years, and we KNOW plants grow better with more CO2, so how can anyone conclusively state that the increase in tree ring width is caused by increased temperature and not increased CO2?)
Or are they looking at more than just the width of the rings? Is there some other property of the rings that can CONCLUSIVELY point to the CAUSE of a ring’s large or small width? And for a given set of values for all these properties of a tree ring, is there ONLY ONE set of environmental variable values that can account for it? Because they certainly don’t know the values of all the other variables that can affect properties of the rings.
And then there’s the fact that 1960 or so, whatever formula they were using to estimate temperatures from tree rings, however they controlled for the other factors, dendroclimatology has COMPLETELY FAILED. (This was the excuse Mike Mann used to explain his “Nature Trick”, AFTER he got exposed for it in ClimateGate I). And noone knows why. So how can they be so sure that whatever has caused it to fail now didn’t happen some time in the past?
On an almost-completely-unrelated note, does anyone know if Yamal 06 is still alive? Because I would be very much interested in obtaining some cuttings of new growth from that tree. I’d like to root those cuttings and grow them and sell them to skeptics as mementos of the global warming hysteria when it’s all over (of course, Anthony and Steve get theirs for free, along with Lord Monckton, and, just out of spite, Gore, Mann, Hansen, and the CRU). I’m hoping the US government (soon to be under the control of saner minds) will buy thousands of them to plant all over the Capitol grounds to remind future lawmakers of the foolishness that was climate alarmism.
From before Climategate, I’d pretty much concluded that venality and megalomania were running rampant. After years of being rebuked by temporizing lukewarmistas, it’s nice to see the plain bare-faced obvious truth finally being acknowledged.
Peter K;
I use Ixquick / Startpage (alternate names) as an anonymous search engine, and got ~12K results in 0.31 seconds. The first is:
Early-on straight talk. Pity it wasn’t more widespread.
Heh. I see the WUWT filters haven’t been revised to accommodate this new awareness yet.
Brian H,
I appreciate the tip on your search engine. Google and its gathering of browsing data is beginning to get on my nerves. I had a link to a search engine based in Denmark, one which doesn’t keep any records of browsing histories.
Probably Roger enclosed his search argument in quotes and Peter didn’t.
So you’re saying that the invalidation of the Hockey Stick(s), thus showing that modern temps are absolutely within the “normal” range of the Holocene, was meaningless? Interesting. What do you think would be more meaningful in this debate?
Don’t miss Montford’s valuable summary of the Yamal issues…. it really makes me wonder about what was going on in the heads of Briffa, Jones, Mann, et al in the fall of 2009 just as the previous “crisis” about the Yamal data boiled, and in the period when someone we know only as “FOIA” decided to make the first Climategate release of emails:
Excellent Summary of Yamal Issues at Bishop Hill
@smokey (7:30 am)
I think you’re wrong about what “Upside Down Tiljander” means. Yes, there were two major events, in the latter part of the Tilajnder series, that created a FALSE SIGNAL in the lake sediments, but they did not completely invert those sediments. Apparently, they just added a whole lot of mineral component to individual layers of the sediments, thus making the percentage of organic matter look small.
This is the way Tiljander et al interpreted the data from their own work.
Warm periods result in 1) more growth of plants, and therefore more organic matter being produced on land, and therefore more organic matter being deposited in lake sediment (at least as a proportion to the total weight of sediments); and 2) Less Ice accumulation in the winter, and therefore less ice melt in the spring, and therefore less flow of water, and therefore less erosion of mineral soils by streams, and therefore less deposition of minerals in lake sediments (both in absolute terms, and as a proportion of total weight of sediments). So, for a combination of two reasons, both of them very reasonable, lake deposits laid down during warm periods will have a higher percentage of organic matter in them (they will also be thinner layers, strictly because of reason # 2 above).
However, Tiljander et al, apparently, could not measure the percentage of organic matter in the sediments directly. Instead they relied on the fact that sediments with a higher concentration of minerals have a higher “X-ray density” (I don’t quite understand what that means – did they shoot X-rays at the sediment and measure how much was absorbed, or do the sediments naturally EMIT X-rays, or what?) but they were clear that X-ray density, whatever that means, had a strong positive correlation to mineral content of the sediment layer, and therefore a strong NEGATIVE correlation to ORGANIC content of the sediment layer. And high organic content, as discussed in the previous paragraph, is associated with warm temperatures. Therefore, X-ray density, the actual thing that was being measured here, was NEGATIVELY correlated to temperature.
(By the way, I can’t remember who, but someone here commented that the entire Tiljander series was irrelevant because it was a proxy for WATER temperature, not air temperature. The preceding two paragraphs should clear that up for you. Even though the ultimate measurement is underwater, the events that influence the measurement happen on land. The Tiljander series IS, in fact, irrelevant, but not for that reason; see the next paragraph.)
