The first (of three) inquiries on the CRU email affair has reported, and this thread is for discussions of the UK Parliamentary Select Committee report. The conclusions are not un-expected, but there is bound to something for everyone to chew on. Get gnawing!
p.s. there is a useful summary at DeSmogBlog.
#193 CFU I read it since you offered, but once again you need to go argue with the committee they are the ones that said the responses to the FOIA requests were unacceptable. They certainly have reviewed ALL of the relevant information, evidence, rules, laws, nad conducted interviews more than you or I? Or maybe you think the committee came to the wrong conclusion on this point? Thats OK with me.
[Response: Can we just wrap this up? You are all just repeating yourselves here. Thanks. – gavin]
“Jack Maloney,
OK, let me get this straight: You actually think that the US government would want climate change to occur–even though it means a huge influx of refugees, global unrest, food and water shortages, etc. and mitigating it represents a large expense and probably decreased prosperity for a generation or two?
Dude, I have got to get me some of whatever it is you are smoking!”
Comment by Ray Ladbury
Dude, you didn’t get it straight. I said nothing even remotely resembling what you claim I said. It should be obvious that climate change will occur without government help.
“The people actually doing the science — the real science, not the “advocacy science” — aren’t getting “special interest” funding…”
Comment by Hank Roberts
What charming naíveté! The Tata Group, an Indian multinational conglomerate with ties through TERI to Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, stands to make several hundred million dollars in European Union carbon credits simply by closing a steel production facility in Britain with the loss of 1,700 jobs. A Tata creation, Pachauri’s TERI, played the bent “Himalaya 2035″ card in winning £2.8 million in research grants from the EU and Carnegie Foundation.
My point is that there are billions of dollars in play around the AGW issue, and many millions being spent by special interests on advocacy and research on both sides. Ambitious politicians and power-hungry bureaucrats are no more innocent than profiteering industrialists and investment brokers.
“Look Rush Limbaugh required large quantities of high-quality of pr-e-scrip-tion pain me- dic -a- tion to maintain such fantasies. Are you suggesting that Jack does so with out major pha- rma- ceut- ical assistance? Wow!”
Comment by Ray Ladbury
I should think sophomoric personal attacks of this sort would be an embarrassment for responsible members of the RealClimate community. Perhaps that shows my own naíveté.
Margaret, we don’t know you at all.
We do know the _opinion_ — sources of funding should not matter in science.
We all, I expect, agree with that opinion. The source _should_ not matter.
Where many of us who’ve been reading in the area a while differ with you is on the _facts_. The facts, the published research, show the source of funding matters, and it matters for reasons not easy to address except by disclosure.
You came in and proposed something widely and well known to be an opinion long held by corporate funders who distorted scientific results, and base your posting on something that’s factually known wrong.
Funding affects results.
Hidden funding affects results by hiding inconvenient results.
We know this. The research is published.
We’d all like to live in the world you describe, where funding doesn’t affect what’s published and science can be evaluated purely.
That’s not this world.
People aren’t happy about this. Readers and publishers and users of medical service in particular have been disillusioned, and angered, and embittered about this discovery. Each time it’s rediscovered, people get unhappy.
Ignoring the funding doesn’t solve this problem.
What will? That’s being struggled with in many areas of science.
This isn’t about you. It’s about the world.
@Jack Malony:
Bollocks. TERI was just one of the many organisations that received the 2.8 million grant from the EU (and not the main driver), and the funding from the Carnegie foundation (if at all paid) was at best an indirect funding, a shared project, and in total at most 310,000 pound.
Get your facts straight first, then you won’t get the sophomoric attacks aimed at you. The people here probably assumed you had not passed that level yet, and were kind enough to come to your level.
Jack Maloney,
Uh, Dude, Rajendra Pachauri comes in at number 1800 on the battle of the climate scientists:
http://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/~prall/climate/climate_authors_table.html
Do you seriously contend that thousands of authors would fudge their data just so some buddy of Raj’s could make a buck. You really think that scientists are going to jeopardize their careers just so Tata can clean up on carbon credits. Dude, can you step back just for a moment and see just how silly that is? ‘Cause I’d hate to think you might not get the joke!
Jack Maloney,
To assert with zero evidence that climate science is a fraud is to invite ridicule. I consider it an obligation to accept such invitations.
