Bishop Hill Public sector efficiency
Mar 7, 2010 Climate: Jones FOI On August 12, 2009 Nature reported on attempts by Climate Auditors to obtain Phil Jones data and Jones' response:
Although Jones agrees that the data should be made publicly available, he says that “it needs to be done in a systematic way”. He is now working to make the data publicly available online and will post a statement on the CRU website tomorrow to that effect, with any existing confidentiality agreements. “We’re trying to make them all available. We’re consulting with all the meteorological services – about 150 members of WMO – and will ask them if they are happy to release the data”, says Jones. But getting the all-clear from other nations could take several months and there may be objections. “Some countries don’t even have their own data available as they haven’t digitized it. We have done a lot of that ourselves”, he says.
The letter to SMHI requesting permission to release their data was dated December 2009.
I wonder what CRU were doing in the intervening five months?
Reader Comments (18)
How does your Parliament enjoy being lied to?
Happens all the time, and they themselves are past masters at it, too. You only have to cast your minds back to the Salmonella in eggs scare, and those of BSE/CJD, Listeria in cheese, Dioxin, etc., etc., where people like Professor Lacey et al put their own beliefs above the truth, and led parliament up a gumtree (at least, those members who weren't in collusion), resulting in legislation which came and went, few people actually dying from the subjects of the scares, but many losing their businesses and livelihoods for nothing - apart from the billions it all cost the public at large. Parliament isn't to be trusted, and even scientists now are suspect.
Nothing out of the ordinary here. How long did it take Briffa to post his data after requests were agreed to? Your book tells us it was months to 3 years.
FOI request to CRU for all contact re: intellectual property, NDA agreements and data release with data rights holders or assumed data rights holders since 2009-01-01?
I don't know what Canadian data CRU holds but if you go to http://www.climate.weatheroffice.gc.ca/ you can download temperature and precipitation data for Canadian weather stations. I believe all Canadian stations are available although the download procedure can be tedious. Some of the data is hourly and some is daily. It's available either as csv or xml files.
It was the Slingo et al gang that laboured to give the impression of proactive release of data at the Parliamentary Enquiry, when the dates themselves show that this was reactive, not proactive, and it was reactive to Climategate. They had failed to react appropriately to polite requests, to the one or two FOI requests that led up to it, or to the FOI request list in summer 2009. They didn't even respond then.. and evidential experience proves beyond reasonable doubt that, had Climategate not happened in November, they would STILL be failing to react.
And they didn't even react to Climategate, they reacted to Climategate not going away after a month but, instead, gathering more and more momentum. That's not proactive at all. Not even a smidgen.
I'm not normally supportive of the likes of PJ, but I feel the need to point out that, within the narrow construction of the Nature article and the revealed correspondcnce, Jones letter of request was undated, it was actually forwarded by John Hirst of the Met Office on the 30th of November. This is just 15 weeks and 4 days, well short of five months, and for all we know, quite standard for the climate science community. For all we know PJ may have asked Hirst to do this for him back in August, and Hirst only got round to it at the end of November possibly because of the leak, or maybe they's miss-placed the addresses or spent all their postage budget on supercomputers. (I wouldn't be surprised if Hirst offered to help because he knew Jones only had two other full time members of staff to do his work for him, one of whom, Briffa, was unwell anyway.)
That said, in the wider context, Jones "has 25 years invested" in this work, so could have started putting data on-line any time from "on-line" becoming a reality. He could have had a channel on AOL or Compuserve in the late eighties or early nineties, and when the WWW came along he could even have used that.
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Just checked, Compuserve was founded in 1969. So, no excuse at all then, Jones.
It's a bit rich for Jones to say “it needs to be done in a systematic way”, when he was forced to admit that his own filing systems leave much to be desired...
OT I know but I expect I'll be able to say that I've just read your book Andrew and it was superb from first page to last, a true tour de force. if you haven't bought it yet go out and do it tomorrow, only Richard Hannay is missing from this "thriller".
Geronimo
Not sure about the reference to Hannay, but like Buchan, our host's book is a wonderful example of elegant writing.
