by Judith Curry
Its a busy week in the climate blogosphere, reacting to the emails and also the UNFCCC Conference in Durban.
Emails
The previous thread on the emails now has over 800 comments, covering a wide range of issues. The skeptical blogosphere remains focused on the emails, although the 2nd round of emails has not really gone viral in the way that happened two years ago. The MSM seems to have concluded “not much to see here.”
I think this 2nd batch of emails is mainly of interest to the insiders that follow the climate debate closely. I have found most helpful those analyses that tie together a number of related emails into a narrative that provides context. Some examples of this that I’ve spotted:
- New Zealand Climate Change: Climategate 2 and the Corruption of Peer Review
- New Zealand Climate Change: Climategate 2 and the Corruption of Peer Review – Part II
- ClimateAudit: Direct Action at Harvard
- ClimateAudit: Severinghaus and hide the decline
- ClimateAudit: Behind Closed Doors: “Perpetuating Rubbish”
Any others that you have spotted?
In terms of defending or explaining the emails, we have:
- RealClimate: Two year old turkey
- CRU: Cherry picked phrases explained
- Forbes: Climategate 2.0 Looks more like Climatefluff 3 1/2
DeepClimate is auditing McKitrick.
Durban
The official UNFCCC web site on the Durban Climate Change Conference is [here]:
The United Nations Climate Change Conference, Durban 2011, will bring together representatives of the world’s governments, international organizations and civil society. The discussions will seek to advance, in a balanced fashion, the implementation of the Convention and the Kyoto Protocol, as well as the Bali Action Plan, agreed at COP 13 in 2007, and the Cancun Agreements, reached at COP 16 last December.
Here are some articles that I have spotted that may be of interest, covering a range of perspectives:
- NYTimes: At meeting on climate change, urgent issues but low expectations
- Robert Stavins: Can the Durban climate negotiations succeed?
- Mother Jones: 5 things to know about the Durban climate talks
- WSJ: The great global warming fizzle
I’m hoping to hear from people who have been following this more closely than I have.
If anyone clicks on ‘the great global warming fizzle’ be aware the article is a long way down a very strange page.
tonyb
And it crashed my browser. But he really doesn’t have anything to say about the latest emails.
Nick continues to run interference for the climate mafia.
Well, what does it say about the latest emails?
Nothing about the emails, but as it’s about Durban and is referenced in the area of the post dealing with Durban, that shouldn’t be surprising…
What does it say, Nick? Where are the ‘consolations of their teachings, and the charisma of their leaders’?
================
What it does say about its leaders, kim is: As with religion, it is presided over by a caste of spectacularly unattractive people…
And the link, Tony, opens right on the story in my browser (I.E.8).
Roger
The link opened for me this time as well-just shows what influence I wield that someone read my comment and immediately fixed the link. Any other things you want me to fix? :)
tonyb
The American Thinker evaluates the emails in:
The Global Warming Bubble is Popping
Durban will hopefully continue the outcome pattern of all prior AGW conferences: a transparent expensive failure. The only thing worse would for the parties to agree to something based on CO2 and actually inact the agreement as written. Short of the US President giving away the store in a dramatic ‘gesture’, we can count on the least irrational outcome and for nothing of any consequence to happen.
The believer community is working feverishly to ignore the e-mails and hoping desperately they go away. Good luck with that.
The question for many folks, hunter, is why politicians are spending public resources on an “expensive failure” when Western economies are collapsing?
See public readers comments on “Project begins injection of CO2 for storage at Illinois Basin”, PhysOrg.com (28 Nov 2011)
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-11-co2-storage-illinois-basin.html
Oliver
Are there any publically available geological reports on this project ?
By that I mean actual stratigraphic borehole logs, sandstone porosity/thickness/structure/cover etc ?
What’s the weather like in Durban. The last two COPs were unusually cool. This seven day forcast for Durban looks like a cold-front is coming through.
http://www.wunderground.com/global/stations/68588.html
Low 70s F for the highs in late spring.
They had an extreme event, a rainstorm and flood that killed several people. Perfect for a religion.
UN Climate Change Breakthrough Decision Already Made: Where to Hold Next Year’s Conference
I think the rate these emails penetrate the mainstream is remarkable. This is happening much faster than the Climategate 1.0 release. If you recall, it took time, several weeks, before the impact began to be “seen” in the general news outlets. It might seem slow from our POV, but think about how much things have changed in less than a week. Information has a lapse rate too.
Dave Clarke, aka Deep Climate, does a fine job, it appears, putting the mails Ross referred to in proper order.
I don’t know why dave won’t put his real name to his work
Was this supposed to be a sarcastic comment, or did you actually find his post good?
did I say his post was good? I choose my words carefully.
Monty Python strikes at the US heartland again :) :)
Reminds me of an old quote.
An American never insults on purpose.
An Englishman never insults by accident.
Or something of that ilk.
Mosh
I don’t follow the minute detail of the emails but Deep Climate clearly says in his second paragraph that it was Trenberth not Jones who said ‘ He Has done a lot but I don’t trust him’ and then makes disparaging remarks about McKitricks version of events.
The emails are confusingly laid out but it seems to me it was Phil Jones who made this remark.
http://foia2011.org/index.php?id=664
It therefore appears that Deep climate makes a mistake from the start. You probably follow this a lot closer than me, so who is right, Deep Climate or McKitrick?
tonyb
Well tony, have a look at the mail in question. Its easier to understand if you’ve used something like Thunderbird.. but have a look,
Ill add some bits
date: Wed Sep 15 16:18:03 2004
from: Phil Jones
subject: Re: Chap 3
to: xx@ucar.edu
Kevin,
This will be my last email this week. I’ll check again on Saturday, then maybe next
week,
but definitely Thurs/Fri next week.
Glad to hear that Jim is recovering well. Give me my best if you see him. Also good on
the jury duty !
The temperature trends would seem to be best (to me at least) as the knowns/unknowns/
unknowable will enable the others to see the thinking and how we have to get across
uncertainties. Need to keep us all focussed.
I’d let Susan go through the scoping material and we/you can pick up on the CAs etc.
I haven’t prepared anything by the way. I have a number of talks on the lap top, but
not
as appropriate as yours.
Getting people we know and trust is vital – hence my comment about the tornadoes group.
I still favour Steve Warren on clouds, but there are a whole range of aspects to consider
there.
Merging wind and waves is fine with me – should be a small section anyway.
I hope to get a few people involved within CRU (Tim Osborn, Malcolm Haylock), but some
are already involved in other chapters and being courted by WGII.
Have another (!) good week in Geneva !. I should arrive in Trieste on the Sunday
morning.
Staying with 2 others from CRU in Venice on the Saturday night.
Cheers
Phil
######################THIS ENDS JONES###############
At 15:37 15/09/2004, you [Trenberth] wrote:
Hi Phil
I was supposed to be on jury duty this week but I was excused after 5 hours,
thank goodness. Next week I am in Geneva at WCRP mtg and I go from there to
Trieste. So this week is all I have to prepare further.
I have several possible presentations to consider. One was the one I sent
you earlier based on the scoping material, although Susan may cover a lot of
that. One is a paper I gave last week where I was tasked to review
temperature trends: the known, the unknown and the unknowable.
The question is whether these might help get us on the same wavelength or
highlight disparate views. To the extent we can get on the same page, so
much the better.
I also have some draft material, adpated from last time, on letters to CAs
recruiting them to do the task required (to be sent by email). Question,
should the LA send these or us? It may carry more weight if we send them.
It may also give us more control.
Some thoughts follow.
####### NEXT comes TRENBERTHS inline comments
### with patches of Jones mails and Trenberths reponses
### trenberth is “inlining” comments.
### the little “>” lets you know that this is jones
### orginal comments.. get it?
On Wed, 15 Sep 2004, Phil Jones wrote:
>
> Kevin,
> Here’s a few thoughts. Not added any of this to the annotated outline.
>
> 3.2 and 3.3. We should talk to Dave Easterling and Tom Peterson about who
> additionally
> might be involved from NCDC. I’m working with Russ Vose on a comparison
> of the NCDC/CRU/GISS
> land temperature datasets. Nor sure how many more in Asheville can get
> involved.
#### NOW COMES TRENBERTH
Tom is on another chapter I believe. Dave is one of our LAs and so I think
will bring a lot of NCDC along with him, just as you will UEA and me NCAR.
I hope.
### ternberth ends
### next comes jones
>
> I’ll talk to Mike Hulme here, but he’s changed his research areas a lot
> in the last few years,
> so is much more WGII now.
>
> I’m at an Antarctic meeting tomorrow and Friday in Cambridge, so can ask
> John Turner or a
> colleague there. Might be useful re 3.6.5 or 3.9 but in all sections we
> are trying to get the
> large-scale picture, so bits on different continents are useful, but will
> need a lot of integration.
> There will be a paper on the latest Antarctic temp trends, so this can be
> referred to in 3.2.
>
> I’m involved in an EU project on the greater Alpine region. This has
> extensive analyses of many
> variables from the best observed mountaineous region. There are precip
> and temperature datasets
> going back to 1800. Also the Austrian group (Boehm, Auer at the NMS) have
> a paper on
> temp changes inferred from pressures at high and low elev sites in the
> region. It confirms the
> surface warming – could be a box in 3.2?
>
> I’ve emailed Adrian Simmons on another issue and asked him how much he
> would like to get
> involved. Need to add Peter Thorne to 3.4.1.6. Co-ordination with the
> various US efforts essential.
> Tom Wigley tells me he’s heavily involved in one of these.
>
> Clouds in 3.4.3 are a problem.
############ jones ended
########### Trenberth begins
I have done a very preliminary review of literature on clouds. I can send to
you if you like? Liepert might be better there. Rossow also? But I don’t
trust him. Norris has done a lot but I don’t trust him either.
>
#######################
so, Trenberth is the one who says he doesnt trust Norris.
Let me just say to folks that unless you read all the mails and get pretty clear on these types of pitfalls, unless you’ve read the science and all the blogs, you had better be careful about what you claim. That goes for people who claim there is nothing in the mails and well as those who crow about finding fraud.
Even then you can make mistakes. I know I did. Gavin caught one, Arthur smith caught one and steve mcintyre caught a couple.
If you want to get some mastery I will suggest this. Pick a narrative or pick a character. The jesus paper is a narrative, read all the mails and look for relavant issues. Or pick a character, trenberth, and try to understand him.
Dont focus on quotes, you will make mistakes. If you dont have a complete story that makes sense you probably should say anything.
arrg.. shouldnt say anything obviously
I thought it made more sense the first time round ;)
haha Ant, so did I
Mosh
That’s why I asked you. The email layout is way too complex to understand from a quick reading and its easiest to wait for those who have made a study of them to make a sensible comment. But if DC is correct what are we all supposed to then make of your response to juokola?
tonyb
I think the point is that if you can’t even work out who said it, you certainly can’t work out the context. They are talking about appointing someone to a task with a lot of responsibilities. As Jones says, you do need to trust them, in many ways. People here immediately assume he’s talking about whther he is a reliable AGW supporter. But he might just be someone who (Jones thinks) never gets things done on time.
