Climategate?

Permabear · 21-11-2009 1:15am #1

This post has been deleted.

cnocbui · 21-11-2009 1:42am

If the material proves to be true, and not altered or faked then it is a bit of a bombshell.

An unexpected angle which might end up biting hard is that apparently the CRU (Climate research Unit) was the subject of some FOI requests for raw climate data and the head of the CRU refused to hand over the data saying it had been lost. I believe one of the emails from the head of the CRU mentions that he would rather destroy the data than hand it over. Others discuss ways of not complying with the FOI requests. Oh dear, that might just be illegal.

lostinsuperfunk · 21-11-2009 2:33am

I read the NYT article and the some of the hacked emails and there doesn't seem to be anything very indicative of any large scale fabrication or conspiracy there.
The most interesting things anyone can find so far are (1) an admission of using a 'trick', said trick being a fully acknowledged use of an instrumental time series on the same plot as a proxy (inferred) time series and (2) an admission from someone that they would prefer to destroy some data than hand it over in response to a particular freedom of information request. Note that they didn't say that they actually destroyed the data, although this fact appears to have been lost on some of the more "enthusiastic" members of the blogging community.
However, perhaps it is a telling admission, and I think it is always wrong to withhold data that taxpayers paid for. The FOI request was very likely to have been a mischievous one from someone with a copy of Excel and an axe to grind, but that still doesn't excuse it.

There is some other mildly amusing stuff, e.g. some disparaging remarks about Steve Levitt & co., Guess what, the CRU don't like him. Big deal.

djpbarry · 21-11-2009 11:43am

Having read the NYT article, I can't see anything particularly damning. If any of the emails represented the 'bombshell' that some sceptics seek, I imagine the text would have been reproduced.

cnocbui · 21-11-2009 12:18pm

lostinsuperfunk wrote: »

(2) an admission from someone that they would prefer to destroy some data than hand it over in response to a particular freedom of information request. Note that they didn't say that they actually destroyed the data, although this fact appears to have been lost on some of the more "enthusiastic" members of the blogging community.
However, perhaps it is a telling admission, and I think it is always wrong to withhold data that taxpayers paid for. The FOI request was very likely to have been a mischievous one from someone with a copy of Excel and an axe to grind, but that still doesn't excuse it.

They said they 'lost' the data when not responding to an FOI request. Combine that with an email where they are saying they would rather destroy it than hand it over and any pretense that the subsequent 'loss' was genuine or accidental begins to look highly dubious.

The FOI instigator was Steve McIntyre who runs the Climate Audit website. When Phil Jones says stuff like this:

Even if WMO agrees, I will still not pass on the data. We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/13/cru_missing/

You really have to wonder what he has been up to with the data if he is so scared of someone independent getting their hands on it.

simplistic · 21-11-2009 2:39pm

http://www.examiner.com/x-25061-Climate-Change-Examiner~y2009m11d20-ClimateGate--Climate-centers-server-hacked-revealing-documents-and-emails

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100017393/climategate-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-of-anthropogenic-global-warming/

It was pretty obvious that it was always a fraud. But the danger now is that it has become a religion. So fraud has been legalized.

Skeptic : your honour, climate change scientists are manipulating data and facts for personal gain.

Judge: How dare you that is blasphemy!

ConsiderThis · 21-11-2009 2:53pm

Having read parts of the emails, and, assuming they are genuine and not a hoax, at least it would seem to call in question the objectivity of these scientists, and appears they have an agenda which they will pursue to the extend that they will alter data, and suppress data, and tell lies.

What does that tell us about them?

Macha · 21-11-2009 3:23pm

ConsiderThis wrote: »

Having read parts of the emails, and, assuming they are genuine and not a hoax, at least it would seem to call in question the objectivity of these scientists, and appears they have an agenda which they will pursue to the extend that they will alter data, and suppress data, and tell lies.

So which exact parts concern you?

djpbarry · 21-11-2009 3:48pm

ConsiderThis wrote: »

Having read parts of the emails, and, assuming they are genuine and not a hoax, at least it would seem to call in question the objectivity of these scientists, and appears they have an agenda which they will pursue to the extend that they will alter data, and suppress data, and tell lies.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. If data has been manipulated or falsified and subsequent publications were based on said data, then it wouldn’t take long for said publications to be discredited. Now, scientific papers are sometimes discredited, or at the very least, critiqued or advanced upon – it’s the nature of science. However, unless someone can demonstrate that a large number of publications on the subject of climate change have been based on erroneous data and that our understanding of the subject has, as a result, been severely compromised, then I’m going to keep this article firmly in the ‘sensationalist’ category.