William #184:
Great idea. I’d really like to see a side-by-side, detailed accounting of what research is funded by whom, and what the published products of that research are. I’ve been frustrated by people like Jack Maloney and others talking about “greedy, grant-farming climate scientists”, but I’m not aware of any analysis of funding for climate science comparable to ExxonSecrets or Climate Cover Up for the deniers. If sufficiently detailed and documented, it might put an end to the most egregious calumnies.
[Response: This topic is very similar to the whole “data secrecy” issue, which is to say it’s primarily a non-issue propagated by those who don’t like the results scientists produce when in fact most of said info is out in the open. Sources and sinks of funding can all be looked up at NSF and other sites.–Jim]
ExxonSecrets, that is.
RE Comment #06 by Ray Ladbury:
“Jack Maloney,
To assert with zero evidence that climate science is a fraud is to invite ridicule. I consider it an obligation to accept such invitations.
Comment by Ray Ladbury”
Again, Ray, you totally misread and misrepresent my post. I have never asserted (or implied, or, for that matter, believed) that “climate science is a fraud.” You might want to work on your reading comprehension skills.
RE Comment #04 by Marco:
“TERI was just one of the many organisations that received the 2.8 million grant from the EU (and not the main driver), and the funding from the Carnegie foundation (if at all paid) was at best an indirect funding, a shared project, and in total at most 310,000 pound.”
TERI received the lion’s share of the £2.5 million EU grant. The other £.3 million grant from Carnegie was actually withdrawn at the request of TERI’s Icelandic partner. But you’re certainly welcome to quibble about the numbers – it might distract readers from the web of connections between Tata, TERI, Pachauri and IPCC’s bogus “Himalaya 2035” claim that helped win the grants.
Jock Maloney,
You are asserting that the source of research money affects research conclusions. That is an allegation of scientific fraud.
On the other hand, Koch et al. aren’t paying for research, are they?
Jack Maloney says: 2 April 2010 at 7:26 PM
Without access to the documentation exchanged between the various participants, ascribing any influence on the Carnegie grant to a single paragraph buried in 3,000 pages of information with something like five nines reliability overall is purest baloney, malarkey.
But lack of evidence is no reason to hold back on specious claims. Just ask Dr. Pielke Jr., one the primary authors of the rumor you’re promoting here, Mr. Maloney.
How does it feel to be on the wrong side of history?
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png
Sorry, folks, Briffa based his analysis on a single pine tree?? N = 1??
Der Spiegel is not so kind (http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,686697-4,00.html).
Did Jones proceed correctly while homogenizing the data? Most climatologists still believe Jones’ contention that he did not intentionally manipulate the data. However, that belief will have to remain rooted in good faith. Under the pressure of McIntyre’s attacks, Jones had to admit something incredible: He had deleted his notes on how he performed the homogenization. This means that it is not possible to reconstruct how the raw data turned into his temperature curve.
For Peter Webster, a meteorologist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, this course of events is “one of the biggest sins” a scientist can commit. “It’s as if a chef was no longer able to cook his dishes because he lost the recipes.”
While amateur climatologist McIntyre spent years begging in vain for the raw data, Webster eventually managed to convince Jones to send them to him. He is the only scientist to date who has been given access to the data. “To be honest, I’m shocked by the sloppy documentation,” Webster told SPIEGEL.
From another article in the same series…
…the scientists under Schellnhuber’s leadership came up with a strikingly simple idea. We looked at the history of the climate since the rise of homo sapiens,” Schellnhuber recalls. “This showed us that average global temperatures in the last 130,000 years were no more than two degrees higher than before the beginning of the industrial revolution. To be on the safe side, we came up with a rule of thumb stating that it would be better not to depart from this field of experience in human evolution. Otherwise we would be treading on terra incognita.”
=====================
That last bit is like reading past IPCC reports and seeing temperature reconstructions with the MWP. I can understand simplifying things for the general public and politicians, but there is a fine line between simplifying and obfuscating. There can still be a case made for AGW without having to hide the fact that the planet has been warmer in the past. This is probably the biggest point of contention between the AGW camp and the skeptics.
