Climate cuttings 33

Welcome Instapundit readers! Hope this is useful for you. If you are interested in more on global warming material, check out Caspar and the Jesus Paper and The Yamal Implosion, or check out the forthcoming book.

General reaction seems to be that the CRUgate emails are genuine, but with the caveat that there could be some less reliable stuff slipped in.

In the circumstances, here are some summaries of the CRUgate files. I'll update these as and when I can. The refs are the email number.

• Phil Jones writes to University of Hull to try to stop sceptic Sonia Boehmer Christiansen using her Hull affiliation. Graham F Haughton of Hull University says its easier to push greenery there now SB-C has retired.(1256765544)
• Michael Mann discusses how to destroy a journal that has published sceptic papers.(1047388489)
• Tim Osborn discusses how data are truncated to stop an apparent cooling trend showing up in the results (0939154709). Analysis of impact here. Wow!
• Phil Jones describes the death of sceptic, John Daly, as "cheering news".(1075403821)
• Phil Jones encourages colleagues to delete information subject to FoI request.(1212063122)
• Phil Jones says he has use Mann's "Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series"...to hide the decline". Real Climate says "hiding" was an unfortunate turn of phrase.(0942777075)
• Letter to The Times from climate scientists was drafted with the help of Greenpeace.(0872202064)
• Mann thinks he will contact BBC's Richard Black to find out why another BBC journalist was allowed to publish a vaguely sceptical article.(1255352257)
• Kevin Trenberth says they can't account for the lack of recent warming and that it is a travesty that they can't.(1255352257)
• Tom Wigley says that Lindzen and Choi's paper is crap.(1257532857)
• Tom Wigley says that von Storch is partly to blame for sceptic papers getting published at Climate Research. Says he encourages the publication of crap science. Says they should tell publisher that the journal is being used for misinformation. Says that whether this is true or not doesn't matter. Says they need to get editorial board to resign. Says they need to get rid of von Storch too. (1051190249)
• Ben Santer says (presumably jokingly!) he's "tempted, very tempted, to beat the crap" out of sceptic Pat Michaels. (1255100876)
• Mann tells Jones that it would be nice to '"contain" the putative Medieval Warm Period'. (1054736277)
• Tom Wigley tells Jones that the land warming since 1980 has been twice the ocean warming and that this might be used by sceptics as evidence for urban heat islands.(1257546975)
• Tom Wigley say that Keith Briffa has got himself into a mess over the Yamal chronology (although also says it's insignificant. Wonders how Briffa explains McIntyre's sensitivity test on Yamal and how he explains the use of a less-well replicated chronology over a better one. Wonders if he can. Says data withholding issue is hot potato, since many "good" scientists condemn it.(1254756944)
• Briffa is funding Russian dendro Shiyatov, who asks him to send money to personal bank account so as to avoid tax, thereby retaining money for research.(0826209667)
• Kevin Trenberth says climatologists are nowhere near knowing where the energy goes or what the effect of clouds is. Says nowhere balancing the energy budget. Geoengineering is not possible.(1255523796)
• Mann discusses tactics for screening and delaying postings at Real Climate.(1139521913)
• Tom Wigley discusses how to deal with the advent of FoI law in UK. Jones says use IPR argument to hold onto code. Says data is covered by agreements with outsiders and that CRU will be "hiding behind them".(1106338806)
• Overpeck has no recollection of saying that he wanted to "get rid of the Medieval Warm Period". Thinks he may have been quoted out of context.(1206628118)
• Mann launches RealClimate to the scientific community.(1102687002)
• Santer complaining about FoI requests from McIntyre. Says he expects support of Lawrence Livermore Lab management. Jones says that once support staff at CRU realised the kind of people the scientists were dealing with they became very supportive. Says the VC [vice chancellor] knows what is going on (in one case).(1228330629)
• Rob Wilson concerned about upsetting Mann in a manuscript. Says he needs to word things diplomatically.(1140554230)
• Briffa says he is sick to death of Mann claiming his reconstruction is tropical because it has a few poorly temp sensitive tropical proxies. Says he should regress these against something else like the "increasing trend of self-opinionated verbiage" he produces. Ed Cook agrees with problems.(1024334440)
• Overpeck tells Team to write emails as if they would be made public. Discussion of what to do with McIntyre finding an error in Kaufman paper. Kaufman's admits error and wants to correct. Appears interested in Climate Audit findings.(1252164302)
• Jones calls Pielke Snr a prat.(1233249393)
• Santer says he will no longer publish in Royal Met Soc journals if they enforce intermediate data being made available. Jones has complained to head of Royal Met Soc about new editor of Weather [why?data?] and has threatened to resign from RMS.(1237496573)
• Reaction to McIntyre's 2005 paper in GRL. Mann has challenged GRL editor-in-chief over the publication. Mann is concerned about the connections of the paper's editor James Saiers with U Virginia [does he mean Pat Michaels?]. Tom Wigley says that if Saiers is a sceptic they should go through official GRL channels to get him ousted. (1106322460) [Note to readers - Saiers was subsequently ousted]
• Later on Mann refers to the leak at GRL being plugged.(1132094873)
• Jones says he's found a way around releasing AR4 review comments to David Holland.(1210367056)
• Wigley says Keenan's fraud accusation against Wang is correct. (1188557698)
• Jones calls for Wahl and Ammann to try to change the received date on their alleged refutation of McIntyre [presumably so it can get into AR4](1189722851)
• Mann tells Jones that he is on board and that they are working towards a common goal.(0926010576)
• Mann sends calibration residuals for MBH99 to Osborn. Says they are pretty red, and that they shouldn't be passed on to others, this being the kind of dirty laundry they don't want in the hands of those who might distort it.(1059664704)
• Prior to AR3 Briffa talks of pressure to produce a tidy picture of "apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data". [This appears to be the politics leading the science] Briffa says it was just as warm a thousand years ago.(0938018124)
• Jones says that UK climate organisations are coordinating themselves to resist FoI. They got advice from the Information Commissioner [!](1219239172)
• Mann tells Revkin that McIntyre is not to be trusted.(1254259645)
• Revkin quotes von Storch as saying it is time to toss the Hockey Stick . This back in 2004.(1096382684)
• Funkhouser says he's pulled every trick up his sleeve to milk his Kyrgistan series. Doesn't think it's productive to juggle the chronology statistics any more than he has.(0843161829)
• Wigley discusses fixing an issue with sea surface temperatures in the context of making the results look both warmer but still plausible. (1254108338)
• Jones says he and Kevin will keep some papers out of the next IPCC report.(1089318616)
• Tom Wigley tells Mann that a figure Schmidt put together to refute Monckton is deceptive and that the match it shows of instrumental to model predictions is a fluke. Says there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model output by authors and IPCC.(1255553034)
• Grant Foster putting together a critical comment on a sceptic paper. Asks for help for names of possible reviewers. Jones replies with a list of people, telling Foster they know what to say about the paper and the comment without any prompting.(1249503274)
• David Parker discussing the possibility of changing the reference period for global temperature index. Thinks this shouldn't be done because it confuses people and because it will make things look less warm.(1105019698)
• Briffa discusses an sceptic article review with Ed Cook. Says that confidentially he needs to put together a case to reject it (1054756929)
• Ben Santer, referring to McIntyre says he hopes Mr "I'm not entirely there in the head" will not be at the AGU.(1233249393)
• Jones tells Mann that he is sending station data. Says that if McIntyre requests it under FoI he will delete it rather than hand it over. Says he will hide behind data protection laws. Says Rutherford screwed up big time by creating an FTP directory for Osborn. Says Wigley worried he will have to release his model code. Also discuss AR4 draft. Mann says paleoclimate chapter will be contentious but that the author team has the right personalities to deal with sceptics.(1107454306)