I might also direct anyone who’s interested to the link in my signature – I find it genuinely disturbing that people will so readily accept something just because it appears in a newspaper*.

*Disclaimer: that’s a general comment, not based on the content of this thread nor directed at any poster on this thread.

ConsiderThis · 21-11-2009 5:07pm

taconnol wrote: »

So which exact parts concern you?

I think all those parts that appear to show the their agenda is less about a search for truth, and appears to be more concerned with withholding information, manipulating it to favour their case, and controlling the agenda.

What do you think the emails says about their agenda?

ConsiderThis · 21-11-2009 5:10pm

djpbarry wrote: »

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. If data has been manipulated or falsified and subsequent publications were based on said data, then it wouldn’t take long for said publications to be discredited.

I think the point is, in this case, that they won't release the data to anyone, so that no one will be in a position to discredit it.

djpbarry wrote: »

I find it genuinely disturbing that people will so readily accept something just because it appears in a newspaper

I'm sure there isn't another member of boards who disagrees with you, which is why I added the proviso "assuming they are genuine and not a hoax" in my last post.

djpbarry · 21-11-2009 5:34pm

ConsiderThis wrote: »

I think all those parts that appear to show the their agenda is less about a search for truth, and appears to be more concerned with withholding information, manipulating it to favour their case, and controlling the agenda.

But specifically, which emails (or parts of emails) are you referring to?

ConsiderThis wrote: »

I think the point is, in this case, that they won't release the data to anyone, so that no one will be in a position to discredit it.

But what data are we referring to? Has someone been denied access to data under-pinning a particular publication? Or are we talking about unpublished results?

hiwayman · 21-11-2009 6:33pm

Consider this,
I think there trying to ware you down again

:D

cnocbui · 21-11-2009 7:43pm

djpbarry wrote: »

But what data are we referring to? Has someone been denied access to data under-pinning a particular publication?

Er, yes.

This article is part of Nature's premium content.
Published online 12 August 2009 | Nature 460, 787 (2009) | doi:10.1038/460787a
News
Climate data spat intensifies

Growing demands for access to information swamp scientist.
Olive Heffernan

A leading UK climatologist is being inundated by freedom-of-information-act requests to make raw climate data publicly available, leading to a renewed row over data access.
Since 2002, Steve McIntyre, the editor of Climate Audit, a blog that investigates the statistical methods used in climate science, has repeatedly asked Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, UK, for access to monthly global surface temperature data held by the institute.

It is the basis for my comments speculating that possibly the most serious aspect of this affair will turn out to be questions concerning the illegal thwarting of valid FOI requests.

You have one of those emails where Phil Jones says he would rather destroy the data than hand it over - a statement which implies the data exists - contrasting with a later claim by him that the data has been 'lost' so can't be handed over.

Now begins the fun. Warwick Hughes, an Australian scientist, wondered where that “+/–” came from, so he politely wrote Phil Jones in early 2005, asking for the original data. Jones’s response to a fellow scientist attempting to replicate his work was, “We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”

Reread that statement, for it is breathtaking in its anti-scientific thrust. In fact, the entire purpose of replication is to “try and find something wrong.” The ultimate objective of science is to do things so well that, indeed, nothing is wrong.

Then the story changed. In June 2009, Georgia Tech’s Peter Webster told Canadian researcher Stephen McIntyre that he had requested raw data, and Jones freely gave it to him. So McIntyre promptly filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the same data. Despite having been invited by the National Academy of Sciences to present his analyses of millennial temperatures, McIntyre was told that he couldn’t have the data because he wasn’t an “academic.” So his colleague Ross McKitrick, an economist at the University of Guelph, asked for the data. He was turned down, too.

Faced with a growing number of such requests, Jones refused them all, saying that there were “confidentiality” agreements regarding the data between CRU and nations that supplied the data. McIntyre’s blog readers then requested those agreements, country by country, but only a handful turned out to exist, mainly from Third World countries and written in very vague language.

It’s worth noting that McKitrick and I had published papers demonstrating that the quality of land-based records is so poor that the warming trend estimated since 1979 (the first year for which we could compare those records to independent data from satellites) may have been overestimated by 50 percent. Webster, who received the CRU data, published studies linking changes in hurricane patterns to warming (while others have found otherwise).

Enter the dog that ate global warming.