Jack Maloney or Brian Dodge or Margaret or Ray or whoever it was who thought that: “Goldmann-Sachs and the other players likely to make money on Carbon trading etc are funding the AGW climatology research conspiracy”
How would Goldmann-Sachs know 30 years or 150 years ago that they were ” likely to make money on Carbon trading”? They are STILL NOT likely to make money on carbon trading.
To whoever thinks such a thing: The funding comes from ordinary NASA and university sources that just fund research for the sake of research. The idea of Goldmann-Sachs funding is ludicrous, humorous, silly, funny, a good joke, etc..
Goldmann-Sachs is getting the research for free. Goldmann-Sachs isn’t in that business. Can’t you spot the Real hoax? It is the idea that Goldmann-Sachs could even come up with such a scheme.
There is no possibility of an ” AGW climatology research conspiracy.” Science just doesn’t work that way.
Of course, somebody who is being paid by the fossil fuel industry came up with that conspiracy theory, or else some paranoid person came up with it.
If you want to know for sure: UNDERSTAND THE SCIENCE. Re-do John Tyndall’s 1859 experiment on the optical properties of gasses for yourself. That is the way science is done. Conspiracy is impossible when every person relies on his or her own experimental evidence. THAT is the way scientists do it. NATURE is the only authority.
Margaret (185),
The Der Spiegel article is garbage from beginning to end. And if you’re against personal attacks, how can you endorse an article which starts off with a vicious personal attack, speculating about a scientist’s emotional upset and whether he is on psychoactive medications? Hypocrisy is a bad thing.
Jack, if you don’t like the IPCC, then look at the peer-reviewed literature–which does a fine job of making the case that the planet is warming, that we are doing it and that it is a concern.
I agree 100% that the IPCC is a political organization not a science organization. They are in fact a mainly volunteer organization charged with summarizing the science. Frankly, I think they do a pretty good job of that–and the scientific community (>90%) agrees with that. I mean when the entire denialist lie machine goes over the document with a fine-toothed comb, and the worst they can find is a typo (turning 2350 to 2035) that isn’t too bad. Compare that to the ouvre of McI or micro-Watts, who publish howlers on a daily basis.
RE Comment #08 by Ray Ladbury:
“You are asserting that the source of research money affects research conclusions. That is an allegation of scientific fraud.”
More false claims by Ladbury. Show me the post where I made such an assertion. Perhaps he was thinking of another post:
Comment #03 by Hank Roberts:
“We’d all like to live in the world you describe, where funding doesn’t affect what’s published and science can be evaluated purely. That’s not this world.”
I don’t disagree with that – and it cuts both ways in the AGW debate – but it’s not an assertion I’ve made. Still, unless you still believe in the Tooth Fairy, you must understand that grant applications are shaped to the requirements of funding sources, which usually have desired outcomes. That isn’t fraudulent – it’s reality.
[Response: Right, you don’t send a paleoclimate analysis proposal to the NIH when they announce for epidemiological modeling proposals. So what?–Jim]
RE Comment by Doug Bostrom:
“…ascribing any influence on the Carnegie grant to a single paragraph buried in 3,000 pages of information with something like five nines reliability overall is purest baloney, malarkey.”
Doug, that “single paragraph” was in the grant abstract posted on the Carnegie web site. It was also a lead claim in Pachauri’s press conference. You call that “buried”?
There’s an amusing symmetry between both sides of the AGW debate: for every James Inhofe there’s an Al Gore, for every Koch Industries there’s a Tata International, for every Rush Limbaugh there’s an Ed Begley Junior, and for every “denier” there’s an “alarmist.”
[Response: Then maybe you should concentrate on the science instead of all those sources–just a wild suggestion mind you.–Jim]
The great thing about being an agnostic on the issue is that I get rocks thrown by zealots on both sides.
Edward Greisch (Comment #13) – You cannot find a post where I used the word “conspiracy”. I don’t think much of people who attribute spurious “quotes” to those with whom they disagree. That seems to be a habit on this forum.
Jack Maloney says: 3 April 2010 at 8:28 AM
Well, gosh, I stand corrected. We’ve gone from “lead claim in the IPCC report” which of course turned out to be bogus, to lead claim in a research institute press release announcing a collaboration and grant. Quite a climbdown, all in all, but looks as though that’s all Jack and crew have left to work with at this point. So let’s deal with it.
