The Oxburgh report on the science done at the CRU has now been published and….. as in the first inquiry, they find no scientific misconduct, no impropriety and no tailoring of the results to a preconceived agenda, though they do suggest more statisticians should have been involved. They have also some choice words to describe the critics.
Carry on…
# 119 BPL:
“BPL: It’s the first time it’s done so in 20 million years, though.”
Sorry BPL – not even close.
Not only are you ignoring the MWP, the Roman warming period and the Holocene Climate warming period – but you are ignoring the ice core evidence from Antarctica.
Take a look at this nature article – http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7271/pdf/nature08564.pdf which shows that even during the last 340 thousand years:
This gradient and the uncertainties calculated (see Methods) imply that maximum interglacial temperatures over the past 340 kyr were between 6.0 K and 10.0 K above present-day values (Fig. 4a).
Average global temperaturs have risen above todays value many times in even the last 340 thousand years.
“Zeroworker seems unaware that though the law requires most citizens to file tax returns”
He also forgets that your tax form doesn’t require you to post 20 year old receipts. Nor your past years’ travel arrangements, the number of times you’ve had sex (and who with), whether you’ve seen anyone else’s financial details, all your workings out including intermediate stages, and ALL correspondence with your solicitor/accountant…
Typically, the ‘critics’ ignore everything said in response to previous postings of the talking points and post them again as though no one had ever thought of them before.
“It is _NOT_ acceptable to deny such a request just because it’s a pain in the a**. ”
It is.
Check out the legal text of the FOIA in the UK.
It is also acceptable to refuse if it breaks the law.
It is also acceptable to refuse if you aren’t the correct place to get the stuff from.
It is also acceptable to refuse if it’s not for the purposes for which the act was written for (read that act again, oh, hang on, that’s NOTzerowork for you, natch).
It is also acceptable to refuse if you’ve already answered as fully as required.
Read up on Jack Thompson. Despite the courts not having the right to refuse someone access to the courts because he’s a pain in the ass, he has actually done this.
In court cases, a vexatious litigant can not only be refused access to court, he can be fined and jailed for it.
But finding this out is work for you, whereas you prefer work for others, zero work for yourself.
zeroworker wrote: “I want to specifically address your argument that responding to an FoI request takes time, and therefore can be disregarded.”
No one, including BPL, has made the “argument” that FOI requests can be “disregarded” simply because responding “takes time”.
Of course you know that. You are just being silly, and entertaining yourself with your ability to get people to waste their time responding to your silly comments.
Regarding FoI:
1) I agree that the flurry of FoI requests received in 2009 were vexatious. However, as #148 was already kind enough to point out, there were 4 requests in 2007 and 2 in 2008. Why didn’t Jones and the university respond to them? I don’t think you can call 2 or 4 requests over the course of a year a “blizzard”, or “vexatious”.
It is the denied FoI requests of 2007 and 2008 which I feel Jones and the university have to answer for.
There clearly was a campaign to flood the UAE with FoI requests in 2009 – I don’t dispute that – and would agree that the requests received as part of that campaign were vexatious.
But that does not explain the earlier denials.
2) I don’t know whether or not Jones was legally compelled to release data in response to these (non-vexatious 2007 and 2008) FoI requests. I’m not a lawyer. If so, then he should have done so, end of story. If not, if he had some legal reason to deny the FoI request, then of course his actual refusal is defensible.
However, here is Phil Jones himself in one of the emails:
“I’m getting hassled by a couple of people to release the CRU station temperature data. Don’t any of you three tell anybody that the UK has a Freedom of Information Act!”
Perhaps he simply didn’t know when he wrote this whether an FoI request would be binding or not, but this email clearly displays an unwillingness to release the data, and raises suspicions about whether or not Jones felt an FoI request could legally be denied.
3) Monbiot re-posts a comment from someone who claims to be a public sector lawyer who thinks Jones and the university did indeed break the law by denying the FoI request.
The most relevant part of his post is reproduced below:
“Professor Jones and his colleagues and his employers knowingly flouted the law of the land without any excuse whatsoever”
So, here is a question for those of you who think Jones’ should have denied the request – under what provision of the FoI statute was he permitted to deny the request?
