This is a continuation of the last thread which is getting a little unwieldy. The emails cover a 13 year period in which many things happened, and very few people are up to speed on some of the long-buried issues. So to save some time, I’ve pulled a few bits out of the comment thread that shed some light on some of the context which is missing in some of the discussion of various emails.
- Trenberth: You need to read his recent paper on quantifying the current changes in the Earth’s energy budget to realise why he is concerned about our inability currently to track small year-to-year variations in the radiative fluxes.
- Wigley: The concern with sea surface temperatures in the 1940s stems from the paper by Thompson et al (2007) which identified a spurious discontinuity in ocean temperatures. The impact of this has not yet been fully corrected for in the HadSST data set, but people still want to assess what impact it might have on any work that used the original data.
- Climate Research and peer-review: You should read about the issues from the editors (Claire Goodess, Hans von Storch) who resigned because of a breakdown of the peer review process at that journal, that came to light with the particularly egregious (and well-publicised) paper by Soon and Baliunas (2003). The publisher’s assessment is here.
Update: Pulling out some of the common points being raised in the comments.
- HARRY_read_me.txt. This is a 4 year-long work log of Ian (Harry) Harris who was working to upgrade the documentation, metadata and databases associated with the legacy CRU TS 2.1 product, which is not the same as the HadCRUT data (see Mitchell and Jones, 2003 for details). The CSU TS 3.0 is available now (via ClimateExplorer for instance), and so presumably the database problems got fixed. Anyone who has ever worked on constructing a database from dozens of individual, sometimes contradictory and inconsistently formatted datasets will share his evident frustration with how tedious that can be.
- “Redefine the peer-reviewed literature!” . Nobody actually gets to do that, and both papers discussed in that comment – McKitrick and Michaels (2004) and Kalnay and Cai (2003) were both cited and discussed in Chapter
2 of3 the IPCC AR4 report. As an aside, neither has stood the test of time. - “Declines” in the MXD record. This decline was
hiddenwritten up in Nature in 1998 where the authors suggested not using the post 1960 data. Their actual programs (in IDL script), unsurprisingly warn against using post 1960 data. Added: Note that the ‘hide the decline’ comment was made in 1999 – 10 years ago, and has no connection whatsoever to more recent instrumental records. - CRU data accessibility. From the date of the first FOI request to CRU (in 2007), it has been made abundantly clear that the main impediment to releasing the whole CRU archive is the small % of it that was given to CRU on the understanding it wouldn’t be passed on to third parties. Those restrictions are in place because of the originating organisations (the various National Met. Services) around the world and are not CRU’s to break. As of Nov 13, the response to the umpteenth FOI request for the same data met with exactly the same response. This is an unfortunate situation, and pressure should be brought to bear on the National Met Services to release CRU from that obligation. It is not however the fault of CRU. The vast majority of the data in the HadCRU records is publicly available from GHCN (v2.mean.Z).
- Suggestions that FOI-related material be deleted … are ill-advised even if not carried out. What is and is not responsive and deliverable to an FOI request is however a subject that it is very appropriate to discuss.
- Fudge factors (update) IDL code in the some of the attached files calculates and applies an artificial ‘fudge factor’ to the MXD proxies to artificially eliminate the ‘divergence pattern’. This was done for a set of experiments reported in this submitted 2004 draft by Osborn and colleagues but which was never published. Section 4.3 explains the rationale very clearly which was to test the sensitivity of the calibration of the MXD proxies should the divergence end up being anthropogenic. It has nothing to do with any temperature record, has not been used in any published reconstruction and is not the source of any hockey stick blade anywhere.
Further update: This comment from Halldór Björnsson of the Icelandic Met. Service goes right to the heart of the accessibility issue:
Re: CRU data accessibility.
National Meteorological Services (NMSs) have different rules on data exchange. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) organizes the exchange of “basic data”, i.e. data that are needed for weather forecasts. For details on these see WMO resolution number 40 (see http://bit.ly/8jOjX1).
This document acknowledges that WMO member states can place restrictions on the dissemination of data to third parties “for reasons such as national laws or costs of production”. These restrictions are only supposed to apply to commercial use, the research and education community is supposed to have free access to all the data.
Now, for researchers this sounds open and fine. In practice it hasn’t proved to be so.
Most NMSs also can distribute all sorts of data that are classified as “additional data and products”. Restrictions can be placed on these. These special data and products (which can range from regular weather data from a specific station to maps of rain intensity based on satellite and radar data). Many nations do place restrictions on such data (see link for additional data on above WMO-40 webpage for details).
The reasons for restricting access is often commercial, NMSs are often required by law to have substantial income from commercial sources, in other cases it can be for national security reasons, but in many cases (in my experience) the reasons simply seem to be “because we can”.
What has this got to do with CRU? The data that CRU needs for their data base comes from entities that restrict access to much of their data. And even better, since the UK has submitted an exception for additional data, some nations that otherwise would provide data without question will not provide data to the UK. I know this from experience, since my nation (Iceland) did send in such conditions and for years I had problem getting certain data from the US.
The ideal, that all data should be free and open is unfortunately not adhered to by a large portion of the meteorological community. Probably only a small portion of the CRU data is “locked” but the end effect is that all their data becomes closed. It is not their fault, and I am sure that they dislike them as much as any other researcher who has tried to get access to all data from stations in region X in country Y.
These restrictions end up by wasting resources and hurting everyone. The research community (CRU included) and the public are the victims. If you don’t like it, write to you NMSs and urge them to open all their data.
I can update (further) this if there is demand. Please let me know in the comments, which, as always, should be substantive, non-insulting and on topic.
Comments continue here.
Okay thanks for the various answers to my question about whether climate modelling physics is chaotic or not.
It seems there are different views on this which is in itself disturbing since if we cannot agree on the type of physics on which we base climate modelling then one has to wonder about the accuracy from a foundational perspective.
But seeing how Gavin has stated that the jury is out on whether climate is chaotic, i have a follow on question.
If its not chaotic and does not abide by the same unpredictability inherent in non linear dynamics then why are terms such as “tipping points” being used to describe climate change? As far as Im aware tipping points are a property of chaotic systems. Can someone please explain why chaotic properties are being used in descriptions if the climate is not chaotic?
