Climategate Who’s Who
Update: Two conflicting stories from UK. In TimesOnline, Jonathan Leake reports ”Climate change data dumped” while in the UK Telegraph, Robert Mendick reports University of East Anglia to Release data.
Jones threatened to destroy data if he was forced to provide it or provide only some of the data or the raw data or some last minute thrown together data. No indication he actually did so except in that other story. Or he might just release the final data sets w/o raw and w/o any or sufficient documentation of what they did to get there. They will not make it easy for scientists to assess what they did right or wrong. The following was from Nov 20, 2009 The warmist conspiracy: the emails that most damn Jones by Andrew Bolt. Here he is quoting Jones from one of his emails.
And when Jones is really forced to the point of handing over his data, he considers ways to make checking it more difficult or annoying: (in Jones’s own words)
...
Options appear to be:
Send them the data
Send them a subset removing station data from some of the countries who made us pay in the normals papers of Hulme et al. (1990s) and also any number that David can remember. This should also omit some other countries like (Australia, NZ, Canada, Antarctica). Also could extract some of the sources that Anders added in (31-38 source codes in J&M 2003). Also should remove many of the early stations that we coded up in the 1980s.
Send them the raw data as is, by reconstructing it from GHCN. How could this be done? Replace all stations where the WMO ID agrees with what is in GHCN. This would be the raw data, but it would annoy them. End of Jones email
Regardless, it will be very difficult to replicate the results they got if they don’t present all the data. Jones is already pointing to NOAA and NASA for confirmation that the trends they found are right even if the numbers we get can’t replicate the trends exactly. We need full transparency into what all the data centers had and used and then did for us to do a thorough and meaningful review and assessment.
Scientist Declares Climategate colleagues Mann, Jones and Rahmstorf ‘should be barred from the IPCC
By Climate Depot
A UN scientist is declaring that his three fellow UN climate panel colleagues “should be barred from the IPCC process.” In a November 26, 2009 message on his website, UN IPCC contributing author Dr. Eduardo Zorita writes: “CRU files: Why I think that Michael Mann, Phil Jones and Stefan Rahmstorf should be barred from the IPCC process.”
Zorita writes that the short answer to that question is: Short answer: “Because the scientific assessments in which they may take part are not credible anymore.”
Zorita indicates that he is aware that he is putting his career in jeopardy by going after the upper echelon of UN IPCC scientists. “By writing these lines I will just probably achieve that a few of my future studies will, again, not see the light of publication,” Zorita candidly admits, a reference to the ClimateGate emails discussing how to suppress data and scientific studies that do not agree with the UN IPCC views.
Zorita was a UN IPCC Contributing Author of Fourth Assessment Report in 2007. Since 2003, Zorita as headed the Department of Paleoclimate and has been a senior scientist at the Institute for Coastal Research of the GKSS Research Centre in Germany. Zorita has published more than 70 peer-reviewed scientific studies.
Zorita’s stunning candor continued, noting that scientists who disagreed with the UN IPCC climate view were “bullied and subtly blackmailed.”
“In this atmosphere, Ph D students are often tempted to tweak their data so as to fit the ‘politically correct picture’. Some, or many issues, about climate change are still not well known. Policy makers should be aware of the attempts to hide these uncertainties under a unified picture. I had the ‘pleasure’ to experience all this in my area of research,” Zorita explained.
Continuing fallout of ClimateGate
Zorita’s revelations are the latest in a series of continuing fallout to the global warming establishment and to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), since the email and data scandal dubbed “ClimateGate” broke earlier this month.