#155 Completely Fed Up
Did any of these apply to Jones and UEA in 2007 or 2008?
I don’t see anything on your list that would make it OK for Jones and UEA to refuse the request, other than the fact that they wanted to put a stick in the eye of those requesting it.
I actually understand this motivation. Climate change deniers are a detestable lot. But simply not liking someone does not allow you to refuse an FoI request.
If it’s possible for you to eliminate the snark, I’d be happy to listen to the legal basis for Jones and the university’s refusal to release the information requested in 2007 and 2008 if you know of one.
Cite sources, e.g. here: http://www.google.com/search?q=british+FOI+vexatious
Many, many examples of vexatious requests and denials appropriately made.
Its kind of fascinating (in a sick sort of way) to watch the inane degree of focus by some on the actions of UAE. Somehow I am supposed to be absolutely horrified that the FOI requests of a particular person were not treated as nicely as possible. Even though no demonstrable harm was done.
Could the requests have been handled better – maybe – so what? All of us could handle most things better given enough 20/20 hindsight. But based on the comments of those complaining about how the FOI requests were handled – its more than obvious, even if the information had been handwalked over, it would not have been good enough.
While I knew there was no hope that the investigation and results would cause any recantation of the claims made, I still had a small degree of hope that just one or two people might say something like “you know this is good, some of my concerns have been addressed.”
Sometimes in reading the comments of those still claiming problems, its like they think its a game. They can’t concede anything because the “other side” wins a point. Its all in protecting the “win” versus trying to understand the science and what it says.
In this case – they seem willing to try to claim a “win” no matter the cost.
RickA says: 15 April 2010 at 12:04 PM
Rick, it consistently baffles me that rejectionists are so wedded to this notion that we’re as dumb as a bolide, as mindless as continental drift, as stupid as a volcano.
Hence the constant chorus of “things happened before”, we’re only following our destiny over which we have no influence, as though we are a brainless ice sheet draped under the uncomprehending sun.
Did you notice? By posting here, you’re thinking and doing. You’re your own contradiction.
As I understand it, measurements indicate that the temperature during the last interglacial, 130000 years ago, was warmer than today’s.
“As I understand it, measurements indicate that the temperature during the last interglacial, 130000 years ago, was warmer than today’s.”
Go on, give us a link…
“Did you notice? By posting here, you’re thinking and doing. You’re your own contradiction.”
Not so fast, Doug.
Posting? Check.
Doing? Check.
End of list.
“Of course you know that. You are just being silly, and entertaining yourself with your ability to get people to waste their time responding to your silly comments.”
Which, for him, is zerowork.
To Theo Hopkins,
Do me a favor and actually read the emails in the CRU release and then tell me with a straight face if you still want to cheer Phil Jones and CRU. If you would like to come over to my house I would be glad to read them to you line by line and then you can explain away. It will be good clean fun. This is a serious offer by the way. I live in Honolulu, you can take a vacation while you are here.
RickA (151) — The evidence indicates that the current global temperature is certainly warmer than during the so-called MWP. Whether it is warmer than any previous time throughout the Holocene is unknown as suitable proxies don’t go back that far. One borehole study suggests not.
As Garry Quinn mentions in comment #159 the weight of the evidence indicates it was warmer than now, by about 2 K, during the Eemian interglacial.
The concern is that current CO2 levels are already about the same as those prevailing in the Miocene, about 20 million years ago, with sea levels several tens of metrs higher than now. One is forced to conclude it will become one whole heckofa lot warmer.
RickA (151): The MWP warm period was a regional event, not a global event. Global temps were cooler.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/medieval-warm-period.htm
RC has already dealt with the Holecene warm period.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/ok-perhaps-recent-20th-century-warmth-is-anomalous-over-the-past-millennium-or-two-but-wasnt-it-warmer-during-the-holocene-optimum-some-6000-years-ago/
The Holocene was warmer than today but only in the summer and in the northern hemisphere.
How do you know the Roman warm period wasn’t regional as well.