[Response: Not quite the same concept. An upside down pendulum has a tipping point (from whence the term derives), but it isn’t chaotic. There are plenty of non-linearities in climate, and a lot of hysteresis. It’s much harder to grow and ice sheet than it is to melt it. It’s harder to warm an ocean than it is to cool it. It’s easier to kill a forest than it is to regrow one etc. But read my take on ‘tipping points’ as used in the public discourse. – gavin]
One more thing i noticed, which is someone said in an above post something along the lines of: “because climate science is based on averages that smudges out the sort of unpredictability seen in open ended non linear systems”.
But then they went on to say that climate models can accurately predict the temperatures for next year. If thats the case why has the Met Office got their predictions so wrong. Here in the Uk we were told it would be a Barbecue Summer this year. Well it was the opposite and certainly no BBQ summer (more the pity).
So how can we claim to be able to predict temps next year when the Met Office gets its longrange climate predictions so wrong?
re 314
Dan
I don’t think this can be looked at without taking the viewpoint of the public. That’s a shame because I think that there is damned little in here that actually SHOULD lead either of them to step down. However, my comment stands. There is never again (for a lot of people) going to be any acceptance that anything Mann or Jones touch has validity. OTOH, for them to step down is to give the appearance of validity to the claims… so it is really a first-class political issue.
The cost of openness – giving them data, and letting them have enough rope to hang themselves and then stringing the bad science up for all to see when it inevitably appears, is admittedly high. However this is now seriously worse.
Stonewalling doesn’t cut it for a public research group. Its the wrong philosophy to apply, and it appears that it is one promoted and supported by Jones and Mann. With openness McIntyre would have had his fangs pulled and might even have done us some good. He is a decent statistician… and it is easy to make a mistake trying to deal with these datasets. We would have been made busier answering him, but the denialsphere would have festered and died without the poisonous atmosphere we helped to create by trying not to answer him.
The science became political the instant that public policy needed changing to account for it. That means that we very much DO have to worry about what people think and at the moment, they don’t think a lot of us. We have to do better. Jones is going to have to go through a very public grilling and release process to get the public back on side, and I don’t think that it will work anyway. It might be worth a try though.
Basically this: Jones has to answer ALL the questions. We’ve sort of provided a practice run for the process here with Gavin answering… and I can’t imagine how this has been a nightmare of the first order for him. At this point the worst is not that bad and the answers are known… so it is likely Jones COULD answer. It isn’t a question of whether he wants to or not. At this point he has to defend each of these points publicly and in doing so defend his integrity. It would get messy, but I am also afraid that the answer would be that he cannot. Not because he doesn’t have the answers, but because it goes against his nature to do it.
respectfully
BJ
[Response: Your criticism of Mann and Jones is completely misplaced. For starters, Mike has never been under an FOI request and can never have deleted anything that was under a non-existant request, furthermore he has been very clear that nothing was deleted in any case. Getting an email asking you to do something is not the same as doing it. With respect to Jones, his comment was clearly ill-advised but whether anything was actually done is unknown. As for a poisonous atmosphere.. let me just state that the first post McIntyre made about me was to question my honesty – because of a comment he made on RealClimate on Christmas Eve night that I didn’t get around to posting until the day after the holidays. And that is not an isolated incident. – gavin]
Alex #471
As a scientist, having read — and I felt dirty doing it — a dozen or so of the supposedly worst ones, my answer is: Yes. Yes! This precisely is how hard-working, honest scientists passionate about their science communicate and collaborate. Anyone should be proud to be a part of that.
There is nothing there. You thinking differently without even understanding the substance of the mails just shows that you have an dirty mind. Honi soit qui mal y pense.
Petey said in #468:
“They use a day over day moving average much like stock traders use (this metric has proved one of the most accurate historical indicators of stock performance).”
So, I take it you have by now made tons of money in the stock market using your “most accurate historical indicator of stock performance” and are now comfortably retired?
“…forecasting [global temperature] a century out look to stay the same”
Again, using your simple but “most accurate historical indicator of stock performance”, can you tell me where Dow Jones or S&P 500 will be tomorrow, in 1 month, 1 year, 100 years? Should be a pretty simple thing to do if you have such a reliable model, right?
RE David Cordon @458 (for now):
I would direct you to Mike Mann’s PNAS paper and supplemental information in PNAS and his PSU web site.
There is also a recent paper covered on this site that tackles the robustness of the bristlecone pine reconstructions. For Yamal, Keith Briffa and Tom Melvin has a series of posts (starting here relative to their reconstructions. Unfortunately, these pages are down along with the rest of the CRU pages, but I hear they are cached.
These should provide the context for Gavin’s answer.
Gavin, You are clearly working hard. I presume that you judge that your actions are of high ethical standards. But I would like to ask you to consider the possibility that behaviour that would be acceptable in an ordinary acedemic setting may need modification if your conclusions will be affecting (one way or the other) the lives of billions of people.
Two specific points
Peer reviewing – confering between reviewers, so not having independent reviews
Abrupt dismissal of people of different (possibly less informed) opinions e.g. from your comments above ‘Playing semantic word games’, ‘Weird’
I would suggest that, given the importance of climate science
– Peer reviews be carried (in so far as possible) independently
– There is a modification of tone from some climate scientists – communicating more of an effort to try to understand the concerns of the unconvinced, if only to explain these away. (After all, the question of why many people come to these different conclusions is a valid scientific question in itself, whose answer lies in a mixture of climate science and various fields of psychology / analysis of decision making).
A hill-walking analogy – you are used to going on long walks by yourself or with other fit adults. But now you are in charge of a large group of children and need to help get them safely down off the hill. Its a very different role.
I am sure you are aware of your (huge) responsibilities – this blog is a major undertaking in itself in that direction. Your work is a key underpining of decisions that involve trillions of dollars (equivalent to millions of lives saved or lost). This is so serious a task that it would not be surprising if it required and requires changes in ways of doing things. Please consider whether you can find such improvements.
Best wishes
Peter Cunningham
(If you are interested, I am a mathematician by background, now working as a consultant engineer in the oil industry. In case any readers are wondering, I have not been paid to make this comment. In fact, I am running a small risk of losing business, since my clients would prefer to avoid even indirect links to climate change controversy).
