What do you make of this?

This email was written by Michael Mann shortly after the publication of McIntyre and McKitrick's 2003 paper in Energy and Environment. The various members of the Hockey Team were trying to formulate a response. Mann first thanks Osborn:  

Thanks very much Tim,

 I was hoping that the revisions would ally concerns people had.  I'll look forward to your comments on this latest draft. I agree w/ Malcolm on the need to be careful w/ the wording in the first paragraph. The first paragraph is a bit of relic of a much earlier draft, and maybe we need to rethink it a bit. Takinig the high road is probably very important here. If *others* want to say that their actions represent scientific fraud, intellectual dishonesty, etc. (as I think we all suspect they do), lets let *them* make these charges for us!

   Lets let our supporters in higher places use our scientific response to push the broader case against MM. So I look forward to peoples attempts to revise the first par. particular.

   I took the liberty of forwarding the previous draft to a handfull of our closet colleagues, just so they would have a sense of approximately what we'll be releasing later today--i.e., a heads up as to how MM achieved their result...

   look forward to us finalizing something a bit later--I still think we need to get this out

   ASAP...

   mike

  So who are the supporters in higher places. And who are the "closet colleagues" (or does he mean "closest"?)

Link

The Hockey Stick Illusion

After the successes of Caspar and the Jesus Paper and The Yamal Implosion, the two postings on this site that have garnered significant levels of attention, a number of readers suggested to me that I write a book about the Hockey Stick. Being an amenable sort, I have done just that and the results of a year's worth of early mornings and late nights are going to become available to the public in the near future.

The Hockey Stick Illusion is a critical history of the affair, tracing the story from its very beginnings in the notorious Deming email, right up to the most recent developments - the release of the Yamal data and the wave of uproar that followed.

I should point out that the cover shown here is a placeholder and that something a bit snazzier is being lined up.

The Hockey Stick Illusion will be published by Stacey International some time in January. Given the events of the last couple of days it looks as though I may have to try to stick in an appendix though, as many of the emails speak directly to events in the book. I hope there's still time. While I'm doing that you can preorder a copy here.

Stacey have the UK rights and will sell into overseas markets too, but will allow me to accept offers of contracts from US and Australian publishers. If anyone wants to speak about rights outside the UK, including translation rights,  please feel free to drop me a line.

More CRU revelations to come

A commenter has just pointed out to me that the hackers who left the file link at the Air Vent described what they had made available as "a random selection" of what there was. So there could be more to come.

Everyone enjoying themselves?

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)

Phil Jones confirms that CRU has been hacked

See here

Update on Nov 20, 2009 by Bishop Hill

An associate of mine has contacted CRU direct and they have confirmed the story. It seems clear then that the story is true. I suppose there remains a possibility that what is doing the rounds of the internet is not all genuine, but this seems fairly unlikely.

Update on Nov 20, 2009 by Bishop Hill

Climate Audit has been swamped by traffic, but has apparently reported that CRU has cancelled all existing passwords.

Update on Nov 20, 2009 by Bishop Hill

The BBC are going to try to sweep it under the carpet.

++++Huge climate story breaking?+++

It is claimed that the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia has been hacked and there is a massive file of emails and code up on a server in Russia. If what has been posted is real then the balloon is about to go up. 

Excerpts of the emails have been posted here. They include a CRU scientist welcoming the death of a prominent sceptic, discussion of how to fiddle results and so on.

Amazing. If true.

As someone says, if it looks to good to be true, it probably is.

Steiner schools

Unity has posted up one of those very, very long posts which have become his blogging trademark. Today's sermon is on the subject of Steiner schools, which Unity opposes. Wholeheartedly. The Steiner movement, and its underlying philosophical movement, Anthroposophy, are, he says, "cultish".

I don't know very much about Steiner schools but the use of the term "cultish" is a strong one, implying to most readers a degree of brainwashing and coercion of the kind that is popularly associated with, say, scientology or the Branch Davidians. In fact, Unity makes this link explicit when he say that

there are marked similarities between approaches of the Anthroposophical movement and Scientology

However, he doesn't present any actual evidence for this statement, beyond  a vague statement that Steiner schools don't teach Anthroposophy explicitly but that what they do teach is designed to prepare children to receive those beliefs. Perhaps there is more to it than that, but on the face of it this is no different to most other forms of schooling. One might equally argue that state schooling doesn't explicitly teach statism but that everything it teaches is designed to prepare children for a belief in the beneficence of the state.

