By Roger Harrabin, BBC
Phil Jones is director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA), which has been at the centre of the row over hacked e-mails. The BBC’s environment analyst Roger Harrabin put questions to Professor Jones, including several gathered from climate sceptics. The questions were put to Professor Jones with the co-operation of UEA’s press office.
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A - Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical?
An initial point to make is that in the responses to these questions I’ve assumed that when you talk about the global temperature record, you mean the record that combines the estimates from land regions with those from the marine regions of the world. CRU produces the land component, with the Met Office Hadley Centre producing the marine component.
Temperature data for the period 1860-1880 are more uncertain, because of sparser coverage, than for later periods in the 20th Century. The 1860-1880 period is also only 21 years in length. As for the two periods 1910-40 and 1975-1998 the warming rates are not statistically significantly different (see numbers below). I have also included the trend over the period 1975 to 2009, which has a very similar trend to the period 1975-1998. So, in answer to the question, the warming rates for all 4 periods are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other. Here are the trends and significances for each period:
Period Length Trend
(Degrees C per decade) Significance
1860-1880 21 0.163 Yes
1910-1940 31 0.15 Yes
1975-1998 24 0.166 Yes
1975-2009 35 0.161 Yes
B - Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming
Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.
C - Do you agree that from January 2002 to the present there has been statistically significant global cooling?
No. This period is even shorter than 1995-2009. The trend this time is negative (-0.12C per decade), but this trend is not statistically significant.
D - Do you agree that natural influences could have contributed significantly to the global warming observed from 1975-1998, and, if so, please could you specify each natural influence and express its radiative forcing over the period in Watts per square metre.
This area is slightly outside my area of expertise. When considering changes over this period we need to consider all possible factors (so human and natural influences as well as natural internal variability of the climate system). Natural influences (from volcanoes and the Sun) over this period could have contributed to the change over this period. Volcanic influences from the two large eruptions (El Chichon in 1982 and Pinatubo in 1991) would exert a negative influence. Solar influence was about flat over this period. Combining only these two natural influences, therefore, we might have expected some cooling over this period.
E - How confident are you that warming has taken place and that humans are mainly responsible?
I’m 100% confident that the climate has warmed. As to the second question, I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 - there’s evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity.
F - Sceptics of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) suggest that the official surface record paints a different story from the actual station records. To restore trust, should we start again with new quality control on input data in total transparency?
First, I am assuming again that you are referring to the surface record from both land and marine regions of the world, although in this answer as you specifically say “station” records, I will emphasise the land regions. There is more than one “official” surface temperature record, based on actual land station records. There is the one we have developed in CRU, but there are also the series developed at NCDC and GISS. Although we all use very similar station datasets, we each employ different ways of assessing the quality of the individual series and different ways of developing gridded products. The GISS data and their program are freely available for people to experiment with. The agreement between the three series is very good.
Large numbers of the CRU e-mails were posted on the web . Given the web-based availability of the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN), which is used by both NCDC and GISS, anyone else can develop their own global temperature record from land stations. Through the Met Office we have released (as of 29 January 2010) 80% of the station data that enters the CRU analysis (CRUTEM3). The graphic in the link here shows that the global land temperature series from these 80% of stations (red line) replicates the analysis based on all 100% of stations (black line). The locations of the 80% of stations are shown on the next link in red. The stations we have yet to get agreement to release are shown in grey.
I accept that some have had their trust in science shaken and this needs the Met Office to release more of the data beyond the 80% released so far. Before all the furor broke we had begun discussions with the Met Office for an updated set of station temperatures. With any new station dataset we will make sure we will be able to release all the station temperature data and give source details for all the series.
G - There is a debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was global or not. If it were to be conclusively shown that it was a global phenomenon, would you accept that this would undermine the premise that mean surface atmospheric temperatures during the latter part of the 20th Century were unprecedented?
There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia. For it to be global in extent the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern Hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions.
Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today (based on an equivalent coverage over the NH and SH) then obviously the late-20th century warmth would not be unprecedented. On the other hand, if the MWP was global, but was less warm that today, then current warmth would be unprecedented. We know from the instrumental temperature record that the two hemispheres do not always follow one another. We cannot, therefore, make the assumption that temperatures in the global average will be similar to those in the northern hemisphere.
H - If you agree that there were similar periods of warming since 1850 to the current period, and that the MWP is under debate, what factors convince you that recent warming has been largely man-made?
