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Bishop Hill Feb 8, 2013 Climate: CRU Climate: Jones Climate: Sceptics The University of East Anglia is having a conference on writing and climate change. It features well known climate writers Giles Foden, Mike Hulme and, erm, Phil Jones (click for full size)
This comes to me via Richard Bean, who was invited but can't make it. My own invitation appears to have been lost in the post.
Bishop Hill Another interesting set of emails from the University of Arizona release. These ones date back to 2001, eight or nine months after the publication of the Third Assessment Report. The thread starts on 7 September, just days before 9/11, and reference is made to those attacks in the thread.
The emails show how the Hockey Team came together to attempt to thwart criticism of their field from a German geological institute. The message is from Stefan Rahmstorf to Overpeck:
Subject: Sceptics attack! [Title inferred from later emails in thread]
Hi Jonathan,
I thought the subject line might capture your attention ... but seriously, we're facing a concerted action here at the moment, a German geological institute has launched a well-orchestrated challenge to IPCC including a book launch, cover articles in major newspapers, a simultaneous official request in the Bundestag, etc. They have the coal industry on their side. Not surprising to you in the US I'm sure but a novelty for germany, where so far the sceptics had no ground to stand on.
Bishop Hill Feb 5, 2012 Climate: Jones Climate: other Last summer, I was at a debate at the Edinburgh book festival in which one of the participants, an environmentalist, lectured everyone about the perils of global warming and then in almost the same breath started telling us about his latest trip to China.
I sometimes wonder whether accusations of hypocrisy have any effect on many such people; among them the tendency to take long-haul flights seems remarkably widespread.
Bishop Hill Feb 2, 2012 Climate: CRU Climate: Jones Climate: Surface Thanks to reader William for pointing out Climategate 2 email 4578. The context seems to be a discussion of how to present temperature trends, and it is worth reading the full email thread. But Jones' contribution to the thread looks a bit problematic.
date: Mon Jul 18 14:25:52 2005
from: Phil Jones <p.jones@uea.ac.uk>
subject: Re: Text and CQ stuff
to: "Parker, David (Met Office)" <david.parker@metoffice.gov.uk>, Kevin Trenberth <trenbert@ucar.edu>Kevin,
Even without smoothing it is possible to get a trend of nearer 0.75 if the trend starts around 1920 (especially if the cold year of 1917 is at the start). The periods chosen for Table 3.2.2 had some justification, so we need to be a little careful. As a schematic for CQ2 though, it will be a different way of showing the same data.
I'll talk it over with David.Cheers
Bishop Hill Jan 23, 2012 Climate: CRU Climate: Jones Climate: Surface FOI This post is a jointly written effort by myself and Don Keiller.
Readers may remember the Information Commissioner's ruling last year that UEA had to release the CRUTEM data sent by Phil Jones to Peter Webster at Georgia Tech. This had been requested by Jonathan Jones and Don Keiller.
This ruling was obviously very welcome, but in fact it was not the end of the story. UEA had put forward an argument that CRUTEM data was held under agreements with national meteorological services and could not therefore be disclosed to outsiders. Along with his request for the data, Keiller had therefore also requested the covering email that Phil Jones had sent to Webster, which should presumably contain caveats about reuse and disclosure. However, when the Information Commissioner ordered UEA to release the data, UEA's non-disclosure of the email was upheld, on the grounds that the information was, on the balance of probablilities, 'not held'.
Bishop Hill Jan 12, 2012 Climate: Jones Media Overseas readers may or may not be aware of the Leveson inquiry into media ethics which is currently gripping the metropolitan elite in the UK. One submission of evidence to the inquiry is of interest - from the Science Media Centre, who were involved in PR efforts on behalf of the Oxburgh and Russell inquiries.
Their submission makes the extraordinary claim that the inquiries into CRU were "independent" and that Phil Jones was exonerated. Given that even Harrabin and Fred Pearce have said that the inquiries were inadequate, this claim seems to me to be more spin than truth. Fox also seems to want the Leveson inquiry to believe that Jones was cleared of misleading policymakers over climate change. Given that the Russell inquiry found the "hide the decline" graph to be misleading, this seems to me to be a case of spinning oneself into the realms of falsehood.
The Leveson Inquiry has heard much from big names whose reputation has been damaged by inaccurate reporting. But this problem does not just affect celebrities. While it is thankfully rare, there are scientists who have suffered serious damage to their scientific standing after being misreported in the press...
There is...the case of Professor Phil Jones from the University of East Anglia who was widely accused by the media of fraudulently doctoring data to mislead the public and policy makers about climate change. Even after four independent inquiries cleared Professor Jones of any scientific malpractice some journalists continue to make the same false allegations (see separate submission from UEA). The SMC recommends that Phil Jones be called to the Inquiry to provide evidence. His evidence would be every bit as harrowing as that given by many of those in the media spotlight and would serve as a reminder that scientists are human beings and can also suffer enormously.