Anyway, I understand the person referred to did become an author.
Try:
Excel Spreadsheet with Climategate 1 and 2 emails ordered chronologically (WUWT)
ordered emails – xls (Office 2000, 2003)
ordered emails – xlsx (Office 2007 and later)
This XLS file is very helpful for chronological context
Stokes: “As Jones says, you do need to trust them, in many ways.”
ROFL. Based on what? Their past openness? Their past attempts to squash opposing science.
“People here immediately assume he’s talking about whther he is a reliable AGW supporter.”
All of the emails show that this is the pimary criteria. Did you miss all the discussion of “the cause”? Did you miss all the coordinated persecution of those that oppose “the cause”. Did you miss the references to producing studies and papers with a specific goal in mind. It’s amazing how hard you are trying to become nothing more than an overt propagandist for people with zero integrity.
As I said, Dave Clarke did a fine job of putting the mails in order.
IN ORDER
I’m not going to render a verdict on his parsing of the mails or the content. For my own part I tried to avoid commenting on stuff where the story line is barely there. I think there are one or two solid story lines in the mails, De Freitas is getting there and the whole Holland FOIA story line is pretty solid.
Here is what I look for. Since you dont have all the mails you have to be careful about jumping to conclusions. On the other hand when you ammass enough of the story line that you cant imagine a missing piece of information overturning the story or changing the plot, then you have enough to run with. That’s a tough line to draw.
The other thing you can do is look for patterns of behavior and changes in patterns.
Nicky,
You are really a tool:
“People here immediately assume he’s talking about whther he is a reliable AGW supporter. But he might just be someone who (Jones thinks) never gets things done on time.”
Another possibility is that he might just be someone who (little Philly thinks) has pretty eyes. And a tool like you could think up a lot of other crap, but everybody knows the reality is that being a believer and a team player is the real primary selection criteria.
I’ll defer to the crowd on whether it was Jones or Trenberth. For the point at issue it hardly matters. The point is: they are going through names in order to pick Contributing Authors to an IPCC Assessment Report. Regardless of how the author selection process is believed to work, the selection is, in this case, done behind closed doors in a private email conversation between Jones and Trenberth. Prior to the release of these emails, how many people knew that this is how it was done, or that these were the names considered, and that personal acquaintance figured into the selection? It is the essence of the old boys system at work, and I don’t think anybody would need to see any more text than is already there to accept that personal biases come into play. One would hardly expect otherwise. If in some weird parallel universe Steve McIntyre and I were Coordinating Lead Authors of Chapter 6, and the selection of Contributing Authors was done by Steve and I shooting emails back and forth going through names of people we know, I don’t expect anyone to believe that the resulting list would not reflect, at least in part, our biases.
In my report, recommendations 2,3 and 6 are my suggestion of how to put sunshine on the CA selection process and limit the scope for CLA bias to drive the whole process.
Ross,
The believer community is so anesthetized against any critical challenges to the ’cause’ that few if any will even understand the issues you raise.
Whereas the skeptic community is a model of open-mindedness?
:“the selection is, in this case, done behind closed doors in a private email conversation between Jones and Trenberth.”
Actually it wasn’t. The untrusted person did become an author.
Are you talking about Rossow? He works for GISS. How far off the team’s reservation can he be. Most likely it was just impossible to find enough people that Trenberth “trusts” to staff the working groups without having the list look like a hockey team who’s who.
He must had had very pretty eyes.
The GISS team and the Trenberth-Jones team are two different sects of the same religion.
“Actually it wasn’t. The untrusted person did become an author.”
Prove it.
> For the point at issue it hardly matters.
Compare and contrast:
> That [Schneider] turns out to have been intensely biased, arrogant and careless with facts matters a great deal.
http://climateaudit.org/2011/11/25/a-somewhat-late-response-to-schneider/
There’s some crazy report of airplanes on the radar. It’s gotta be birds.
================
Carelessness with facts is a little thing
That matters a great deal to the fraud investigator
Who believes it will reappear in big things:
http://climateaudit.org/2005/10/29/is-gavin-schmidt-honest/
My biggest shock (or perhaps just disappointment) is the naked unethical behavior of the “team” in trying to squelch valid scientific debate. I knew they were wed to their idea, but to actually be anti-science about promoting it is very saddening.
“Shock” Phil? Were you born yesterday?
This has been going on for 15+ years or more at the Mann/Jones/CRU level alone.
I know that now. But like most of the naive public, until recently, I thought there were just honest differences of opinion. To see the level of deceit and fraud should be shocking to anyone except the ones who participated in it.
Fair enough Phil. You should bone-up on “Agenda-21” and review your George Orwell http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/ and reconsider Soviet Science authority and history if you want to understand the AGW “consensus” and what it is trying to achieve.
I love Orwell (even though he was a big socialist, his books are the most anti-socialist outside of Ayn Rand). And I know about Agenda 21. I do not hold out any myopic visions of politicians being this way. I know they are unethical and unscupulous b*st*rds. However, I was giving you a view of a naive person of 2 years ago (when I started researching the subject of AGW). Who I was then is who most people are today. These emails are their wake up call – for the ones not comatose.
Phil, why do you think they went throuigh the AGW sales effort? What is the root goal of AGW activists who dominated the age? What politics do they largely share including Dr. Curry?
(Woodstock, Hippies, Population Bomb, Greenpeace, Grateful Dead concerts, OWS, anti-capitalism, Pete Seeger and Peter Paul Mary Concerts, Obama, Eco-left, Earth day, NYTimes, MSNBC, Keynesian Economics, academic know-it-all culture, experts, smartest people in the room, social arrogance etc. etc.)
Sales and PR are one thing. That is human. We all want to be right, so we strive to convince others we are right. I do not agree with scientists doing PR, but I expect it. And I figured that was what Algore and his minions like Trenberth were doing – selling their brand of snake oil – but one they truly believed in.
This is different. This shows they do not have the conviction of their statements. They are afraid of debate because they lack evidence they are right. It shows them to be charlatans. I know that now. Still, it was a rude awakening for me, and as I indicated, a big disappointment. I think Steven Mosher nailed it – I was putting them on a pedestal. One that clearly Climate scientists do not belong on.
Cwon14 and Steven Mosher – I will add one qualification. While many on the AGW “team” have soured me to my myopia, Dr. Curry has made me see that not all are that way. I have more respect for her than for all the “team” combined. We may not agree on many things, but she has my utmost respect for have the faith of her convictions and willing to put them on the line for the sake of scientific integrity.
PhilJourdan, with your very words you have given US, all, the ‘Big Mo’…
Now go and tell all of your friends why.
perhaps you put scientists on too high a pedestal?
they are human. they will try to stop debate. ego is more important than the “truth”. usually this doesnt matter as science is self correcting. The issue here is that science cant correct with these types in charge
I think you hit the nail on the head. But as I indicated, that was a prior me. But that prior me is most of the people that do not follow AGW closely.
Perhaps ‘science can’t correct quickly’ would be better in your last sentence. Lysenko finally went, and that aspect of Soviet science corrected itself. All this will be a lot clearer in ten years, and some of what passes for ‘climate science’ will have corrected itself by then.
Here’s hoping, anyway.
Yes,
I will add that Nick Stokes said something in Lisbon that has stuck with me ever since. I trust he won’t mind me violating the rules of repeating what he said. basically, we can argue all we like in the end nature will decide. Personally, I think that nature will show us that the IPCC reports get it generally right. The language is far too confident and thats a result of politics and ego. I think that people who believe in AGW have treated skeptics like they are big bad boogie men and that has worsened the situation. We would be better off if mann has shared his data, jones had shared his data, and holland had gotten his mails. Much ado about precious little. The enemy isnt big Oil and everyone who opposes your Hockey stick is not a “baddy”. The enemy is uncertainty and the scope and scale of the problem. Drawing scary pictures doesnt help.
But most people who believe in AGW cant say those things. They cant say, Mann was a dope for not sharing is data. They cant say that Phils fight against FOIA was stupid and counter productive. They can’t say the HS is a side show. Even though they know that to be true. In the end Nature will give up her answer about the science. Its a big bet either way.
Nicely stated.
steven mosher
I think you said it all with
Max
Surely, the way around this would ba an audit… anyone? audit? no?
fine… :-(
RE: Climate science corruption:
SSDD. Eugenics, Lysenkoism, tulip mania, the Wall St. effort to use quants to manage and predict market risk, etc. etc. etc.
People like to be on the cutting edge of the latest, greatest and most profitable.
What we see hapening in the climate science/AGW movement is no different.
I have an odd response to the second tranche of emails – I somehow feel it should be an occasion for everybody to have a ‘time-out’ from tribalism. It seems so predictable that one group of people is saying it represents the end of the AGW movement (or should) and another saying that they can’t see that the emails represent a problem at all.
Surely it isn’t too hard to put them in some kind of reasonable perspective? They don’t say very much about the fundamental science except perhaps that in private a lot of the Team players are vastly more uncertain than they state publicly. Then of course there is the bullying of editors, gatekeeping, and various unpleasant but largely irrelevant behaviours…
From my point of view some of the most important revelations are about the mechanisms and processes of the IPCC being man-handled for political ends, but hey, I think that should have been obvious! It’s politics!
We may have more context for how the Hockey stick was defended beyond reason or common sense, but aren’t we over that? The TAR was ten years ago for Gods sake!
Durban – I have to say that in the UK its hard to be sure anything is occurring there at all. Does anybody have any hopes of anything actually happening?
Anteros, CG2 isn’t going to change the active interest participants at all. Defense of the Hockey stick confirms science ignorance so the exercise helps skeptics overtime. Since AGW is political religion first and foremost, it must always be defended as an article of faith by the AGW faithful.
I’m personally hoping for a meltdown at PennState similar to that of the Soviet Union. Then the records of many frauds will be be disclosed but this might take a decade if at all. The correct endgame is for massive disclosure, civil and criminal prosecutions of the key AGW promoters, defunding of climate central planning (UN and IPCC) and a common consensus that political agenda science should not be repeated.
Durbin isn’t just a joke, it’s criminal enterprise of state expansion based on touted disinformation and hyperbole. It shouldn’t be forgotten or forgiven.
In The Great Global Warming Fizzle, Bret Stevens observes:
John Brignell provides insight into the religious factors driving global warming alarmism in:
How we know they know they are lying
Tennyson – The Grandmother.
A telling example is:
etc.
Anteros
The emails reveal a politically corrupted IPCC “consensus process”
They reveal that this process (and a group of climate scientists involved) went out of their way to squelch any scientific studies, which dissent from the “consensus” position.
This, in turn, has raised serious questions regarding the validity of the science supporting the IPCC report, which was a product of this “corrupted process”
The emails directly discredit a group of culpable scientists; the sad thing is that they indirectly result in a lack of confidence or trust in climate science in general.
