Another Climategate investigation

Updated on Apr 30, 2010 by Bishop Hill

The headline today is the news that the Virginia attorney general has launched an investigation into Michael Mann's time at the University of Virginia.

In papers sent to UVA April 23, Cuccinelli’s office commands the university to produce a sweeping swath of documents relating to Mann’s receipt of nearly half a million dollars in state grant-funded climate research conducted while Mann— now director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State— was at UVA between 1999 and 2005.

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CCC and the future

The Clear Climate Code guys have posted up a presentation looking at their work on GISS and outlining some future projects. The latter appear to cover areas like arctic sea ice, paleoclimate and HADCRUT. This is admirable stuff.

Seth Roberts again

Seth Roberts is discussing the Hockey Stick Illusion again. This time he's looking at how the best people are sometimes wrong.

Sleeping policemen

This is extracted from a blog called "The Legend of Pine Ridge". The writer has managed to extract a statement from Norfolk Police about their ongoing investigations into Climategate.

Detective Superintendent Julian Gregory who is leading the investigation said:

"This is a complex investigation and as a consequence will take some time to conclude. As with any investigation we will interview anyone who may have information which is of relevance to the enquiry but it would inappropriate to comment on any specific lines of enquiry.”

“Norfolk Constabulary continues its investigations into criminal offences in relation to a data breach at the University of East Anglia. During the enquiry officers have been working in liaison with the Office of the Information Commissioner and with officers from the National Domestic Extremism Team [See NETCU]. The UEA continues to co-operate with the enquiry; however, major investigations of this nature are of necessity very detailed and as a consequence can take time to reach a conclusion. It would be inappropriate to comment further at this stage."

It still seems extraordinary to me that after nearly six months of investigation, the boys in blue don't even seem to have worked out whether they are investigating a hack or a leak.

Key climate model assumption wrong?

There's an interesting article over at El Reg, which discusses a new paper in Nature Geosciences on the subject of the reaction of soil bacteria to increases in temperature. The theory is that as temperatures rise, all the microbes in the soil will emit even more carbon dioxide than they do already, exacerbating warming still further.

That's the theory. Unfortunately, an ecologist from California has now rather thrown a spanner in the works by doing some good old-fashioned experiments. Steve Allison has discovered that although small increases in warmth do increase carbon dioxide emissions, as temperatures rise further, the effect tails off quickly and emissions plunge. 

Interesting stuff.

Schneider in the archives

This from the St Petersburgh Times of 31 January 1977 and contains an interesting early set of views on the global warming scare from Stephen Schneider. Interestingly he holds out the possibility that the whole of any carbon dioxide derived warming could be entirely wiped out by the effects of cloud feedbacks. I'm not sure that our understanding of clouds has erased this possibility yet. Perhaps someone can fill me in here.

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That green energy scandal

It's here. I think we are going to be seeing a great deal more of this kind of thing.

Surprising documents ...reveal that Assistant Secretary of Energy Cathy Zoi has a huge financial stake in companies likely to profit from the Obama administration’s “green” policies.

Zoi, who left her position as CEO of the Alliance for Climate Protection — founded by Al Gore — to serve as assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy, now manages billions in “green jobs” funding. But the disclosure documents show that Zoi not only is in a position to affect the fortunes of her previous employer, ex-Vice President Al Gore, but that she herself has large holdings in two firms that could directly profit from policies proposed by the Department of Energy.

A good trick to create a decline

Shortly after the Climategate emails broke, an guest article was posted at Climate Audit. The article is important, but was rather overlooked by the sceptic community in all the excitement over the emails. “The Hockey Stick and the Milankovitch Cycle” uses some of the Climategate files to solve one of the remaining mysteries of the Hockey Stick. 

This is my attempt to put the post into layman's language. It's rather long so you may want a cup of coffee to keep you company.

Read it at the link below.

A good trick to create a decline

Hubert Lamb on ice ages

More from the archives: this is a clipping from the Deseret News of Salt Lake City - the edition of 8th September 1972. It carries details of an interview with Hubert Lamb, the founder of the Climatic Research Unit, in which the great man discusses the impending ice age.

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IPCC in trouble again

Donna Laframboise has discovered that the IPCC cited the Stern report no less than 26 times, even though the report had missed the cut off date for inclusion by some distance. In fact pretty much every rule in the book seems to have been trampled in the IPCC's haste to get Lord Stern's parvum opus included.

The conclusion here isn't pretty: by citing the Stern Review, the IPPC broke not one, not two, but three of its own rules. First, it had to deliberately overlook the fact that this document is not peer-reviewed...

Second, it had to violate the published-before-January-2006 rule about which Pachauri recently reminded us.

Third, it had to subvert its own requirement that text in the IPCC report be subject to two rounds of expert review.

Are we impressed yet?

The IPCC might have been breathing easy after the lack of any new 'gates for them to be criticised over. Looks like there may be a whole new wave of criticism coming.

John Maddox on AGW

Via a reader, these comments on global warming from John Maddox, the legendary editor of Nature. They're taken from his 1972 book, The Doomsday Syndrome, which cast a sceptical eye over some apocalyptic predictions.

I wonder what he would have made of the way his journal operates nowadays?

The Hockey Stick and the Madoff case

Hot on the heels of his review of The Hockey Stick Illusion, Seth Roberts looks at the parallels between the story and that of the Madoff case.

Green jobs scandal coming

Icecap is reporting that there is going to be a major ethics scandal breaking on Monday. Apparently someone in the Obama administration has a major conflict of interest regarding green jobs and the stimulus. There are links to Al Gore it seems.

Falck Renewables and the mafia

Remember Falck Renewables, the Italian company whose UK arm was headed up by Lord Oxburgh? Observers wondered if the chairman of a green energy company wasn't quite the right choice for the head of the investigation into CRU.

Tom Fuller has been doing some research into the company and has discovered that the Italian side of the business seems to have been implicated in a mafia investigation.

Read the whole thing.

Josh 20