Zorita’s defection from the global warming establishment comes after the shocking news today that one of the scientists employed at ground zero of what has been termed “ClimateGate” has suggested disbanding the United Nations climate panel, the IPCC. See: Pressure Mounts From Inside: Disband IPCC? Scientist from U. of East Anglia Suggests ‘UN IPCC has run its course...politicizes climate science...authoritarian, exclusive form of knowledge production’ - Mike Hulme Excerpt: ClimateGate reveals science has become ‘too partisan, too centralized...more usually associated with social organization within primitive cultures’
Meanwhile, pressure to fire or resign continues to increase for the man at the center of the ClimateGate scandal, Phil Jones. See: Phil Jones, the Fall Guy? Scientist in climate change ‘cover-up’ storm told to quit - UK Daily Mail - Nov. 25, 2009
Caught in Another Untruth? THEN: UN IPCC’s Phil Jones, Dec 3, 2008: ‘About 2 months ago I deleted loads of emails, so have very little - if anything at all’ - NOW: UN IPCC’s Phil Jones, Nov 24, 2009: ‘We’ve not deleted any emails or data here at CRU’
The New ‘Deniers’: UK Greenie George Monbiot: ‘Most of the environmentalists I know have gone into denial’—‘Pretending the climate email leak isn’t a crisis won’t make it go away’ - Monbiot: ‘There is no helping it; Phil Jones has to go, and the longer he leaves it, the worse it will get’ - UK Daily Mail - Nov. 25, 2009
More Defections! Center for Env. Journalism’s Tom Yulsman: ‘I’m standing with George Monbiot on this’ - Nov. 25, 2009 - ‘I believe the CRU (Climate Research Unit) should agree to an independent examination of what happened...to prevent this kind of thing from ever happening again’
Et tu? Head of UN IPCC Pachauri Now throwing global warming under the bus?! There is a ‘larger problem’ than climate fears?! - Nov. 23, 2009 - Urges ‘time and space to look at the larger problem of unsustainable development, of which climate change is at best a symptom’
As the UN IPCC’s ClimateGate scandal unfolds, it appears New Zealand may have their similar type scandal involving manipulation of temperature data by a government agency. See: More Warmist Woes: New Zealand: Government agency accused of ‘cooking the books to create a warming trend where none exists’ - Nov. 26, 2009
Scientists from around the world now are questioning the propriety of a UN climate conference during all of this unraveling controversy surrounding the credibility of top UN scientists. See: UK Scientist: ‘Case for climate fears is blown to smithereens...whole theory should be destroyed and discarded and UN conference should be closed’ - Nov. 26, 2009
All of this has caused skepticism of man-made global warming to become the new political expediency. See: Losing Their Religion: 2009 officially declared year the media lost their faith in man-made global warming fears - Oct. 13, 2009 and see: ‘Welcome to the delayers’: Obama’s ‘half-hearted climate efforts’ welcomed by skeptics - Nov. 17, 2009
See more here.
This could prove to be climate science’s Vietnam. See more here. See recent email posts here and and here and here.
By James Taranto, Wall Street Journal
The massive University of East Anglia global-warmist archives are now searchable at this site, and one particular email demonstrates the nexus between the scientific shenanigans and the popular press, on which most people rely for their information on global warming. This email, dated Sept. 29, 2009, is from Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University to New York Times warm correspondent Andrew Revkin. The crucial exchange begins with this question from Revkin (quoting verbatim):
I’m going to blog on this as it relates to the value of the peer review process and not on the merits of the mcintyre et al attacks. Peer review, for all its imperfections, is where the herky-jerky process of knowledge building happens, would you agree?
And here is Mann’s response:
“Re, your point at the end--you’ve taken the words out of my mouth. Skepticism is essential for the functioning of science. It yields an erratic path towards eventual truth. But legitimate scientific skepticism is exercised through formal scientific circles, in particular the peer review process. A necessary though not in general sufficient condition for taking a scientific criticism seriously is that it has passed through the legitimate scientific peer review process. those such as McIntyre who operate almost entirely outside of this system are not to be trusted.”
In principle, Revkin and Mann are quite right. But as we noted Monday, one of the most damning findings in the archives concerns the corruption of the peer-review process.
In one email, under the subject line “HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL,” Phil Jones of East Anglia writes to Mann: “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow--even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”
In another, Mann--discussing a journal that has published a paper by skeptical scientists, puts forward a plan for such a redefinition:
“This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the “peer-reviewed literature”. Obviously, they found a solution to that--take over a journal! So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering “Climate Research” as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board...”
The scare quotes around “peer-reviewed literature” are Mann’s. And it hardly needs to be said that peer review is a sham if papers that present alternative hypotheses are not even allowed into the process.
So how does Revkin, who two months ago took the words out of Mann’s mouth, deal with this problem? Barely at all. See rest of post here. See this Wall Street Journal editorial showing how Mann helped forge a false consensus by controlling the peer review process here. See this post on Mann in the hot seat here. See Kimberly Strassel’s story “Cap-and-Trade is Dead” on WSJ’s Potomac Watch blog here.
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Icecap Note: Revkin follows with a balanced report on Pachauri’s comments on the Climate Files with a community response. We can only hope this bright man realized when he read the emails that he has been treated as a “useful idiot” by the cunning Michael Mann.
Head of Climate Panel Discusses Climate Files
By Andrew Revkin, New York Times Dotearth blog
Rajendra K. Pachauri, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has distributed a statement on the unauthorized disclosure of thousands of e-mail messages and documents involving a variety of contributors to the panel’s reports. One e-mail message from July 8, 2004, particularly related to the workings of the climate panel, has been the subject of much discussion.
In it, Phil Jones, the now-embattled head of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, the source of the leaked files, discusses several papers that challenge the status quo with Michael Mann, a longtime colleague from Pennsylvania State University. This is the take-home line, now reverberating around skeptics’ web sites:
I can’t see either of these papers being in the next I.P.C.C. report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!