Update on Nov 22, 2009 by Bishop Hill

Updated to add links to the online database of the emails at Elegant Chaos.

Update on Nov 22, 2009 by Bishop Hill

)Here's more:

• Phil Jones having problems with explaining issues over the Lamb image of global temps in the early IPCC reports. Says it shouldn't be discussed openly at Real Climate. Says better left buried.(1168356704)
• Phil Jones emails Steve [Schneider], editor of Climatic Change [plus others, editorial board of the journal?], telling him he shouldn't accede to McIntyre's request for Mann's computer code. In later email to Mann ("For your eyes only, delete after reading") Jones says he told Jones separately [presumably meaning without saying to the rest of the board] that he should seek advice elsewhere and also consult the publisher and take legal advice.(1074277559)
• Briffa says he tried hard to balance the needs of the IPCC and science, which were not always the same.(1177890796)
• An anonymous source says that robustness problems with the Hockey Stick are known to anyone who understands his methodology. The source says that there will be a lot of noise over McIntyre's 2003 paper and that knowing Mann'svery thin skin he will react strongly, unless he has learned from the past.(1067194064)
• Giorgio Filippo (University of Trieste) says that IPCC is not an assessment of published science but about production of results. Says there are very few rules and anything goes. Thinks this will undermine IPCC credibility. Says everyone seems to think it's OK to do this.(0968705882)
• IPCC review editor John Mitchell says that the issue of why proxy data for recent decades is not shown (he says it's because they don't show warming) needs to be explained. [Note to readers, this was not done Let's say that the explanation was nuanced - it said that the divergence problem, as this issue is known, was restricted to a few areas]. Also says that Mann's short-centred PC analysis is wrong and that Mann's results are not statistically significant.(1150923423)

