Bishop Hill Climategate press
Nov 23, 2011 Climate: CRU The Christian Science Monitor quotes Mann, in typically combative form:
Climate scientist Michael Mann blasted the release of new leaked emails and documents taken from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit as "truly pathetic" and a "shameless effort to manufacture a false controversy" on Tuesday
The Independent quotes Bob Ward as saying "move on nothing to see here".
The Washington Post
The climate skeptic blogosphere has been quick to cherry pick certain snippets from the emails they claim show dissension within the climate science ranks, perhaps to demonstrate scientists may express more doubt about their confidence in the science in private than they do in public…
New leak of hacked global warming scientist emails: A 'smoking gun' proving a conspiracy - or just hot air?
I have it from a very good source that it absolutely was a hack, not a leak by a "concerned" UEA scientist, as has been claimed in some circles.
Andrew Bolt at the Herald Sun notes well known consensus upholder Barrie Pittock writing to UEA to say that they need to make sure their results cannot be interpreted as unalarming:
I would be very concerned if the material comes out under WWF auspices in a way that can be interpreted as saying that “even a greenie group like WWF” thinks large areas of the world will have negligible climate change.
Times Higher Ed reckons a hacker group was behind the latest disclosures:
An anonymous group, calling itself “FOIA”, posted a link to the files earlier today on four well-known climate change websites popular with sceptics.
Nature has comment from UEA:
The university said in a statement that it had no evidence of a recent breach of its systems. The statement continues: "If genuine, (the sheer volume of material makes it impossible to confirm at present that they are all genuine) these emails have the appearance of having been held back after the theft of data and emails in 2009 to be released at a time designed to cause maximum disruption to the imminent international climate talks."
Reader Comments (22)
Telegraph has nothing as far as I can tell.
After reading quite a few of them, many mundane but still interesting, all I see is an agenda consistently pushed by almost all parties.
No surprise that the MSM reacts in this way. The whole CAGW edifice is interlinked.
This juggernaut now has a couple of flat tyres, thanks to the tacks of Climategate I and II, and will take some time to stop.
Dellingpole has posted on his Telegraph blog Jiminy.
Amusing to see Bob Ward pleading with the mothership (i.e. Phil) for arguments to defeat the fact that statistically significant warming has not been present in recent years 'I need to be able to scotch their argument'. Unfortunately, Phil couldn't help...' Been in touch with Bob - and told him that when you add in errors then you can't say that any of the 10-year trends are significant. 1998-2007 values do have a positive trend, but it isn't significant - and certainly not when considering the errors.'
4890.txt
0800.txt
You'd think if the whole AGW thing were so well settled, Bob Ward wouldn't have to go running to Phil Jones, and if Bob did, Phil would be able to give Bob a suitable GCSE level argument, wouldn't you?
Perhaps Bob just wasn't able to absorb the abstract algebra and spherical harmonic analysis necessary for the full Mannian explanation.
@PeterH...thanks but he is not "newsroom"...
Interesting that Bob Ward should be quoted in the Independent. He appears in many of the emails pumping Phil Jones for info on how to drive the agenda. For some he is actually working for Risk Management Solutions (www.rms.com) whose purpose is to ratchet up the fear.Phil is a willing assistant.
So why use Ward's opinion?
It seems to me that it is way to early to decide whether there is anything significant in these emails or not.
At first sight there are some strange quotes which are worth looking into - and many of these may lead to colleagues falling out. However we will only know if there is a real story when people have compared the emails to what was said and written at the time. If they show a mismatch, or if the emails corroborate suspicions of activity that were denied, there will be story that the MSM and the wider public can get their teeth into. Meanwhile most of us will have to wait for SMc and others to put these emails into a proper context
"drive the agenda"... sorry I should have used language the email parties are comfortable with...
"drive the cause"... there fixed.
Washington Post
"The climate skeptic blogosphere has been quick to cherry pick... "
====================================================
Now, let me see. You Washington Post folks pick up a block of a thousand emails, one of which contains matter of interest to your readers. But, in your concern to avoid cherry picking, you print all thousand? Well, that certainly would demonstrate you practising what you preach.
The Bob Ward/Phil Jones emails are very revealing. It shows the extend of behind-the-scenes scheming that Bob Ward is up to. I also not that he is doing this stuff using his workplace email. I wonder what his then bosses at Risk Management Systems would have to say about Bob Ward dragging their name into the mud?
It shows Bob Wards frantic desire to go into battle about David Whitehouse's pioneering 2007 New Statesman article pointing out that the global annual average temperature between 2001 - 2007 showed no statistical change. Bob seems desperate to refute this but lacks the mathematical/statistical skills to do it, which shows he had already made his mind up before he had gathered the evidence.