Here’s Dr. Pachauri’s statement defending the climate panel’s procedures:
Statement on news reports regarding hacking of the East Anglia University email communications
“It is unfortunate that an illegal act of accessing private email communications between scientists who have been involved as authors in I.P.C.C. assessments in the past has led to several questions and concerns. It is important for me to clarify that the I.P.C.C. as a body follows impartial, open and objective assessment of every aspect of climate change carried out with complete transparency. IPCC relies entirely on peer reviewed literature in carrying out its assessment and follows a process that renders it unlikely that any peer reviewed piece of literature, however contrary to the views of any individual author, would be left out. The entire report writing process of the I.P.C.C. is subjected to extensive and repeated review by experts as well as governments. Consequently, there is at every stage full opportunity for experts in the field to draw attention to any piece of literature and its basic findings that would ensure inclusion of a wide range of views. There is, therefore, no possibility of exclusion of any contrarian views, if they have been published in established journals or other publications which are peer reviewed.”
“I would also like to highlight the fact that the summary for policymakers of all the reports of the I.P.C.C. are accepted and approved by all the governments of the world. Even at the stage of approval of the summary for policymakers of any report, which is carried out word by word, omissions if any would be highlighted by government representatives in the course of the approval.
In summary, no individual or small group of scientists is in a position to exclude a peer-reviewed paper from an I.P.C.C. assessment. Likewise, individuals and small groups have no ability to emphasize a result that is not consistent with a range of studies, investigations, and approaches. Every layer in the process (including large author teams, extensive review, independent monitoring of review compliance, and plenary approval by governments) plays a major role in keeping I.P.C.C. assessments comprehensive, unbiased, open to the identification of new literature, and policy relevant but not policy prescriptive.
The unfortunate incident that has taken place through illegal hacking of the private communications of individual scientists only highlights the importance of I.P.C.C. procedures and practices and the thoroughness by which the Panel carries out its assessment. This thoroughness and the duration of the process followed in every assessment ensure the elimination of any possibility of omissions or distortions, intentional or accidental.”
Mohammad Al-Sabban, who has for many years been the lead negotiator for Saudi Arabia in treaty talks on climate and is that country’s liaison to the intergovernmental climate panel, appears unsatisfied. After receiving a copy of the statement this morning, he sent this comment to me by e-mail:
“A lot of damage has already been done to this international scientific body and I do not think the attached response by Dr. Pachauri was convincing enough to remove such a damage.”
See post here.
Icecap Note: See John McLean’s powerful study of IPCC fraud here. Time for Pachauri to go back to his old job as railroad engineer and the IPCC to be dissolved.
See also David Archibald in the Quadrant on the control and abuse of peer review here.
By Justin Sorkin
In their Tuesday-released report about the stepped-up pace of climate change, three scientists - Richard Somerville of Scripps Institution of Oceanography; Michael Mann of Penn State; and Eric Steig of University of Washington - said that last week’s leaked emails controversy was apparently a part of a “smear campaign,” attempting to wreck the climate summit in Copenhagen next month.
The clamor about the leaked emails began on November 20, with an unknown hacker breaking into a server at the well-known Climate Research Unit (CRU) of Britain’s University of East Anglia; stealing nearly 169 megabytes of emails from the institute’s computers; and posting them online.
While climate skeptics said that the leaked documents are a clear revelation of the deliberate effort by some scientists to overemphasize the effects of man-made global warming, the University said that the rather candid messages were a part of the ongoing debate among leading change specialists about the ways in which to address recent data showing temperatures leveling off.
Steig called the skeptics’ attempt as a “desperate” one launched right before the Copenhagen conference, while Mann termed it as a convenient “cherry picking” episode.
Mann said: “What they’ve done is search through stolen personal emails - confidential between colleagues who often speak in a language they understand and is often foreign to the outside world.” He further added that the skeptics had largely turned “something innocent into something nefarious.” Read post here.
See how Zorita Calls For Banning Mann, Jones and Rahmstorf from IPCC here. See the danger Copenhagen which these ‘scientists’ are cheering on poses in this video here.
Icecap Note: it is the height of irony that these ‘scientists’ who are masters of cherry-picking should claim those who have written about the alleged emails as ‘cherry pickers”. They are in denial and hopefully will find their work, already debunked to now be forever ignored. Let’s hope the great damage they have done to the science is not irreparable.