220,
Try here: http://BartonPaulLevenson.com/Lag.html
Hans: ROFLMAO!!! I love it! Terrific free verse!
Does this help or hurt your predicament?
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2009-11-24-copenhagen-united-nations-emails_N.htm
“A controversy over leaked e-mails exchanged among global warming scientists is part of a “smear campaign” to derail next month’s United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen, one of the scientists, meteorologist Michael Mann, said Tuesday.”
How does this much differ in its attempt to influence the Copenhagen meeting than the release of the emails?
“Somerville, Mann and 24 other scientists released a report Tuesday with what they said was new evidence of climate change and its effects. Among their findings:”
You have a pile of lemons. Why would you want more? Why not make lemonade? What was it the other day 9 million hits on this web site? I can see you are doing that with the links at the top of this comments section.
How about the authors of the emails stop complaining about the “evil hacker in the pay of the “evil conspirators of industry” and acknowledge that the emails sound bad. — But while they are at it take advantage of the spot light to “come clean” and at the same time explain why it is that they believe they are correct in the long term?
I have seen a lot of talk previously that Global dimming from the 40’s until the late 70’s did not happen. Not sure where that info was coming from. However if you are trying prove your case to the public that Man Made Global warming is a serious issue the largest problem you have is proving that man can have a large scale effect on the climate. Not that the climate can change or not.
You are asking the people of the world to trust you while demanding that they make huge sacrifices in their lives. They have the right to know all the facts whether it is felt that they have the right to know and discuss them or not. Without people making them out to be stupid for discussing it. That is the real reason the emails matter.
Solar power is fast becoming a better option than burning fossil fuels to generate electricity. Not because it is greener, but because it is cheaper. Seems like it is much better to use carrots instead of sticks.
And in case it was missed the last time I posted it and to drive it home: “The humble shall inherit the earth”. Unless “climate scientist” and “humble” are a contradiction in terms, you should not have a problem with the emails. Why are you wasting your time in the spot light trying to deny their significance?
You published on this site “Fred Singer!!!??? Give me a break…This is the harlot that fought for the tobacco industry”
I had rather thought you were, allegedly, serious about what you do and publish.
Anand Rajan: To pass draconian laws issued from the mouth of a quasigovernmental body that will affect the whole globe and the future of ‘humanity’, to want to do that, is wrong.
BPL: What Draconian laws and what quasigovernmental body would that be? I’m not aware of any.
Re:357 J.Bob. I don’t what I’m even bothering to refute your pathetic comments. Umm..sea level rise is 80% higher than the previous IPCC projections (oh! of course Bob..the whole planet’s landmass is sinking..why didn’t I think of that before). I have just been to the Australian Bureau of Meterology web site..www.bom.gov.au and saw the frequency of min temps vs max temps in australia over the past 40 years. Check it out and for Christsake Bob put a permanent sock in it will you!!
Mark Gibb: “regardless of the science, I just cannot accept”
Hank Roberts: giving the most likely reason for the Fermi Paradox in a nutshell.
BPL: I’ve thought about that a lot lately. I used to be very interested in the Fermi Paradox. I had my own solution for it, which got turned down by the journals. But the “Where are they?” question has always haunted me since I started studying habitable planet astronomy.
Nuclear war killing civilizations off never seemed too likely to me, despite the three we almost had on Earth (1962, 1971, 1983). There was no incentive for them; too many obvious losers and no clear winners. But in global warming, the advantage from denial is huge–a trillion dollars a year. Maybe this is the bottleneck advanced civilizations have to go through. The ones able to summon enough social responsibility to go to renewables continue to advance; the ones who let their climate go to hell decline to the point where they can’t make or use radio telescopes any more.
“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”
I see for defending this email you’ve concentrated on the the word ‘trick’, but surely the important part of this sentence is ‘to hide the decline’?
Sure a ‘trick’ might be a clever bit of science or whatever, but it doesn’t really matter what it is if it’s only there to hide parts of the actual data.
Quite a clever piece of psychology going on about the word trick though, it almost made me overlook the rest of it.
[Response: They ‘hid’ the decline in a paper in Nature. How clever of them. – gavin]
“You have changed your argument, from one that professed no care even as a human being for the fate of the planet, to now discussing the best method to prevent harm. ”
Gavin,
You thought a good portion of my post was colorfully incendiary and deleted it, and you are calling it off-topic?
Do you believe there can be situations where one has ‘foreknowledge’ but not to act on it is the best thing to do?
And to top it, you let Ron R post his example of the falling bridge. Isn’t that ironic?
Let me list the parallels that I see:
1)Excessive action based on premises that seemed shaky to a lot of people
2)A small group of individuals who control the debate and shut out opposition with appeal to sentiment.
3)Endless discussion of data, noise and data. Lots of circumstantial and indirect evidence but none otherwise.
4)Doomsday predictions if action were not taken immediately
5)And finally, people who admitted in private to having doubts, but kept a strong public front with the exact opposite opinion.
And all this was an example of whether to take action or not, by demonstration of its consequences. There is a better reason why scientists should not ‘care for the planet’. It interferes with their work, this messianic attitude. Deny to me the numerous comments which goad you on to ‘keep up the good work’ because you are on a mission to save the world. What do they mean indirectly? Ignore the email requests that ask for data/conclusions to be deleted before FOI requests, that’s what. I am repeating this, anything would seem justifiable to a scientist who sets himself up to ‘save the world’ – that is the seed of totalitarianism for you.
If a small ‘slip’ like this were to happen in a competitive academic environment, the sharks will tear you to shreds. I don’t know what kind of scientific community the climatologists move in. Maybe you all ‘work together to save the world’.
You may actually be working to save us all, and the conclusions from your science may be correct, but you are still suspect.
Is is really that difficult for scientists to understand that they *have* to remain detached from their work? Irrespective of the exactitude of foreknowledge they might possess? Is that really too much to ask for?
Ron R
So when I question the powers of a vague international body to pass laws that impact the whole world, you come back with a personal angle – something toxic dumped in my backyard. Do you what you just did is called? ‘Scare tactics’. I think the question I raised initially (why should the globe not warm up at all?) requires a better response from the climatologist community, than just scare tactics.