From the TERI press release:
The challenges facing the international community in the 21st century are primarily posed by changes in the natural environment. This applies to India and the sub-continent more starkly than most other regions of the world, as changes in weather patterns and the climate are bound to cause profound changes in the Himalaya. Of particular consequence will be changes of the glaciers. According to predictions of scientific merit they may indeed melt away in several decades. This, in turn, will have implications for the entire water system of the sub-continent, with immediate effect on soil, water management, and the possibilities of food production.
So the timeline of anticipated effects is in error, though the need for research on the topic is in fact unchallenged; nobody would disagree that narrowing the range of possibilities for hydrological changes in affect region is a desirable outcome.
Meanwhile here’s the fountainhead of Jack’s information:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6999975.ece
Read it carefully, and note this mischievous paragraph:
Any suggestion that TERI has repeated an unchecked scientific claim without checking it, in order to win grants, could prove hugely embarrassing for Pachauri and the IPCC.
The Times artfully goes on to make this exact suggestion as nearly as possible without actually risking a libel claim. They’ve had a lot of practice at this sort of thing.
Of course, as opposed to Carnegie and TERI, the Times rather than referring to available published information stuck its neck out in this “news” article, helpfully suggesting to readers that Pachauri was corrupt:
“However, other questions remain. One of the most important is in connection with Pachauri’s earnings.
In an interview with The Sunday Times he said his only income came from his salary at TERI. However TERI does not publish his salary and he refused to divulge it. “
I like the “other questions remain” part: “We’ll make up a question designed to heavily suggest that Pachauri is corrupt and feed it to our readers.”
Another neat little bit of suggestion:
Pachauri spoke at the same presentation and Hasnain is understood to have been present in the audience.
Ah, the conspirators are found in the same room together, maybe.
The Times goes on:
“Critics say it is odd for a man committed to decarbonising energy supplies to be linked to an oil company.”
I myself receive oil royalty checks every month yet I’m strongly offended that we crudely burn petroleum instead of using it for better purposes. Odd, eh?
Since then we’ve learned that Pachauri earns a very modest amount amount of money indeed, as verified by KPMG.
In sum there’s no case for corruption here, simply rumor and innuendo produced by experts in misdirection and suggestion.
You’re a sap, Maloney, putty in the hands of such as the Times.
Ray, et al: You seem to be equating to receiving special interest funding with fraud. Maybe I missed it but I don’t think that was Jack Malony’s assertion at all.
#206 Ray Ladbury
Well put :)
NEW CLIMATE MINUTE VIDEO:
History of Climate Science
—
Our best chance for a better future ‘Fee & Dividend’
Understand the delay and costs of Cap and Trade
http://www.climatelobby.com/fee-and-dividend/
Sign the Petition!
http://www.climatelobby.com
RE Comment by Doug Bostrom – 3 April 2010 @ 10:41 AM
“You’re a sap, Maloney, putty in the hands of such as the Times.”
Is that the level at which the AGW side of the debate is being conducted?
RE Comment by Ray Ladbury — 3 April 2010 @ 6:14 AM
“…the worst they can find is a typo (turning 2350 to 2035) that isn’t too bad.”
“2350” is merely a typo?! So Pachauri’s TERI elevated a mere typo into a “prediction of scientific merit”?
“…changes in weather patterns and the climate are bound to cause profound changes in the Himalaya. Of particular consequence will be changes of the glaciers. According to predictions of scientific merit they may indeed melt away in several decades.” TERI press release 15 January 2010
“Ray, et al: You seem to be equating to receiving special interest funding with fraud”
No, just the papers that are fraudulent are mostly paid for by Exxon et al.
A government has to prove it gets value from its spending.
A company (especially a private one) can just tell all the people to go hang. How many times has a fine against a corporation been decried as bad (especially if it’s a US corporation) because they’ll just pass the cost on to the consumers?
But you’ll never see an itemised list of “parts”, “paying a criminal penalty”, “goodwill costs”…
“I agree 100% that the IPCC is a political organization not a science organization.”
Just like to point out that all those concern trolls complaining about not being polite, that word has the same root as political and politician: polis. The City.
How impolite they are too politicians, however. But don’t you DARE call them denialists when they’re denying there’s a problem!
re CRS How does it feel to be on the wrong side of history?
This history?