The fact that we can’t explain the warming from the 1950s by solar and volcanic forcing - see my answer to your question D.
I - Would it be reasonable looking at the same scientific evidence to take the view that recent warming is not predominantly manmade?
No - see again my answer to D.
J - Are there lessons to be learned for society or scientists about the way we see uncertainty and risk?
Yes - as stated by Sir John Beddington - the government chief scientist. And this doesn’t just apply to climate science.
K - How much faith do you have - and should we have - in the Yamal tree ring data from Siberia? Should we trust the science behind the palaeoclimate record?
First, we would all accept that palaeoclimatic data are considerably less certain than the instrumental data. However, we must use what data are available in order to look at the last 1,000 years. I believe that our current interpretation of the Yamal tree-ring data in Siberia is sound. Yamal is just one series that enters some of the millennial long reconstructions that are available. My colleague Keith Briffa has responded to suggestions that there is something amiss with the Yamal tree-ring data. Here is his response.
L - Can you confirm that the IPCC rules were changed so lead authors could add references to any scientific paper which did not meet the 16 December 2005 deadline but was in press on 24 July 2006, so long as it was published in 2006? If this is the case, who made the decision and why?
No answer. Question should be put to IPCC.
M - What advice did you seek in handling FOI requests?
The university’s policy and guidelines on FOI and the Environmental Information Regulations are on our website and the information policy and compliance manager (IPCM) takes responsibility for co-ordinating responses to requests within that framework. We also have colleagues in each unit and faculty who are trained in FOI to help in gathering information and assessing any possible exceptions or exemptions. I worked with those colleagues and the IPCM to handle the requests with responses going from the IPCM. He also liaises with the Information Commissioner’s Office where necessary and did so on several occasions in relation to requests made to CRU. Where appropriate he also consulted with other colleagues in the university on specific issues.
N - When scientists say “the debate on climate change is over”, what exactly do they mean - and what don’t they mean?
It would be supposition on my behalf to know whether all scientists who say the debate is over are saying that for the same reason. I don’t believe the vast majority of climate scientists think this. This is not my view. There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties, not just for the future, but for the instrumental (and especially the palaeoclimatic) past as well.
O - Can you tell us about your working life over the past decades in climate science. Paint a picture about the debate with your allies and scientific rivals etc.
I have been at CRU since November 1976. Up until 1994, my working life was almost totally in research. Since 1994, I have become more involved in teaching and student supervision both at the postgraduate and undergraduate level. I became a Professor in 1998 and the director of the Climatic Research Unit in 2004 (I was joint director from 1998). I am most well known for being involved in the publication of a series of papers (from 1982 to 2006) that have developed a gridded dataset of land-based temperature records. These are only a part of the work I do, as I have been involved in about 270 peer-reviewed publications on many different aspects of climate research. Over the years at scientific meetings, I’ve met many people and had numerous discussions with them. I work with a number of different groups of people on different subjects, and some of these groups come together to undertake collaborative pieces of work. We have lively debates about the work we’re doing together.
P - The “Climategate” stolen emails were published in November. How has your life been since then?
My life has been awful since that time, but I have discussed this once (in the Sunday Times) and have no wish to go over it again. I am trying to continue my research and supervise the CRU staff and students who I am responsible for.
Q - Let’s talk about the e-mails now: In the e-mails you refer to a “trick” which your critics say suggests you conspired to trick the public? You also mentioned “hiding the decline” (in temperatures). Why did you say these things?
This remark has nothing to do with any “decline” in observed instrumental temperatures. The remark referred to a well-known observation, in a particular set of tree-ring data, that I had used in a figure to represent large-scale summer temperature changes over the last 600 years. The phrase ‘hide the decline’ was shorthand for providing a composite representation of long-term temperature changes made up of recent instrumental data and earlier tree-ring based evidence, where it was absolutely necessary to remove the incorrect impression given by the tree rings that temperatures between about 1960 and 1999 (when the email was written) were not rising, as our instrumental data clearly showed they were. This “divergence” is well known in the tree-ring literature and “trick” did not refer to any intention to deceive - but rather “a convenient way of achieving something”, in this case joining the earlier valid part of the tree-ring record with the recent, more reliable instrumental record.
