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/
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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.
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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…
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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’?
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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.