Comments

[TA]

This is a fantastic compendium. I have been wanting a couple of clear links I can send to my family of AGW believers. I've been looking for something short and sweet that makes the issues clear. I think I will send them this plus Spencer's response on WUWT today, which shows the contrast of a responsible scientific attitude toward finding the truth. Thanks!

[aylamp]

At 06:25 28/09/2009, Tom Wigley wrote:

"REDUCE THE OCEAN BLIP"

Phil,
Here are some speculations on correcting SSTs to partly
explain the 1940s warming blip.
If you look at the attached plot you will see that the
land also shows the 1940s blip (as I'm sure you know).
So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC,
then this would be significant for the global mean -- but
we'd still have to explain the land blip.

[Tom]

This is the clearest compendiation I've yet seen. Nice job, sir.

Anyone interested in seeing Dr. Kevin Trenberth debate Dr. William Gray on the issue, check this out:

http://fortcollinsteaparty.com/index.php/2009/10/10/dr-william-gray-and-dr-kevin-trenberth-debate-global-warming/

http://fortcollinsteaparty.com/index.php/2009/10/10/dr-william-gray-and-dr-kevin-trenberth-the-global-warming-debate-continues/

It's not necessarily complex, but it is illuminating.

[Peter E.]

Here are some notables I found so far (less than 1/4 of the way through the emails):
____________________________________________
Filename: 876437553.txt (Date: Thu, 9 Oct 1997 18:52)

I am very strongly in favor of as wide and rapid a distribution as
possible for endorsements. I think the only thing that counts is
numbers. The media is going to say "1000 scientists signed" or "1500
signed". No one is going to check if it is 600 with PhDs versus 2000
without. They will mention the prominent ones, but that is a
different story.

Conclusion -- Forget the screening, forget asking
them about their last publication (most will ignore you.) Get those
names!

Prof. Dr. Joseph Alcamo, Director
Center for Environmental Systems Research
University of Kassel
_____________________________________________
Filename: 907686380.txt (Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1998 11:06)

I just wanted to thank Keith for his comments. They are right on target.
There is indeed, as many of us are aware, at least one key player in the
modeling community that has made overly dismissive statements about the
value of proxy data as late, because of what might be argued as his/her
own naive assessment/analysis of these data. This presents the danger of
just the sort of backlash that Keith warns of, and makes all the more
pressing the need for more of a community-wide strategizing on our part.

Michael E. Mann
Adjunct Assistant Professor, Department of Geosciences
Morrill Science Center
University of Massachusetts
_______________________________________________
Filename: 924532891.txt (Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1999 10:06)

As for thinking that it is "Better that nothing appear, than something
unnacceptable to us" .....as though we are the gatekeepers of all that is
acceptable in the world of paleoclimatology seems amazingly arrogant.
Science moves forward whether we agree with individiual articles or not....

Raymond S. Bradley
Professor and Head of Department
Department of Geosciences
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01xxx xxxx xxxx
_________________________________________
Filename: 938125745.txt (Date: Thu Sep 23 18:29)

My concern was motivated by the possibility of expressing an impression of more concensus than might actually exist . I suppose the earlier talk implying that we should not 'muddy the waters' by including contradictory evidence worried me .

- Keith Briffa
_________________________________________________
Filename: 942777075.txt (Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15)

I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline.

Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit
School of Environmental Sciences
University of East Anglia

[Ayrdale]

Overall, this is indeed a scientific tragedy.

The idealist in me wants some of these people to apologise, after acknowledging their often underhand conduct and promise to move forward in a spirit of cooperation and openess. A climate change panel, if you like, well divorced from the politics of the IPPC, greenpeace , FOE and other red green groups.

Some hope I guess.

[John]

And yet, those pesky poles and glaciers keep on melting, and the growing season in the Northern Hemisphere keeps getting longer. I guess they didn't get the memo maybe?

Once again... every single major scientific body on the planet is in consensus that the planet is trending warmer, and humans are behind it. But go ahead and believe what you want, and scream about a few emails that will probably be explained and clarified over the next few days. Doubt you'd listen anyway, and that would kill your dream.

[JEM]

John - funny how the exact same troll nonsense text keeps popping up over all the scientific-honesty sites (I won't say 'skeptic', because some of them aren't even skeptics) under a scattering of different names.