Roger Pielke Jr., an esteemed professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, then requested the raw data from Jones. Jones responded:
Since the 1980s, we have merged the data we have received into existing series or begun new ones, so it is impossible to say if all stations within a particular country or if all of an individual record should be freely available. Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites, only the station series after adjustment for homogeneity issues. We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (i.e., quality controlled and homogenized) data.
The statement about “data storage” is balderdash. They got the records from somewhere. The files went onto a computer. All of the original data could easily fit on the 9-inch tape drives common in the mid-1980s. I had all of the world’s surface barometric pressure data on one such tape in 1979.

If we are to believe Jones’s note to the younger Pielke, CRU adjusted the original data and then lost or destroyed them over twenty years ago. The letter to Warwick Hughes may have been an outright lie. After all, Peter Webster received some of the data this year. So the question remains: What was destroyed or lost, when was it destroyed or lost, and why?

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZTBiMTRlMDQxNzEyMmRhZjU3ZmYzODI5MGY4ZWI5OWM=

Another e-mail from Jones dated last year with the subject line “IPCC and FOI” is a request to Michael Mann, asking him to delete certain e-mails. Bloggers allege that Jones was trying to destroy data that had been requested under the Freedom of Information Act.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/11/climate-hack

Macha · 21-11-2009 8:07pm

ConsiderThis wrote: »

I think all those parts that appear to show the their agenda is less about a search for truth, and appears to be more concerned with withholding information, manipulating it to favour their case, and controlling the agenda.

Yes and I'm asking you which parts are those?

ConsiderThis wrote: »

What do you think the emails says about their agenda?

I certainly don't read into them what you seem to. That's why I'm asking you which specific parts you have a problem with.

Bucklesman · 21-11-2009 8:13pm

A spokesman for Greenpeace said: "If you looked through any organisation's emails from the last 10 years you'd find something that would raise a few eyebrows. Contrary to what the sceptics claim, the Royal Society, the US National Academy of Sciences, Nasa and the world's leading atmospheric scientists are not the agents of a clandestine global movement against the truth. This stuff might drive some web traffic, but so does David Icke."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/20/climate-sceptics-hackers-leaked-emails

Most sensible response in my opinion. Chill the beans, folks.

hiwayman · 21-11-2009 10:09pm

I havent looked at much of this yet and it might already be here, but it seems to help search through the leaked e-mails.
It'll take quite a while for anyone interested enough to get through this stuff and perhaps to make an informed judgement.

http://www.anelegantchaos.org/cru/

21-11-2009 10:12pm

The whole situation brings into focus the evidence that Governments are so keen to use as a reason for introducing "Carbon Taxation".

If proven it will blow the lid on one of the biggest con tricks ever devised by Western Governments on it's citizens since the "temporary" Income tax levied in the 18th century, or more recently the Iraqi "super-gun".

cnocbui · 21-11-2009 10:37pm

taconnol wrote: »

Yes and I'm asking you which parts are those?

I certainly don't read into them what you seem to. That's why I'm asking you which specific parts you have a problem with.

I don't know about Consider This, but I have reservations about what these seem to be saying:

I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.
The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.
As we all know, this isn’t about truth at all, its about plausibly deniable accusations. [This is from Michael Mann of the Hockey Stick]
The skeptics seem to be building up a head of steam here! … The IPCC comes in for a lot of stick. Leave it to you to delete as appropriate! Cheers Phil
PS I’m getting hassled by a couple of people to release the CRU station temperature data. Don’t any of you three tell anybody that the UK has a Freedom of Information Act !
If FOIA does ever get used by anyone, there is also IPR to consider as well. Data is covered by all the agreements we sign with people, so I will be hiding behind them. [From the same Phil as above, the director of CRU]
If you think that Saiers is in the greenhouse skeptics camp, then, if we can find documentary evidence of this, we could go through official AGU channels to get him ousted.
Phil, Here are some speculations on correcting SSTs to partly explain the 1940s warming blip. If you look at the attached plot you will see that the land also shows the 1940s blip (as I’m sure you know). So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC, then this would be significant for the global mean … It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip
I’ll maybe cut the last few points off the filtered curve before I give the talk again as that’s trending down as a result of the end effects and the recent cold-ish years.

You can delete this attachment if you want. Keep this quiet also, but this is the person who is putting in FOI requests for all emails Keith and Tim have written and received re Ch 6 of AR4. We think we've found a way around this.
And then there's this...
From: Phil Jones <p.jones@uea.ac.uk>
To: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@meteo.psu.edu>
Subject: IPCC & FOI
Date: Thu May 29 11:04:11 2008
Mike,
Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He's not in at the moment - minor family crisis.
Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don't have his new email address.
We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.
I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!!
Cheers
Phil

There is also the matter of apparent collusion to undermine the journal Climate Research and to force out an editor of that journal.

