Bishop Hill The Jones rebuttal
Nov 24, 2011 Climate: IPCC Climate: Jones Phil Jones has been "putting the emails in context". This one made me laugh. (Emphasis mine)
Email 0714: “Getting people we know and trust [into IPCC] is vital - hence my comment about the tornadoes group.”
This was related to the selection of contributing authors, not IPCC-appointed chapter authors over which I have no influence. It means scientists we could trust to write succinct and clear text.
Bishop Hill
It's noticeable that CRU doesn't actually give the context for Jones's comments. In the previous email in the thread, Trenberth says
The question is whether these [two possible presentations] might help get us on the same wavelength or highlight disparate views. To the extent we can get on the same page, so much the better. I also have some draft material, adpated from last time, on letters to CAs recruiting them to do the task required (to be sent by email). Question, should the LA send these or us? It may carry more weight if we send them.
It may also give us more control.
Succinct and clear text, my foot.
Reader Comments (76)
See? Unblemished, my Phil.
I wonder if he'd care to explain http://di2.nu/foia/foia2011/mail/1616.txt
" Things aren't always better through using more data."
Actually the whole email thread is a joy. E.g. this is i.harris (aka Harry):
> Firstly, I don't really think the published papers reflect the
> actualité of how the dataset was produced. Neither do the read me
> files. They contain elements of truth but there are glaring
> inaccuracies (including the gridding method, possibly the most
> important single issue). For this reason I've not been as slavish to
> them as I should have been.
You could read Phil's comment two ways, at that. There's "trust to write clear text," and "trust (pause) to write clear text."
Almost all of the rejoinders I've seen this week have been hilarious.
Giant piles of "out of context," lots of "more of the same," and even a few "I don't trust people who steal emails."
If you're there, Mr. Jones, RESIGN!!
Oh, I see.
By putting a few emails 'in context' (as badly as he does everything else), we therefore disregard the hundreds of bile-filled, misleading, devious, back-stabbing, process-corrupting, abusive, and incorrect ones that remain.
Pitiful try.
People understand perfectly the 'plain english' used in these emails. It is all succinct and clear.
More importantly it highlights the utter panic at UEA and how damaging these emails actually are.
If there was 'nothing to see' in these emails there would be no need for official explanations to describe such nothingness.
Climategate 2.0 has struck home with a vengence.
I wonder when FOIA2011 will release the "nuclear option" of Clmategate 3, I think he's keeping his powder dry right now to see what crawls out from under the rock?
"Getting people we know and trust" into the game - oh dear me, group consciousness engenders an empathic mass psychosis, ref' anyone who joined the Liebstandarte SS.
Obviously, what was needed were people who questioned, not a bunch of similar thinking and feebleminded yes men - like Jones and his 'crew'.
The whole episode, is a very sorry one, this lot UEA/Tyndall/CRU needs shutting down and or funding cut off.
Once more, taxpayers are the losers, our government shown up to be fools for believing these charlatans.
It seems that Phil Jones can't draw a line under things just as much as he can't calculate a trend.
Jones is blissfully ignorant of Pielke Jr.'s latest post.
I love the phrase "Cherry-picked phrases explained".
If I were suspected of murder and the please discovered a confession among the 10,000 emails they found on my hard drive, would I have a defence of "cherry picking"?
Whoever is releasing these files is not only clever, but also very pissed at the "climate scientists".
It is a lovely sight to behold.
Suggestion to Josh. "Climate scientists" cringing under a table with a thick book marked "Climategate I" already resting on it and a second thicker book marked "Climategate II" crashing down from above. Title: "Climategate II -- the sequel"
For 'please' above, please read 'police'. Gulp.
This is really immature and superficial defence by Jones.
I somehow have a vision (inspired by Billy Bunter or Molesworth) of PJ getting a good thrashing from The Master and squealing
'Well Sir (ouch) what I really meant when I called you an ignorant oik and four-eyed imbecile (yarooh) was that you came to the subject with a fresh perspective (ooooh) and that your long nights of lesson preparation (cripes that was a stinker) have had a deleterious effect on your eyesight,as any fule kno'
Surely he can do better than this? After about 100 repetitions of 'what I wrote doesn't mean what it says' even his staunchest defender must begin to have doubts.
Perhaps those here who have influence with his Mum can urge her to persuade him to retain some dignity by just resigning without the need to bury himself in ordure beforehand?
Josh,
I second Don P's suggestion. dead on.
Josh,
I second Don P's suggestion. dead on.
UEA has a bit of a problem here. Inviting either Muir Russell or Lord Oxburgh back to conduct ‘independent’ investigations isn’t going to work, and it’s hard to judge how much a spin-doctor could help in rescuing CRU’s reputation: “poor Phil” won’t wash anymore. As for morale in CRU, it must be at rock bottom. Climategate 2 is to CRU what the MPs’ expenses scandal was to the Commons. The only cure is to lance the boil, and that means that the old guard has to go, sooner rather than later. Within the Beeb, Lord Patten, Chairman of the BBC Trust needs to start looking into the BBC’s darker recesses.