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/reportcard/figures/seaice2009fig2.jpg
I think you’ll find that 2010 puts a little black dot just below the ‘0’ line.
Not much deflection to that trend, though.
That’s the thing about history – it doesn’t get re-written by some drive-by denialist at some moment chosen for his convenience.
Jack Maloney, Perhaps, then, you would care to lay out clearly what you are implying in your seeming equation between the denialist lie maching and the scientists. I would be more than happy to take back half the nasty thing’s I’ve said about you if in fact you are not implying some sort of vast conspiracy. I do not think it is appropriate to be an “agnostic” on the matter of truth vs. falsehood. It’s the only area where I am not an agnostic.
After all, what matters, ultimately is the science–and that is unequivocal.
Jack Maloney says: 3 April 2010 at 12:07 PM
You (and the Times for that matter) are describing a conspiracy theory. You do know that, don’t you?
RE Comment #26 by Ray Ladbury — 3 April 2010 @ 12:29 PM
“Jack Maloney…I would be more than happy to take back half the nasty thing’s I’ve said about you if in fact you are not implying some sort of vast conspiracy.”
I don’t believe in conspiracy theories. Frankly, the archiving on a publicly-funded server of email discussions about hiding declines, influencing journals, suppressing articles, deleting emails and evading FOI requests CRU have convinced me that climate scientists couldn’t successfully manage a conspiracy if they tried.
[Response: Good, we can put that one to rest then. All other posts insinuating guilt on the other topics mentioned above, without substantive discussion thereupon, will be deleted–Jim]
I think the whole Climategate kerfuffle is more about human frailty than science.
@Jack Maloney: You claimed
“TERI received the lion’s share of the £2.5 million EU grant”
Please define what you consider “lion’s share” and provide the proof for the amount that TERI will receive.
Tim Huck, scientists don’t rely upon good faith, they rely upon independent replication of conclusions using multiple different approaches. If Jones’s results diverged from the results of other independent groups analyzing similar data, then there would be an investigation of what it was about his methodology that led to different conclusions. The notion that the conclusions might depend upon some “notes” that he did not think were important enough to keep is ridiculous. Perhaps this might be true for a culinary masterpiece, but it is not true for science. Scientific methodology is described in peer reviewed publications in sufficient detail such that any competent scientist should be able to reproduce the approach (that’s one of the responsibilities of peer reviewers–to verify that the methodology is described in sufficient detail for any competent scientist to reproduce the conclusions). There is no need the repeat his calculations exactly to the last decimal point, or even to use temperature recordings from the exact same set of recording stations. All one should require is a decent general description from his peer reviewed publications publications. If some data is proprietary and cannot be obtained, it is OK to simply leave it out. You don’t need the exact same data, just the same kind of data. The conclusions should be essentially the same. If they are not, then there *is* a problem, because valid scientific methodology is robust–the conclusions should not be critically dependent upon subtle details of how the calculations were done, or the exact selection of temperature stations that were used. So far, every other group that has independently carried out a similar analysis has reached essentially the same conclusions. It is that, rather than “good faith,” that leads the scientific community to accept that the conclusions are correct.
Jack Maloney @228 says, “I think the whole Climategate kerfuffle is more about human frailty than science.”
On this, sir, I agree wholeheartedly. But what does it say about the scientific process that it yields reliable knowledge when weilded by frail humans? After all, not one iota of science crucial to understanding the climate has been altered in light of what we learned. Surely that speaks in favor of the process, regardless of what it says about the people.
Scientific research is codified in exactly the same way as patents are supposed to be codified: not by stating each and every stage on the way, nor giving all the intermediate points (the failed attempts to realise the patented work), but in explaining in sufficient detail so that ONE SKILLED IN THE ART can recreate the work.
But concern trolls don’t care about that.
They just want to be seen wringing their hands over the “scandal”.
RE Comment #29 by Marco — 3 April 2010 @ 3:20 PM
“@Jack Maloney: You claimed
“TERI received the lion’s share of the £2.5 million EU grant”
Please define what you consider “lion’s share” and provide the proof for the amount that TERI will receive.”
Most native English speakers understand the “lion’s share” to mean the largest or prime share. The EU has not provided a breakdown of the €2.5 million grant. That the “lion’s share” went to TERI has been reported in major media worldwide, and no one from TERI or the EU has disputed the claim. If you have more exact figures, I’d be pleased to see them.
