Readers may recall this yesterday: NOAA releases tranche of FOIA documents – 2 years later. I have a few to share from CEI now.
Here’s one email, right after Climategate1, that is uproariously funny, given NRO’s response to Dr. Michael Mann today.
Heh. Here’s that email thread plus others as PDF files.
NOAA emails reax to ClimateGate
How IPCC sausage is made in 2007:
The Team is unhappy with Andrew Revkins post CG1 questions on IPCC, one refuses to look at his blog anymore.
Alarmists not happy with Revkin for noting IPCC probs
Let’s meet with the President-elect.
See comments about the role science must play to help BHO to get cap and trade passed. That’s the old left, viewing science for its use in service of the state. All this amid fretting that people will be distracted by things such as the economic collapse actually going on around them.
Susan Solomon emails regarding Science in Service of the Cause
Revkin asks about why can’t we share temperature data post CG1.
NOAA on Temperature Data Sharing issues
We need an independent and transparent study, but let’s not question the IPCC, ‘kay?
Trenberth see’s Ben Santer’s paper published in Science as having “substantial problems”, due to spurious artifacts introduced by radiosonde equipment changes over time making the ERA-15 data “corrupted” in Trenberth’s words. Two words sum the problem up: temporal inhomogeneity.
But, why wouldn’t he send this to Science? Instead he just sends around to (I presume) a few trusted members (pals) of the team? Oh, right, “the cause” and all that.
Trenberth_just_not_that_into_Santer_et_al
These documents really need to be in the original digital file format. They’ve given paper on purpose to make the job of searching harder. PDF files cannot be hosted in searchable form online. We know how they operate, they actually went to extra effort for this because emails are of course stored as text files. This should be raised with the FOI tribunal.
So Eli Rabett is Joshua Halpern? Are you acquainted with the folks at NOAA and featured in the “finally released” batch of emails? If so, Mr. Halpern, it will be nice to get to know you.
Just a thought, here. Who is this “Climate Community?” Is it a little town down the road? You know, totally isolated, indeed insulated, from the rest of the real world?
I note some email addresses have been redacted. If they did this on these how come 120 odd others [the important ones?] have been withheld because they contain addresses?
Come on FOIA release the rest. Let them fly. Let’s see the bunny et al digging the crap for all they are worth.
I’ve stocked up on the popcorn, the beers in the frigo, let them loose.
If Dr. Mann tried tossing the caber, if he did’t get it right it might fall back on top of him. He might have to duck and dive a bit.
Reminds me of something else that seems to be about to happen to him.
Dave A Said:
These documents really need to be in the original digital file format. They’ve given paper on purpose to make the job of searching harder. PDF files cannot be hosted in searchable form online. We know how they operate, they actually went to extra effort for this because emails are of course stored as text files. This should be raised with the FOI tribunal.
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Absolutely Dave, this is clearly a double bladed sword for them, not only will it take longer to analyse the documents but it is easier for inadvertent errors and omissions to occur. If there was an email missing between two others how could you tell ?
Redaction is much safer and easier done electronically rather than relying on the human eye/brain thing.
Not only that, but NOAA claimed to have sent electronic documents too, but assuming there are no duplicates, why are these emails hard copy ?
To me, this is a clear attempt to stall. Make them pay!
The ‘sausage factory’ one is particularly interesting. It shows that the IPCC FAQ section saying that climate forecasting is much easier than weather (described by Pielke as “an absurd, scientifically unsupported claim”) was hyped up by Susan Hassol, a ‘climate change communicator’. There’s no mention of Hassol as an author in the IPCC report.
Reblogged this on Climate Ponderings and commented:
I LOVE FOIA
All these characters are not scientists. They are advocates; glorified community organizers. True scientists wouldn’t waste their time on all these politics, nor would they constantly worry about consensus. Consensus means nothing to a true scientist.
How different of a world this climate “science” is to pharma. I would love to file a new drug application based on the consensus of my colleagues, but sadly we have to show our work under intense scrutiny of external agencies.
Those climate “scientists” have it so easy. They never have to show their work and we all just have to trust their consensus.
That they, for the great part, honestly believe in their thesis and its vital importance for humanity is all the more pathetic in that they never seriously attempt to test it to destruction and to welcome others to share in the work of testing it. There is confirmation bias (seeing) and then there is bias towards confirmation (seeking).
This should be of assistance to anyone who needs to see the bigger picture . . .