You cite a new Nature paper to support your position. I assume that means you are willing to accept other papers that contradict your position on the Holocene, the MWP, and the Roman warming period?
Gerry Quinn, note the difference between 1850 and today.
Note the rate of change in temperature over that span.
Look at the rate of change in the past.
#157 Donna
>>Even though no demonstrable harm was done.
Right. The huge firestorm in the media that happened after the hack didn’t do any damage at all to the campaign to educate the public on the dangers of climate change or to achieve policy changes to mitigate the problem.
Give me a break.
As I’ve said, I do not believe Jones participated in scientific fraud. I’m not even convinced that he and/or the university broke the law (although neither have I been convinced that they didn’t – certainly nobody in this comment thread has addressed that point to my satisfaction).
But doing a good job with the science ultimately will not do anyone any good if we lose the political battle. It is the political fight, the fight for rational policy change that ultimately matters the most for our future.
And it is clear is that this whole affair was a PR disaster for the good guys. Could it have been avoided if Jones and the university released the information up front? I honestly don’t know.
But it does strike me as important to keep our noses clean, because we know the character of the opposite side. We know they are media savvy, and we know they play dirty. It is important not to allow them to score cheap debating points by doing stupid things, like stonewalling an FoI request, possibly illegally.
151 (Rick A),
I’ll let Barton fight his own battles, but I think a common problem with deniers is that they always focus on the temperature change measured to date, where you’ll find that people at RC are aware of and focused on where temperatures are seemingly inevitably going to go, and that’s the concern. If warming stopped here and now it might be within the realm (although at the top) of normal climate, or at least tolerable.
But if we get the 2C global increase that we’re expecting at a minimum, or the 4C or 5C worst case estimate, with possible regional increases that could be in excess of 8 C for important places like Greenland, and even larger ranges regionally and seasonally, then yes, highest in millions of years (I’ll shy away from any exact number, because it’s really not that easy a thing to see clearly in my crystal-time-ball).
#155 SecularAnimist
No one, including BPL, has made the “argument” that FOI requests can be “disregarded” simply because responding “takes time”.
That was indeed part of his argument. Otherwise why bother pointing out that it takes 18 hours? Does he just like to type?
His argument is actually a good one assuming a flood, or blizzard, or deluge (pick your description) of requests meant only to annoy Jones and the UEA, which, as I’ve admitted, did happen in 2009.
It is not a valid argument for the FoI requests received in 2007 and 2008.
Why not try to address the issue, instead of being snarky? Is it really that hard?
sam said to Theo:
> If you would like to come over to my house I would be glad to read [the CRU emails] to you line by line
That’s the worst pick-up line I’ve heard in a while.
Speaking of warmer temperatures, the March report from NCDC is now out. The numbers show serious warm anomalies, as predicted here and on other sites for some time now, with this proving the warmest March ever in several categories, including global land-and-ocean mean. Tropospheric temps for the first three months of 2010 exceeded those of 1998. Meanwhile, the stratosphere was measured at the 9th coolest value ever, just in case someone thought “the sun did it.”
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=global&year=2010&month=3&submitted=Get+Report
You’re getting close. How about … you don’t know whether or not Jones was legally *allowed* to release those parts of the data not in the public domain.
The answer is: no, CRU was not. This was explained in the response to McIntyre’s appeal of the original rejection by the compliance people. The response also made clear that UEA CRU were working with the owners of the unreleaseable data in an effort to get them to agree to allowing UEA CRU to do so.
Normal people would react to that by saying, “oh, I can’t get it now, but I’ll wait until they tell me they have permission to do so, and then I’ll have it”. Not McIntyre. In his mind, this reasonable response was near to being a criminal act.
It’s not Jones’s decision as to whether or not a FOI request can be denied. It’s up to the compliance people. That’s why McIntyre’s appeal rejection letter was signed by a compliance person, not Jones.
You’re right that Jones was acting more or less like a jerk towards McIntyre and his team of self-proclaimed martyrs. I don’t blame him. McIntyre’s devoted to discrediting professionals like Jones, Briffa, Mann, Thompson, etc and if possible, to the destroying of their careers. If someone was doing their best to destroy your career, how would you react?