@Jack Maloney:
Please provide references to the media reports. So far I only found one, and unsurprising, it is from Jonathan Leake…who has zero credibility left after all the lies and distortions he has thrown around.
Just for extra information: in the same article in which Leake claims TERI got the lion’s share, he also wrote:
“The EU grant was split between leading European research institutions, including Britain’s Met Office, with TERI getting a major but unspecified share because it represented the host country.”
In other words: “I have no idea, so I just make things up”. Plausibly deniable allegations. If TERI says “we only got 100,000”, Leake says “I only wrote “major share”!
“the focus on CRU and Professor Phil Jones, Director of CRU, in particular, has largely been misplaced,”
I had a feeling of emberassment watching the Climate research unit hearings..There seems to be Galileo effect that applies to scientist that are ahead of the curve..”hit the messenger”..
I found myself applauding Phil Jones at some point..
Heads up Phil, i think you are one of the great scientist of our time and i want to thank you for your important service to humanity..
The hearings were posted on youtube by deniers but interesting,,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAj_lZv4Gxc
“Most native English speakers understand the “lion’s share” to mean the largest or prime share. ”
You weren’t asked what “most native english speakers” think it means.
What do YOU think it means?
£50?
£500?
Tim Huck (213),
The Der Spiegel article deliberately misrepresents (i.e., lies) about what happened. McIntyre spent years begging for data he already had. 95% of CRU data was public-domain, the other 5% was covered by proprietary agreements and couldn’t be released. McIntyre then coordinated a denial-of-service attack through his blog, encouraging readers to “pick any five countries” and send in an FOI request for all their met data to CRU.
CRU employs three people.
It takes 18 hours to completely process a UK FOI request.
McIntyre’s group sent 40 FOI requests over one weekend.
Jack Maloney 228: the archiving on a publicly-funded server of email discussions about hiding declines, influencing journals, suppressing articles, deleting emails and evading FOI requests CRU have convinced me that climate scientists couldn’t successfully manage a conspiracy if they tried.
BPL: And the fact that you believe those charges, after having the opportunity to learn better, has convinced me that you couldn’t learn critical thinking if you tried.
RE: Comment by Completely Fed Up — 4 April 2010 @ 5:18 AM:
“What do YOU think it [“the lion’s share” of €2.5 million] means? £50? £500?”
Well, if you want to be literal, look at it this way: TERI is among nine contractors on the project. If the money was shared equally, each contractor would get about €277,777. So TERI’s reputed “lion’s share” could be as little as €277,778…if that’s what you’d like to believe.
#237 Barton Paul Levenson
This is truly dirty pool. I received an email form a friend stating also that he is getting hit hard with FOI’s
What I’m looking forward to though is the possibility of tying concerted coordinated efforts with FOI requests to disrupt the science itself and the communication. It seems that these lines can be drawn.
What I hope to see in the future as we move forward is that these actions will be prosecuted and pursued.
The reality is that the science is reasonably solid as we know, so the efforts and coordination when tied to funding from special interests may produce some interesting prosecutions in the future.
It will be the smoking trials all over again but with a lot more intensity because this is not just the smokers, they are doing harm the everyone on the planet.
I would say that those that participate in these campaigns to disrupt the work will be targeted by these investigations and they are doing so, rightly so, at their own peril.
VIDEO: A Climate Minute
History of Climate Science
Arctic Ice Melt
—
Our best chance for a better future ‘Fee & Dividend’
Understand the delay and costs of Cap and Trade
http://www.climatelobby.com/fee-and-dividend/
Sign the Petition!
http://www.climatelobby.com
John P. Reisman (OSS Foundation) says: 4 April 2010 at 1:36 PM
What I’m looking forward to though is the possibility of tying concerted coordinated efforts with FOI requests to disrupt the science itself and the communication. It seems that these lines can be drawn.
Horner at CEI (Competitive Enterprise Institute) has been boasting publicly about blasting out FOIA requests here in the United States and we then see output from those spun up on Fox. It’s perfectly obvious Horner’s not intent on ferreting out misbehavior but is actually abusing the law to feed PR flacks with fodder for their misinformation machine. He ought to be stopped, for sure.
re #213
You are certainly right about the italicised phrase, but what follows it is ambiguous.