For a climate scientist who is outside this guilty cabal (like our host here), this must be extremely disheartening.
This is the significance here, Anteros.
Max
What I can tell you is that there are lot of people from the UK there, take a look at this list posted on Tom Nelson’s site.
http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2011/cop17/eng/misc02p02.pdf
For those from the USA they are listed just below the UK and there are pages and pages of them, all paid for by the poor tax payers.
It is disgusting.
Climategate 1.0/2.0 can be interpreted in the tradition of neo-Malthusianism exaggeration and intolerance. I blog on this today at MasterResource: http://www.masterresource.org/2011/11/climategate-2-0-neomalthusian-intolerance/.
Too many of these emails are Enronish, a combintation of intellectual arrogance (‘smartest guys in the room’) and deceit (working from the story to the numbers, rather than vice-versa). Psychic profits, not only monetary profits, can attract bad behaviors.
“Too many of these emails are Enronish,”
Having seen the CNBC series on Enron, I have to say that that’s a superb parrallel.
No more than a few hours after the Climategate 2.0 email story hit the web, I was assured that it was “more of the same – nothing to see here” by quite a few people. Admittedly, they hadn’t had a chance to read the emails, but the official point of view was established very quickly. I’ve noticed a shortage of “forgery” claims, mostly because they got bit with that one in the 1.0 release.
On prediction about the UNCC meetings: they’re going to host them in Southern Hemisphere locations for a few years, so they get nice warm weather during the conference (the record cold in Cancun last year nearly panicked some of the delegates, and more than a few left early).
The interesting thing about that is that there were thoushands of emails released, no way there was enough time to check them all yet but still, the authorities are sure there’s nothing of interest in them.
Hmmm.
I believe that the article on Severinghaus is very important. What follows is something that I have posted on the matter:
As many have pointed out, there has been no empirical research that can tell us why tree ring width declined. What The Team have offered and offers is nothing but hunches. Until there is empirical research on at least one variety of tree that can tell us about the changes in growth rates for tree rings and the environmental changes that cause them, tree ring data cannot be used as a proxy for temperature. This applies to all tree ring data extending into the past. That tree ring data has not been supported through empirical research.
The point should be extended to all paleo data. Paleo data is used today only because it has been used in the past. But none of it, present or past, has been subjected to serious empirical research that would provide some support for the data and, more important, some scientific basis for distinguishing good paleo data from bad. By contrast, archeologists can use radiocarbon dating to assign dates to historic and pre-historic artifacts with reasonable confidence because there is a well-confirmed science that explains techniques of radiocarbon dating. There is no such thing for tree rings as proxies for temperature. For that reason, all claims based on tree ring proxies must be treated as hunches and not genuine science.
This message came to The Team more than a decade ago from prominent scientists, such as Professor Daly, who warned them that they must adopt scientific method in the practice of paleoclimatology. I am sad to say that I have come to believe that the members of The Team truly do not understand the message. They truly do not understand that their claims about tree rings as proxies for temperature are not empirical claims at all. These studies must be rejected because there is no empirical support for them. All articles by The Team that rely on tree ring width data, past and present articles, must be withdrawn.
“I believe that the article on Severinghaus is very important.”
I believe it is very unimportant. What happened? S asked about divergence and got impatient and unsatisfactory answers from Mann, saying basically “read the papers”?
OK, Mann gave an impatient answer? Is that it? That part of his answer, though, was right. There were major papers written on the topic. And if you want to argue about the validity of proxies in the face of divergence, that’s the place to look. Not in emails. There are no revelations there.
Nick: “There were major papers written on the topic.”
And which major papers do you feel adequately explain the divergence. Which papers provide emperical and experimental evidence for their explanation? Links please.
Tilo, I’m sure you can argue for ever about that. But it isn’t a climategate issue. The papers have been there and open for discussion for over a decade.
But OK, start with:
Reduced sensitivity of recent tree-growth to temperature at high northern latitudes – a whole Nature paper devoted to this topic, and
Trees tell of past climates: but are they
speaking less clearly today?; an even more detailed and thorough inquiry.
Nick:
From the Briffa paper that everyone is familiar with.
“The cause of this increasing insensitivity of wood density to temperature changes is not known,”
No explanation of the divergence here. Did you see what I asked you? Are you now just throwing out papers to support your earlier statement:
“There were major papers written on the topic. And if you want to argue about the validity of proxies in the face of divergence, that’s the place to look.”
Clearly, the Briffa paper does nothing to verify the validity of proxies in the face of divergence.
Both papers have Team members. Does confirmation bias ever enter your mind?
Are there any independent studies outside the tribe?
Nick:
And from your second paper we have:
“On annual, decadal, and probably even
centennial time-scales, tree-ring data are demonstrably
reliable palaeoclimate indicators, but where the focus of
attention shifts to inferences on century and longer time-
scales, the veracity of inferred change is difficult to
establish. Furthermore, recent analyses of large regional-
scale growth patterns and absolute tree growth changes
over recent centuries strongly suggest that anthropogenic
in£uences are increasingly challenging our assumptions of
uniformitarianism in tree growth climate responses.
While this clearly represents a problem in interpretation,
it also provides challenging opportunities for disentangling
different tree-growth signals.”
So, your implication that 20th century divergence is understood and explained is simply so much BS, Nick. More of the kind of nonsense that you generate for “the cause” every day.
Nick, You are quite mistaken. The Nature article refers to divergence in the density of the wood, not ring width.
“Did you see what I asked you?”
Yes. And did you see what I answered. It isn’t a climategate issue. It’s a standard scientific argument, conducted in the public literature, and that’s the place to look. We won’t resolve it here.
You said:
“What happened? S asked about divergence and got impatient and unsatisfactory answers from Mann, saying basically “read the papers”?”
And then you said:
“It isn’t a climategate issue.”
But it obviously is a climategate issue. Mann is again exposed as trying to snow someone with “read the papers”. When asked about the divergence during one of his lectures, Mann simply pulled out of his butt, “it’s caused by pollution.” So the S. issue is very much about climategate because it is one more of the hundreds of existing pieces of evidence for what an agenda driven jerk Mann is.
Here Mann again displays both his character and his drive to punnish anyone who opposes his agenda:
“It seems to me that this “Kinne” character’s words are disingenuous, and he probably supports what De Freitas is trying to do. It seems clear we have to go above him. I think that the community should, as Mike H has previously suggested in this eventuality, terminate its involvement with this journal at all levels–reviewing, editing, and submitting, and leave it to wither way into oblivion and disrepute,
Thanks,
mike
Apparently, for the Hockey Team, the world is just full of people that they cannot trust and that they must punnish.
I guess between suing people like Singer; trying to shut down journals that publish things that he doesn’t like; trying to snow people about issues of divergence, trying to hide his public email from the public, etc., it’s no wonder that Mann has so little time for work that he has to use proxy series upside down.
Nick, stop bluffing and state the contents of the papers that you prize so highly. Do not do us the indignity of presuming to assign homework.
Tilo Reber: absolute tree growth changes over recent centuries strongly suggest that anthropogenic in£uences are increasingly hallenging our assumptions of uniformitarianism in tree growth climate responses.
It’s that pounds sterling symbol in “in£uences” which validates your point, Tilo.
Tilo quotes a paper cited by Nick as follows:
“Furthermore, recent analyses of large regional-
scale growth patterns and absolute tree growth changes
over recent centuries strongly suggest that anthropogenic
in£uences are increasingly challenging our assumptions of
uniformitarianism in tree growth climate responses.”
“…challenging our our assumptions of uniformitarianism in tree growth climate responses?”
OMG! Anyone who would assume uniformitarianism in tree growth response is jaw-droppingly stupid and certainly not an empirical scientist. All of the work based on such a Medieval concept must be withdrawn from all journals.
To the best of my knowledge, the last uniformitarians argued that some races are inherently inferior to others.
“There were major papers written on the topic.”
What’s in them? Are you unable to say? There is nothing on empirical research because none has been done.
As a separate question, surely you are not referring to Briffa’s papers? Briffa said he had not a clue why the divergence occurred.
Severinghaus makes clear that The Team was given an opportunity from a friend to address this very important matter regarding the empirical support for their proxy data and they dodged it.
“Until there is empirical research on at least one variety of tree that can tell us about the changes in growth rates for tree rings and the environmental changes that cause them, tree ring data cannot be used as a proxy for temperature. ”
well that is clearly false. tree rings can be used as Proxies for temperature or precipitation. The question is always how good are they.
You can, for example, take a core from trees and look at the rings from
1850 to 2010. You can use the 1850-1900 period as calibration and then verify using the rest. or use 1950 to 2010 as calibration and the first part of the core as validation, or you can use the middle as calibration. Thats
a standard approach in validation. This is an empirical approach.
Not if you don’t gave a way to control for moisture, you can’t.
Moisture among how many other conditions? Twenty? Fifty? A hundred? The empirical work on moisture is very limited. There is no universal theory of moisture and tree growth as the Warmists assume. There is no theory that contains all the relevant variables for the tree rings that Briffa studied. If there is, here is your opportunity to produce it.
Isn’t it a matter of “how good are they” but not that they “can’t be used as a proxy for temperature”, just like Steven said? As long as they have even a tiny bit of temperature signal in them they can be used. It is only a matter of how you do that.
So the scandal isn’t that the proxies are unreliable. The scandal isn’t that they couldn’t be used a s a proxy. The scandal is, that they use more accurate thermometer readings in the same graph to make HS -shaped reconstructions. And that they cut the inconvenient bits of data to hide any uncertainities between them.
“Isn’t it a matter of “how good are they” but not that they “can’t be used as a proxy for temperature”, just like Steven said? As long as they have even a tiny bit of temperature signal in them they can be used. It is only a matter of how you do that.”
This is the faith of Mann and The Team: give me any set of numbers from proxies and I can tease the temperature signal from them. No, you have to do genuine empirical research to learn that the set of numbers is not contaminated from some one change that has nothing to do with temperature. In the case of the Hockey Stick, we still do not know why the tree widths declined. No amount of statistical magic can address that problem.
Theo,
you are correct of course that somewhere in there is a temperature signal. There is also the humidity/water availability signal, the CO2 fertilization signal, the actual fertilizer signal, the direct insolation signal, disease/pest signal, fire signal… Bristle Cone Pine are an interesting example. Mann may have used trees that had been damaged by having sections of bark removed. this is a possible cause of accelerated growth!!
The issue is that there are so few studies that even begin to attempt to separate out who these differing influences impact density and width of the rings. i haven’t even seen anything on explaining double rings during a year.
We are at the point of a BEGINNING Science trying to fob off bias confirmation as technical analysis based on accumulated knowledge.