In a fair world, folks like Monbiot would be taking McIntyre out back behind the woodshed and giving them a sound beating, rather than rewarding his behavior by engaging in a witch hunt against Jones.
Tough. The powers that be have said that no, they haven’t. And this public sector lawyer ought to know that it’s the compliance people who make the final decision, so university broke the law in denying the FOI request, the compliance people, not Jones, are responsible.
If he says otherwise he’s not acting very … lawyerly.
Demonstrably false. The rejection letter to McIntyre’s original request clearly stated that the data not in the public domain could not be released, FOI request or no. Also, of course, the law doesn’t require the university to release data that’s freely available elsewhere, i.e. the 95% that’s available in the public domain. FOI doesn’t require UEA or anyone else to hand McIntyre his bread toasted, buttered, and placed on a silver platter.
That’s been made clear in the various investigations. McIntyre also published the appeal rejection letter when he got it (he rejected the rejection premise, of course). I’ve told you enough. It’s time for you to do your own research.
Jim (126, et al), Just for the record, freespeech might have misread Eli’s comments — and quite naturally so, but he didn’t misrepresent them. But this is way into the chaff so I’ll move on.
http://www.google.com/search?q=UEA+McIntyre+vexatious
#160 Doug Bostrom – I am not calling you dumb. I just don’t agree with the assertion that the average global temperature hasn’t been higher than the value of today in 20 million years. Do you honestly accept that assertion? I just provided a cite to show that I was correct in my earlier post on this point.
#161 Gerry Quinn – Thank you.
#162 Completely Fed Up – I already gave a link which shows that the ice core data from East Antarctica was 6 to 10K warmer than the value of today in East Antarctica – in addition to citing three other recent periods.
#166 David B. Benson – It sounds like you do not agree with the assertion that it has not been warmer than today since 20 million years ago.
#167 Daniel J. Andrews – I do accept evidence, although sometimes it is mixed and then reasonable people can differ. My only point was that I do not accept the assertion that the average global temperature has not been higher than today for 20 million years. Do you accept that assertion?
#168 Hank Roberts – So what. Do you project the summer temperatures forward into winter? Temperatures go up in down in many cycles – not just up.
#170 – Bob. Your right. If we ignore the past then we are really only looking at 35 years of data to judge the future by. I don’t think this is enough and mostly occured during a natural warming period – so can we really take a 30 year trend and then project it forward to 2100. I would feel better with a 60 year trend, even better with a 120 year trend, etc. 30 years just isn’t enough to really say what the climate will be in 2100.
“#162 Completely Fed Up – I already gave a link which shows that the ice core data from East Antarctica was 6 to 10K warmer than the value of today in East Antarctica”
Aye, and the EAIS covered the entire globe..?
zeroworker wrote: “Why not try to address the issue, instead of being snarky?”
The issue I am addressing is your deliberate dishonesty and your obvious intention to waste people’s time by badgering them with dishonest comments until they are sufficiently annoyed to respond.
In which respect you are similar to the people who sought to waste the time of climate scientists by badgering them with deliberately dishonest FOI requests.
“Otherwise why bother pointing out that it takes 18 hours? Does he just like to type?”
Because 50 FOI requests taking 18 hours is pretty much 100% of the time for the three people they had for 10 weeks.
Since one of the puling crowd’s complaints was that the information was not released on a timely basis (this basis being much shorter than 10 weeks), don’t you think that it’s rather a salient point?
“>>Even though no demonstrable harm was done.
Right. The huge firestorm in the media that happened after the hack didn’t do any damage at all to the campaign to educate the public on the dangers of climate change or to achieve policy changes to mitigate the problem.”
So this is the damage that the CRU are responsible for???