“Not a smidgen of feeling for the majesty and beauty of the only living planet…”
I believe the earth is just a blue ball with some green stuff stuck on it and humans crawling all over. Feeling miserable all the time. And looking for something to strike out at.
That’s is my perspective.
Now my question is: Why should your perspective (a fawning worshipping one) be the lens through which we see the world we both live in? And pass laws which impact me? And perform science which generates data (and Fortran programs) that support your conclusions?
pete: Today, on behalf of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, I filed three Notices of Intent to File Suit against NASA and its Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), for those bodies’ refusal – for nearly three years – to provide documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act.
BPL: Bravo! You are finally standing up to this nonexistent conspiracy. It’s about time we fought back against the reality-based community and their attempt to force sanity on the rest of us! Human freedom depends on our ability to space out and live in the world inside our heads! Don’t let them take it away!
Sean @465 asked: “As well, could someone point me to a historical reconstruction that does not graft instrumental temperature data? All I’m looking for is a study that does not suffer the pitfalls of divergence. Thanks”
Gavin responded: “Any of them. See the NOAA list.”
Well, just to pick one, I had a look at “Global & Hemispheric Temperature (CPS & EIV: Tree Rings, Multiproxy), 2,000 Years, Mann et al. 2008” Clearly, only the temperature record is at the end of this series … the ‘hockeystick’ portion.
Of course, this graph makes it hard to tell exactly where the temperature record comes in. The CRU instrument record is bold, in red, which obscures all the other endpoints. Perhaps a clearer graph would be warranted, one that shows how well these proxies compare to instruments for the last 20-40 years?
[Response: All of the individual data series are in the files. Plot them up and see for yourself. – gavin]
Ed: It seems fairly clear to a casual observer that these “hackers” are among your own ranks, and that bias is too easy to introduce in the face of complexity.
BPL: It seems especially clear after a few hits of LSD.
Re: 376 Mark Gibb; I am with a similar opinion to that of Hank. Sure human’s have great potential..but to get that potential focussed on a single cause with all the countless other’s with a very different veted interest will be I believe be quite impossible to achieve. With the significant timelag in trying to change/alter global climate not to mention to get the oceans back to a sort of crude equilibrium will take thousands of years, they will become sterile anyway without the millions of forms of biomass needed for it’s homeostasis. We know there is at the very least 100-150+ years of increasing ocean acidification hardwired into the system and at least 100 years of climatic atmospheric warming built into the system. What was the gross tonnage of global GH emmissions in 1909 to what it is now?. Don’t forget that 100 years ago most of that pollution was carbon soot based and so should have a cooling effect on climate, now it is largely chemical and nano particualte compounds including our ol buddy CFC’s which are still buzzing around up there and all the other flourine compounds which are blocking the ability of the sun’s energy radiating back into space. So yes human’s have heaps of potential..but we simply have left it far too late. I dunno know..is the world worth saving if most of fauna and flora is dead or dying..all we would be be creating is a virtual hell on earth of our future children for many centuries to come…do we really want that for them?
RE Jose
Gavin’s hours spent on his grant work and on this site are between him and his supervisor. As taxpayers, we give oversight authority to granting agencies, delegated to the program officer and grants special-ist (NIH titles; YMMV) and their concern is the investigator’s progress towards the milestones that were delineated in the approved grant application. The metrics for this are generally the number and quality of his publications and more detailed information is generally contained in the reports that he furnishes to the granting agencies. I do not know Gavin, but I do know science from the practicing end and the granting end, and I can make a couple of inferences:
1. For scientist of Gavin’s stature (deduced by his grant support and publications), a 40-hour work week is almost like a vacation. Besides the number crunching, paper and grant application writing, reporting, staff oversight, etc., there are the responsibilities in being a “peer” for “peer review” of manuscripts and grant applications. Further support depends on the success of these tasks.
2. For the return on our investment, we can look at Gavin’s publication record. In 2009 Gavin has 14 papers published and 1 paper in press. He is the only, first or senior author on 9 of these papers. Oh yeah, also a book (highly recommended, BTW). During this time, he has also been doing the RC thing. By any measure, he has not been slacking.
The metric of Gavin’s public service in devoting his time to defending climate science is incalculable, and his willingness to engage us and his patience in a time when he and his colleagues are under attack is impressive. Gavin, I’ve tried to get the numbers right; if any of this is in error, please correct.
[Response: Thanks. Only 11 of the papers this year (but there are a few more in press) are peer-reviewed. One is a pop sci. article, one is a News and Views, one is an encyclopedia entry (which was reviewed but not in the same way). And you are right, a 40 hour work week would be a vacation. – gavin]
Hi Gavin,
Seeing as lots of people complain about the emails being “taken out of context” I would like to point you guys to one of the players in the email drama and his requests for information under FOI Act. His name is Willis Eschenbach. He lays out his emails and requests for information from CRU and their replies in light of some of the leaked emails. Very illuminating about the scientific method.
Warning: this is not flattering for CRU at all.
http://omniclimate.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/willis-vs-the-cru-a-history-of-foi-evasion/
I hope this post gets through as it adds something to the debate and there is nothing offensive here.
Paul Swanson: Could you direct me to papers that discuss the ability of the atmosphere to store energy based on its composition?
BPL: Heat content is:
H = m cp T
where m is the mass of the object (in kilograms in the SI), cp the specific heat at constant pressure (Joules per Kelvin per kilogram), and T the absolute temperature (Kelvins). Clearly the product is in Joules.
The specific heats for the various gases, along with their molecular weights, are here:
http://BartonPaulLevenson.com/GasDatabase.html
The total mass of the atmosphere is 5.148 x 10^18 kg according to one recent estimate. Other estimates are very close to that.
The mass fraction of a gas is the volume fraction times the molecular weight divided by the air’s mean molecular weight:
F = X (M / Mair)
For a list of volume fractions, try here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_atmosphere
If you want a quick-and-dirty estimate, the mean cp for the atmosphere is about 1007 J/K/kg, so the atmosphere at a mean temperature of 260 K holds
5.148e18 x 1007 x 260 = about 1.35 x 10^24 Joules.