Here is one study of stip bark and whole bark bristlecone that gives a little idea of the complexities that would need to be unravelled to be able to to any kind of attribution.
http://www.geo.arizona.edu/Antevs/Theses/AbabnehDissertation.pdf
and, of course, for those who think McIntyre doesn’t do science an one of his posts on the subject:
http://climateaudit.org/2007/10/16/the-ababneh-thesis/
http://climateaudit.org/2007/10/17/almagre-strip-bark/
“You can, for example, take a core from trees and look at the rings from
1850 to 2010. You can use the 1850-1900 period as calibration and then verify using the rest. or use 1950 to 2010 as calibration and the first part of the core as validation, or you can use the middle as calibration. Thats
a standard approach in validation. This is an empirical approach.”
That might be good for boy scouts, but it is not science.
How do you rule out a tree as aberrant? How do you determine that an entire population of trees is aberrant or not? Your science must be able to tell you what is a good proxy and what is not. The answer is below in the last paragraph. Meanwhile, try these questions:
Do you core one tree and use it as the standard for all?
What do you do when your samples conflict with one another? Surely, you are not assuming that they never conflict, are you?
Is this calibration specific to a particular environment or a given territory or elevation or what?
Etc?
The empirical matter is far more complicated than you seem to realize. Just to show you how complicated it is, to this day no member of The Team has published a paper which contains empirical research that explains why some tree ring widths used in the Hockey Stick diverged from recorded temperatures after 1960.
You have to have standards and they can be developed only through empirical research which identifies the kinds of changes that a particular kind of tree undergoes in a particular kind of environment, the environmental changes that cause those changes in the tree, and the causes of those environmental changes. No one on The Team has done that kind of research.
“Do you core one tree and use it as the standard for all?”
no theo you do not. If you read the mails you will find either ed cook or Briffa telling you about the number of trees you need. 50 or so.
each tree is cored. If its done right you take two cores at 90 degree angles to each other.
Other question:
How do you rule out a tree as aberrant?
usually trees that show sign of mechanical damage
or fire or insect damage are ruled out. See
the thread on climate audit where RC made his
appearence. Surely you’ve read all of Climate audit, at least
do your blog science.
Your science must be able to tell you what is a good proxy and what is not.
Funny, I dont see you attacking people who use sun spots as proxies. Its essentially the same thing, except with tree rings there is a physical theory
“usually trees that show sign of mechanical damage
or fire or insect damage are ruled out. See
the thread on climate audit where RC made his
appearence. Surely you’ve read all of Climate audit, at least
do your blog science.”
An aberrant tree is one that looks exactly like the other tree(s) except that the width of its tree rings diverges considerably from the others. What are you going to do when half the trees are aberrant?
“Funny, I dont see you attacking people who use sun spots as proxies. Its essentially the same thing, except with tree rings there is a physical theory.”
I take it that there is something of a theory about what causes sunspots and how their occurrence might cause some events on Earth. If I am wrong then I will reject them as proxies.
You know that there is no physical theory that explains the effects of all relevant environmental changes on the trees that Briffa studied and none that explains what causes those changes. If there were such a physical theory, it would have been trumpeted years ago. You cannot produce such a theory here and neither can any member of the team. What you refer to in your post above as discussion of these matters is simply another list of hunches. Hunches are not science.
Theo
“An aberrant tree is one that looks exactly like the other tree(s) except that the width of its tree rings diverges considerably from the others. What are you going to do when half the trees are aberrant?”
You really dont get this do you. Like I said start with the blog science which you can probably handle. Then go read the papers.
Tree rings can be used as proxies for temperature. How well they perform is a separate question. Its all about the error bars.
The nice thing is we do have an understanding that temperature ( and other things) do effect the width of tree rings. Unlike the sun spot crap you let slide under your selectively skeptical eye.
Moshpup,
“Funny, I dont see you attacking people who use sun spots as proxies. ”
We also let slide Gypsies, Voodoo practitioners, medicine men and many others who have their own methods of predicting climate and other issues. Are you planning on trying to change the subject and claim we need to condemn these people also loudly and with vigour before we attack those who actually have influence and are assisting in taking actions based on their shoddy work?
“Its essentially the same thing, except with tree rings there is a physical theory”
I have a physical theory that is based on physical stuff that says light travels faster than light except when it doesn’t. Will you take it seriously??
Y’all really are starting to to make such specious arguments you are going to get a reputation worse than Nick and the rest of the apologists.
Steven Mosher writes:
steven mosher | November 30, 2011 at 1:00 am |
Theo
“An aberrant tree is one that looks exactly like the other tree(s) except that the width of its tree rings diverges considerably from the others. What are you going to do when half the trees are aberrant?”
“You really dont get this do you. Like I said start with the blog science which you can probably handle. Then go read the papers.”
You are the one who does not get this. You have no comprehension of empirical research whatsoever. You think that so long as you take some measurements from nature then you are doing empirical research. Sorry, but that is not enough. You assume that trees are uniform in nature and you cannot do your statistical work without that assumption; however, that assumption is radically false and non-empirical. Yes, I know that invalidates all prior work using tree rings as proxies. Such discoveries of mistaken methods are made daily in science.
I am here to debate not to be assigned homework. If you cannot state your argument that is your problem not mine.
“Tree rings can be used as proxies for temperature. How well they perform is a separate question. Its all about the error bars.”
Your statistics are based upon the non-empirical assumption that trees are uniform in nature. You cannot be more anti-empirical.
“The nice thing is we do have an understanding that temperature ( and other things) do effect the width of tree rings. Unlike the sun spot crap you let slide under your selectively skeptical eye.”
Well, I can tell you that temperature affects tree rings but I cannot systematically list the other causes of changes in tree rings that interfere with the effects of temperature yet that is the puzzle that needs solving. To this day, no one knows why the divergence occurred that became the famous “hidden decline.” Only empirical research beyond anything that exists can explain that.
I did not mean to suggest that I trust sun spots as proxies for anything.
“You can, for example, take a core from trees and look at the rings from
1850 to 2010. You can use the 1850-1900 period as calibration and then verify using the rest. or use 1950 to 2010 as calibration and the first part of the core as validation, or you can use the middle as calibration. Thats
a standard approach in validation. This is an empirical approach.”
Your words reveal the most fundamental error in scientific method. You have assumed that nature is uniform. No scientist whose name has survived, except in the annals of infamy, has assumed that nature is uniform since the publication of David Hume’s “Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding” in the 18th century. In that immensely important book, Hume proved that all arguments to the effect that nature is uniform are circular. Good old empiricism teaches us that we must always expect changes in nature including the most fundamental principles of natural law.
Mosher: “well that is clearly false. tree rings can be used as Proxies for temperature or precipitation. The question is always how good are they.”
Yeah, you can use extraterrestrial sightings as proxies for temperture. And you can use the 1850-1900 period as calibaration. But “the question is, how good are they.”
I use pirates.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PiratesVsTemp%28en%29.svg
here Joshua
do some reading outside your comfort zone
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2011/11/29/schellnhuber-and-the-tyndall-centre.html
I liked Tol’s tweet: ‘oh oh’. Take a look, J.
===========
Well Tilo that would require you to do math.
Opps, you cant
Math can contribute to empirical research but math alone does not constitute empirical research. You need to demonstrate that you can engage with empirical reality before you post ad hominems against others. I know you are very proud of the statistical skill that you have gained but that skill can be applied only on the basis of assumptions about empirical reality. The assumption that The Team is using in the case of Briffa’s tree ring records is that trees are uniform in nature. That assumption is radically false and it is our topic.
You can tell steven has lost the argument, he is getting abusive.
It is patently obvious that to use Tree Rings for an ACCURATE proxy you need to know at least the following about the time period
Local Humidity, Snowfall and Rainfall figures.
Local land use conditions above the trees, ie farming providing fertiliser in rain runoff.
Industrial Polution
Local Cloud Cover history.
History of any Earth movements, or Volcanic activity.
The Temperature to compare it to.
With the last why would you need the trees as a proxy, and without the others how can you possibly know what has affected the growth of the trees?
Mosher: “Opps, you cant”
Apparently I can do it well enough to compute a minimum global UHI effect – something that seems to be beyond your ability. In fact, you are even unable to come up with a decent objection to my number.
Steve, all of the paleo reconstructions that I have seen assume that things are linear. For trees, this is particularly troubling as the same tree ring width or wood density or whatever likely (almost certainly) corresponds to multiple different temperatures as tree growth is a non-linear function of sunlight, temperature, water, soil conditions, etc. Now, if the variability in conditions is sufficiently small, then despite the non-linearity, a linearized model could be tolerable; however year-to-year climate and condition variation is reasonably large, and quite likely exceeds the range for which a linearized model would work.
So to me, any analysis of this sort that makes a linear assumption, without extreme care in justifying that assumption is effectively worthless.
Well take a look at approaches that use both a calibration and verification period. Then you can put a number down.
numbers look like this 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Moshpup,
“numbers look like this 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9”
There you go with that linear stuff again!! You do realize that numbers also look like:
XIXVI
102.0
15X10^-12
etc??
Number series can also look like::
1 2 4 8 16 32
0 3 5 7 9 11
-32 6 15 2 8248 2 -1564
etc.
See? NOT LINEAR!!
Sore loser…
“As many have pointed out, there has been no empirical research that can tell us why tree ring width declined”
Does the data used comprise of ring widths or the ring density, calculated using X-Ray absorbance/light-scattering readings?
We know that trees deposit metals in their rings.
We know that metals, especially heavy metals, have a strong X-Ray absorbance/scattering spectrum.
We know that metals, such as Mercury, are deposited in the biosphere during the burning of coal.
We know that since the introduction of the ‘Clean Air Act’ in 1970 that absolute levels of metals and other strong X-Ray absorbers like selenium, have dropped.
What we don’t know is if MXD levels have been modulated by the tree mobilization of anthropogenic X-Ray absorbing elements, like Hg,
I don’t think the main stream media has concluded that there is not much to see here. I think it’s just there is nothing new to be seen. In their defense of themselves climate scientists have already admitted that they are petty, dissembling, juvenile, emotional, rash, tricky and when behind closed doors are not distinguished but just a regular bunch of guys being guys.
You obviously just haven’t bothered to read the emails or are you that misguided?
I read enough of the first bunch to get the drift. I’ve got better things to do. While I do want to better understand the climate, I think it’s better to go looking other places. The crew in these emails seem too caught up in the drama of it all to give the kind of sober, reflective explanations I like to read.
Judith Curry
Thanks for interesting and timely update.
Funniest are the three articles “defending or explaining the emails”, which you cited:
– RealClimate (Gavin Schmidt): “nothing new” (denial)
– CRU (Phil Jones): “out of context” (rationalization)
Best of all is the article in Forbes by Steve Zwick:
“Wingnuts” from the “massive denial machine” are “cherry-picking” the “hacked e-mails” in a “lame and embarrassing attempt” to “distort anything that doesn’t fit their worldview”..
HUH?
It’s a circus. Important is to keep your eye on the main ring and not get distracted by the clowns in the side rings.
Max
Max
I like the one about cherry picking. Can you imagine a criminal telling a judge that he shouldn’t be sentenced for murder because the judge had simply cherry picked one short event in his life.