And then what happens, neither Phil Jones nor his Met Office friends can refute Whitehouse's claim! (I expect that Whitehouse might take a dim view of Phil Jones' comment that overlapping trends might be beyond Whitehouse given that Whitehouse has a PHD in physics!)
The fact that Phil Jones et al could not refute Whitehouse's claims makes the New Statesman 'reply' - an article by Mark Lynas in which he says Whitehouse was totally wrong - look even more stupid.
Bob Ward comes across as an interfering bully who makes his mind up first and seeks evidence later. Whitehouse comes over as a gentleman who is confident in his assertions and figures, but then he had done his homework, unlike Bob, and, also unlike Bob, had completed his PHD. Perhaps simple statistics was in the part of the PHD that Bob never got around to.
Kudos to Whitehouse. He had Bob and Jones/Met Office running round in circle to prove him wrong...and they couldn't.
I'm pleased to report that on this side of the pond, at Canada's National Post, Terence Corcoran has a much more perceptive and balanced view of Climategate 2.0:
You can't "cherrypick" doubts. A doubt is infallibly a doubt.
@PeterH...thanks but he is not "newsroom"...
Nov 23, 2011 at 7:13 AM | Jiminy Cricket
Agreed Jiminy but I would think editors would be asking how he got it on a blog (along with the Guardian, BBC etc) and they (the newsroom boys) had nothing.
In the Telegraph Ms Gray refers to opinions from the UEA, M Mann and Bob Ward. No need to balance the tale with any sceptic opinion then.
It is quite clear that scientists were casting serious doubts over the science, the way the science was being done, the impact of the science, the policy derived from the impact studies, and the naked politicking of scientists ................ but they were unwilling or unable to express those doubts in public.
We also know that the main consensus drivers were mendacious scientists, the environmental movement, companies that wanted to profit from climate change, politicians who saw a ballot box opportunity, and a willing and febrile number of journalists.
It the end what we have is clear evidence of a massive public fraud - CAGW.
Who do you now believe on climate change?
Not Mann, Jones nor Trenberth.
Not Nature, New Scientist nor American Journal of Science .
Not the IPCC, the UK government nor the Met Office.
Not Cameron, Clegg nor Miliband.
Not UEA-CRU, Tyndall nor the Royal Society.
Not the BBC, the Guardian nor the Independent.
The extent of the damage done to science, all science, is immense. It will take decades to restore the public's faith.
Mac: And that's by no means an exhaustive list. It's gone awfully quiet on the Met Office front. Has Richard Betts been told not to engage with us anymore, is he on holiday or is he just keeping his head down? It would be interesting to have an inside view of the contents of the emails.
He did tell us one occasion that yes, they should have been more critical of the spin that was being put on the "science" by the media and the politicians, but I see nothing having changed.
PS I did my science in the belief that all science was honest - when I look back, how naive I was in those days.
I think EURef sums up my feelings best, it's kinda good to have more info but we already know these guys are dodgy so it'll be another whitewash and on with 'The Cause'
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2011/11/only-problem.html
Piers -
you mean Risk Management SOLUTIONS - good day to revisit this perhaps:
3 May 2007: Climate Audit: Risk Management Solutions Ltd and the 37 Professors
http://climateaudit.org/2007/05/03/risk-management-solutions-ltd-and-the-38-professors/
Philip Bratby
To be honest Richard Betts and Tamsin Edwards have shown the same degree of neglect with regard airing doubts over the science as the others, namely the 2 degree meme that has become common currency in the CAGW fraud (and we know now it is a fraud).
If they had been more proactive earlier on this issue correcting and admonishing those who spouted this nonsense this could have represented one small victory for actual science.
Would you trust what Dr Betts and Dr Edwards have now to say publicly on climate change when for all we know they could be well be expressing doubts in private over the veracity of the science and the stances of their colleagues? (Can it be okay for climate scientists to dig the dirt on critics by employing an investigative journalist, possibly to trawl thru bins, bug phones, hack into computers).
It seems that the consensus has to be protected at all costs irrespective of the damaged done to the public image of science.
Who can you trust on climate change? That is the big question now.
Climategate 1.0 poured a ton of ordure over the AGW faithful; I'm not sure that pouring another ton over them is going to have the same impact, unless these 2.0 mails fill in some crucial gaps in our understanding of their shenanigans.
Rick Bradford
Climategate 2.0 spreads the muck further, not higher.
Leaked climate emails force carbon dioxide to resign
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4578&Itemid=35
Filbert Cobb
At last a balanced report!
They are calling the bloggers reviewing the emails and yourself as looking for a 'conspiracy theory'. It is not a theory. it is a conspiracy. in my Collins dictionary Conspiracy = "a combination of persons for an evil purpose" I think the proof is in the emails from climateagte 1 & 2 and it fits.