[edit]
#174 dhogaza
OK, I will look into the appeal rejection McIntyre received. I have not seen that to date, and thanks for the reference.
re RickA 15 April 2010 at 4:12 PM
(1) I don’t think there’s much support for your notion that the warming of the last 35 years occurred during a “natural warming period”. The evidence that bears on this indicates that the sun has made an overall slight cooling contribution during much of this period:
http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/464/2094/1367.abstract..
and that natural contributions have been rather minimal:
http://www.pnas.org/content/106/38/16120.abstract?sid=487f40e9-b7b4-47a8-a6cb-b7deb93e3e6a
(2) Your notion that one “judge(s) the future” by inspection of the last 35 years (or 60 years, or 120 years or whatever) is non-scientific. Our assessment of future consequences of raised greenhouse gas concentrations (warming, sea level rise, ocean acidification etc.) is based on an understanding of the physics of the response to enhanced radiative forcing and the ocean chemistry in response to raised CO2 levels etc. It’s got rather little to do with extrapolation of trends…
“I don’t think this is enough and mostly occured during a natural warming period – so can we really take a 30 year trend and then project it forward to 2100. I would feel better with a 60 year trend, even better with a 120 year trend, etc. 30 years just isn’t enough to really say what the climate will be in 2100.”
So fundamentally wrong. We are not just simple extrapolating to 2100! We know the forcings involved, natural and man-made. It is the additional man-made forcings from greenhouse gases since the 1970s that explains the warming since the 1970s. And the continued warming. Furthermore, the idea that somehow you know more about climate science as a laymen then literally thousands of peer-reviewed climate scientists world-wide is the height of pure arrogance.
> so what? … cycles ….
http://ourchangingclimate.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/temp_co2_tsi_stacked.png?w=449&h=366
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/04/05/stalking-the-elusive-solar-cycletemperature-connection/
177 (RickA),
And there you hit on the heart of it. All deniers are focused on what’s happened to date, and what the (imaginary) MWP means, and how the temperature record is measured and adjusted, and what today’s and tomorrow’s weather is doing, and on and on and on.
But the reality is that multiple lines of evidence, beginning with a very strong understanding of physics, chemistry, and atmospheric physics which has been born out by rigorous experimentation, and ending with paleoclimate studies and detailed observations which support the theory…
[drum roll here, please]
… All point to a very, very high probability of a very dangerous increase in temperature over the next fifty to two hundred years which is entirely based on what we’ve already done to the atmosphere and what we are going to do to the atmosphere if we don’t begin to make adjustments to how we consume and generate energy.
It’s that simple. Everything else, all of the “they homogenized wrong” and “it’s not really that warm yet” and “he stonewalled FOI requests” and “the hockey stick is the sign of the devil” is all nonsense.
Physics says it’s going to get very, very warm, and each and every clue that we find says the physics is right.
RickA…
Correction… what I should have said at the end there is “Physics says it’s going to get very, very warm, and each and every clue that we find says that our understanding of the physics is right.”
So you are right to say that 30 years is an unsatisfying period in which to look for a climate trend. But if you wait for a 60 or 100 year trend, it is then too late and the human race is, to use an ironic term, “cooked.”
you keep on telling us the same thing, but whats the next step to dealing with it ? What do the scientists propose?
CFU #162:
Eemian
David Benson #166:
Why? Clearly the high temperature in the Eemian had some other cause than high CO2, a cause which does not apply today – so what is the basis for your conclusion?
Hank Roberts #162:
I’m not sure what any of that has to do with the question of whether the temperature was higher than today during the Eemian interglacial.
In any case, do we have sufficiently high frequency data from the Eemian to determine whether the recent rate of change is unprecedented?
Bob #170:
Where do you get “might” from? Clearly today’s climate is perfectly tolerable and in fact rather nice.
And even the polar bears don’t seem to have been bothered too much by the Eemian, or by the thermal maximum 8000 years ago, which (as far as I can see from the little I’ve read) seems to have been hotter than today in the Arctic…
Certainly there is some global average temperature above which the effects will probably start to become undesirable on average, but there is no obvious indication that we have reached it yet.
The FOI is a moot point. The data isn’t available.
This inquiry is a moot point. The data isn’t available.
Peer review is a moot point. The data isn’t available.
Why didn’t Phil Jones just tell everyone that the data isn’t available? Why drag this on for years, first denying requests, then justifying the denial because of this or that, when he could have just told the truth.
Or am I wrong?