Regarding the one about things being out of context, I would simply challenge Jones to show, in each case, the emails that were “the context” and show how the meaning was changed.
The Schmidt, “nothing new” is correct. What is there is not new; but it simply reconfirms that which Schmidt had previously denied.
@ cirby:
[“(the record cold in Cancun last year nearly panicked some of the delegates, and more than a few left early).”]
Is it true?
Delegates who gathered because of their serious concern about global warming left EARLY because it was COLD?
As the saying goes: “You can’t make this stuff up!”
“Is it true?
Delegates who gathered because of their serious concern about global warming left EARLY because it was COLD?”
Absolutely. They arrived in a beautiful vacation spot, expecting warmth and sunshine, and got record cold temps (for Cancun) and rain. By the second full day of the conference, the less-important folks were leaving as fast as they could book flights.
There was also a big emphasis change by the ones who stayed – they weren’t talking about global warming. They were talking about “climate justice,” because even their own folks were making global cooling jokes…
Personally I have found Climategate 2011 far more serious, and far more depressing, than the 2009 version. Partly that’s just personal: it’s depressing to turn up evidence of Phil Jones conspiring to discredit me. (Not that these plans got anywhere, but that’s beside the point). But beyond that it has finally settled what was for me the central question: was “the team” wicked, or merely incompetent?
Up until now I could still believe that they didn’t know what they were doing, and that they behaved badly because they didn’t know any better. Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. But with the latest releases this position is no longer tenable. They knew exactly what they were doing; indeed they discussed it in great detail in private. Some of them even knew that what they were doing was wrong. And yet they went ahead and did it.
A very sad day.
agreed, i find the the 2011 emails overall more disturbing and revealing of the social psychology of this group (first round of emails focused on hockey stick and temp data stuff).
Why are you reading stolen private emails anyway? And why do you believe a bunch of statements taken out of context and distorted to make good people look bad?
Holly, calm down.
The extra 5000 emails actually provide extra context and are thus useful.
I don’t think the statements have to be distorted to make people look bad – they look bad because that’s exactly what they are.
Look, it’s not the end of the world, but some of the behaviour revealed is despicable and it would show an open mind if you just agreed that some of it, well is.
You can claim they were stolen emails all you like but I think it is fair to say they were public property and merely being returned to their rightful owners. All of them had contracts which stated that they shouldn’t have expectations of privacy in their work emails. Quite right too – they are employed with my taxes.
Hacker huggers are in denial. Hacking e-mails is illegal in the UK. That’s why the police are looking for the hacker, and that’s probably one reason the hacker hasn’t identified himself.
Carey,
There is no evidence whatsoever that the emails were hacked. They could have also been leaked. I guess we never know. But that doensn’t matter, what matter is the content and people making claims of “taking quotes from context” are actually cherry-picking the most defensible quotes and putting them in context.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/29/the-steve-zwick-guide-to-defending-the-indefensible/
Are you guys aware that your email chains here sound disturbingly similar to the stolen email chains? If I had hacked your emails, I would conclude that you have a vendetta or something. Email chains between colleagues will touch on the positive and negative aspects of a subject, and sometimes things are said (and only said) in the heat of the moment and are meant to be private, and in the most part, don’t mean a thing. These emails remind me of some chains I have seen in my work. Separate the wheat from the chaff.
Holly
The beauty of the 2011 release of emails is that they provide more context than you could possibly wish for. Your reference to ‘stolen’ emails is just a poor effort to distract attention away from the real issues.
Are you finally going to tell me what you think of Wikileaks? And MSM publication of those “stolen” documents? How about the Pentagon Papers? Want me to go on?
Holly,
You are like someone with some sort of OCD issue.
They are in the public square.
You obviouslykow they reveal things you do not want revealed because you and so many fellow believers are acting like there is a problem with seeing this stuff.
There is not. Get over yourself. Or not. You are only making yourself transparently obvious.
“hunter hacker hugger” or “hacker hugger hunter” ?
I don’t know which is preferred.
M.Carey,
Whichever floats your boat.
It is a bit sad to see you reduced to rhyme-y whiney names, sort of like Joshua and his “mommy they do it too” whine.
Meanwhile,Roger Pielke,Sr. is putting the e-mails in context and showing patterns of self dealing and conflict of interest in the climatocracy and science bureaucracy.
So come up with more cutesy names and keep on…….denying (how I love irony) the reality.
hunter, I have no problem with seeing it. I want to see all of it. And I want to know who the hacker is and why he did it. I want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
No you do not. It you wanted the truth, you would accept the fact that it may be a leaker and not a hacker. yet you are unequivicol in your labeling the person a hacker. The emails are damaging to your comfort zone, and so you greatly resent both the emails and the purveyor of them. If you were after the truth, you would be studying the emails to learn it. There is a lot of truth in the emails. Reading them is not breaking any laws, morals or ethics.
M. Carey,
Most believers avert their eyes from the cliamtegate, so you are heads and shoulders above your comrades on that.
There is one quick cure for cliamtegate the team could prescribe, if they are indeed nice innocent science boys: release the e-mails on their own.
since they are avoiding that at every opportunity, one can draw their own conclusions.
Phil, are you serious? Everything the e-mails say is truly what the e-mailers said, but interpretations are another matter.
You want the perp to be a leaker not a hacker. Why would a leaker hide if he hasn’t broken UK law? If he is an honest person, why doesn’t he tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Hunter,
“There is one quick cure for cliamtegate the team could prescribe, if they are indeed nice innocent science boys: release the e-mails on their own.”
Well, ya see, there is now a problem. Apparently Phil and possibly others already “cleaned up” their mail boxes, are using PERSONAL communications, and don’t have anything to release!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Anyone not driven by strong bias has to think about that one!!
Holly, you of course judge wikileaks and Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon papers in the same way?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg
Any evidence the emails were “stolen”? Could be a nobel “whisleblower” don’t you think?
Looks like the usual liberal double standards (hypocrisy) at work (again).
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/11/pointman-a-dead-mans-hand-detonator-on-hidden-emails-may-protect-climategate-whistleblower/
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2010/12/17/why-climategate-was-not-a-computer-hack/
Thanks for the links! While I try to read Joanne’s site regularly, I missed that one. A very good read.
WikiLeaks has just received a Walkley Award for investigative journalism, yet one of the whistleblowers who supplied sensationalised information to WikiLeaks languishes in jail for 20 years or more … hypocrisy par excellence !!
As for context in CG1 and CG2 emails, try:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/29/new-tool-all-climategate-emails-in-order-in-excel/
ordered emails – xls (Office 2000, 2003)
ordered emails – xlsx (Office 2007 and later)
End of wriggle room
They are not private mails. They are in the public for one reason only: Phil Jones played chicken with the FOIA laws and he lost. He though he had to stop the skeptics, but he forgot about people who care about the FOIA law.
in 2007 I put an FOIA to NOAA for all mails relating the the surface stations project of Anthony Watts. NOAA were very professional in their response. I got a 500+ page report from them. call logs, meeting notes, inter office mails, status reports. Guess what? NOAA did a fine job.
Guess what? there professional and legal services were on the ball upholding the law.
There was one mail where one guy got a little snotty. Guess what? He’s human. he gets to be snotty. So I dont talk about that mail. Never have, never will. But there were no mails where people discussed having FOIA officers look at web sites. No discussion of evil skeptics. It was a well run professional government agency doing a fine job. When I read the CRU mails I have to contrast what I’ve seen there with what Ive seen from NOAA. The difference is stark.
The hacker got only those e-mails subject to FOIA?
Will the hacker show everything he got, or will he lie?
Will the hacker show his face, or is he a coward?
M.Carey,
It is so obvious that climategate has really, really gotten under your skin.
Yet you still have not figured out (or won’t admit) why.
Classic.
No M carey the hacker got more than was requested via FOIA.
CRU, the inquiry found, brought trouble upon themselves by failing to comply with reasonable FOIA. That brought more FOIA and FOIA appeals.
On Nov 13th the FOIA appeal officer decided to reject McIntyre’s appeal. McIntyre had appealed the decision to release the data and offered a compromise. He would only ask for data that was not covered by confidential agreements. His appeal was rejected and the officer argued that it was too hard to separate the confidential data from the non confidential data. The hacker closed shop, took the last mail. And penned his first note to us about the importance of FOIA.
Later, after climategate broke, CRU made station data available on the web within days, giving lie to their claim that it was too hard to separate out the data that wasnt covered.
Questions.
You are aware that CRU IT staff reckoned that it had to be someone with access or very sophisticated skills.
steven mosher on November 30, 2011 at 1:11 am said
“No M carey the hacker got more than was requested via FOIA.”
Which may be one reason he’s afraid to identify himself.
The prospect of up to 12 months in jail is not something to take lightly.
Being entitled to one candy bar because you paid for it, doesnt entitle you to stick a handful of candy bars into your pocket
Holly, here is your task for the rest of the day.
imagine a context in which jones request that people delete mails comes off sounding good?
you wanna know how bad that is? I will tell you. Muir Russel thought it was so bad that he refused to ask Jones about it. he refused to ask Jones about it because he said Jones might admit to a crime and he did not wantto put him in that situation.
So Muir Russell who had access to ALL the mails, Muir Russel who had access to Jones himself was so frightened that Jones would admit to a crime that he refused to ask him the question.
Please imagine a context in which Jones request is not an abomination.
Steve,
It is a common practice in government to delete emails that you think should not be subject to exposure under FOIA, and in no way violates the Act (unless the emails are the subject of a current request, and the deleter is an employee of that organisation).
Let me mention again the Bush Admin practice. Email traffic conducted from RNC servers. All email deleted after one month (this was modified after protest).. You wanna say how bad that was? Noone was prosecuted.
You might be referring to this Briffa email asking a colleague to delete the email after reading. That was a simple reference for a PhD student. Do you think he should have kept it for a possible FOIA demand? Even the hacker could not bring himself to actually oublish the reference.
IT departments should be backing up servers daily anyhow. Deleting an email doesn’t necessarily mean its unretreavable. The bottom line is you should never write email at work that would be considered unethical.
Nick, what was Muir Russel afraid of then?
Its very simple to tell what mail Jones attempted to delete.
This is not about Bush. This is about Jones. I trust that Muir Russel knows more than you which is why he feared asking the question.
I trust his judgement, your issue is with him. go argue with him, because you havent argued with me and cant
This is not about Bush. This is about Jones.
Your complaint about changing the subject might have more credibility if you didn’t constantly try to drag Mann into discussions which are not about him.
What is your proof that they are taken out of context? I find them perfectly in context. You have groupthink taken to its absurd end point with behavior that borders on playground bullying tactics.
Each and every one of these emails is public property. They were illegally withheld from the public by actors such as Phil Jones.
The hacker took only e-mails subject to FOIA?
The hacker did nothing illegal?
If the hacker isn’t a crook, why doesn’t he show us everything he took and tell us who he is?