Much of Unity's piece is an eye-opening exposition of the eccentric beliefs of anthroposophists - take this quote for example:

[A]ngels – the spirits closest to human beings – are seeking to create images in human astral bodies. These images are given with the intention of bringing about ‘definite conditions in the social life of the future’ related to brotherhood, religious freedom, and conscious spirituality…

Far out, man.

But so what? Is this any more eccentric than the whole water-into-wine malarkey that informs mainstream christianity, or for that matter the weirdness of any of the other mainstream religions? Many, many people have deeply irrational beliefs, and want children to be brought up in those beliefs. In a world without state education they would be able to do so.

The advent of state education has put the whip in the hands of the state and its acolytes. With the purse strings now held by the bureaucracy rather than the individual the opportunity has arisen to crush dissenting belief systems. Funding will be withdrawn from those that do not toe the line. In the case of the Steiner schools, the argument is being put forward not on the grounds that the education provided is inadequate or any other rational basis, but simply because these people are marginal and unacceptable - "cultish", in Unity's terms.

I've said it before, but I think it is worth repeating. The mindset of most of the writers at Liberal Conspiracy is not that of the liberal. It is that of the conservative. These are people who hate diversity, who despise people who don't think like they do.  They are Tories of the left.

How odd!

Americans have apparently started to chant the name of Daniel Hannan MEP at street protests. They are calling for him to be elected president.

The power of YouTube, it seems.

DK on liberty

Devil's Kitchen has a must-read post up, detailing the increasing use of enabling legislation by the government. And he doesn't swear at all - must be serious.

You know you're in trouble

...when Amazon's best idea for a book you might like to buy is... Actuarial Mathematics for Life Contingent Risks.

Maybe I need to get out more...

Taxation as poetry

This is shamelessly stolen from Jeff Id. The idiom is American, but the point is universal.

At first I thought this was funny…..
then I realized the awful truth of it.

Be sure to read all the way to the end!…

A Tax Poem

Tax his land,
Tax his bed,
Tax the table
At which he’s fed.

Tax his tractor,
Tax his mule,
Teach him taxes
Are the rule.

Tax his work,
Tax his pay,
He works for peanuts
Anyway!

Tax his cow,
Tax his goat,
Tax his pants,
Tax his coat.

Tax his ties,
Tax his shirt,
Tax his work,
Tax his dirt.

Tax his tobacco,
Tax his drink,
Tax him if he
Tries to think.

Tax his cigars,
Tax his beers.
If he cries
Tax his tears.

Tax his car,
Tax his gas,
Find other ways
To tax his ass.
Tax all he has
Then let him know
That you won’t be done
Till he has no dough.

When he screams and hollers,
Then tax him some more,
Tax him till
He’s good and sore.

Then tax his coffin,
Tax his grave,
Tax the sod in
Which he’s laid.

Put these words
upon his tomb,
“Taxes drove me to my doom…”

When he’s gone,
Do not relax,
Its time to apply
The inheritance tax.

...

Accounts Receivable Tax
Building Permit Tax
CDL license Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Dog License Tax
Excise Taxes
Federal Income Tax
Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel Permit Tax
Gasoline Tax (42 cents per gallon or more)
Gross Receipts Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory Tax
IRS Interest Charges IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
Liquor Tax=0
Luxury Taxes
Marriage License Tax
Medicare Tax
Personal Property Tax
Property Tax
Real Estate Tax
Service Charge Tax
Social Security Tax
Road Usage Tax
Sales Tax
Recreational Vehicle Tax
School Tax
State Income Tax
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)
Telephone Federal Excise Tax
Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax
Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Taxes
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax
Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax
Telephone State and Local Tax
Telephone Usage Charge Tax
Utility Taxes
Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Watercraft Registration Tax
Well Permit Tax
Workers Compensation Tax
California Redemption Tax
Recycling Tax

STILL THINK THIS IS FUNNY?

Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago, and our nation
was the most prosperous in the world.

We had absolutely no national debt, had the largest middle
class in the world, and Mom stayed home to raise the kids.

The climate compass

Here's a bit of fun. Inspired by the Political Compass, your humble Bishop brings you what I think is a slightly different way of looking at the various groups in the climate debate. I've analysed people's perception of the debate along two axes - one covering how much one thinks that global warming is a problem, the other looking at how people perceive the integrity of climate science. I've added some likely groupings in the space I define, which I think you'll agree are quite interesting.

There are a growing band of Lukewarmers on the web, of course; people who believe in AGW but don't think it's a big issue. I also identify a group who I've called the Doubters. This group intrigues me. The idea was inspired by Atte Korhola's comments of a couple of weeks back. Korhola believes in AGW, there seems no doubt of that, but he is clearly concerned over the integrity of climate science. I don't think it is reading too much into his position to describe him as a doubter, therefore. He may still believe, but if he doubts the integrity of the science his faith must at least be subject to occasional pangs of doubt.

Here's some questions that occur to me on the groupings:

• Should the Lukewarmer bubble extend further north? Or do all lukewarmers think that there are problems with the integrity of climatology?
• Is there really a gap between the Faithful and the Doubters in terms of perception of problems with the integrity of climatology?
• Is there nobody in the north western quadrant?
• Who are the other doubters?

And lastly, for fun, suggest coordinates for your favourite global warming debate personalities. There are some people out there who really intrigue me. Of course, if you are a global warming debate personality or a climate specialist of some sort, you could just tell us. Over to you Mr President.

Yamal is back!

David Appell reports on his blog that he has a new article in this month's Scientific American, reporting on a new method for creating temperature reconstructions by Tingley and Huybers. It goes without saying that their results are hockey stick shaped.

I don't have access to the article, but the theory doing the rounds at Climate Audit is that David is referring to this manuscript. The link is to an unpublished version of the paper, but it's not clear from David's article if it has now gone to print or not, and it is of couse possible that it's a different paper entirely. I hope so, because within about half an hour of my posting a link to Appell's story up at CA, when reader JeanS pointed to the linked manuscript, he also observed that the dataset used in that paper included Mann's Hockey Stick itself (the PC1 for the technically minded among you) and the now legendary Yamal series.

It's too funny.

And besides, if the reconstruction includes Mann's PC1, then it is not, as Appell puts it "a completely different method".  Tingley and Huybers's results are biased by Mannian short centring just as much as the Hockey Stick itself.

Update on Oct 25, 2009 by Bishop Hill

McIntyre is reporting that there is in fact another unpublished paper by the same authors. This looks interesting because he has been able to get something of a fix on the data which, rather than having 20th century upticks, has downticks instead. This being the case, it's something of a mystery as to how Tingley and Huybers' methodology manages to generate a hockey stick.

Watch this space.

Home ed numbers

There has been much interest in the statistics that the government is using in its campaign to link home educators with child abuse.

The essence of the story is that a survey of local education authorities has determined that 0.4% of home ed children are on the "At risk" register. This compares to a figure of 0.2% in the population as a whole. The 0.4% figure is described as varying greatly between different counties, suggesting to me that it is a measure that is prone to error.

The figures appear to be being used as a way of answering the question "Are HE kids more at risk of child abuse than those in schools", with "on the At Risk register" being used as a proxy for "At risk". It strikes me that these are not the same thing at all though. There are clearly very large numbers of children who are HE but are not known to the authorities and there will also be some who are at risk who are not known to the authorities either. Because of this, "On the At Risk register" would appear to be a very poor proxy for "At risk", at least as far as assessing HE is concerned.

The question is, how would you answer the question properly? With the survey as presented there must be a possibility that that the risk associated with HE is actually less than that for the population as a whole. But how would you calculate this probability?

This is a question for a stats blogger - I wonder if this man knows? I'll ask him.

Home education consultation

There is a home ed consultation ongoing at the moment, inviting responses to the government's proposals. Readers may like to make their feelings know here. Responses are due by close of play on Monday.