Bishop Hill A trickle of further information
Jul 21, 2012 Climate: CRU Climate: Parliament My request for copies of UEA's correspondence with the Outside Organisation has been discussed here previously. While UEA have released a certain amount of correspondence, they have withheld parts of it, citing all manner of exemptions.
My appeal to the Information Commissioner has now had some effect, with UEA agreeing to release further documents, although there is still more that they are refusing to divulge. The disclosures can be seen in three PDF files, annexes 1, 2 and 4. I'm not sure what happened to Annex 3.
The contents are not of devastating interest, although there are a few redactions that are intriguing, in particular one in the middle of a paragraph discussing my submission to the SciTech inquiry.
Andrew Montford (Bishop Hill) submission states:
12 The disclosures reveal several instances of government funded scientists working with environmental pressure groups. In one case, Greenpeace activists are seen helping CRU scientists to draft a letter to the Times and in another working closely with the World Wildlife Fund to put pressure on governments regarding climate change.
RedactionRedactionRedaction
Montford's will be one of the submissions they are likely to pay attention to.
Reader Comments (31)
Since that document mentions you directly by name you should be able to get hold of it using the DPA.
The rules for that are different and they might not be able to make the same redactions.
Disclosure denialists!
Disclosure denialists!
Redacted?
Alan Preece (UEA):
From Neil Wallis:
Two things about this:
The first is what was the source of the questions? Were they given the questions they would be asked before the committee or did they make up some questions they thought they would be asked? In either case the questions and responses would make interesting viewing/reading.
The second is that I am surprised Phil was coached (and practised) in his body language before going before the committee. If I remember correctly he looked like a frightened rabbit caught in the headlights of a car. Or maybe this was the effect they practised so as to engender sympathy for the poor overburdened scientist being picked upon by the nasty bloggers.
Ah, reading further I see they assembled the questions Phil and Edward might receive, so no advance knowledge of the committees question.
Is that the same Neil Wallis that was arrested over phone hacking?
Is that the same Neil Wallis that was arrested over phone hacking?
Jul 21, 2012 at 11:10 AM | Anoneumous
The very same, he also worked for the Met (The PC Plod version not the MET Office)
I suspect Annex 3 contained all my (devastating) submissions.
Only kidding- but I do wonder where they ended up?
Here are the questions "Phil and Edward" practised with:
Compare the questions in the practise session (was it videotaped?) to ones they were actually asked by the committee. A missed opportunity.
"I suspect Annex 3 contained all my (devastating) submissions."
The buggers are devastation denialists!
The questions they created give a clear indication of the things that the bosses could see were wrong with the actions of CRU, which those responsible will never admit, never explain, never apologise for in any meaningful way.
The rehearsal questions are very impressive and whoever was responsible for the preparation of the UEA team for their appearance before the select committee was very competent. What a pity the Select Committee didn't have the same ability.
Arthur Dent
yes, and the fact that so many of those questions still have not been meaningfully addressed is continuing disgrace. Where are the real journalists to pursue and require answers to such questions?
Messenger
A very perceptive observation, if I may say so.
In this situation the questions that people think they are likely to be asked often say more about the state of their consciences than the answers they give or the statements they make.
Skiphil
Well, perhaps now the questions have been made public some journalists will come forward to ask them. There is a reputation to be made for the reporter that can get the answers.
Feb 19 2010 from Neil Wallis wrt possible areas for questions:
"... with a liberal dash of leaked emails."
So at least one insider had a contraian view on the leak / hack issue.
Heh, a guidebook for the inevitable real inquiry. A gift from the Gods, and oh, what Gods these be.
==================
The coached body language video of the Q&A rehearsal. Totally beyond the pale to FOI for of course. Is it?
Feb 7 2010 from Neil Wallis wrt planted Sunday Times story.
"Unidentified hackers broke into the UEA website ..."
This, for public consumption, is inconsistent with the internal communication on the same point on Feb 19. It would be very interesting to know why.
TerryS's diligent transcript work is duly rewarded.
http://climateaudit.org/2012/07/21/the-questions-that-were-never-asked/#more-16543
Alan Kennedy writes:
Feb 19 2010 from Neil Wallis wrt possible areas for questions:
"... with a liberal dash of leaked emails."
So at least one insider had a contraian view on the leak / hack issue.