To get a more accurate estimate, divide the atmosphere up into layers each with its own mean temperature and composition, recalculate, and average. Then change the composition to see how the heat capacity alters.
Gavin, Mike, Ray, Eric et al. — the fact that you are being sued and publicly slandered on radio programs implies that the deniers consider you a chief enemy — which probably means you’re being really effective. There’s always a silver lining. As someone in a thriller put it, “Wow, we must be really close to something important if they’re trying to kill us!”
from the CRU emails:
“I wanted you guys to know that you’re free to use RC in any way you think would be helpful. Gavin and I are going to be careful about what comments we screen through…. We can hold comments up in the queue and contact you about whether or not you think they should be screened through or not, and if so, any comments you’d like us to include.
[T]hink of RC as a resource that is at your disposal…. We’ll use our best discretion to make sure the skeptics don’t get to use the RC comments as a megaphone.”
Is this site about science or propaganda?
[Response: Science. But the signal is drowned out by anti-science and noise if the comments are un-moderated. No apologies for that. If questions come in that we don’t know the answer for, we asked the authors of the study in question to respond. No apologies for that either. This is the thread in question. – gavin]
#447 – inks says (24 November 2009 at 8:32 PM): “So the claim is we know he deleted emails because he didn’t delete an emails.”
Good one. Bears repeating!
I also look forward to weeks and weeks of this:
– CRU showed climate science can’t be trusted because they won’t let outsiders check their work.
– But NASA’s climate scientists their data and code public?!
– That just proves the CRU had something to hide.
– Well, whatever you think about those emails, the planet’s still warming.
– No it’s not. It hasn’t warmed for the past twelve years. It’s cooled.
– Yes, it has. NASA GISS shows warming.
– Well, obviously you can’t trust that.
– So where do you get your “cooling” data?
– From the prestigious HadCRU temp record… the Had… cru… waitaminnit… dammit….
#466 J. Bob… ” more noticeable increase from 1995 to ~2007, and now what appears to be a drop in temps. So depending on your point of view”
Why don’t you ask an Arctic fellow, like myself, if its a cooling? I can tell you that it isn’t. When its 10 to +15 degrees above normal for prolongued periods , we notice over here. But don’t take my word for it… What point of view do you need to use to interpret this:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/map/images/fnl/sfctmpmer_30b.fnl.gif
Does it look like its cooler here?
Or this for the year?
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/map/images/fnl/sfctmpmer_365b.fnl.gif
Cooling you say? ….. Wow! I must live in Disneyland… Or is it Arctic land in Florida?…
#474, totally agree with Eric, although you don’t have to read stolen e-mails to be confused. The process of discussing any subject of endeavor may appear to be messy, its intimate between colleagues, and its not a conspiration to fake data, rather its the data, needing to be slowly put together with a lot of dedication which conspires to reveal the truth, which at one time or another may defy current thinking.
Why not read published data?
…..Open to scrutiny, and not an invasion of privacy! Before acting like a peeping tom, or worse , like a propagandist, looking for a flaw in order to assassinate careers, to make this theft worse than it already is, conspiring with criminals to prove a point is a new low in the contrarian world…
This is an excerpt from George Monbiot in the Guardian:
“But there are some messages that require no spin to make them look bad. There appears to be evidence here of attempts to prevent scientific data from being released, and even to destroy material that was subject to a freedom of information request.
Worse still, some of the emails suggest efforts to prevent the publication of work by climate sceptics, or to keep it out of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I believe that the head of the unit, Phil Jones, should now resign. Some of the data discussed in the emails should be re-analysed.”
What are these statements based on? I would like to see links to the actual e-mails so I can judge for myself. Let me see the “worst” ones in their proper context.
Dear Gavin – as more evidence comes out of the FOI2009 data, it becomes increasingly difficult, IMO, to defend some of these comments.
Here is a tidbit from the file data4alps.pro: “IMPORTANT NOTE: The data after 1960 should not be used. The tree-ring density’ records tend to show a decline after 1960 relative to the summer temperature in many high-latitude locations. In this data set this “decline” has been artificially removed in an ad-hoc way, and this means that data after 1960 no longer represent tree-ring density variations, but have been modified to look more like the observed temperatures.”
[Response: Fine, but what was this used for or in? Was it simply an internally used calculation or what if? The post 1960 decline in a single proxy (the MXD series) is well known and has been discussed openly for over a decade. What has been hidden? – gavin]
It’s not conclusive by itself of course. But taken in combination with many other bits (“hide the decline”) a robust pattern is beginning to emerge, indicating that the proxy data has been cherry-picked to an astonishing degree, in order to reinforce a pre-conceived notion. (For an example of such a pre-conceived notion: efforts to “contain” the Medieval Warm Period – a quote from #1054736277 seems to confirm David Deeming’s statement to Congress about [edit – this is not what Deeming said] [the] desire to “get rid of” the warm medieval period: “…addresses a good earlier point that Peck made w/ regard to the memo, that it would be nice to try to “contain” the putative “MWP”…”)
[Response: Read that email again. In it Overpeck denies categorically ever making the statement that Deeming has discussed. Perhaps Deeming would like to make his email public? And yes, the MWP as a global phenomena is ‘putative’. – gavin]
I wonder, Gavin, if you can ask around, maybe get a copy of “the memo” for us to see (and Peck’s comments on it, if he’s willing to share)? Apparently there are quite a few people (Mann, Jones, Wigley, Crowley, Briffa, etc.) who were a part of this conversation, and should probably understand the reference.
[Response: Only Deeming knows about this email and he has never disclosed its text, nor its origin, nor its context. I suggest you ask CEI to sue him for you. – gavin]
#491 Well Brian we will just have to wait and see. However looking at the more recent global temp info
http://www.imagenerd.com/uploads/climate4u-lt-temps-Ljbug.gif
and the Arctic temp data from my above Rimfrost ref., coupled with the modest Arctic “recovery”, I don’t think Santa and elves will be waterlogged soon, and if I’m wrong, I’ll be the first to admit it.
Almost forgot, I have to compliment Gavin for opening the “gate”, seems I was “persona non grata” until recently.