I was justified in curtailing the tree-ring reconstruction in the mid-20th Century because these particular data were not valid after that time - an issue which was later directly discussed in the 2007 IPCC AR4 Report. The misinterpretation of the remark stems from its being quoted out of context. The 1999 WMO report wanted just the three curves, without the split between the proxy part of the reconstruction and the last few years of instrumental data that brought the series up to the end of 1999. Only one of the three curves was based solely on tree-ring data. The e-mail was sent to a few colleagues pointing out their data was being used in the WMO Annual Statement in 1999. I was pointing out to them how the lines were physically drawn. This e-mail was not written for a general audience. If it had been I would have explained what I had done in much more detail.
R - Why did you ask a colleague to delete all e-mails relating to the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC?
This was an e-mail sent out of frustration at one FOI request that was asking for the e-mail correspondence between the lead authors on chapter six of the Working Group One Report of the IPCC. This is one of the issues which the Independent Review will look at.
S - The e-mails suggest you were trying to subvert the process of peer review and to influence editors in their decisions about which papers to publish. Do you accept that?
I do not accept that I was trying to subvert the peer-review process and unfairly influence editors in their decisions. I undertook all the reviews I made in good faith and sent them back to the editors. In some e-mails I questioned the peer-review process with respect to what I believed were poor papers that had appeared. Isn’t this called freedom of speech? On some occasions I joined with others to submit a response to some of these papers. Since the beginning of 2005 I have reviewed 43 papers. I take my reviewing seriously and in 2006 I was given an editor’s award from Geophysical Research Letters for conscientious and constructive reviewing.
T - Where do you draw the line on the handling of data? What is at odds with acceptable scientific practice? Do you accept that you crossed the line?
No answer. Matter for the independent review.
U - Now, on to the fallout from “Climategate”, as it has become known. You had a leading role in a part of the IPCC, Working Group I. Do you accept that credibility in the IPCC has been damaged - partly as a result of your actions? Does the IPCC need reform to gain public trust?
Some have said that the credibility in the IPCC has been damaged, partly due to the misleading and selective release of particular e-mails. I wish people would spend as much time reading my scientific papers as they do reading my e-mails. The IPCC does need to reassure people about the quality of its assessments.
V - If you have confidence in your science why didn’t you come out fighting like the UK government’s drugs adviser David Nutt when he was criticised?
No answer.
W - Finally, a personal question: Do you expect to return as director of the Climatic Research Unit? What is next for you?
No answer.
See an SPPI post on this Most Important Interview here.
See the Indur Golkany take on this momentous mement on WUWT here.
By Suzanne Goldenberg, UK Guardian
Carbon dioxide is “essentially harmless” to human beings and good for plants. So now will you stop worrying about global warming?
Utah’s House of Representatives apparently has at least. Officially the most Republican state in America, its political masters have adopted a resolution condemning “climate alarmists”, and disputing any scientific basis for global warming.
The measure, which passed by 56-17, has no legal force, though it was predictably claimed by climate change sceptics as a great victory in the wake of the controversy caused by a mistake over Himalayan glaciers in the UN’s landmark report on global warming.
But it does offer a view of state politicians’ concerns in Utah which is a major oil and coal producing state.
The original version of the bill dismissed climate science as a “well organised and ongoing effort to manipulate and incorporate “tricks” related to global temperature data in order to produce a global warming outcome”. It accused those seeking action on climate change of riding a “gravy train” and their efforts would “ultimately lock billions of human beings into long-term poverty”.
In the heat of the debate, the representative Mike Noel said environmentalists were part of a vast conspiracy to destroy the American way of life and control world population through forced sterilisation and abortion.
By the time the final version of the bill came to a vote, cooler heats apparently prevailed. The bill dropped the word “conspiracy”, and described climate science as “questionable” rather than “flawed”.
However, it insisted – against all evidence – that the hockey stick graph of changing temperatures was discredited. It also called on the federal government’s Environmental Protection Agency to order an immediate halt in its moves to regulate greenhouse gas emissions “until a full and independent investigation of climate data and global warming science can be substantiated”.
As Noel explained: “Sometimes ... we need to have the courage to do nothing.”
Read more here.
Predictably, environmental professors at BYU and the University of Utah sent letters denouncing the action fearing that would endanger the grant gravy train they have been riding at our expense in recent years. To which we reply - reality has set in fellows. Find another this time honest job.
NRO Editorial
Exaggeration and alarmism have been a chronic weakness of environmentalism since it became an organized movement in the 1960s. Every ecological problem was instantly transformed into a potential world-ending crisis, from the population bomb to the imminent resource depletion of the “limits to growth: fad of the 1970s to acid rain to ozone depletion, always with an overlay of moral condemnation of anyone who dissented from environmental correctness. With global warming, the environmental movement thought it had hit the jackpot - a crisis sufficiently long-range that it could not be falsified and broad enough to justify massive political controls on resource use at a global level.