Coming from someone with thorough professional understanding of what hacking means and how to do it, that choice of works is significant.
One should consider however that this phrase does not preclude hacked then leaked.
P Solar
Yes, that's entirely possible. But if you look at the UEA public statements about this event they consistently employed words like "hacked" or "stolen". This terminology was established quickly and has persisted up to the present (and it may indeed be true). It is hard to avoid concluding that, at least initially, this was an agreed line to take. So far, so reasonable. Then you see an email between the insiders (that the author no doubt considered private) and the term "leaked" pops out. As you say, we'll never know - but it is odd nonetheless.
Sometimes I feel that what the authorities do NOT do/tell us is far more informative than what they do
eg
"There are proposals to increase worldwide taxation by up to a trillion dollars on the basis of climate science predictions. This is an area where strong and opposing views are held. The release of the e-mails from CRU at the University of East Anglia and the accusations that followed demanded independent and objective scrutiny by independent panels. This has not happened. The composition of the two panels has been criticised for having members who were over identified with the views of CRU. Lord Oxburgh as President of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association and Chairman of Falck Renewable appeared to have a conflict of interest. Lord Oxburgh himself was aware that this might lead to criticism. Similarly Professor Boulton as an ex colleague of CRU seemed wholly inappropriate to be a member of the Russell panel. No reputable scientist who was critical of CRU's work was on the panel, and prominent and distinguished critics were not interviewed. The Oxburgh panel did not do as our predecessor committee had been promised, investigate the science, but only looked at the integrity of the researchers. With the exception of Professor Kelly's notes other notes taken by members of the panel have not been published. This leaves a question mark against whether CRU science is reliable. The Oxburgh panel also did not look at CRU's controversial work on the IPPC which is what has attracted most series allegations. Russell did not investigate the deletion of e-mails. We are now left after three investigations without a clear understanding of whether or not the CRU science is compromised.".—(Graham Stringer.)”
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmselect/cmsctech/444/44411.htm
[And a shame that the three Science and Technology Committee members who had NOT attended both reviews into the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit's E-mails were able to vote against the amendment to the Parliamentary Report as proposed by the ONLY Science and Technology Committee member who had - Graham Stringer.]
From the Ecclesiastical Uncle, an old retired bureaucrat in a field only remotely related to climate with minimal qualifications and only half a mind.
Messenger
I feel some pity for the people at the UEA. The situation they find themselves in reflects an institutional problem and that problem affects the whole of the body politic.
When the UEA accepted the contract to provide the scientific basis for AGW (whatever it actually said) they can have had little suspicion that the work would blow out and come to occupy so much time, effort and investment of careers, or that it might,, as now seems to be the case, turn out to be endless. The whole thing has grown like a cancer. However, government is employer under the contract and has the ability to cancel it, or alter its objectives, and so bears the main responsibility.
The failure of government to exercise these powers is yet one more example of total failure of governance. Present arrangements do not ensure that the many contrary pressures that bear upon the vast majority of decisions required of governments are examined within the civil service structure, reduced to conclusions and presented to the politicians for resolution in the simple terms they can understand.
In the final analysis, absence of other candidates (but, it occurs to me, what about the royals?)) means that the politicians must be responsible. Gradual changes, possibly over many decades have allowed them to displace public service with system funded self interest. They have made themselves secure and now find themselves part of the very system we elected them to direct and protect us from. In this case they have supported continuation of the UEA’s contract at high cost to us so as to avoid embarrassment to those who established the contract and now support its continuation although it has long been evident that it can never achieve its objectives.
So:
1. Governance must (and IMHO will) be changed. But it is difficult to be optimistic as the politicians that can change the system will hardly change it in the way required unless mayhem threatens or actually forces the issue.
2. Do not criticize UEA bosses alone for the improprieties they require from their staff in order to achieve the objectives of the contract they signed with the government. Is not it usual to criticize both those who offer a bribe as well as those that accept it?