Prince Prospero,
Speaking of ethical conduct by scientists, what’s your real name and where are you employed? Where and when did you get your degree? What articles have you published in peer-reviewed journals? Try as I might, I can’t remember ANY physics articles with “Prince Prospero” or “Prospero, P.” or “P. Prospero” as an author or co-author.
The Supreme Court ruled that the federal government couldn’t stop the NY Times from printing them based on a presumption that a crime had been committed. Prior restraint of this kind was deemed in violation of the First Amendment.
The ruling didn’t say anything about not being able to go after the Times *after they’d printed* the content.
Ellsberg faced 150 years of prison time for releasing the secret materials. He won not based on any principle or legal ruling that what he did was OK, but rather due to the FBI and administration having broken so many laws in their effort to determine who did it that when all that illegally obtained evidence was tossed out of court, the DOJ no longer had a case.
I sit on a panel that reviews scientific information, and makes recommendations to government based on that information. For the record, I am NOT a scientist, but have worked with that community for over 2 decades, so I certainly understand protocol and procedure, and especially what peer review is.
I am also pervue to the discussions that the scientists have prior to their findings being forwarded to our panel.
Never have I seen this type of discussion… ever. The scientists I have had the privilege to work with would be horrified.
Let me give you one example. A certain study came up with a result that appeared to pass peer review, however, when the statistical analyses was looked at again, rather than forwarding the results, the whole exercise was sent back for re-evaluation. To the embarrassment of the primary researcher, it required another 2 year intensive re-evaluation, and then different, but similar, results that were now substantiated were received.
The issue did not involve climate change, but a similar issue of public interest with just about as much controversy. There were many people who had made foregone conclusions which the initial study seemed to substantiate, and I know the researcher personally, and I know he has prejudices that probably influenced the original outcome. Fortunately, he was able to overcome his prejudices to produce a proper study.
Why can’t these scientist, rather than obfuscating the issue, do things the proper way?
[Response: What are you referring to? Your example is fine, but what paper in climate science do you think needs to be sent back for a do-over that hasn’t been? McLean et al (2009)? Douglass et al (2008) perhaps? – gavin]
One of the most interesting of the leaked e-mails is, to my eyes, the one which includes reference to the 1910 – 1940 ‘problem’.
“It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip,
but we are still left with “why the blip”.
Let me go further. If you look at NH vs SH and the aerosol
effect (qualitatively or with MAGICC) then with a reduced
ocean blip we get continuous warming in the SH, and a cooling
in the NH — just as one would expect with mainly NH aerosols.
The other interesting thing is (as Foukal et al. note — from
MAGICC) that the 1910-40 warming cannot be solar. The Sun can
get at most 10% of this with Wang et al solar, less with Foukal
solar. So this may well be NADW, as Sarah and I noted in 1987
(and also Schlesinger later). A reduced SST blip in the 1940s
makes the 1910-40 warming larger than the SH (which it
currently is not) — but not really enough.
So … why was the SH so cold around 1910? Another SST problem?
(SH/NH data also attached.)”
This 1910-1940 issue goes to the heart as to what level of confidence we can have in the AGW theory and the associated GCMs.
Upto now it seems that certain AGW scientists and advocates have been happy to wave their hands a bit whilst muttering Solar and Aerosols as the answer as to why global temperatures increased at a similar rate during this period as compared to the latter part of the century, with little help from increasing CO2 levels.
I have known all along that this is rubbish. If you believe in AGW then you can only allow a small fraction of the observed increase in temperatures to be attributable to increased solar activity. As far as aerosols go, this is a direct lie. Aerosols increased very sharply during this time. This is a fact confirmed by the Greenland ice cores.
Now we can see, in writing, that this problem is unresolved by scientists at the heart of the AGW hypothesis and they do not believe the meme they have happily allowed to become established as the answer to this ‘problem’.
So we know for certain that we have a situation where an unknown combination of climatic factors caused the global temperatures to rise at a significant rate comparable to the late 20th century and this remains unresolved.
I am sure that most people here can see what this means for the AGW hypothesis. Logic dictates that if you cannot explain one rise over a similar period then you cannot explain another rise over a similar period. Unless you can identify and isolate the significant factors in the earlier period then you cannot know whether these unknown factors are driving the rise in the latter period, it is unarguable logic.
This disconnect has been hidden in my view. It needs to be addressed and made known and highlighted in all discussions with policy makers etc. Willful failure to do so would be similar to sticking fingers in your ears and going “La La La……”!
I would appreciate someone at RC addressing this issue and justify pushing ahead with very costly change to society whilst this huge issue lies unresolved at the heart of the AGW hypothesis.
Please don’t give the glib answer that ‘Just because we don’t know everything, doesn’t mean that we know nothing’ Can there be a more fatuous and vacuous statement when it comes to science?
Is there any other area of science that would give a free pass to a theory that had huge uncertainties, unresolved crucial issues and downright conflicts in emperical observations at the centre of the arguement just by using the phrase ‘Just because…….’?
Alan
Can’t HadCru just release a version of their temperature analysis that doesn’t use the commercial data sets (which I gather are supplementary, but not necessary, as GISS doesn’t use them)? Or do they already do this? It might take a bit of work to create yet another product, but at some point, it becomes worthwhile to deprive McIntyre of a talking point. He’d just invent another one, but you do what you can.
On the other hand, couldn’t McIntyre just sweet-talk the CEI into buying him the commercial data sets?
The denialsphere screaming over peer review leads to the position that this paper should’ve been published as is, rather than sent back for correction.
Because the Evil E-mails show that climate scientists have worked to limit publication of bad work, by discussing possibly pressuring editors who do so, and apparently this is wrong. Apparently half of the editorial board of Climate Research resigning in protest is wrong.
The trash must be published, not rejected or sent back for correction before publication.
Or do you read the screaming over this differently than I do?
Of course, the e-mail you are using to describe this as “rubbish”, is describing OBSERVED CHANGES IN SOLAR ACTIVITY.
If it’s not changed sufficiently to explain warming, then it’s not the source of observed recent warming.
Apparently you want to replace observation with your belief that “it is all solar”.