Who says they were illegally withheld? The ICO didn’t.
I believe that he is a member of the The Team who would prefer that The Team reform rather than face penalties such as loss of jobs and other things.
“Why are you reading stolen private emails anyway?”
We’re not, they are a matter of public record now.
“And why do you believe a bunch of statements taken out of context and distorted to make good people look bad?”
Holly, you may believe it unethical to read the ‘stolen’ emails…. that’s ok, so I assume you have not read them, in that case you can’t make further comments about ‘statements taken out of context’ or whether they have been ‘distorted to make good people look bad’ because you have not look at all the information. So please refrain from expressing an opinion on a topic you are not informed about.
If, OTOH, my assumption about your not reading the emails is not correct and you have been reading them, then why are you reading them? You would appear to be taking a double standard on the ethical issue and betraying your own rule. Regardless, how do plan to defend the story lines being pieced together? Under what type of ethical behavior would you condone what is being revealed about the team? The context is becoming more and more clear. The team are not good people looking bad… they are an old boy network looking… well, like an old boy network, which I think you would agree is generally not looked upon favorably.
Holly,
then you agree with the current manner of US court proceedings where, if someone illegally videotapes a murderer confessing, the videotape is not allowed in evidence and the perp is released if there is no other evidence sufficient for a conviction??
Gee, could you explain to me how Justice for the person murdered and their survivors enters into this picture?
They may be stolen (or leaked), but they are not private. Indeed, why are you ranting when the emails were the subject of numerous FOI requests that were illegally ignored?
Phil,
I must have missed or forgotten that bit. Who FOI’ed their emails?? I thought they were for confidentiality agreements, data and methods?
Fresh from her latest “timeout”, Holly immediately heads to the computer and shows us she still hasn’t learned how to grow up.
Point 1 Holly – as yet they are not proven to be stolen.
Point 2 – they are all emails from servers of institutional funded by public money and at least theoretically open to public access.
Had you stuck to your only valid point – that there is a strong possibility for them to be taken out of context, we would have all thought you were starting to show some maturity.
Do you find any difference between a single public statement where person A attacks the character of person B and a private character assasinations? where person C repeatedly libels person D, suggests that person D is a fraud, suggests that person D should be investigated, and tries to turn journalists against person D?
Ross’ comments, tribalistic comments, lacked one thing. Power.
He can call the man a coward and nothing happens. Mann’s tribalistic
comments resulted in actual actions being taken.
the asymetry is a power issue. You will see the same styles on both sides. you will see the same kinds of biased viewpoints on both sides in more or less equal amounts. One side, however, has had more power. With the help of the courts and FOIA that might get a bit more in balance.
steven –
Although I think that your assessment of the imbalance in power is reflective of you biases, I agree that of course there are differences.
I’m just not into moral equivocation as you and Judith seem to be.
McKitrick is an important contributor in the climate debate. A person of influence. He calls someone he’s never met a “grovelling, terrified coward,” smearing someone in a very public forum, and Judith calls it mere intemperance.
She reads about similar behavior on the part of people in the “climate community,” in private emails (unarguably, in the sense that they weren’t the smearing of someone in a public forum) where tribalists were venting anger against those they felt were promoting bad science and illegitimately attacking those who they felt were promoters of good science, and she finds it “disturbing…social psychology.”
The “social psychology” is the same. It’s tribalism. Judith’s disturbance is selective.
As many have noted, these and the prior emails, like most topics in the climate debate more generally, are a Rorschach test. Tibaliists see what they want to see in a never-ending loop. Some “realists” see climate scientists protecting themselves against vindictive attacks directed at serving a political agenda and based on bogus science. Some “skeptics” see deviant socialist, eco-Nazis trying to destroy capitalism at the expense of millions dying in third world countries. On a lesser scale, people on both sides of the debate acknowledge bad behavior on both sides of the debate.
But on both sides, the great moral visionaries believe themselves to be on the moral high ground.
It’s amusing to watch.
Joshua
“Although I think that your assessment of the imbalance in power is reflective of you biases, I agree that of course there are differences.”
In what way does it refelect my bias to note the objective fact that Ross has no power over Wagner while Mann excercised his power and led other to excercise their power over De Freitas. My bias does not create that fact. you see that fact. history records that fact. These documents detail the mechanisms they used.
“I’m just not into moral equivocation as you and Judith seem to be.”
There is no moral equivocation on my part. I condemned what Ross said. I condemn what Mann said. I note a difference between what Mann actually DID. People were actually hurt. my “bias” did not create that.
“McKitrick is an important contributor in the climate debate. A person of influence. He calls someone he’s never met a “grovelling, terrified coward,” smearing someone in a very public forum, and Judith calls it mere intemperance.”
yes and I condemned it. And Ross is a friend. There is my damn bias again. IDJT.
“She reads about similar behavior on the part of people in the “climate community,” in private emails (unarguably, in the sense that they weren’t the smearing of someone in a public forum) where tribalists were venting anger against those they felt were promoting bad science and illegitimately attacking those who they felt were promoters of good science, and she finds it “disturbing…social psychology.””
Perhaps she finds it disturbing because it has impacted her personally.
Lets take an example. She invited Mcintyre to her school. You realize she got letters from people trying to coerce her to change her mind?
Now let me ask you, if people in your academy, wrote you letters because you brought one of their critics into speak to your students, what the hell would you say? answer honestly.
“The “social psychology” is the same. It’s tribalism. Judith’s disturbance is selective.”
I think her disturbance is selective for the same reason that mine is somewhat selective. I’m not a skeptic. Their tribalism does not impact me in any way shape or form. They let me post at their sites, they let me publish at their sites. Where do you think I am moderated and snipped and sent to the memory hole? my own damn team. Of course Im harder on my own damn team. I think the tribalism weakens us. Of course I feel it more directly than the tribalism of people who disagree with me.
” Some “realists” see climate scientists protecting themselves against vindictive attacks directed at serving a political agenda and based on bogus science. ”
Really, what “bogus” science did McIntyre perpetrate when he asked mann for data. what bogus science did I perpetrate when I asked Jones for data? seriously, How is willis’ request for data an attack?
how? Soon wrote a paper. the paper got published. What was Mann’s response? He assumed that the editor must be in cahoots with the skeptics and went after him personally. Nobody attacked Jones until 2004 when he wrote to warrick Hughes. I wont send you data because you just want to find something wrong with it. Seriously Joshua.
This isnt about morality. This is about standard scientific practice.
Moshpup,
That’s right, a power issue, just like when sceptics go after Team papers and ignore the rest of them!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Relax Joshua, Dr. Curry isn’t going to become a skeptic over the massive culture of politically motivated agenda setting at the core of your beloved if not imaginary apolitical “science” team. She still can’t identify what political stripes that have been driving the movement the past 40 years or that she was a member. For all we know they might be Whigs or Freemasons in her narrative.
It’s all about “science” Joshua, keep telling yourself that. Over and Over….
Here Joshua,
some reading. outside your echo chamber
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2011/11/29/schellnhuber-and-the-tyndall-centre.html
God Bless You, Jonathan Jones. You were already pretty high on my list of honor but now your name is inscribed above the mantel over the fireplace. Thank you for your appraisal of the emails from long personal experience.
I think the 2011 emails (Climategate 2) provide huge context for Climategate 1 and prove that there is a whistle blower who put these emails on the web. The proof is that only a participant in these email discussions would have been able to create a Climategate 2 that successfully completes much of what is in Climategate 1. (Actually, I believe there is a team of whistle blowers.)
Mann’s mean, vindictive, and tyrannical personality comes across clear as a bell in Climategate 2. The person(s) who selected these emails had to know Mann personally and viscerally to create the fascinating portrait of Mann that we have in these emails.
I would trust Mann not to hack my e-mail and hide like a cowardly thief after giving my adversaries means to malign me.
M. carey,
For what reason would Mann hack your emails? Are you secretly discussing ways to gain ‘contrarian’ papers better access to academic journals with your peers? Really, you need to think about what you write. When you write such silly hypotheticals, you provide your adversaries all the means to malign you without any of Manns’ help.
John,
There’s nothing hypothetical about me believing Mann is more trustworthy than the Mann bashers who post here.
M. Carey – nothing hypothetical – just myopic. Clearly the emails have demonstrated that Mann is unethical. He does not deny it.
M. carey,
“I would trust Mann not to hack my e-mail and hide like a cowardly thief after giving my adversaries means to malign me.”
Then you admit that there are means to malign the Team in the emails!! That is a a start. Of course, if you read the mails more closely you might not have quite so much faith in Mann not taking the chance to malign you if you were against him!!
The stolen e-mails are fibber fodder. The fibbers are mostly fossil fuel fools.
Try saying “fossil fuel fools” real fast.
M. carey,
I see you are being reduced to childish gibberish. do you have anything else to discuss?
That is called misplaced trust.
Your first mistake would be to trust Mann.
Your second is to think your e-mails are worth hacking.
Your third is to pretend Mann is not doing worse than hacking some e-mails to those with he is displeased.
Read 1812.txt to see Phil Jones’s response to being asked for data by Jonathan Jones and Don Keiller.
One thing I find deeply disappointing is the UK Met. Office putting out a press release on the average temperature for 2011, and then desperately trying to spin this to show that, indeed, CAGW is real. The Met. Office used to be a magnificant organization, and I just hate to see it distorting the data in a desperate attempt to breathe some life into the corpse that is the UNFCCC, and it’s COP17 meeting in Durban. They only have 10 months of data, and the satellite data and the current La Nina strongly indicate that the data for November and December may well be significantly cooler that the year to date.
Very sad, indeed.
AGW is corroding everything in its path.
Jim –
Are you sure it was the Met office? I read Richard ‘CAGW-beast’ Black’s piece today on the BBC website and he was claiming that it was the WMO who were saying that ‘despite the cooling, it is actually warming’ which I found a little amusing.
They don’t even bother with –
‘it would be warming if it weren’t for x, y, and z’
What they can now say [where are you Winston Smith?] is
‘up is down, left is right , and colder is actually hotter’.
Priceless :)
Anteros
You ask Jim: “Are you sure it was the Met office?”
Yes. It apparently was.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/29/2011-global-temperatures
If November and December values come in at the levels expected now, this will shift to the “13th warmest year”.
But more important than that is the trend. This has shown slight cooling since 2001 and will certainly continue to do so at the end of this year.
Wonder why MetOffice did not tell us that?
Max
Thanks Max. Now I have a reason to be depressed. Next time Richard Betts turns up at Bishop Hill I will give him a veritable earful.
I agree that Stott’s comments were somewhat weasley, but most of the spin had ‘Guardian’ all over it. I’m sure Betts would have been a bit more honest. Perhaps he’s been knobbled? Maybe M. Mann sent round a couple of his ‘investigative reporters’ to bring him to heel, and remind him what the ’cause’ is all about..
Max – if you’re feeling like pickin’ cherries, Hadcrut shows cooling for 14+ years [as does RSS].