So are you a bot, or is someone feeding you this stuff?

[Ken]

The real issue behind all of this is, how many good research papers that have shown the whole AGW theory as a fraud have been rejected due to these socalled scientists? As a chemist I find the whole affair to be completely reprehensible conduct for these scientists and their cronies in all areas of the scientific debate.

[jonathan benjamin uppington-smythe snr]

'Tis inadequate to send the IPCC to the trash heap - it will only do to uproot and destroy and incinerate and bury the whole of the UN and all of its affiliated institutions, banks, armies, political plants, etc, etc.

THE UN MUST DIE - DIE - DIE !!!!
ROOTS TO SHOOTS - THE UN MUST UTTERLYAND COMPLETELY AND ETERNALLY DIE !!!!

[Glen Raphael]

I wrote a ruby script to parse out the email senders, the better to get a sense of who the players are. There are ~330 unique addresses in the From: fields. Sorted by number of messages sent, there were:

214 messsages from: p.jones
171 from: michael e. mann
144 from: k. briffa
103 from: jto
80 from: t.osborn
60 from: santer1
45 from: wigley
31 from: m.hulme
21 from: eystein.jansen
19 from: trenbert
18 from: steve mcintyre
16 from: wahl, eugene r
14 from: drdendro
11 from: rahmstorf
10 from: narasimha d. rao; rashit
9 from: thomas.c.peterson; tim osborn
8 from: d.j. keenan; drind; naki; peiser, benny; tcrowley
7 from: gschmidt; mhughes; raymond s. bradley; stepan g. shiyatov;
tatiana m. dedkova
6 from: c.goodess; ipcc-wg1; kevin trenberth; mmaccrac;
peter.thorne; valerie.masson
5 from: john.christy; jonathan overpeck; joos; mick kelly;
susan.solomon; t.d.davies

The full list of 331 senders is here:
http://blogjack.net/2009/11/whose-mail-was-in-cru-foia-leak.html

[truthseeker]

Wikipedia articles that do or should record this event in a neutral and balanced manner, with journalist-written sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climategate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Jones_(climatologist)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_E._Mann
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_controversy

[John Blake]

We eagerly await a sophisticated whistle-blower dynamiting loose these back-channel conspirators' incriminating archives from Hansen's GISS, Mann's hyper-fraudulent Pennsylvania eyrie, innumerable others as available.

The time for mealy-mouthed self-justifications is long past. These blatant ideologues, hypocritical poseurs, are unworthy of respect in any form. Under cover of objective, rational, scientific analysis/evaluation, for ten years now they have blighted careers of anyone with integrity, suppressed dissent, raked off tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars by repeating their Big Lie in violation of every ethical, legal, moral canon known to man. Al Gore alone should disgorge near a billion dollars of illicit gains, obtained on patently false pretenses indistinguishable in principle from Bernie Madoff's.

Any self-respecting scientific journal, not necessarily including Nature or Science, which does not immediately take steps to ensure that all --repeat, all-- future climatological submissions are properly archived and subject to valid peer-review (emphatically excluding Climate Cultists' cozy little circles) should be banned from all scholarly discourse forthwith. And that's just for starters.

[frank verismo]

Let's ponder the following email from Mann to Jones:

"Anyway, I wanted you guys to know that you're free to use RC (realclimate.org) in any way
you think would be helpful. Gavin and I are going to be careful about
what comments we screen through, and we'll be very careful to answer any
questions that come up to any extent we can. On the other hand, you
might want to visit the thread and post replies yourself. We can hold
comments up in the queue and contact you about whether or not you think
they should be screened through or not, and if so, any comments you'd
like us to include.

You're also welcome to do a followup guest post, etc. think of RC as a
resource that is at your disposal to combat any disinformation put
forward by the McIntyres of the world. Just let us know. We'll use our
best discretion to make sure the skeptics dont'get to use the RC
comments as a megaphone...

mike"

Interesting enough in and of itself, but who owns realclimate.org? A whois.com search gives us the answer:
http://www.whois.net/whois/realclimate.com
Environmental Media Services, Washington DC. EMS was founded by one Arlie Schardt. And Mr Schardt just happens to be Al Gore's communications director for his 2000 presidential run, among other things:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_Media_Services

How very, very cosy.

So here we have the 'leading' AGW website offering free rein to Phil Jones while stifling any dissenting voices. A website that just happens to be owned by Gore's buddy.

Branching out further we have Gore's Generation Investment Management and other carbon-trading schemes he and his chums stand to do very, very nicely out of - provided certain inconvenient truths don't come to light.