Gavin, I would be interested in answering some questions I have (feel free to send to my e-mail instead of the comments thread which is rather full).
1. These e-mails surely do show something of an academic clique in climate science? Does this clique actually exist?
[Response: Ummm… if you hack into a server of emails and publish some of them from one or two senders/recipients, it might be expected that you would get a set of emails that reflect those people’s contacts and colleagues. Why is that a clique? There are thousands of other researchers whose emails are not present and who do climate science – people from NCAR, GISS, Jamstec, Scripps, WHOI, MPI, Hadley Centre, GFDL, IPSL, CNRS, Kiel, Bremen, Edinburgh, Chicago, U. Washington, Irvine, Bristol, Jena, Georgia Tech etc. etc. I’m sure they all discuss issues in climate science too. – gavin]
2. Rightly or wrongly, can you see why these e-mails actually put off neutral observors (i.e. people from other disciplines being asked by climate scientists to trust their findings)? I mean if many, if not most, disciplines rely on information from climatologists – many will have completely natural doubts perhaps based on ignorance (they are not ‘stupid’ simply unexposed to particular material).
3. As a student, what worries me most is the e-mails regarding the journal (cannot remember the name), where (I think) Michael Mann suggests getting 50+ academics to pressure the *publisher* and force resignations from the editorial board. Was this petition put to the publisher? Can you cite any other example (in other disciplines) of when this has occurred?
[Response: No petition was organised, and nobody was forced to resign. The resignations were because of the editors own problems with how the journal was being run. Given that Hans von Storch was the chief editor who resigned, the idea that he was doing so at the urging to Mike Mann is, frankly, rather difficult to contemplate. See the links above for the editors own statements on this. – gavin]
In short, surely when anyone talks of ‘neutral’ observor, you actually mean departments/disciplines that have to trust the diagnosis of another discipline. Surely, you must see that these e-mails play to the intuitive doubts that academics have when being confronted with a resource demands of another discipline.
“s there any other area of science that would give a free pass to a theory that had huge uncertainties, unresolved crucial issues and downright conflicts in emperical observations at the centre of the arguement just by using the phrase ‘Just because…….’?”
Try reading the data sheets that come with medications, just for one example. Often huge uncertainties and unresolved issues with drugs yet people use them all the time without question. The research and science that supports global warming is much stronger than most science that is accepted with little question. Thus, another example of why denialists are simply political tools because they fail to understand the science and they fail to understand how science is conducted through the scientific method.
The grandiosity of the agenda which a party of climate activists has drawn up is quite alarming. At the same time, there is mounting evidence that the scientists advising them are neither wholly disinterested nor wholly scrupulous. The co-dependent appeal to a politician’s fantasy of omnipotence, embedded in any campaign calling for action to save us from our sins of intemperance, is a potential risk-factor which should not be dismissed out of hand. Loss of trust is as great a danger as global warming. Therefore the need, to validate their claims, and to do so beyond reasonable doubt, is now imperative. If we cannot demonstrate seriousness in tackling that problem, how can anyone believe that we are capable of changing the climate, or justify the severe taxation envisaged to fund the attempt?
I’ve attempted to give my readers some context into the conflict between scientists and contrarians in regards to this hacked email affair by tracing the history of the Manufactured Doubt industry in my latest blog post. Regarding the hacked email affair, I state:
“You’ll hear claims by some contrarians that the emails discovered invalidate the whole theory of human-caused global warming. Well, all I can say is, consider the source. We can trust the contrarians to say whatever is in the best interests of the fossil fuel industry. What I see when I read the various stolen emails and explanations posted at Realclimate.org is scientists acting as scientists–pursuing the truth. I can see no clear evidence that calls into question the scientific validity of the research done by the scientists victimized by the stolen emails. There is no sign of a conspiracy to alter data to fit a pre-conceived ideological view. Rather, I see dedicated scientists attempting to make the truth known in face of what is probably the world’s most pervasive and best-funded disinformation campaign against science in history. Even if every bit of mud slung at these scientists were true, the body of scientific work supporting the theory of human-caused climate change–which spans hundreds of thousands of scientific papers written by tens of thousands of scientists in dozens of different scientific disciplines–is too vast to be budged by the flaws in the works of the three or four scientists being subject to the fiercest attacks”.
Manufactured Doubt campaigns are an inevitable result of our corporate system of law, and we can expect any company that makes a dangerous product to protect their profits by waging a disinformation campaign against the science saying that their product is dangerous.
Jeff Masters, Weather Underground
Blair Dowden #527:
Satisfy your voyeurism at Monbiot’s site. Remember though that there’s still no proper context — these have been selected by criminals with an agenda.
Blair Dowden #527:
Sorry, that’s
Monbiot’s site
Followup from #458, #499: I am trying to figure out the truth of the matter here to my own satisfaction, and being directed to papers which don’t address the questions I am asking, or to key documents which are not available, does not serve to convince me that the conclusions drawn from this data and these methods are valid.
I will repeat the key issues I am trying to resolve so that there should be no confusion.
#1 Sample size: a) Are the 10-15 cores from Yamal considered enough to produce statistically significant results in this field of study? b) are the 16 sites noted in the referenced paper sufficient to establish statistically significant results for the planet as a whole?
[Response: The more trees the better. The later period (post 1990) when there are only 12 would not be as well characterised as the earlier period. But Briffa’s comment on his website (google for the cached version) shows the results are very similar even when you add in more recently collected material. Note that we don’t need tree rings to know that the temperatures have warmed since 1990. – gavin]
#2 How much influence in the reconstruction do the tree rings actually have, on a scale of 0=none to 1=total?
[Response: Which reconstruction? and for what time period? There are some examples in the Hey Ya!(mal) thread. For recent centuries, you generally don’t need tree rings at all. The further back you go, the more important they become. – gavin]
#3 Is there any independent source for reconstructions which able to confirm the Mann/Jones/Briffa global temperature reconstruction?
[Response: There isn’t just one reconstruction. There are many, and some are completely independent (Oerlemann’s for instance). See the NOAA page for some examples. – gavin]
The classic saying goes ‘extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof’. I would not think any would doubt that the temperature predictions claimed are extraordinary. What concerns me greatly is the the proof is not only not extraordinary, but has key weaknesses which are not being acknowledged by the assertion that we must act on this information immediately in order to avert a catastrophic man-made climactic disaster scenario.