Instead of being “out-of-context nothing to see here emails’, their content suggest a fraud by Mann, Steig, Jones, Santer, Somerville, Peterson, Briffa, Ammann and others including Gore, Holdren, Pachauri, Solomon and the UN IPCC is on such a massive scale that it makes Bernie Madoff look like he was robbing a few convenience stores. As Joseph Olson in Recussant Picadores Circle the IPCC says so well “It is time for the purge and reboot. For the lead AGW climate scientists, this will be sudden and decisive, due to behavior so abhorrent that none can condone. There is a fairy tale cast of climate charlatans to be the lead lambs. There is Phil “Butcher” Jones who has slaughtered and packaged the data. There is James “Baker” Hansen, who willingly heated the climate information in his control. Dr Michael “Hockey Stick Maker” Mann carved up a marvel of mathematics. The best quote on Dr. MM is from Dr Tim Ball who stated that “Dr Mann is in transition from Penn State to State Pen”. We can only hope he does a better job with license plates than he did with hockey sticks.
See this CBS Online post on How Congress May Probe Emails here. It contains some very powerful email evidence that the data used to show significant warming the last century is seriously flawed. See this excellent WUWT post by Willis Eschenbach on the abuse of the scientific method.
And from Andrew Bolt here:
Frank J. Tipler, professor of mathematical physics at Tulane University, on the true significance of Climategate: “The now non-secret data prove what many of us had only strongly suspected - that most of the evidence of global warming was simply made up. That is, not only are the global warming computer models unreliable, the experimental data upon which these models are built are also unreliable. As Lord Monckton has emphasized here at Pajamas Media, this deliberate destruction of data and the making up of data out of whole cloth is the real crime - the real story of Climategate. It is an act of treason against science. It is also an act of treason against humanity, since it has been used to justify an attempt to destroy the world economy.”
And even James Hansen of NASA thinks the Copenhagen IPCC meeting is a fraud. See more here.
See in Pajamas Media video with an interview of the enviromentalists on the emails here.
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Lord Monckton: Shut Down The UN, Arrest Al Gore
By Paul Joseph Watson, Prison Planet
Appearing on The Alex Jones Show yesterday, Lord Christopher Monckton went further than ever before in his vehement opposition to the elitists running the climate change scam, calling for the UN to be shut down and for fraudulent peddlers of global warming propaganda like Al Gore to be arrested and criminally prosecuted.
Monckton said that those who are threatening to shut down economies, bankrupt nations, and deepen the problems of the third world by implementing draconian policies in the name of global warming should be indicted, prosecuted and imprisoned “for a very long time”. “The fraudsters and racketeers from Al Gore to the people at the University of East Anglia who have been making their fortune at the expense of taxpayers and the little guy,” should be criminally charged, said Monckton, in response to the climategate scandal.
“We the people have got to rise up worldwide, found a party in every country which stands for freedom and make sure we fight this bureaucratic communistic world government monster to a standstill - they shall not pass,” he added.
Monckton said that the United Nations should be “closed down,” adding that he talked to a senior UN ambassador in Canada who told him that he no longer saw any purpose in the UN and it exists “only to enrich itself at the expense of the nations it claims to serve, it’s time it was brought to an end.”
“We would all save billions if we shut down the UN and just about all of its hideous bureaucracy,” said Monckton.
Lord Monckton emphasized how the emails released as a result of climategate prove that global warming alarmism was still prevalent in public but behind closed doors, warmist scientist are admitting that the “deniers” as they label people like Monckton are correct.
“Publicly they’re saying the science is settled, we’re all doomed unless you close down the economies of the west, whereas privately they’re saying to each other ‘we’ve got it wrong, none of this adds up and it’s a travesty that we can’t explain it’.”
Monckton also slammed Obama’s science czar John P. Holdren, who in his 1977 book Ecoscience called for draconian population measures to be enforced by a “planetary regime” in the name of saving the earth, as an “openly admitted communist”.
Monckton pointed out how Holdren had been once of the most prominent alarmists in the 70’s warning about the onset of rapid “global cooling”. “Now with seamless mendacity he says that what we’re now facing is global warming,” said Monckton. “How can anyone like Holdren stand up with a straight face and expect anyone to believe it,” he added.
Monckton said that the agenda behind the global warming movement was to set up a communistic world government which will be run by people who “do not care how many people they kill with their policies” and that their goal is to “do away with democracy forever by stealth using the excuse to save the planet.” Monckton said that the people running the scam had a “deliberate desire to control population by killing people in large numbers deliberately if necessary.”
The former advisor to Margaret Thatcher said that the warmists were sounding more and more desperate and knew that they had been rumbled as a result of climategate, which would only make it more urgent for them to try and force through a binding treaty in Copenhagen. Monckton said that the answer to combating the move towards neo-feudalism and global government was to form a worldwide “freedom party” that would operate nationally in every country in order to defend freedom, democracy and prosperity while routing out every aspect of the communistic takeover. “Every time these people try to take it away, we in the freedom party will stop them, and I think now is the time,” said Monckton.
Watch the interview in full here. Part I below. Other parts here.