Former Colorado senator Tim Wirth was unusually candid when he remarked in the early days of the climate campaign that “we’ve got to ride the global-warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing - in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.” (Not surprisingly, after Wirth left the Senate and the Clinton administration he ended up at the United Nations.)
The global-warming thrill ride looks to be coming to an end, undone by the same politically motivated serial exaggeration and moral preening that discredited previous apocalypses. On the heels of the East Anglia University “Climategate” scandal have come a series of embarrassing retractions from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) regarding some of the most loudly trumpeted signs and wonders of global warming, such as the ludicrous claim that Himalayan glaciers would disappear within 30 years, that nearly half of the Amazon jungle was at imminent risk of destruction from a warming planet, and that there was a clear linkage between climate change and weather-related economic losses. The sources for these claims turned out to be environmental advocacy groups - not rigorous, peer-reviewed science.
To be sure, these revelations do not in and of themselves mean that the idea of anthropogenic global warming is false. But this is probably the beginning of a wholesale revision of the conventional wisdom on climate change. One of the central issues of Climategate - the veracity and integrity of the surface-temperature records used for our estimates of warming over the last few decades - is far from resolved. The next frontier is likely to be a fresh debate about basic climate sensitivity itself. There have been several recent peer-reviewed papers suggesting much lower climate sensitivity to greenhouse gases than the IPCC “consensus” computer models predict. And alternative explanations for observed climate change in the Arctic and elsewhere, such as shifts in ocean currents and wind patterns, should receive a second look.
Dissenters who pointed out these and other flaws in the IPCC consensus were demonized as deniers and ignored by the media, but they are now vindicated. (The American media are still averting their gaze, though the British press - even the left-wing Guardian and the Independent - is turning on the climate campaigners with deserved vengeance.) The IPCC is mumbling about non-specific reforms and changes in the process shaping its next massive climate report, due out in three or four years. The IPCC should emulate a typical feature of American government commissions and include a minority report from dissenters or scientists with a different emphasis. But the next IPCC report may not matter much: With the collapse of the Kyoto-Copenhagen process and the likely rejection of cap-and-trade in Congress, climate mania may have run its course.
See editorial here.
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EPA Mandates Rely On Unsettled Science
By Shannon L. Goessling, Investors Business Daily
That the Obama administration and the Environmental Protection Agency are on the wrong climate path is the understatement of the decade.
Recent disclosures through ClimateGate, an EPA whistle-blower and a daily barrage of scientific data call into question every assumption of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
These disclosures make it clear that the EPA’s rush to regulate every aspect of American commerce, energy and consumer choices is based on flawed and perhaps even fraudulent scientific data.
Even according to a number of IPCC scientists, if the entire planet adopted the Kyoto Protocol and additionally ceased all productive activity worldwide tomorrow, the global temperature might be reduced slightly less than 1 degree - in 20 to 50 years, a trivial “benefit” purchased at catastrophic cost.
EPA defenders in Congress say not to worry because the regulations that will flow from the EPA’s December 2009 endangerment finding have yet to be enacted.
Here’s the truth: According to the EPA’s extensive documentation, the forthcoming regulations are already placing enormous burdens on companies, employers, consumers and energy ratepayers. And once the regulations take effect, it gets worse.
For example, the EPA estimates a 20% across-the-board increase in costs for attorneys, regulatory compliance professionals, engineers and the like in order to comply with the new regulations. Guess who’ll pay the tab? You and I.
Representing more than a dozen members of Congress and more than two dozen associations and companies that are dramatically affected by the new EPA endangerment finding, our firm filed a petition for review with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia this week.
In December, we asked the EPA to reconsider its ill-considered finding. In the coming weeks, we are likely to engage in a number of other challenges to attempt to halt this train wreck.
The Obama administration’s agenda, echoing the globalist mantra heard at the recent Copenhagen climate change conference, would force a command-and-control regime onto the struggling U.S. economy that has no parallel in our nation’s history.
Every American would be affected at great cost. Farmers and agriculture, manufacturers, trucking-transportation companies, railroads, energy producers and suppliers, and energy-intensive industries like concrete and glass will face staggering mandates that may dwarf the potential costs of pending health care reform.