Now, the explanation for the corruption of the Tiljander data, and the effect that it had. Two man-made events in the 1900s caused unusually thick layers, comprised of a high percentage of minerals. In 1930, peat ditching and forest clearance, and in 1967, the rebuilding of a bridge over part of the lake. Tiljander et al were well aware of these events, and of the fact that they caused a false signal in the data. There was a VERY high X-ray density during those two years (and somewhat lower X-ray density, but still well above the series average, throughout the last 70 years of the record). By the theoretical relationship between temperature and inorganic content of sediment, this would indicate lower temperatures during that period (and particularly low in 1930 and 1967), IF one did not throw out the last 70 years of the record as totally unusable. And that was exactly what Tiljander et al recommended, ignoring the post-1929 portion of the record, because those two events had made it worthless as a proxy for temperature.
Now, here’s where (I think) Mann erred. Somewhere in their paper, Tiljander et al published a graph of X-ray density in their lake sediments, with high values toward the top and low values toward the bottom, as is the standard. But remember that high X-ray density indicates low temperatures. Mann probably saw this graph and immediately recognized that it looked a lot like his own hockey-stick. But the only reason it looked anything like his hockey stick was the two events in the 1900s that artificially increased the mineral content of the sediments – without those events, it would have been pretty flat throughout the 20th century. He probably didn’t read the paper thoroughly, and never realized, until Steve pointed it out, that what he was actually seeing was an INVERSE temperature graph. If it proved anything (and because of the 20th-century disturbances, it did not), it was that temperatures FELL dramatically during the 20th century. But Mann, embarrassed by M&M’s thorough debunking of his treering-based hockey stick, and the resultant slap-on-the-wrist by the NAS, was desperate to cherry pick a hockey stick that didn’t depend on bristlecone pine trees. And Tiljander et al’s graph of X-ray density looked tailor-made, so he cherry-picked it (and likely gave it a huge weight in his analysis).
When Steve and others started pointing this out after Mann published, Mann took another look at the Tiljander paper and immediately realized that he had seriously screwed up. But instead of admitting his error, he claimed that he understood all along what the Tiljander data meant. He arrogantly used that line about multivariate regression, which meant basically, it really doesn’t matter which way McIntyre THINKS the relationship should work – I ran it through multivariate regression, and the sign of the coefficient came up positive, with a high t-ratio, and there was a high R-squared so it MUST be valid.
But there was nothing at all valid in Mann’s work. The dataset was hopelessly corrupted over the period of interest, and even then, actually showed the exact opposite of what he intended to show. Though we, on the skeptic side of the argument, don’t think CO2 has much influence on temperature, we at least acknowledge that the effect, if there is any, MUST be positive. NOONE recognizes a theoretical NEGATIVE effect of CO2 on temperature, or any physical mechanism by which this can be accomplished, yet that is exactly what Mann “proved”. Which is why Steve (correctly) points to this a prime example of a spurious relationship. No causal relationship in this direction can exist in the physical world, yet a statistical analysis makes the two seem related.
“Upside-down Tiljander” refers to the fact that, properly interpreted, the measured proxy (X-ray density) in the Tiljander lake sediments is INVERSELY proportional to the temperature, and therefore (if you believe that CO2 drives temperature) you would expect to see X-ray density go DOWN in recent decades, but Mann, unaware that he was really looking at a negative temperature proxy, cherry-picked the wrong data set, failed to realize he had to invert it, and (as expected) got another upturned hockey stick. (Actually, had Mann realized he had to invert Tiljander to get temperature, he would have just thrown out the dataset entirely, and would have eventually found another dataset that showed a hockey stick pointed in the right direction.)
Note that I’m oversimplifying Mann’s work. There were actually 19 different proxies used in the paper, and only 4 of them were the Tiljander data sets. But all four of them graphed as a hockey stick (when not properly inverted), while only one of the remaining 15 looked anything like a hockey stick. So there were 14 showing no hockey stick at all, one showing an upturned hockey stick, and four (if properly interpreted) showing an inverted hockey stick. So the straight average of the 19 proxies is a very-slightly bent (but definitely downwardly bent) hockey stick. So Mann’s paper, if it proves anything, proves global COOLING.
Seriously, sometimes I think Mann is really a mole for the SKEPTICS, intentionally coming up with research that is full of holes for the skeptics to expose, and acting as the very epitome of the arrogant scientist when challenged. With all due respect to Steve, Ross, Anthony, Jo Nova, Lord Monckton, etc., I don’t think anyone has done more to discredit CAGW than Mike Mann. Except perhaps the unknown Climategate leaker. Or Al Gore. I just hope the rest of the hockey team doesn’t figure it out and kick Mann off the team. Kinda hard to do, though, I guess, since he’s pretty much the team captain.
Regards
Trevor
Trevor,
I believe you’re mistaken. The human caused problems with tiljander made it correlate better to the calibration period when inverted. Mann’s comment that his algorithm was “invariant” to the sign of the predictor, or whatever he said, means that the algorithm automatically flips the series if it correlated better upside down. Mann knew it was effectively upside down and as usual used careful wording to avoid answering the question.
What I find amusing is the fact that the Yamal area sample was used to show Global warming and now Yamal is the area where huge gas fields are being exploted producing more CO2.
Strange old world isn’t it.
anybody know if CRU have responded to this?