Max in action !
http://www.doobybrain.com/2011/01/06/video-of-a-cherry-picking-machine/
HadCRUT3 in action!
Jim Cripwell
Yeah. Sad indeed.
And downright stupid.
The MetOffice has a dismal record in short-term forecasting (“end of snow, BBQ summer, unusually mild winter”, etc.) – how can one believe their longer-term forecasts?
And now they set themselves up for another blooper.
Sure, this was meant to give COP17 a boost (and maybe to distract from Climategate 2011), but it has a very high chance of backfiring (and reducing the credibility of MetOffice even further).
Max
“The MetOffice has a dismal record in short-term forecasting”
Well, middle-term anyway. Which brings back a point I keep thinking:
Are the “adjustments” in observed temperatures damaging forecast accuracy? If you’re going in and altering your officially observed temps at a lot of stations, you end up with a biased dataset that should impact what you think the weather – and the climate – are going to be doing in a few months. Not a lot, but it doesn’t take much to change the long term outlook by a fair amount.
cirby
Yeah.
And a small error in short to medium term can bring a major error in long-term forecasts (which is why they are next to worthless).
Max
Jim, it is not unusual for November and December to be cooler than the “year to date” in the satellite-based UAH series.
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt
In the past Jim has over invested in La Nina. Looks like he might be doing it again. It does not look like 2011 will be colder than 2008, which is currently 12th.
JCH writes “It does not look like 2011 will be colder than 2008, which is currently 12th.”
I agree. For this to happen, the average for these two months needs to be less than 0.165 C; not very likely. However, let us see what the UAH data for November is, which we should know by Friday with any luck.
It does look like we will finish the year in La Nina.
I would hope that CRU looked at preliminary November data before writing that press release.
NOAA Jan thru Sept was the 11th warmest. When they did Jan thru Oct, it became the 10th warmest.
Max joked that 2011 would end up the “13th warmest year”. An apparent agreement with you that La Nina was going to chill November and December in some major way.
And I don’t know what I’m talking about?
I assume Wood for Trees does not touch upon the significance of trends in its graphs because the science for determining significance is not straight forward enough for it to be easily incorporated, so I really don’t feel bad that I don’t do it.
2011 started off the 17th warmest year. According to NOAA, Jan thru Oct is the 10th warmest. They had Jan thru Sept as the 11th warmest, so with Oct added the year climbed the ladder.
JCH
Assume 2011 ends up 11th or 12th warmest, essentially tied with 1997, and with 2008 as the 13th warmest.
Of the “top 13”, the warmest 4 years were El Niño years (1998, 2010, 2005, 2003).
Three of the coldest were La Niña years (2008, 1997, 2011).
Max
Which is why focusing on year-to-year is sort of silly. The longterm trend is strongly positive.
Of course, I’m an American and believe NASA and NOAA have more accurate numbers. NOAA scientists were with my father’s company when the 28th captured Mt. Suribachi. Gotta luv geeks who will run into lead and steel side-by-side with jarheads.
JCH writes “The longterm trend is strongly positive.”
Would you be a little more specific on “strongly”. What is your estimate of the current rate of rise in temperature? Is is significantly greater that 0.06 C per decade (cf Girma’s graph)?
Jim, I don’t do significance. I’m a cowboy. I do think the 40-year trend is starkly other than .06 degrees per decade, and I have a certain methodology I use on varmints who are trying to moisten my leg.
Shoots foot. Varmint runs away to piss another day.
===============
JCH writes “Jim, I don’t do significance.”
I find this response to be absolutely terrible. Here we are on a blog that really discusses science, and where both sides of the debate are represented, and JCH comes out with statements which are completely unscientific. He somehow believes that out there there is some sort of science that supports the idea that global temperatures are still rising strongly. He clearly has no idea whatsoever, what this data is. He merely repeats the mantra that global temperatures are rising strongly, with absolutley nothing whatsoever to support this statement. No wonder when there is any sort of debate between the proponents and opponents of CAGW, the proponents lose every time; hands down.
I suspect JCH believes the models. The models do, indeed, suggest that global temperatures are still rising strongly. However, as has been pointed out, ad nauseum, none of the models have ever been validated.
JCH has absolutely no idea what he is talking about. Global temperatures are NOT rising strongly. They are rising at about 0.06 C per decade, as they have been doing for about 150 years. There is no sign that CO2 has any effect whatsoever on global temperatures.
Kim wins this thread. 10/10
Just checked out the schedule of events at the Durban climate conference.
http://cop17insouthafrica.wordpress.com/public-events/cop-17-a-selection-of-public-events/
We have (among other events open to the public):
1 Dec – “Response to Climate Change” Musical Production
1 Dec – “Veganism to Save the Planet” Gala Banquet
2 Dec – “Artist Protect Earth (APE)” Concert
3 Dec – “Global Day of Action” March and Concert
4 Dec – Faith Rally and Day of Prayer
9 Dec – Music Festival and Beach Party
There’s even an “Occupy Durban” movement in the wings for more entertainment:
http://mg.co.za/article/2011-11-25-vulnerable-countries-consider-occupying-cop17-talks/
And all that’s in addition to the many “closed events for delegates only”.
Should be fun for all.
Let’s see how it all works out.
Max
When is the exciting-in-its-primitive-splendor snake dance taking place?
They’ve been handling snakes, but the faith is gone.
==============
kim
I think it’s more like “selling snake oil”.
But I’ll agree that “the faith is gone”.
Max
This is what is hilarious about the comment section at Climate Etc.. I don’t think they’re, the CAGW team, even slightly shaken up. Cool as cucumbers.
Snakebit, and shivering as the toxin spreads.
=======
I think these activities and sessions on the program alone are enough to tell us it isn’t about science.
I think the biggest single take away from “Climate-gate Redux” is that Mann’s hockey stick has once and for all been discredited. The corruption of peer review, the behind the scenes machinations to ruin people, the internecine quarreling about issues that are supposed to be “settled”, while profoundly damning, will be mostly ignored by the MSM in my opinion. At least in the short term.
The irony (if you’re inclined that way) is that the guy who seemed most eager to destroy his enemies has only succeeded in destroying himself.
pokerguy,
Great observation.
AGW in general,a nd Mann in particular are a Greek tragedy of the real unfolding before our very eyes.
Thanks, Hunter, I almost mentioned Greek tragedy myself. Or better yet Shakespeare. It’s the human dimension of this whole thing that interests me the most. I actually find myself feeling bad for them. Of course Mann is so vicious it’s hard to feel much sympathy. But most of these guys I’m sure are decent people who started out with the best of intentions. It’s a cautionary tale on many levels.
Stay tuned for Michael Mann: The Opera.
Thanks a lot. Now I have Elmer Fudd singing “kill the wabbit” to the tune of the Ride of the Valkyries going through my head.
Mann on Ice.
=========
Which is the counter-argument…and a very persuasive one…to my half baked nothing that this rises to the level of tragedy. Mann is simply pathetic.
sorry, should read half-baked “notion”
Absolutely total agreement here. Dr Mann shows just how unwilling he is to critically examine his own work. That is the big takeaway for me. Take everything else out of the picture and you still have a scientist that is not willing nor able to stop and take stock of his work. Nor is he willing to apply principles of self correction despite his own fellow colleagues being able to demonstrate that at least some of the criticisms leveled at his work are warranted. That is entirely not the behavior of a Doctor at all. It demonstrates abject failure (for whatever reason is not important) to behave as a Doctor does and must behave. There is and can be no justification for this type of systemic failure of an academic.
Mann’s Hockey Stick has been discredited in the eyes of people who are afraid of it, because that makes them feel better.
Don’t forget Hockey Stick critic Wegman allowed that Mann could be right.
Don’t forget Hockey Stick critic McIntyre doesn’t claim to have anything better.
M. carey,
the fact that McIntyre doesn’t have anything better is a meaningless argument. Mann’s fraud was shown to be made up of a series the experts claimed shouldn’t be used as temperature proxy that was given innappropriate weighting, poor statistics and unique statistics that have no grounding in reality and a couple other things I don’t remember. Basically when someone is selling nme a piece of crap the idea that there isn’t anything else being offered to me really doesn’t enter into my decision to pass on it.
When someone tells me they have the solution to faster than light travel I also won’t spend any money or time on them. They may be correct, as Wegman points out for Mann, but, what are the odds??
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Claims of fraud by Mann are fraudulent claims made by ignorant people.
Neither McIntyre or Wegman will say Mann’s Hockey Stick is fraudulent, but they hint around with a bunch of statistical mumbo jumbo, and the ignorant fall for it.
The “statistical mumbo jumbo” is called science. And science does not yell fraud unless the intent of the scientist was to defraud – in other words, McIntyre would not claim that since he does not pretend to possess telepathy and has not claimed he can read Mann’s mind. He has stated the hockey stick shows nothing statistically. For the main stream reader, statistically that means it is worthless.
Phil, I didn’t know McIntyre and Wegman said Mann’s Hockey stick was “statistically worthless.” I didn’t even know there was a statistical worthless test.
M. Carey – sorry, I thought you could tell the difference between a quote and a paraphrase. I guess until you learn the difference, communication will be hard for you.
M. carey,
what is your opinion of the claims and work done by the Slayers?
Yes this is on point.
Phil, I see what you mean. You speak for “main stream readers,” not McIntyre and Wegman, when you label Mann’s Hockey Stick “statistically worthless.”
Can you give details on the main stream reader’s test for “statistically worthless” ?
I’ve got a bridge to sell you. Nobody else will give you a better deal.
What is your point.
I bet as a kid you loved throwing rocks at things. (wait a minute, I loved throwing rocks at things as a kid. And crab apples and water balloons.)
Point is, you aren’t offering much to the debate here. Just throwing rocks.
Penn State to lecture on “climate ethics”
Contrast that with the
The Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship
A Penn State lecture on ethic sounds like the start of a bad joke.
Or a bad movie.
Big Oyl
How I wish.
This lecture shows Penn State as clueless on the foundational ethical values on which the USA and West are founded. e.g., the Founders of the USA appealed to the supreme Judge of all the world for the rectitude of their intentions, in the Declaration of Independence. The Magna Carta (1215) was similarly on Oath before God.
Breaches of ethics appears to be a systemic issue at Penn State.
For background see: a brief summary
Compare responses to FOIA requests between George Mason Univ. and the U of Virginia (Mann):
But were they exactly the same kind of request?
George Mason hasn’t been so speedy in investigating Wegman for plagiarism. Hasn’t that investigation been going on for more than a year?
M. carey,
ya think the fact that the emails were available and read by both sides just MIGHT have something to do with why there has not been an expedited investigation into Wegman, as in, there ain’t nothing to go after him for??
They blew off Mann’s investigation because he was a money maker. If Wegman did or didn’t do anything why root around and besmirch their good name?? See, it works for both sides when Universities have other things as priorities than laws and ethics!!
kuhncat, you got it all wrong. Mann was clean, so his investigation didn’t take long. The Wegmann investigation has been going on for more than a year, which probably means more and more plagiarism is being uncovered.