I make that 105 exceedingly incisive and trenchant questions, or perhaps 105 strokes of the self-flagellation whip. Mind you, they did look grim walking into that first Select Committee hearing, didn't they?
on 23 Feb 2010 Wallis writes to Acton & Davies, says "piece right after your own heart by David Aaroonovitch in the Times today":
that piece according to journalisted was seemingly:
22 Feb 2010: Times: David Aaronovitch: Climate campaigners reap what GM sowed
On Sunday night, during a debate on climate change at Wellington College in Berkshire, a man in the first flower of old age told the 350 people in the chapel that there was absolutely no peer-reviewed scientific evidence whatsoever that there was a warming trend or that human activity was contributing towards it. The whole thing, he thought, was got up by governments to raise taxes. I hardly need to tell you what I told the audience, that there is plenty of such evidence and masses of peer review - the slightly paranoid and unnecessarily defensive actions of some climate scientists as revealed in "Climategate"... more »
http://article.wn.com/view/2010/02/22/Climate_campaigners_reap_what_GM_sowed/
unfortunately, u can't now access it on The Times without paying, tho there may be a full version on some other website.
From the Ecclesiastical Uncle, an old retired bureaucrat in a field only remotely related to climate with minimal qualifications and only half a mind.
Further to my previous contribution for particular attention by Messenger, it has occurred to me that the arrangements under which the UEA has worked for the government might be of some, albeit slight, interest. I have turned up a ‘History of the Climatic Research Unit’ at the UEA that unsurprisingly reveals a bewilderment of funding sources. So my talk of a contract in my previous contribution will be misleading. There will have been multiple funding channels.
The formal documentation recording the arrangements is likely to be unhelpful. If I were writing such a document, I would try to make it as vague as possible in order to allow the work to continue in directions not foreseeable at the time. Perfectly legitimate. However, I might also want to conceal the actual objectives for political or other reasons. Then I would define the objectives in some anodyne phraseology that would be politically unexceptionable but at the same time encompass the actual politically troublesome purpose. Thus, I would write that the UEA is to investigate how the climate has behaved in the past and how it is likely to behave in the future, so including pursuit of the idea that the globe is warming - the actual purpose - and the ideas that it is cooling and that temperatures are not changing - that I would not want investigated.
Bureaucratic caution would make me ensure the existence of copious paper records, both within my office and in the UEA’s leading to the paper agreement. I would not be unduly upset were these documents to be exposed to general scrutiny as a result of a request under the FOI, etc,.. By contrast, I would only give instructions restricting the work to the actual purpose by word of mouth. These instructions would be no less secure because, at the same time, I would make it clear that failure to follow them would result in reduction in funding or other punitive action. At the same time I would make it clear that no papers even so much as hinting at the actual purpose were to be allowed to be created within the UEA. Thus the actual purpose would not readily be exposed by FOI requests.
The variety of funding sources detailed in the history indicates the involvement both of government departments and of subsidiary bodies such as the research councils. I have no idea what the formalities employed by these bodies are, but I would expect a formal written arrangement to exist, particularly as the UEA is not part of government. However, a simple exchange of letters, maybe referring to ‘our discussions’ would appear to be both sufficient (provided internal audit would agree) and bullet proof.
Notwithstanding the expected anodyne nature of the documentation , has anyone isolated the agreements between the government and the UEA that cover work thought to have been improperly – in a scientific sense – done? Has anyone seen them? Do they make it easier to infer what the actual instructions might have been? Have FOI requests been submitted?
Re: Jul 23, 2012 at 7:59 AM | Ecclesiastical Uncle
You are correct, Ecclesiastical Uncle, there are indeed a bewildering array of funding sources. Some touched upon here -
"...The real culprit in the corruption of the scientific process and the promotion of climate alarmism is named again and again in the East Anglia e-mails and documents. But the culprit is named with many different names, mysterious combinations of letters and numbers and lyrical code words, names like “dgxii, dgxi fp5 fp6 fp7 life enrich.” What do they mean? In the final analysis, it is but one and the same multinational organization that lurks behind all these designations: the European Union...."
But they also receive funding indirectly via NGOs funded also by the EU as the article goes on to explain.
"....In July 1999, Dr. A. Barrie Pittock of Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (csiro) can be found well-nigh pleading with Mike Hulme to alter climate change scenarios being prepared by Hulme on a wwf grant. “Our main concern . . . is your use of the 95% confidence limits of natural climatic variability as some sort of threshold for change,” Dr. Pittock writes.
This is a reasonable thing to do if you are addressing the question of whether climatic change will be detectable at a “scientific level” of confidence, but that is certainly not the question I would expect wwf to want answered . . . 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.