Also OT: I see that Scafetta and West have written a book to be published 30 March:
"Disrupted Networks: From Physics to Climate Change"
Offers a lens through which modern society is shown to depend on complex networks for its stability. This text reviews, in non-mathematical language, what we know about the development of science in the twenty-first century and how that knowledge influences our world.
This book provides a lens through which modern society is shown to depend on complex networks for its stability. One way to achieve this understanding is through the development of a new kind of science, one that is not explicitly dependent on the traditional disciplines of biology, economics, physics, sociology and so on; a science of networks. This text reviews, in non-mathematical language, what we know about the development of science in the twenty-first century and how that knowledge influences our world. In addition, it distinguishes the two-tiered science of the twentieth century, based on experiment and theory (data and knowledge) from the three-tiered science of experiment, computation and theory (data, information and knowledge) of the twenty-first century in everything from psychophysics to climate change. This book is unique in that it addresses two parallel lines of argument. The first line is general and intended for a lay audience, but one that is scientifically sophisticated, explaining how the paradigm of science has been changed to accommodate the computer and large-scale computation. The second line of argument addresses what some consider the seminal scientific problem of climate change. The authors show how a misunderstanding of the change in the scientific paradigm has led to a misunderstanding of complex phenomena in general, and the causes of global warming in particular.
Amazon is listing the author as West but another book site states it is co-authored with Scafetta.
http://www.kriso.ee/Disrupted-Networks-From-Physics-Climate-Change/db/9789814304306.html.
they were doing nothing bishop. I FIOAd them on this and got only a few mails.. aug 09 to nov 09
Peter Dunford - "(I wouldn't be surprised if Hirst offered to help because he knew Jones only had two other full time members of staff to do his work for him, one of whom, Briffa, was unwell anyway.)"
Peter, please stop swallowing the "only three staff" balony passed off by Acton.
According to the UAE CRU website, the CRU has:
* An acting director
[a professor - presumably also a fulltime member of academic staff]
* A deputy director
[a professor - presumably also a fulltime member of academic staff]
* A research manager and senior research associate (with a doctorate)
* Three "academic staff"
* Six research staff (four with doctorates)
* Eleven associate fellows (all with doctorates)
* Four support staff, one of them a "research administrator" holding a doctorate.
This is a much more substantial operation than the picture conjured up by Acton of just three harrassed academics inundated by a deluge of vexatious FOI requests.
Martin has noted something significant:
CRU was receiving, under Jones' excellent grant writing and money raising, >$2 million US per year.
Any argument he makes about staff shortages should be met with more than a bit of, shall we say, skepticism.
Jones, as his statements and actions are compared, is a brilliant communicator. He has won tens of millions in grants year after year, he knows how to dissemble and distract with great effect, his pose as humble, over worked under staffed science wizard has been most compelling for many.
He knows how to shmooze Parliament into asking mostly soft questions with a great deal of wiggle room.
AGW promoters are not communications challenged. They are ethically challenged.
How many fulltime staff would $2m p.a. finance?
Lucy: your
How many fulltime staff would $2m p.a. finance?
Answer: It would finance one full time staffer. Me. But I would do it for no longer than a decade.
Lucy Skywalker "How many fulltime staff would $2m p.a. finance?"
It depends on what you estimate for their salaries and the overhead rate for the organisation.
If the average salary were £40k p.a. and the overhead rate were 2.5 [ie the bill to the sponsors would be 2.5 the salary total] then $2M would pay for eighteen or so fulltime staff.
My estimates for salary and overhead rate for research staff in a UK university may be way off - can anyone improve on my guesses?
Time for me to send in another FOIA. This time I'll ask for a dated copy of the letters they sent out asking for permission to post the raw data.
In spite of saying back in August that they were in the process of doing so, there is a very high probability that nothing was done until after the unauthorized release of the climategate e-mails.
@dave ward March 7, 2010:
But "systematic" is one of those scientific words that just allows a person to puff out one's chest - and then warn, "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!"
If Phil only had a brain...