The whole enterprise is beginning to smell like a global-sized racket. The science never stood a chance.

[anonymous coward]

it would seem that a number of legitimate scientists in the field have tort actions against this mob for libel and slander, interference with contract, and, oh, I don't know what else, but I would love to see some lawsuits by those who have standing against these a**holes personally.

[HEEL LIFTS]

Qh what a web we weave..................................lol

Deal with it Gore.

[Scott Matheson]

I haven't gone through all of the comments, but surely I cannot be the first to bring up the "life imitating art" angle with Michael Crichton's "State of Fear"

[Not Impressed]

I read this and I found myself thinking "so what?" It seems to me that all the emails show is that the people who sent them hold you denialists in deep, deep contempt. I've not seen anything that actually shows they believe they are working on a fraud or that they are fabricating data. If the most incriminating one is Jone's not wanting to highlight dubious tree-ring data then frankly, you've got nothing.

When you add in the illegal way these emails were procured then it really starts to look like an own-goal for you denialists.

[mark]

Apparently the IPCC doesn't care if error bars are correct "and having them is all that matters. It seems irrelevant whether they are right or how they are used."

From: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: Re: Out in latest J. Climate
Date: Thu Aug 4 09:49:54 2005

Mike,
Gabi was supposed to be there but wasn't either. I think Gabi isn't
being objective as she might because of Tom C. I recall Keith
telling me that her recent paper has been rejected, not sure if outright
or not.
Gabi sees the issue from a D&A perspective, not whether any curve
is nearer the truth, but just what the envelope of the range might be.
There is an issue coming up in IPCC. Every curve needs error
bars, and having them is all that matters. It seems irrelevant whether
they are right or how they are used. Changing timescales make this
simple use impractical.
We have a new version of HadCRUT just submitted, so soon
the'll be HadCRUT3v and CRUTEM3v. The land doesn't change much.
This has errors associated with each point, but the paper doesn't yet
discuss how to use them.
I'll attach this paper. Only just been submitted to JGR - not
in this format though. This format lays it out better.
Thanks for reminding Scott.
Cheers
Phil

[mark]

Why is the word "true" in quotes???
also note: "And I also see your problem: what we are finding out now makes
> the IPCC process look somewhat unsophisticated back in 1990, so it is a
> diplomatic conundrum how to be completely truthful in reporting this, as
> we need to be as scientists, without providing the skeptics undue
> fodder for attacking IPCC."

From: "Rasmus Benestad" <rasmus.benestad@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: <rahmstorf@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: Figure 7.1c from the 1990 IPCC Report
Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2007 17:58:46 -0000 (GMT)
Reply-to: rasmus.benestad@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Cc: <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, , <wmc@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, <tcrowley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, <rbradley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, <steig@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, <gschmidt@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, <rasmus.benestad@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, <garidel@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, <d-archer@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, <rtp1@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, <k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, <t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, <john.f.mitchell@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, <geoff.jenkins@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, <David.Warrilow@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, <wigley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, <mafb5@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, <chris.folland@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>

I think that this story could possible catch on and make headlines, so I
agree that we should be careful. But it's important that we bring the
*true* picture out, and it is best that this is done by RealClimate rather
than a sceptic site. The general scientific side of the IPCC report (i.e.
all the peer-reviewed papers ad the scientific theories) is still sound,
but to explain how *one* figure was shoe-horned into the report is harder
to defend. The sceptics may argue that the IPCC reports are political
after all, and this is also what it sounds like if governments 'hoisted
the national flag' by having it's own figures inserted last minute.
However, by providing an account of the 'evolution of the IPCC report
writing', we could possibly give the story a softer landing. E.g. how many
times of review the first report underwent as compared to the present
report. We should also put this in perspective - the report is large and
covers a wide range of topics, and most (all but our case?) is true to the
science. There are sometimes a few rotten apples in a good batch,
unfortunately. But the important part is that we don't accept rotten
apples and that we sort it out! Forthcoming and up-front. Another
important side is that this can provide a lesson for the scientific
communities.