Please assist me in resolving these concerns. Surely someone must be independently verifying these claims – is that not a prerequisite for establishing confidence in the conclusions?
[Response: What extraordinary claim do you think is being made? And of course, the literature is full of papers testing the reconstructions. None of them are making ‘extraordinary’ claims – they are simply trying to piece together a coherent history of climate over time. See Chapter 6 in IPCC AR4 for some more discussion. – gavin]
> I have known all along that this is rubbish. … Can there be
> a more fatuous and vacuous statement when it comes to science?
What he said, except for the stuff in between. Asserting your belief and finding stuff to fit it is bad. It’s even worse though when you assert your belief there must be something there that nobody can see that explains what’s happening. The mysterious hidden force in the shadows? Right.
I’ll try to look that solar work up for you when I have time, Alan, if someone doesn’t get to it first. You should try skepticalscience.
But along the same line, Alan, you must have missed this, for example:
5 Climate Studies That Don’t Live Up to Their Hype
By Andrew Moseman
Published on: July 1, 2009
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/earth/4323558.html
So all we need now is full release of ALL source code and raw data, so the results can be independently generated, audited and reviewed, as they should have been from Day 1 (ala Scientific Process 101). This is publicly funded research, so denying access to data and methods is evasive and unacceptable, and always has been.
[Response: Tell that to the Met Services who commercialise their data and whose restrictions prevent CRU from passing on their raw database. Credit where credit is due. – gavin]
Being an agnostic on this issue which i believe makes me a neutral observer ):-)
My take on the CRU emails is that most of the focus has been on the comments such as the “nature trick” which i think is silly since that can easily be seen in another context and i believe Jone’s point about using the term “trick” for clever short cuts etc…
However, i think what is far more worrying is the FOI requests were suppressed and there were discussions about deleting important files relating to those, and also convincing FOI officials that the people making the requests were sceptics.
For instance when Bohr and Einstein argued over foundational qm they shared information and certainly did not politcise or tribalise the for and againsts. They did not discuss strategies for elimating all thought contrary to their own within the peer review process, and they did not attempt to shut down punlications or get editors fired who were of a sceptical nature.
Why not just hand all the raw data over to the likes of climate audit’s Steve because if its solid then he will not find anything amiss.
I dont understand why he is hated since he has spotted genuine errors in climate data before. Nothing he has corrected has ended up being a major game chganger so i cannot see why Mr Jones et al are so worried about this one guy and his calculator.
Gavin, In reference to your response (shown below), to what extent is the divergence between the computer runs due to different material balance errors in the water vapour and CO2 for each run leading to different radiative forcings ? What is the range in material balance errors for the water vapour and CO2 over a 100 year period for the different runs?
[Previous Response: We don’t know that it is unique. There could be a range of net forcings, and indeed a range of climate sensitivities, and a range (though not unlimited) of the magnitude of internal variability. We use the various other constraints – ocean heat content uptake, paleo-climate at the LGM etc. to try anc constrain these values, but there is still a range – which leads of course to a range of projections. For the medium term (~20-30 years) they are robust, but over the longer time scale, they begin to diverge. – gavin]
[Response: Not quite sure what you’re asking. The difference in the forcing from a CO2 change in different models is about a 10% uncertainty (3.5 to 4.0 W/m2 or similar). The difference in the net water vapour/lapse rate feedback in different models is also small. So the divergence in sensitivity and outcome isn’t dominated by either of those two effects. It’s mostly cloud feedbacks that control the divergence, and they are less well constrained. – gavin]
Alan Millar (#533) illustrates what the real problem is with the global warming “debate.”
He confuses the “1940s blip” with the temperature increase from 1910 to 1940 — because he really doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about. But he still feels qualified to conclude that climate science has “unresolved crucial issues.”
He further utterly fails to understand the nature of the 1910-1940 warming. His statement about “muttering Solar and Aerosols as the answer” reveals that either he’s ignorant of the influence of the volcanic lull, or he chooses to omit mention of it because he’s deliberately trying to deceive people.
He also is either ignorant of, or chooses to turn a blind eye to, the fact that using only known forcings and our current understanding of climate science, we get an outstandingly good fit to the entire 20th century — not just the recent warming, but the 1910-1940 warming as well. THERE IS NO “1910-1940 ISSUE” — Millar just claimed there is, again either through ignorance or deliberate deceptiveness.
Millar is not just ready, but eager to indict climate science, despite all signs pointing to his failure to understand it. And that’s the real problem with the “debate”: Alan Millar and those like him are steeped in arrogance even greater than their ignorance.
In response to Gavin’s comment on post 532, I am referring to issues surrounding endangered species, which can be as controversial as any climate change issues.
I am not qualified to advise or comment on which climate change studies may need to be re-assessed, however, as I advised in post 532, I AM aware of the discussions that the scientific panel has with regards to the endangered species issues I am referring too, and must reiterate, never in 2 decades have I seen the type of discussions that the emails seem to refer to.
BTW, I did ask one of those scientists how prevalent it is to use the terms “trick” and “hide” in an innocuous manner when attempting to define a study, and I got an answer that said, “Who are they trying to sell a used car too?”.
Perhaps that was a telling comment?
Science must not only be credible, it must appear credible, otherwise the rigor that has been built up over decades dissipate, and that would do us all irreparable harm.
RE: 520 –
All due respect Gavin and Deech56, but I didn’t ask how hard you work and, no, Gavin’s work is subject to review by the public as he is a public employee.
More explicitly, I asked the question of Gavin if he was using his work time(paid for with tax dollars) or his work resources(also, paid for with tax dollars) to moderate this sight?
This will be the third time you’ve been asked the question and you have yet to answer this very simple question.
If you’re not responding due to legal concerns, you can answer that you’re declining to answer on legal grounds.
[Response: How I manage my time, and what I do with it and what gets done is an issue for me and my line managers with input from NASA and Fed. Govt. guidelines on the issue. It is not something that is going to be discussed in blog comments. Sorry. – gavin]