Hey guys. Hands up. Who is having fun? :p
This tells me that Jones have spent the last days picking out emails he feel he could respond to because he isn't really explaining anyone's complaints. He doesn't even touch the nasty stuff. Talk about cherry-picking.
I third the Don's suggestion, but with an even thicker Climategate III precariously poised on a shelf above.
You seconded it twice, you silly bugger. My Phil wouldn't do that. Good boy, 'e is.
It'a good job they don't allow comments at UEA.
Is he going to give a rebuttal/explanation of all his emails that reveal the truth about what he is?
Re: Phillip Bratby
> Is he going to give a rebuttal/explanation of all his emails that reveal the truth about what he is?
No. Standard operating procedure is to (cherry) pick one or two emails, try and spin these to a positive message and then ignore all the rest. Their acolytes then claim that all the emails have been explained and accuse anybody questioning this of cherry picking or attacking the scientist and not the science.
If Phil Jones had any integrity left, he would resign here and now and at least show he had a small bit of honour left. However, I think his integrity tank ran dry shortly after he started dabbling in the climate change scam.
The "team" in general chooses to use deceptive word modifiers on a consistent basis.
They know at some level they are committing a deception.
Could Prof. Jones's Mum please return to her original and less confusing title of "Phil Jones's Mum"? Some of us don't wish to be tarred with his brush.
Actually, it wouldn't surprise me much if Jones did something a little more radical than just resigning .......
Prof Jones's Mum
I wonder if a friend could come over for tea and play with Phil one night, Jeremy, he has a nice little show on the TV of an evening? Mrs Paxman would be most appreciative, Phil could probably help Jeremy out with his homework prior to the show one night, maybe even join in if he felt up to it, it would be most enjoyable.
Re: Prof Jones's Mum's son
Are you two siblings? :)
Succinct and clear? Funny there's no mention of those criteria. Jones does, however, mention finding people who are "useful", people whom he has personally met, and people who are "on the right side."
The email quoted above, no. 0714, was from Jones to Trenberth in September 2004. In June 2004 Jones had written to Trenberth email no. 3205.
Josh - there’s enough material here (as I remember reading elsewhere) for you to create a 365-day tear-off calendar, with emails as daily mottos!
Somewhere, I think you should have Dr ‘Indiana’ Jones standing on a precipice (CG1) and about to be flattened by a large boulder (CG2) and maybe some pointy sticks at the bottom CG3)...
Neil:
No, that's not cherry-picking but sifting the evidence. But if you're doing analysis of a dataset and deliberately mine for good verification statistics, choosing the one result out of just three that makes you look best, that definitely is cherry-picking and would get you sacked on the spot from many places in the City and Wall Street.
There are 5292 emails in all (type "find . -type f | wc -l" in the mail directory if using Unix) but as others have said there will always be some phrases that stand out and make sense of the whole. Thus it was with "Mike's Nature trick to hide the decline" and Trenberth's "missing heat" and "travesty" in Climategate 1. The situation this time is currently more complex, though I do have high hopes for "The people [that] put the contrary view are not climate experts" because Phil is referring to Viner's extraordinarily innacurate prediction of no snow there.
As Motsatt says, the real cherry-picking today is from Jones himself. It takes one to know one. As for taking messages out of context, I tried to answer that on Climate Audit earlier. Feel free to improve my argument but let's hit that inanity on the head too. At some point some truly intelligent people will begin to listen. I met one in the pub in Camden last night after a software developer meetup on Node.js - a talented programmer for a Silicon Roundabout startup who did PPE at Oxford. I may write about that in my own long-neglected blog later today.
On the same subject, I wonder what Jones might have to say about this one:
3205 - Jones
"Useful ones (for IPCC) might be Baldwin, Benestad (written on the solar/cloud issue - on the right side, i.e. anti-Svensmark), Bohm, Brown, Christy (will be(sic) have to involve him?)"
A pity he didn't involve Cern on the right side too.
"Are you two siblings?"
That seems a little harsh! I'm sure Dr Jonathan is having a hard enough time.. :-)
Sorry RM, you must have posted while I was still typing!
Of course the usual suspects knew what they wrote in their emails. Imagine the suspense they had after Climategate, The Original. Is there a sequel?? When will it be released?? Now there seems to be a nucluar time bomb ticking.... Oh The Suspense, The Suspense... life must be hell for poor ol' Jonesy...
This is just a repeat of Oxburgh and Russell with Jones only answering the questions that he himself has posed.
The old military adage you don't reinforce failure comes to mind here.