Rasmus

> Phil, I fully agree. The point is not to blame anyone at all - at least
> my point was to track down the source in order to be able to show the
> skeptics (or in my special case, the school authorities) that this old
> graph is completely superseded and should not be used any more in
> teaching! And I also see your problem: what we are finding out now makes
> the IPCC process look somewhat unsophisticated back in 1990, so it is a
>
> diplomatic conundrum how to be completely truthful in reporting this, as
> we need to be as scientists, without providing the skeptics undue
> fodder for attacking IPCC. But maybe we're too concerned - the skeptics
> can't really attack IPCC easily in this case without shooting
> themselves in the foot.
>
> Cheers, Stefan
>
> --
> Stefan Rahmstorf
> www.ozean-klima.de
> www.realclimate.org

--
Rasmus E. Benestad
Skype: rasmus.e.benestad
Rasmus.Benestad@xxxxxxxxx.xxx or @met.no
mobile +47-41122662

[mark]

7) Publish, retire, and don't leave a forwarding address

Without trying to prejudice this work, but also because of what I
almost think I know to be the case, the results of this study will
show that we can probably say a fair bit about <100 year
extra-tropical NH temperature variability (at least as far as we
believe the proxy estimates), but honestly know fuck-all about what
the >100 year variability was like with any certainty (i.e. we know
with certainty that we know fuck-all).

[mark]

Why does Phil need to keep convincing himself more often recently that he is "on the right side and honest"???

Phil
Hang in there. I went thru this on the hurricane stuff and it was hard to
take. But responding to these guys unless they write papers is not the
thing to do.
Kevin
>
> Kevin,
> My problem is that I don't know the best course of action.
> Just sitting tight at the moment taking soundings.
> I'd be far happier if they would write some papers and act
> in the normal way. I'd know how to respond to that. In
> a way this all seems a different form of attack from that on Ben and
> Mike in previous IPCCs.
> I know I'm on the right side and honest, but I seem to be
> telling myself this more often recently! I also know that 99.9%
> of my fellow climatologists know the attacks are groundless.
>
> Cheers
> Phil

[edrowland]

Paranoia at work: the dump is just TOOO neat and tidy.

So lets say those various FOIA requests were processed. Let's say somebody else other than Tom and Kieth is tasked with collecting the documents. Let's imagine what the deliverables would look like. Kinda exactly like what that FOIA zip file contains: namely all correspondence between Tom and Kieth and a list of people specified in one of the FOIA requests. All HADCRU code. Raw data for all the tree ring archives. IPCC correspondence. Budget and funding info for IPCC-related activities. All of it. The union of all FOIA requests seems to be pretty much there.

And lets look at what's not there. It's not a straight document dump of somebody's home directory. It's not all emails sent or received by Tom or Kieth. It doesn't have routing headers on the emails. Or MIME envelopes. Or really very much else.

The narrowness of the contents of the file indicate that somebody spent an extraordinary amount of time assembling and filtering what's there. There's no way some Russian kiddy-hacker sorted through gigabytes of raw eml files, and thousands of documents meticulously separating those several hundred messages from the several thousand birthday messages, the love letters, the inter-office memos, and announcements of social functions, and the ordinary minutia of a real email inbox the in order to generate that archive.

Now think about this. What would have been more damaging: if the contents had been released via an FOIA deliverable; or whether they contents had been released in a "hack". In the first case, this would have been the end of the line for many people involved. Career over. In the second case, polite people will avert their eyes and pretend that they had never seen it. Mainstream media outlets will provide abrided coverage without relaying any of the details. Not a great outcome; but better than if the stuff had gone out by FOIA.

So the theory is: facing the prospect of an imminent FOIA release, somebody inside the Kabal took it upon themselves to stage a "hack", in order to reduce the impact of such a release through an FOIA disclosure.

What do you think?

[ZZMike]

Unless you're British, people totally unconvinced of a position are "skeptics". Sceptics are things like sceptic tanks.

Other than that, this event is just what the doctor ordered.

[Glen Raphael]

So the theory is: facing the prospect of an imminent FOIA release, somebody inside the Kabal took it upon themselves to stage a "hack"

I like where you started out, but it didn't take me where you ended up. How about this alternate theory: Somebody at CRU was tasked with simply putting together information that would satisfy the FOIA requests. Perhaps it was somebody's job to decide whether to release the information, he had a smart/bored intern handy and said, well, before we make the final decision, let's first just look at how much info this is and what it encompasses - could you put that together? Or maybe the right hand didn't know what the left was doing and one group/person with appropriate access saw the request and started putting the info together - possibly as a spare-time project - without regard to whether release was intended.

Before long, we've got a full FOIA directory just ready to go pending final approval, sitting on a local file server. Anybody in the organization - it didn't have to be the person who assembled the data - might have then come across it and said "wow! this is really important stuff! This should get out in the world!"

...and then the final decision is NOT to release it. Or they decide to put off release until after the big conference, or to put it off indefinitely until X happens or until so-and-so changes his mind about something or until some last bit of review process is satisfied.