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/climategate/history/climategate_timeline_banner.gif
Eli Rabett says:
August 22, 2012 at 7:34 pm
quote ”You folks are really reaching.”……..
Hmm, strikes me it should be you folks who should be doing the reaching! – even if only for a pen to draft your resignations!
Seriously, and with all due respect to any of the climate scientists involved in this whole process, I say, put you hands up now, if you feel you may have overstepped the mark. Sure, no-one likes to admit they made a mistake, (and an honest mistake is always acceptable !) – but if any of this shows deliberate posturing and deliberate fabrication/omission, etc, etc you folks won’t have a leg to stand on.
I would be absolutely certain that there are members of the alarmist community who are doubting their own actions, etc. These are the folk who need to clean their slates now, or risk association with the downfall of the CAGW scam (and potentially their own downfall). I know some will simply want to save their own skins – but I’m sure there are some genuine scientists out there in Alarmismland that have been duped just like the rest of us – they are the ones I am appealing to – and they are the ones to help put a stop to this BS earlier rather than later!
From Pat Frank on August 22, 2012 at 5:21 pm:
If this is him, looks like his email address is clearly posted on his IAMAS (International Association of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences) bio, along with address and phone #:
http://www.iamas.org/People Profiles/MacCracken.html
I checked with a Googled address verifier, it’s good.
http://verify-email.org/
Given the ISP (comcast.net), that might be a home office. I’ve heard of Comcast as a cable TV provider that also does internet and phone, but for the residential market, not for commercial.
Trivia question:
Bio page identifies him as “Past-President IAMAS (2007-2011)”
Bottom of bio page says:
Page last update: 10 March 2004
Maintained by Dr John Turner, British Antarctic Survey
So did they know in 2004 when he’d be President,
Or is “last modified” not automatically updated?
I strongly suspect it’s the latter. And I find it troubling when prestigious organizations do things in a way that allow them to “slip in” changes without noting when they were made, or that changes were made at all.
It appears the first question on the NOAA job application form is …
“Who did you vote for in the last election?”
I wonder what the odds are that all climate scientists hired by NOAA are democrats?
Anthony – I dont want to presume ignorance but just in case you may not be aware – There are a number of text recognition packages available which could easily transfer the hard copies into word etc. Most notable/ common is onenote – which does it automatically. Scanning them all may be labout intensive unless you have a fancy scanner, but it occurred to me this would be a good way to enable searching of the documents for key words, and help dissemneiation – you know obvious stuff like cut paste is easier.
see http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/14595/ocr-anything-with-onenote-2007-and-2010/ for how to
Email of Berrien Moore: “…open a dialogue with the President-elect on the scientific consensus and recent findings, which reflect the seriousness of the climate challenge, and…
The phrase “open a dialogue” is code for partisan lobbying to ensure that the President-elect kept his campaign promise that “electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket”. The phrase “scientific consensus” refers to the near certainty that increasing the amount of CO2 causes warming that is mostly mild and beneficial, particularly making cold and dry places warmer and wetter. The phrase “recent findings” is code for laughable alarmist speculation like “low sea ice causes blocking”. The “serious of the climate challenge” reflects the reality that less than 0.01% of Americans would like their electricity rates to skyrocket.
Fortunately the President-elect was not an idiot.
kadaka you said: “Given the ISP (comcast.net), that might be a home office. I’ve heard of Comcast as a cable TV provider that also does internet and phone, but for the residential market, not for commercial.”
Comcast has a huge commercial presence as an isp, i’d say about half the businesses in my city that have internet at work use them as their internet provider. the other half uses Verizon DSL(no fios service, no other major isp’s around).
Interesting the left does not understand ‘swiftboating’ is simply telling the truth.
David Ross says:
August 22, 2012 at 6:10 pm
Thanks for the Dyson video. What he describes is genuine science. Nothing sexy about it. You put one foot in front of the other and you create the tools and experiments necessary to learn about a specific aspect of the warming question such as the net absorption of CO2 by plants. No Warmist has done any empirical work on this question. Warmists only do sexy stuff.
By contrast, the Trenberthian paradigm reduces all questions about warming to radiative transfer between sun and earth, treating earth as a black body, and the effects of CO2 on the transfer. That is why Trenberth can say that temperature change can cause clouds but clouds cannot cause temperature change. Given his “a priori” assumptions, all he has to do is pop everything into the supercomputer and become the prophet of climate doom. Trenberthians might have deduced from their “a priori” assumptions some connection between plants and CO2 but you can bet that the empirical component of the work is trivial.