I like the idea of Jones being called to give evidence though. I think yet another inquiry that heard from CRU but not their principal critics would rather prove the point.
Bishop Hill Jan 4, 2012 Climate: CRU Climate: HSI Climate: Hulme Climate: IPCC Climate: Jones Climate: Mann Climate: Ward This was provided to me by Phillip Bratby.
Letter from Bob Ward Junior (chief scientific advisor to the Department for Climate Change and Energy (DCCE)) to the Secretary of State for Climate Change and Energy, Ed Miliband Junior.
December 2031
Dear Ed,
First of all congratulations on being the youngest ever MP appointed at the age of 16 and, following your degree in political communication, being appointed the youngest ever Minister of State at the age of 19.
Bishop Hill Dec 19, 2011 Climate: Jones David Holland's post on email 2526 has deservedly got a lot of attention, enabling sense to be made of many of the statements put forward by people as diverse as Jones, Acton and Russell. 2526 dated from the middle of 2008. A year later, however, there is another email that appears to suggest that Jones had adopted new working practices after his brush with FOI the previous year. Email 0021 involves a discussion between Jones and Manola Brunet, a Spanish climatologist. The important bit is the start of Jones' message.
Hola Manola,
I've saved emails at CRU and then deleted them from the server. Now I'm at home I just have some hard copies.
Interestingly, the topic of the email thread appears to be nothing more suspicious than efforts to compile a new temperature dataset, so it's not obvious why Jones would be telling Brunet that he had deleted emails from the server - earlier emails are not obviously among the CG2 disclosures (If anyone wants to check more thoroughly and to look in CG1 as well, that would be useful.) Brunet is somewhat indiscreet in her response, so it may be that she is nervous that correspondence with Jones might be disclosable under FOI.
Bishop Hill Dec 17, 2011 Climate: CRU Climate: Jones Climate: Parliament Climate: Russell
Updated on Dec 18, 2011 by
Bishop Hill
This is a guest post by David Holland.
Last time I googled 2526.txt to see if this email had been commented upon I did not find any. This is as near the smoking gun proof as we will get, that Professor Phil Jones’ instruction to delete all emails “re AR4” was complied with – at least using the team definition of the word “delete”. Note that on 29 May 2008 Jones had emailed,
“Mike [Mann], Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith [Briffa] will do likewise. He's not in at the moment - minor family crisis. Can you also email [Eu]Gene [Wahl] and get him to do the same? I don't have his new email address. We will be getting Caspar [Ammann] to do likewise. I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!! Cheers Phil”
Bishop Hill Dec 16, 2011 Climate: Jones FOI Fox News has run a Climategate story, suggesting there's still quite a lot of mileage in the new disclosures. The emails of interest are the ones in which Phil Jones suggests that the US Department of Energy has told him that it is acceptable to withhold climate data:
“Work on the land station data has been funded by the U.S. Dept of Energy, and I have their agreement that the data needn’t be passed on. I got this [agreement] in 2007,” Jones wrote in a May 13, 2009, email to British officials, before listing reasons he did not want them to release data.
Two months later, Jones reiterated that sentiment to colleagues, saying that the data "has to be well hidden. I’ve discussed this with the main funder (U.S. Dept of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original station data.”
Bishop Hill 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.
Bishop Hill Jun 14, 2011 Climate: Jones Climate: Surface An article in New Scientist picks up on the vexed question of Phil JOnes' recent prognostications of significance in the temperature records. The author, Andy Coghlan links to the story here:
Jones told New Scientist that in the short time since his latest statement on the data's "significance" had been aired in the media, some sceptics had already challenged it in blogs.
Bishop Hill Jun 12, 2011 Climate: Jones Climate: Surface This is all getting rather interesting. Some very numerate people have been looking at Phil Jones' claim about statistical significance in the temperature records and the consensus seems to be that Jones has got it wrong.
First out of the blocks was Doug Keenan, who noted in the comments here that using the methodology described in Jones' IPCC chapter and data to the end of 2010, the confidence interval for the temperature trend still covered zero.
Bishop Hill Jun 10, 2011 Climate: Jones Climate: Surface Phil Jones has announced that post-1995 warming is now "significant", with new data changing the picture he had previously reported to Roger Harrabin. The news comes via Richard Black, in one of those "we don't want anyone disputing this, so we've switched commenting off" articles.
By widespread convention, scientists use a minimum threshold of 95% to assess whether a trend is likely to be down to an underlying cause, rather than emerging by chance.
If a trend meets the 95% threshold, it basically means that the odds of it being down to chance are less than one in 20.
Last year's analysis, which went to 2009, did not reach this threshold; but adding data for 2010 takes it over the line.
I wonder what he makes of the Koutsoyiannis paper then?
Bishop Hill May 10, 2011 Climate: HSI Climate: Jones 
Members of the CRU book group couldn't wait to see what Phil Jones was going to suggest as the title for next month...
H/T Anoneumouse