After receiving assurances from Hulme about changes in the latter’s presentation, a relieved Pittock (“I am now much happier”) sheepishly explains the background to his intercession:
I should perhaps explain my delicate position in all this . . . I have a son who is now a leading staff member of wwf in Australia and who is naturally well informed on climate change issues. Moreover, Michael Rae, who is their local climate change staffer, is a member of the csiro sector advisory committee.
One day after receiving Pittock’s plea, Hulme received still more indirect “input” from wwf, this time via Adam Markham. Markham tells him that “in particular, they [wwf] would like to see the section on variability and extreme events beefed up if possible.” In an e-mail sent August 6, 2003, Stephan Singer of wwf’s European Policy Office can be found flogging that summer’s European heat wave as proof of “truly global warming” and offering money for a study on the “economic costs of these weather extremes.”... "
"...Several other so-called ngos that have played important roles in the promotion of the Kyoto protocol and the supposed fight against “global warming” are likewise beneficiaries of eu operating subsidies. .."
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/43291
And the results of an FOI request here, though by no means fully inclusive as the comments point out
"71% Of CRU Salaries Paid By Grants"
December 2, 2011
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2011/12/02/71-of-cru-salaries-paid-by-grants/
A bewildering array indeed (and such a complicated network of inter-connections), it would take someone who was familiar in the language of bureaucratese and knowledgeable of their means of disseminating useful information to yield the maximum value from such FOI requests.
However this latter is of interest in that it mentions "Weather Generator"
something that was touched upon in the Climategate 2 emails -
In the "FOIA - Background and Context"
ie - this comment
under "Communicating Climate Change"
"<2495> Humphrey/DEFRA: I can't overstate the HUGE amount of political interest in the project as a message that the Government can give on climate change to help them tell their story. They want the story to be a very strong one and don't want to be made to look foolish."
http://foia2011.org/
referring to the 'Weather Generator' project with further interesting language contained in the actual mail addressed to Phil Jones
"I know this is extremely frustrating for you and completely understand where you are
coming from.
This is a political reaction, not one based on any scientific analysis of the weather
generator. We did the peer review to take care of that. I can't overstate the HUGE
amount of political interest in the project as a message that the Government can give on
climate change to help them tell their story. They want the story to be a very strong
one and don't want to be made to look foolish. Therefore, every time they hear about
any criticisms from anyone, they jump."
Ealier on in the chain ie 18th May 2009 (slight change in format for clarification - mine)
"The remainder of the conversation focussed on the Weather Generator. JM raised two
issues on this -
(a) that the level of "statistical noise" involved in moving down from
25km to 5km scale meant that the results became so uncertain to the virtually worthless
and
(b) the very fact that so many sensible scientific experts shared this opinion
risked discrediting the rest of the UKCP09 package - essentially everything was getting
`tainted' by the WG.
She argued we should drop it.
In response BM set out the justification for the WG using the usual arguments.
As you know Ministers have also raised questions about this so we will need to go back
to them with some further advice, starting with a heads up at the meeting with SofS
tomorrow afternoon.
Please could you provide some further advice on three questions - a quick initial view
by tomorrow afternoon insofar as this is possible would be v helpful..."
Next in the chain of mails -
"Could you please send me some comments urgently on the issues below. I have a meeting
with Hilary Benn this afternoon and this is likely to come up (at 4.30). As you know we
have already given him some advice on the weather generator but perhaps I need to give
them more on the validity tests etc as well. "
http://foia2011.org/index.php?id=2445
This is an area that requires a great deal of further scrutiny for
1. The scale chosen
and
2. The validation sites chosen
I may be wrong but it seems to me that the validation sites incorporate a number of airports (known to give a warm bias to temperature data)
http://ukclimateprojections.defra.gov.uk/media.jsp?mediaid=87941&filetype=pdf
Also check out email 4386
"Quick outcome from the meeting with the Secretary of State:
REDACTED He is comfortable to launch the weather generator.
REDACTED It may launch a few weeks after the public launch as it is tied in with the fate
of the UI- decision on that should be made soon.
REDACTED Suggested that Bob Watson, Robin are joined by Chris/Phil to go back to Jacqui
in a conference call and discuss her concerns with the WG, as it is still unclear what they
are- for a few weeks time. Will set this up soon.
REDACTED I'll do some "weather generator sound bites" as part of the launch comms."
Link -
http://foia2011.org/index.php?id=4336
If you're in such a hurry , why haven't you hired Evgeny Kaspersky ?