Will other scientists come out in support of Jones and Mann or will they, with the spectre of Climategate 3.0 looming large, decide that it is time for Jones and Mann to silently dissappear from public gaze.
Surely Betts and co must know that public confidence in science will be further degraded and eroded in any attempt to defend the hapless Jones and the nasty Mann.
I don't think he has the guts (certainly not the integrity) to resign; in any case, I'd rather see the whole lot of them given indeterminate sentences manning remote weather stations somewhere... rather chilly!
I think it's more fun if they stay. Obviously they have never heard of the politician's maxim - when in a hole stop digging.
He was surely clear and succinct in 1953.txt Wonder what Mike will say about this?
Tim,
> I have had a reply from Barbara saying I have until mid-Dec.
> I had to go to London yesterday and I took the file with me. I began by
> reading what I'd written before and looked at Michael's report. I can't
> really face up to writing more. Barbara wants two things :
>
> 1) What IPCC has concluded ?
> 2) What are Michael's main points ?
>
> (2) is very difficult to summarise. I'm not sure what points he's trying
> to make his science is so bad. If this paper were submitted to any
> reasonable peer-review journal it would not see the light of day.
>
> (1) IPCC concluded an awful lot - the best any reader can do is to
> read its summary. I made reference to this in my piece.
>
> I'll accept your offer of a letter if you swing it.
>
> I'm away all next week in Crete !
>
> Cheers
> Phil
> Dr Phil Jones
Ross, It probably wouldn't of mattered who Jones/Trenberth etc. tried to recommend/get as contributing authors (email no. 3205), history shows us that the SPM would have ignored/changed anything that didn't fit the required political message anyway.
Jones (Phil that is) cannot resign. That would be a tacit admission of his guilt and then CRU and the whole of IPCC "climate science" would also be guilty by association.
Cam'on, he would never dare to influence, select, push or intimidate others, how could you think such a thing:
1625.txt
....
But if you do decide to write, I would be cautious about how such a message
is phrased - along lines of written more in sorrow than in anger... We want to avoid
any accusation that you are trying to get people fired because they disagree with you.
Best, Annie
-------------------------------
Annie Ogden, Head of Communications,
....
.... The email was passed on to me and it came from an
Emeritus Reader at Hull (first name Sonja). I was incensed by this and sent a
response to the head of department of Geography at Hull. I did this on Wednesday
after Keith's web page went up. I have had a couple of exchanges with the Head Of
Geography. I just got this back
I know, I feel for you being in that position. If its any consolation we've had it
here for years, very pointed commentary at all external seminars and elsewhere,
always coming back to the same theme. Since Sonja retired I am a lot more free to
push my environmental interests without ongoing critique of my motives and supposed
misguidedness - I've signed my department up to 10:10 campaign and have a taskforce
of staff and students involved in it.... Every now and then people say to me sotto
voce with some bemusement, 'and when Sonja finds out, how will you explain it to
her...!'
The thought is whether we should follow the same course with these two at Anglia
Ruskin and Oxford?
I'm away tomorrow and Mon/Tues next week.
Cheers
Phil
Nice attempt at wriggling here by our Phil!
Frankly, I'm enjoying this Climategate II hugely, because it not only shows what they think of each other, maligning each other and opining about their doubts, sticky behind closed doors, but especially because all what we surmised after Climategate I in relation to such issues as peer review, manipulation of IPCC authors, Team control etc is now out in the open.
Not only has their "science" been through the shredder in the last two years, now their ugly attitude to any scientist who doesn't agree with their "cause" is out in the open.
Oh - even more delicious is how they diss the work of their colleagues, and voice doubts about their own "science"
I'm loving it!
"all the emails have been explained and accuse anybody questioning this of cherry picking or attacking the scientist and not the science."
cue Zeds.....
Zed has buggered off with its tail well and truly between its legs.
Its entire response was predicted here and it lived right down to expectations.
Has anyone worked out how often Professor Jones leaves the country and what the 'Carbon Footprint' is?? Just looking at a handful of the emails, so far I've found out it is hot in Mexico, Sardinia and Crete...
Rob...he needs to do that travelling because his mum is falling behind on knitting jumpers for him
Hi Athelstan.
I note your earlier comment that the government/politicians were fools for believing these charaltans. I have a diffeent view. Yes, they are charlatans, but I think they were providing exactly what government/politicians had asked for.
Will the Team's pack of dogs, Revkin, Black, Appell, Harrabin, Monbiot, Adam, Kirby, etc be able to come to the rescue of Mann and Jones?
It wil be an interesting few days to read the lame excuses and hit pieces that are being prepared now.
Sceptics don't need to dig the dirt when Team members are crapping in their own nests.
#1625 that Patagon quotes above reads pretty awful at first blush. Hopefully I have the wrong end of the stick.
Any idea who "Keiller and the Oxford Professor" could be and how their careers are fairing?