[Response: He did. Some people were not happy with that answer. – gavin]
RickA (177) — Internal variability AKA natural warming and cooling has but a small role to play in the last 13 decades of the instrumental record:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/03/unforced-variations-3/comment-page-12/#comment-168530
Perhaps the moderators have been rather generous?
The Emails and the FOI requests are both off topic as they are the subject of the next inquiry chaired by Sir Muir Russell. When Prof.Oxburgh was asked questions referring to either of the above topics he refused to reply.
Not at all surprising. Am I correct in saying that the IPCC investigation is the only one left to come out?
I find the lack of media coverage on the investigations strange. For months we were bombarded with allegations of scientific fraud. Now that it’s coming up clear, the mainstream media outlets don’t care anymore. It’s like they dropped the story in the middle, right when the soundbites were screaming the opposite of what measured investigation would later show.
“Furthermore, the idea that somehow you know more about climate science as a laymen then literally thousands of peer-reviewed climate scientists world-wide is the height of pure arrogance.”
actually that would be the height of pure ignorance, as in the Dunning-Kruger effect. [link added for RickA]
Kevin McKinney #147:
The OP claimed that the CCC companies “hid behind intellectual property law”. Either they filed patent claims or they didn’t. If they did, they are forced to disclose those claims by intellectual property law. If they didn’t, they are not hiding behind intellectual property law. Either way, the OP has no leg to stand upon.
RE CFU
“Very best” is a term I rarely hear from statisticians. Statisticians will try to choose the most appropriate tests, but statisticians will argue – it’s not as cut and dried as some people think (as anyone on an e-mail chain devoted to Bonferroni corrections will know). Anyway, the sponsor has to justify the choice of statistical tests and the FDA will evaluate the SAP and the tests that are proposed.
My point, and I believe Steven Sullivan’s point, is that the suggestion that scientists should collaborate more with statisticians is not limited to climatology research. My post in response to NS was that a lot of medical research studies are not as tightly controlled as studies that are planned for FDA submission. Trust me, climatologists would not be very productive working under such constraints.
IEEE Spectrum has a bit of a slugfest going on in comments on this article: http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/environment/climategate-is-dead-long-live-climategate-
I’ve responded to some, but some defence of the science there is needed too.
David Benson says: The concern is that current CO2 levels are already about the same as those prevailing in the Miocene, about 20 million years ago, with sea levels several tens of meters higher than now.
cf. Last time carbon dioxide levels were this high: 15 million years ago
Also worth noting:
Rate of ocean acidification the fastest in 65 million years
#189
Sorry for getting off topic, although I was initially responding to someone else.
I’ll hold my fire on the FoI stuff for now. I’ll wait for the results of the next inquiry, although I will say the more research I do on this intensifies the bad taste in my mouth rather than the opposite.
But I have to say, as a longtime reader of the site, but a new poster, I was hoping this site would be a place where mudslinging would be held to a minimum and people would at least try to politely engage with a newcomer. I’m not one to shrink from a debate, but I have tried to be respectful. I have not received respect in return. Instead, I’ve received responses such as:
“your deliberate dishonesty and your obvious intention to waste people’s time”
“Which, for him, is zerowork”
Totally uncalled for, as well as incorrect.
Let it be known that in the future I will fight fire with fire.
Note to zeroworker:
I’m sure you feel some of the responses you’ve received about FOI requests have been outright rude. And in a vacuum you’d be right.
A lot of people are kind of short-tempered about it because the same canard has been posted here almost daily since the hack itself back in November. The moderators and we posters get tired of telling the basics again and again; the CRU released all the data it could before the first FOI request took place, and was prevented from releasing the other data (the last 5%) because it was owned by various met agencies and covered by non-disclosure agreements.
There’s a widespread belief that McIntyre was well aware of this, having been told of it on multiple occasions, and he still had readers of his blog send FOI requests to the CRU.
If you go to the search box on RC’s home page and look for “CRU hack” all the threads from November pop right up top. Try reading through the comments and seeing how many times your question was asked (“if they’d just followed FOI guidelines there wouldn’t have been any problems…”) and how many times it was answered by Gavin and others. All I can say is that they exhibited far more patience than I have.