SLUSK · 22-11-2009 9:30am

This is what happens when you have government controlled "research". Lysenkoism all over.

HollyEvans · 22-11-2009 11:28am

I have been a long time believer in AGW. However over the last year or so I have been disgusted by the manipulation, lack of debate and smear campaigns used by various scientists.

This latest revelation has left me distraught and feeling that once again we may have been scammed.

djpbarry · 22-11-2009 9:33pm

cnocbui wrote: »

Er, yes.

That link doesn’t refer to a particular publication.

cnocbui wrote: »

It is the basis for my comments speculating that possibly the most serious aspect of this affair will turn out to be questions concerning the illegal thwarting of valid FOI requests.

Who says the FOI requests are valid and the ‘thwarting’ of said requests is illegal?

cnocbui wrote: »

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZTBiMTRlMDQxNzEyMmRhZjU3ZmYzODI5MGY4ZWI5OWM=

Ok, so we have an allegation here that the instrumental temperature record has been falsified in some way. Should we just take Mr. Michaels’ word for it? After all, this is a guy who (as far as I am aware) still questions whether the phasing out of CFC’s was necessary to prevent the destruction of the ozone layer, so you’ll have to excuse my scepticism.

djpbarry · 22-11-2009 9:37pm

cnocbui wrote: »

I don't know about Consider This, but I have reservations about what these seem to be saying:

What do they seem to be saying (assuming that the emails are genuine)? Take the first piece of text that you have highlighted: "...to hide the decline". Hide what decline? What's that about?

djpbarry · 22-11-2009 9:38pm

SLUSK wrote: »

This is what happens when you have government controlled "research".

Govenments rarely 'control' research. They might fund it, but that's a whole other matter.

djpbarry · 22-11-2009 9:39pm

HollyEvans wrote: »

I have been a long time believer in AGW. However over the last year or so I have been disgusted by the manipulation, lack of debate and smear campaigns used by various scientists.

Could you provide some examples?

HollyEvans · 22-11-2009 10:05pm

djpbarry wrote: »

Could you provide some examples?

Well for a start it is widely known and yet widely ignored that global temperatures have dropped since 1998.

We also have Al Gore hyping things out of all proportion and refusing to engage in any sort of open debate. It has also been suggested that he is to profit massively from carbon taxes.

Macha · 22-11-2009 11:47pm

HollyEvans wrote: »

Well for a start it is widely known and yet widely ignored that global temperatures have dropped since 1998.

That is not widely known but is probably widely ignored because it is incorrect.

The reality is that the ten warmest years in the period of instrumental measure have all occured in the past 12 years.

HollyEvans wrote: »

We also have Al Gore hyping things out of all proportion and refusing to engage in any sort of open debate. It has also been suggested that he is to profit massively from carbon taxes.

Suggested by who? Backed up with any proof?

djpbarry · 23-11-2009 1:12am

HollyEvans wrote: »

Well for a start it is widely known and yet widely ignored that global temperatures have dropped since 1998.

As taconnol says, I’m not sure that’s an accurate assessment, but the global temperature record is hardly a secret.

HollyEvans wrote: »

We also have Al Gore hyping things out of all proportion and refusing to engage in any sort of open debate. It has also been suggested that he is to profit massively from carbon taxes.

Again, I don’t know if that’s accurate, but Al Gore is not a scientist.

23-11-2009 1:22am

HollyEvans wrote: »

We also have Al Gore hyping things out of all proportion and refusing to engage in any sort of open debate. It has also been suggested that he is to profit massively from carbon taxes.

taconnol wrote: »

Suggested by who? Backed up with any proof?

http://www.theage.com.au/news/business/gore-makes-sustainable-investment-his-business/2005/11/13/1131816810708.html

As chairman of a British company, the former US vice-president still has global warming and long-term consequences on his mind, writes Peter Weekes.
AL GORE, the man who five years ago won the popular vote but lost the US presidential elections by a few hanging chads, has a stark warning for all investors.
"Capitalism is at a critical juncture," he says, arguing that the focus on short-term results is undermining issues such as the long-term sustainability of profits, how a company relates to the community and its employees, and the environment.
Australia's politicians might prefer to quietly retire after securing lucrative business consultancy deals, but Gore is out to make a noise as co-founder and chairman of British-based sustainable investing company Generation Investment.