Most people would agree that the planet has been warmer in the past. But there is an insinuation here, that some temperature proxies have been hidden which demonstrate that the MWP was an occasion when that occurred on a global scale.
RE: Comment #38 by Barton Paul Levenson re: Comment #28 by Jack Maloney on CRU “email discussions about hiding declines, influencing journals, suppressing articles, deleting emails and evading FOI requests”.
“BPL: And the fact that you believe those charges, after having the opportunity to learn better, has convinced me that you couldn’t learn critical thinking if you tried.”
Not charges, BPL – facts. They’re all right there in the CRU emails. I tried to post the specific CRU email reference numbers (complete and in context), but the moderator on this site is apparently (and understandably) reluctant to expose RealClimate viewers to what they actually contain.
[Response: Give me a break. We ‘the moderator’ are perfectly happy to let the facts stand for themselves. The facts are that reasonable people will come up with different interpretations of the CRU emails because a bunch of private emails between people doesn’t actually amount to anything very much. If the facts are so clear from the emails, why do so many people feel the need to add ‘in temperature’ after ‘the decline’, knowing perfectly well this is a lie?–eric]
Jack Maloney says: 4 April 2010 at 9:10 PM
I tried to post the specific CRU email reference numbers…
Not to pick on you alone, I suspect you’re a hobbyist/enthusiast drawn into the excitement, but the idea that somebody has taken these poor, sad emails and created an entire website around ’em with indexing systems and the like is positively pathological. A few years down the road and the folks who burnt the midnight candle throwing together this contraption are going to be in the annals of popular delusions along with phrenologists and other purveyors of trumped up and then deflated fads.
Too weird.
Moderator says “We ‘the moderator’ are perfectly happy to let the facts stand for themselves.”
Ahh – then why not post my comment with the CRU email reference numbers, so that RealClimate readers can see the actual statements by Phil Jones and Tom Wigley? As you say, let the facts stand by themselves, in context and without interpretation.
[Response: The point is that reading individual emails is exactly the wrong approach. Some context might be obtained by reading ALL the emails, but actually getting the full context would be in knowing the full history, not to mention (for example) getting a close look at all of Steve McIntyre’s emails (though his blog alone should suffice for any rational person to understand why one might lose one’s temper about his FOI requests). Reading a couple of emails that *you* have chosen to highlight is not sufficient ‘context’ for anyone to draw any conclusion other than the one they are predisposed to draw. What’s truly mystifying is how so many people don’t seem to understand this basic point. I would have thought our society would have learned some lessons from the McCarthy era, but evidently not. –eric]
JackMaloney – You might try thoughtfully considering the post on the Rabetts blog to understand some of the context for the “actual statements” of Jones and Wigley, if you’re capable of understanding.
@Jack Maloney:
I’m still waiting for the evidence that TERI would receive the lion’s share and the supposed main media reporting as such. I see you have decided not to react to my request. Gee, I wonder why.
Oh, and you may want to read this e-mail:
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/mr/Wigley_email.pdf
Jack Maloney,
Have you noticed that in the normal course of science, private communications–be they letters, emails or telephone conversations–never enter into play. What matters is the evidence.
It is only because one side in this debate has NO evidence that they feel the need to rummage around in garbage and hack servers to obtain private communications. They then see nothing wrong with selectively editing these communications to present them in the most unflattering light–and still they come up with nothing that changes the evidence.
Doug Bostrom is right–the fact that one side in this debate seems to think it is necessary to devote a whole site to pilfered emails is really, really sad. Just as sad as devoting time and effort to dissecting a paper that is nearly a decade and a half old or latching on to any idea that might explain some tiny aspect of the evidence–no matter how outlandis.
Compare this to the amazing explanatory and predictive power of the consensus scientific theory, and that OUGUT to give you some idea of where the scientific truth lies.
“So TERI’s reputed “lion’s share” could be as little as €277,778…if that’s what you’d like to believe.”
Still avoiding the question: what do YOU believe?
And where do you get your belief from?
The cloaca?
Eric sez:
Of course they have learned some lessons from that era – they learned that McCarthyism works. Why else would they adopt similar techniques?
Jack Maloney is, if not a practitioner, then certainly a fellow traveler.