The data has been assembled; the public has a legal and moral right to see it, and yet there's no movement, or not ENOUGH movement towards releasing it, so our helpful interloper who doesn't want all that work to go to waste decides to speed up the process. Give it that last push out the door.

[Asimov]

If you want to really see how dirty the science (and the numbers themselves) are, read "HARRY_READ_ME.txt"

It's an accounting of somebody trying to make sense out of the last version of data and programs, then giving up and writing a new version.

The numbers they have are trash. Nobody knows what half of it is, or what was done with the original data. A good chunk of the data they DO have they have to guess as to what it is.

It wasn't a lie when they said the originals were destroyed. It was incompetence.

[Cinna]

Since when did anything of true significance come out if the East Anglia polytechnic?

[Akatsukami]

So, Professor Mandia, your hypothesis is that Mann, Jones, et al. are incompetent thugs who are incapable of noticing your twelve indicators of alleged anthropogenic global warming, realizing their significance, and applying them, but instead must resort to faking data, strong-arming editors of learned journals, smearing those who differ with them, and plotting (ineffectually, it seems) to destroy their little scam rather that release documents in response to an FOI request?

Sounds quite plausible to me.

[JAT]

Always thought it was the new communism dreamt up by beardos and wierdos to secure power and grants. What a bloody scandal!!!

[Ian Nunn]

Very helpful summary. It seems to me the academic community of climate science has an opportunity to clean house or forever be discredited. If that can be done, then the political ramifications will fall out from it.

[mark]

I thought the science was "settled" - CO2 is the primary cause of AGW ...oh wait, maybe the "skeptics" who have shown good correlation of solar activity and global temperature changes -"solar forcing"- might really be correct and "then I believe we must re-examine the increased carbon dioxide scenario."
oops

All of this raises the questions, what drove both the Little Ice
Age and the thirty year interval in the middle of the last century? It is
possible that they were driven by the two different causes
outlined. It is vital I think that the reason(s) for the two climate shifts be
determined. This would go along way to settle the recent debate
as to the importance of solar minima in initiating climate changes
over more than just a few years. Further to this, the picture of the
future will be clarified. If for example, decreases in solar output is
proven to be of less importance during the past, then surely the present climate
downturn will be likely only a temporary respite from the inexorable
upward trend in temperatures worldwide. If on the other hand the
solar cycles accompanied by low sun activity over decades and even
longer can be proven as significant, then I believe we must re-examine the
increased carbon dioxide scenario.
Rodney Chilton

[MikeN]

I doubt this is a random sample. It appears to be a search for Yamal, and some other keywords that are known to be an issue. There is a little bit that reinforces Caspar and the Jesus Paper, but it doesn't seem to be a focus of the filter. We see no moving of 'heaven and earth.' The e-mails here give the end date as Mar 1 2006.

[Konrad Fischer]

Who is the Godfather behind the AGW-gang, installing such fellows and feeding them daily? How to search him in the mass of data?

Konrad Fischer
Oekoketzer

[mark]

For an interesting discussion of the very disturbing "HARRY_READ_ME.txt" file in the documents see:

http://www.tickerforum.org/cgi-ticker/akcs-www?post=118625&page=13

[ATN]

Come on guys, trying to wrap a conspiracy theory round this as well?!?

I am far from convinced there is a problem with all this. There are lots and lots of different, independent data around which show the earth is warming up. It doesn't go up in a straight line, and it doesn't go up equally in different parts of the world - the poles in particular are heating up more quickly. Let's take a wider perspective before debunking everything.

[Eyes Wide Open]

Some villages somewhere are missing their idiots!!

[Neo]

Except for the conspiracy aspects of the contents of FOIA2009.zip, exactly why was all this stuff secret in the first place ?

Likewise, if the part of the theory that says this was put together as part of the review to Steve McIntyre’s FOIA request, exactly what contained with FOIA2009.zip, aside from the embarrassing conspiracy perpetrated by CRU employees, were the CRU officials trying to protect by denying the request.

Finally, the legal department of CRU found nothing strange reading this material that obviously reveals many unethical, if not illegal, acts by CRU employees ?

Frankly, the best course for the CRU and the University of East Anglia is to announce that a ongoing probe had been started on Nov. 12, 2009 into the actions of various employees of the CRU, from material that came to light because of a FOIA request.

[Lenore]

"From 1210367056.txt:

You can delete this attachment if you want. Keep this quiet also, but this is the person who is putting in FOI requests for all emails Keith and Tim have written and received re Ch 6 of AR4. We think we've found a way around this."

Maybe the way out was to leak the less incriminating stuff so no one looks any further. I don't know why they were worried the media is their pawn.