There is a dynamite discussion of these emails at Bishop Hill’s website:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2012/8/22/us-reaction-to-climategate.html?lastPage=true&postSubmitted=true
Pardon me, Anthony and moderators, if this post is offensive or forbidden for other reasons.
So once again, the team doesn’t see the issue as bad science, bad data, bad methodology, sloppy statistics or the fact that the real-world climate doesn’t match the computer models’ output.
The problem is PR. They feel they need more salesmanship. They need to find a compelling story, and create a meme that keeps the public buzz going.
more soylent green! says:
August 23, 2012 at 9:29 am
Yes! The fact that there are such things as graduate programs in “science communication” shows how low our standards have fallen. Derrida and postmodern literary theory now trump science.
Maus says:
August 22, 2012 at 8:20 pm
I found your rhetoric to be really entertaining and I also agreed with your sentiment. I think it is important to realise that the type of information viewed is from emails where nobody purports there is validated scientific content. I would think the only evaluation that would be appropriate is whether their character can be maligned and intentions known as easily as some make it appear. If these scientists want to use manipulation tactics to make people align themselves with their agenda then that isn’t unusual seeing as every facet of life is involved with manipulation. And secondly, this doesn’t alter that this is entirely consistent with their position that they believe their scientific research is ‘robust’. You also made issue with the disagreements and snark between researchers and certain analysis and you make mockery of the claim that the science is settled. Scientists are always finding new information and constantly criticise eachother and puff up their egos. These emails are not dramatic and this conspiracy talk by taking email fragments and applying malice to the authors will always lead to a fictional analysis in your interpretive favor. I just see no benefit out of analysing these emails at all except to sow discord… and that to me appears manipulative.
davidmhoffer says:
August 22, 2012 at 8:59 pm
If you care about ideas then the identity or authority of a person doesn’t mean anything. I believe WUWT pretty much have that as their mission statement.
Kevin Trenberth’s comments on Ben Santer’s July 2003 Science paper are interesting for a number of reasons. First, and most trivially, we see what it takes for KT to critically appraise an AGW paper: defense of his own work. All of KT’s citations contravening Ben Santer’s Science paper are to his own published first-author work.
Second, crediting KT’s actual criticisms, Ben Santer’s 2003 paper is worse than flawed. It reflects incompetence. Ben Santer should have known the data on which his paper rested were completely unreliable.
Third, Ben Santer’s article has 143 citations listed in Web of Science, right up through June 2012. His results were disputed in a short Science article, March 19 2004, by T. Chase and R. Pielke Sr., and defended by B. Santer & friends in the same issue. However, it appears that Kevin Trenberth never published his critique. He let a paper that he knew is fatally flawed stand in Science Magazine, where it has misled other scientists ever since.
Given the rapid team response to papers that contest their AGW view, one can only suppose that Kevin Trenberth’s public silence was studied. For example, Kevin Trenberth was a co-author on the infamous and dishonestly accelerated 2003 Eos paper attacking Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas. So, it when suits Kevin he’ll attack papers quickly.
Most here will also remember that Steve McIntyre showed that the Kevin Trenberth co-authored 2003 Eos paper included a Figure that dishonestly truncated Keith Briffa’s embarrassing spaghetti graph divergence. So, fatal flaws apparently don’t bother Kevin when they’re properly flawed.
Ben Santer’s 2003 Science paper was properly flawed, of course, but from Kevin’s perspective its flaw was taken out of his hide. And that apparently transgressed Kevin’s limit. Now we know his evident order of importance: ego first, then AGW, then scientific integrity.
Fourth, all of the flaws Kevin Trenberth found in Ben Santer’s paper should have been caught by a competent knowledgeable reviewer. However, they were not. This indicates that the reviewers deployed by Science Magazine were — at least in that case — incompetent and ignorant. Donald Kennedy was the Editor-in-Chief of Science Magazine during this time. He would have been responsible for the review process. Donald Kennedy was an outspoken partisan of AGW, providing a possible explanation for the uncritical review of Ben Santer’s submission.
Finally, Ben Santer has published extensively on attribution of recent warming to a human cause. The 2003 Science paper was part of that effort. Ben has had a vital interest in proving human causality ever since he illicitly wrote the attribution lie into the SPM of the IPCC 2AR in 1995. Call the subsequent effort to prove attribution Ben’s post hoc auto-absolution for a prior sin. If he can prove attribution, his past lie becomes a prescient truth. He’ll have to live with that. Public honors never remove a private stain.