The trade-off promised by global warming acolytes is an avalanche of so-called “green jobs.” A pledge made by President Jimmy Carter more than 30 years ago, millions of green jobs have never materialized, despite billion-dollar public expenditures ostensibly designed to encourage them.
Moreover, according to recent econometric studies of congressional cap-and-trade proposals, which are less stringent than the forthcoming EPA mandates, 4 million U.S. jobs would be lost to increased costs and lower productivity by 2030.
The cost of gasoline, electricity and natural gas would increase approximately 150%. The nation’s gross domestic product would be reduced by more than $630 billion. The impact would be particularly painful to the poor and lower-income families.
Our foundation and the group of petitioners we represent are opposed to the government attempt to take control of key aspects of life on the pretext of saving the planet.
The method by which the EPA arrived at its “finding” is procedurally suspect and is based on science that is anything but what Al Gore has described as “settled.”
The unprecedented cost in lives, jobs, services, consumer choices and quality of life inflicted by the EPA’s draconian measures staggers the imagination, provides no significant environmental benefit and is likely unconstitutional. Read editorial here.
Goessling is executive director and chief legal counsel for the Southeastern Legal Foundation, a public interest law firm and policy center now litigating against the Environmental Protection Agency.
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Why the EPA is Wrong about Recent Warming
by Chip Knappenberger, MasterResource
Back in December, the EPA announced that it had determined that greenhouse gases released by human activities “threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations.” This “Endangerment Finding” is the first step toward EPA’s issuing regulations aimed at restricting GHG emissions in the U.S.
Unfortunately for the EPA, a major pillar of support of the Endangerment Finding - that “most” of the “observed warming” since the mid-20th century is from greenhouse gas emissions from human activities - has been shown by recent scientific research in major peer-reviewed scientific journals to be largely in doubt.
Add this result to the list of problems that seems to grow longer with each passing day as more IPCC gaffes are uncovered and Climategate emails are parsed. One has to wonder just how long it will be until the EPA is challenged to reconsider its Endangerment Finding.
The basis for the Engangerment Finding is contained in the EPA’s Technical Support Document for Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act (TSD). The TSD does not describe any new, independent research carried out by the EPA (because they did not undertake any), but instead largely summarizes the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
One of the key statements (from page 2 of the Executive Summary of the EPA’s TSD) is this - a simple mimic the IPCC AR4 finding:
Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG [greenhouse gas] concentrations.
As to what the “observed increase in global average temperature since the mid-20th century” has been, I present Figure 1 - the annual HadCRUT3 global temperature record from 1950 to 2009. The trend line has value of 0.117C/decade which amounts to a total temperature increase of 0.702C over the 60 years from 1950.
As I shall show, this statement is no longer tenable.
As to what the “observed increase in global average temperature since the mid-20th century” has been, I present Figure 1 - the annual HadCRUT3 global temperature record from 1950 to 2009. The trend line has value of 0.117C/decade which amounts to a total temperature increase of 0.702C over the 60 years from 1950.
Observed global temperature history, 1950-2009 (black). “Corrected” global temperature history (red line). “Corrected” temperature history with general influence of stratospheric water vapor (according to Solomon et al., 2010) removed (green line). “Corrected” temperature history with general influence of stratospheric water vapor (according to Solomon et al., 2010) removed and the influence of black carbon (according to Ramanathan and Carmichael, 2009) removed (blue line).
The remaining warming - that which possibly could be caused by anthropogenic GHG increases - now stands at about 0.366C - or just 52% of the EPA’s “observed” increase.
Conclusion - The EPA is Wrong
And I have only included the best estimates from Solomon et al. and Ramanathan and Carmichael. In fact, both studies include a range of estimates. Had I used the low end of the ranges, the remaining warming from GHGs would have been quite a bit less than 50% of the “observed” warming. Also, I used a pretty conservative “correction” based on Thompson et al. Others contend that the “correction” should be larger, and in and of itself could invalidate the EPA/IPCC “most likely” description.
And, I didn’t include any warming from things such as urbanization, land-use change, site changes, or other natural variability - which have been by some studies to have a detectable (warming) impact.
So, if we take what the best science gives us, we find that pretty close to half of the warming that is currently indicated by the extant global temperature datasets may be from influences other than anthropogenic greenhouse gas increases - perhaps a bit less, perhaps a bit more.
Heading back to the EPA’s Description of Likelihood Table (above) we find that instead of “very likely,” probably the most apropos descriptor is found a couple of lines down, the one that encompasses a 33 to 66% probability - or “about as likely as not.”
Read the extensive details here.