[Another_Fred]

edrowland: check out "Watts Up With That" for a similiar theory. They also noticed that after the FOIA request was denied on Nov 13th, the "hacked" e-mails list stops. What is theorized is that this was a potential FOIA file that was incompetently left on an open server. In other words, the "hacker" only downloaded a open file that was being collected for the FOIA request. As confirmation its noted that the CRU open server has been taken down. If your internal server was hacked why take down your public one?

[mitchel44]

"Overpeck tells Team to write emails as if they would be made public. Discussion of what to do with McIntyre finding an error in Kaufman paper. Kaufman's admits error and wants to correct. Appears interested in Climate Audit findings.(1252164302) "

He also points out, "#5 is tricky. Giving him the data would be good, but only if it is yours to give. You can't
give him data that you got from others and are not allowed to share. But, it would be nice if he could have access to all the data that we used - that's the way science is supposed to work. See what Mike and Ray say..."

Nice to know that he understands "the way science is supposed to work", now if he could just get down to the application of that process.

[Ellis]

I'm struck by the many points of similarity between this climate-science scene, and the so-called science around HIV and AIDS. See http://www.virusmyth.com

[RJ]

Watching this the last few days has been jaw-dropping. It's like the science equivalent of Woodward and Bernstein. This site has shown great skill and constraint in letting it unfold. Your work has been inspirational.

Try not to feel overburdened. Let it flow. Take your time. It's your site that the forums I hang out in are referencing.

[RJ]

One other thing. Numbers replacing the bullet points would make helpful references as we spread the correspondence around. I immediately copied, pasted and numbered mine and have updated it as you have.

Cheers

[ClimateReview]

If the sceptics are finally, openly, touting the whole Global Warming phenomenon as a conspiracy, with the IPCC and its proponents as the tools, it begs the question, who's really behind it all?

[dave]

@climatereview - the reptiloids are behind it, silly. In other news, watching the drama queens pounce on this debacle is entertaining to say the least. Ohmygawsh, scientists can be just as dodgy and self interested as politicians, businessmen, teachers, police, priests, butchers, bakers and candlestick makers! The problem is that you mugs still have a quaint Victorian notion about the irreproachability of scientists (unless they agree with your ideology). This *scandal* hardly brings the god knows how many million man-hours of research into climate change into doubt (except in the minds of fanatics, hai gais) but what it should do is make people finally question how we view ALL scientists and their processes of accountability. But no, everyone wants their black/white judgmental arguments to take centre stage for their own self aggrandizement. Thanks for being part of the problem, not the solution.

[Tony S]

It's about time some of this stuff came into the open. Just shows how condescending, untruthful and arrogant some of those people are. They have no morals and will do (have done) anything to maintain the fiction of AGW.

[mark]

From the programming file called "briffa_sep98_d.pro":

yyy=reform(compmxd(*,2,1))
;mknormal,yyy,timey,refperiod=[1881,1940]
;
; Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!
;
yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)*5.+1904]
valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,-0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,$
2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor
if n_elements(yrloc) ne n_elements(valadj) then message,'Oooops!'
;
yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,timey)
;

[mark]

From the programming file "combined_wavelet.pro":

restore,filename='combtemp'+regtit+'_calibrated.idlsave'
;
; Remove missing data from start & end (end in 1960 due to decline)
;
kl=where((yrmxd ge 1402) and (yrmxd le 1960),n)
sst=prednh(kl)

[mark]

From the programming file "testeof.pro":

; Computes EOFs of infilled calibrated MXD gridded dataset.
; Can use corrected or uncorrected MXD data (i.e., corrected for the decline).
; Do not usually rotate, since this loses the common volcanic and global
; warming signal, and results in regional-mean series instead.
; Generally use the correlation matrix EOFs.
;

[mark]

From the programming file: "pl_decline.pro":

;
; Now apply a completely artificial adjustment for the decline
; (only where coefficient is positive!)
;
tfac=declinets-cval

[mark]

From the programming file "olat_stp_modes.pro":

;***TEMPORARY REPLACEMENT OF TIME SERIES BY RANDOM NOISE!
; nele=n_elements(onets)
; onets=randomn(seed,nele)
; for iele = 1 , nele-1 do onets(iele)=onets(iele)+0.35*onets(iele-1)
;***END
mknormal,onets,pctime,refperiod=[1922,1995]
if ivar eq 0 then begin
if iretain eq 0 then modets=fltarr(mxdnyr,nretain)
modets(*,iretain)=onets(*)
endif
;
; Leading mode is contaminated by decline, so pre-filter it (but not
; the gridded datasets!)
;