M. Carey – re: Wegman – or the investigators are actually doing their job and that is why it is taking so long. Whereas it has already been demonstrated the Penn State investigators did not do their job – or even attempt an appearance of it.
PSU and NSF both exonerated Mann, and both failed to properly investigate Sandusky.
M. carey,
repeating non-sequiturs does not make your case. The Wegman report did their work for them and they ignored it and anything else that would have been useful in an actual investigation.
Please give us your delusions as to why they must spend so much money to hide, er protect, Mann’s emails if he is so wonderful, yet, other people’s emails are routinely turned over for FOI?? Wouldn’t they WANT to show how squeaky clean their money maker is?? Oh yeah, they are the same guys who suppressed allegations against an accused child molester who also was a squeaky clean money maker!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Minitrue at work again.
“Consequently, they ignore our potential, as bearers of God’s image ….”
HA HA ! How can you argue with people who believe they look like God?
M. carey,
if we don’t look like God, then you should be able to tell us what God looks like??
That’s easy. God probably looks like me, and Satan probably looks like you.
Ad Hominems now? Please, try to remain at least partially competent and do away with childish insults.
M. carey,
excellent, we are progressing. You now claim there is a God and YOU are made in his image and you also accept there is a satan and I look like him!! Any other major theological issues you would like to inform us on?
Since nature allows the dominant sentient species to appear as it does then said species can assume that it represents (locally) the face of nature (or creator.) This would also be true on planets where said species wore E shirts rather than T shirts (not bilaterally symmetrical.) There is nothing that says nature (or creator) is limited in manifestation/appearance.
Your comment is needlessly inflammatory, doing nothing more than acting as a goad for religious people. It’s not helpful. Grow up.
What if you are wrong on this one?
Hopefully it’s the forgiving God, with a sense of humor you run into, not the one who destroyed Sodom and Gomorah.
Penn State
WTF? To answer, one must assume a disinformation campaign exists. Shouldn’t they provide proof that this is the case *before* they try to discuss the ethical ramifications thereof?
Surely the people putting this on could be charged with crimes against common sense since it is we the taxpayer who are footing the bill for this crap.
I’m taking a poll. Whose emails, if they were leaked/hacked would make for the most interesting comparison with the current batch?
1. GWPF
2. McIntyre/McKitrick
3. NIPCC
4. Watts
5. Monckton
6. Soon
Interesting list, none of them are supporting a global authoritarian power grab (taxes and regulation) or making any claims regarding cause and effect of industrialization.
You can join Joshua in failing to connect the most simple dots about who is what in the AGW cabal.
Ok, so all equally interesting then.
John
I think you are missing the key point here..
If the individuals (or groups) involved are operating on taxpayer funds, then those e-mails they send covering their taxpayer-funded work are public information (by definition). This information should be fully available to the public, provided that its release does not represent a security threat.
If they are involved in a collusion of interests to block any dissenting scientific conclusions from being published, to discredit any dissident scientists or to hide any of the details of their taxpayer-funded work from FOI requests, they are cheating the taxpayers who are funding them, and are therefore guilty of unethical (and possibly illegal) behavior.
Whether or not their emails are “interesting” is beside the point. Some may find them totally boring – others may not.
Do they belong to the public or not should be the main point.
The second point should be: do they reveal unethical behavior or misuse of taxpayer funds?
The Climategate I and II e-mails seem to fit both categories.
Max
Ok, so you’re saying that McKitrick’s emails should all be public domain then, since he’s at a public university.
OK, max, when do we get Sen. Inhofe’s e-mails?
M. carey,
“OK, max, when do we get Sen. Inhofe’s e-mails?”
1) when you can come up with a plausible reason to request them
2) when you file the FOI request with that plausible reason
What don’t you understand about we don’t know who or why the emails were released? What don’t you understand about if someone did the same to Inhofe the emails would be OK to read?
John –
You ask whose emails would make the most interesting comparison…, how about the most amusing? Most depressing? Most incomprehensible?
Moncton’s might be quite funny… but what would be missing for ALL of them would be……power. It’s the influence wielded by Jones, Trenberth and Mann that created the opportunity for serious misdemeanours.
If there was an FOIA opportunity to get hold of Willie Soon’s emails I can’t say as I’d be able to summon up the interest.
My guess is that cwon’s would manage to be both very amusing and very depressing at the same time, although not particularly interesting nor comprehensible.
Ok, Soon not interesting, others interesting.
My vote would go to Morano.
When Morano can get people removed from editorial boards or reviwe papers, then he’s scientifically interesting
1. GWPF ( interesting, but the have no power over what science is done)
2. McIntyre/McKitrick ( boring, Mc is not much for mail, except for
requests for data. McKitrrick? Powerless over what science is done
3. NIPCC ( interesting, but powerless over what science is done)
4. Watts ( not as boring as Mc, but also powerless over what science is done)
5. Monckton; Hilarious, giant windbag, also powerless
6. Soon: interesting for what you wont find. also powerless.
The climategate mails are interesting because of the power of the poepl involved. Power to decide what science gets done ( when they want a paper published it get published ) Power to decide what editors sit and what editors must go. Power of review. Power to break IPCC rules.
In general the mails of the powerful are way more interesting than the mails of weaklings. Moranos mails.. ya love to see them. Imhofe? you bet.
I see the points about powerful / not powerful and what’s required of those that are publicly funded.
But why *wouldn’t* these people just release all of their emails?What better demonstration of their moral authority?
I dont think anyone claims moral authority here. The issue at hand is not a moral one. The issue is the abuse of power and the failure of institutions.
The simple fact is science is supposed to be self correcting. To the extent that people with institutional power have imposed their personal views on the path that science takes, what questions get asked, what papers get published, who sits on editorial boards, that self correcting mechanism has been impaired. Clearly the mails show some of the abuses of institutional power. Its a matter of governance not of morality. The individual who point out flaws in governance need not be saints. They will most certainly have agendas. But if scientific independence is our cheif value, then I really dont care who points out the flaws or WHY they do. I care about fixing the issue. fix the problem, not the blame
Would it be bad if McKitrick’s emails were leaked/hacked?
Steven, when you talk about ‘power’ I think about which organisations are more likely to write commentary pieces in MSM and here in the UK it’s much more likely to be GWPF and Monkton than IPCC contributors. If we talk about the power to inluence the general public (and therefore elected politicians), I’d say that the ‘Team’ are powerless.
Louise
That statement would seem wrong if you consider who has the ability to impact the UN assessments
Rob – it is still our elected politicians who decide which policies to implement, regardless of UN statements.
Our politicians are elected by the general public. GWPF are much more likely to be writing Op Eds for MSM than UEA CRU and so could be said to have much more power.
Depends on what one is exerting power over.
Louise, I take it you’ve never listened to the BBC nor read the Guardian?
John,
“Whose emails, if they were leaked/hacked would make for the most interesting comparison with the current batch?”
you seriously want to bore us to death??
Might be boring, might not. I guess most of the list doesn’t have to release their emails, but why wouldn’t they?
Personally I am for more openness. I am a big advocate for sunshine laws and get ticked whomever gets in the way of the light. If someone is on the public dime, be it McKitrick, Moshpup, O’Sullivan (slayer), me, police officers… their official communications at a minimum should be open and anything that goes over equipment provided by the public dime should be available.
GWPF
Particularly if any are to the Queen or concerning the Queen
None of the above.
Personally I’d like to see Joe Romm’s emails, if only to establish whether he is as obtuse in private as he is in public!
.
It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.
.
Oh Robert, would that you had lived to see how low Climate Change Science could fall…
Note also the bias of the MSM. Usually they love to make juicy headlines out of secret documents that reveal sensational name-calling, sharp disagreement and unethical practices within some community.
This time they keep mum. Climate scientists are their pals, they are working for the common cause.
Can somebody in the know please put this to rest?
1. SA President (Zuma) announces on National TV “climate change already having severe impacts in many parts of Africa.” (it is?)
2. SA Vice-President leads Durban march to highlight rising sea levels. (Somebody here says there’re down?)
The reason I bring this up is that this message is delivered over and over to a population, the majority of whom I believe, are not as well acquainted with the science and so, are much more obedient/trusting of their leaders than populations in the first world. Thanks.
FOX news just had piece on Durban and the leaked emails. That’s the first I’ve seen it on MSM.
Climate Gate 1 was the Big Bang that destroyed the appearance of the monolithic structure that was Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming.
Climate Gate 2 is like a bucket full of battery acid poured on the remaining structure of that same CAGW belief.
Corrosive effects are not instantaneous but they are a debilitating process that grinds down and ultimately destroys anything in their path.
So do not expect to see an immediate and big response in the MSM but that is coming and it will not be a big bang revelation but a slow quiet shift that will become increasingly bitter at the way the MSM has been so conned by the climate change scientists at the heart of the global warming scam..
Already I am seeing here in the quietly increasing numbers of climate change articles in the Australian news media, articles that are taking on a small and sometimes a significant skeptical hue and increasingly include some very particular and very specific phrases and words that are a common characteristic of the skeptical blog commentaries.
The MSM is in a real bind as they find their long held biases and beliefs and trust in both the climate warming scientists and science of global warming coming apart at the seams.
The MSM has to shift gears but as with all human undertakings where belief has been shown to be wrong and trust has been seen to have been grossly abused, it takes time and much angst before an admission can be made that the former beliefs and the trust placed in authority were both wrong and utterly misplaced.
The fact that the phrases and words used commonly in skeptical comment are appearing in opinion articles and in editorials show that a great deal of reading is going on in the media of the skeptic blogs and that the very difficult psychological shifting of attitudes and beliefs is underway in the media and by all accounts if the comment from a high ranking UK and former professed global warming believing politician is correct, the reassessment is already underway in the political ranks across many western nations as well.
Patience and time will see the changes and shift in sentiment revealed.
And I would not wish to be in any way associated with the “Team” when that shift is completed as the vengeance may well be brutal as the pendulum swings way back past to the other extreme.
The goal is to put AGW back into the incubator for another day. It can’t be renounced it can only be reinvented and Minitrue (establishment MSM and academia) will lay the groundwork.
AGW is largely going silent and the disinformation campaign at the student/education levels will continue for generations. With no near term regulatory goal possible they hope apathy will set in at the dissent level. This is how every bad socialist idea always returns.
>Already I am seeing here in the quietly increasing numbers of climate change articles in the Australian news media, articles that are taking on a small and sometimes a significant skeptical hue … <
Discount The Australian, please, as it has always done that. Where else in the Aus MSM have you seen this ? Serious question – I can't find it
Durban: UNFCCC has once again claimed that 2011 was among the 13 warmest years of past century etc… etc… Just hiding the very inconvenient truth that warming has stopped 14 years ago, as shown by all T° data and climate indicators:
1) Temperature has been stagnating since end 1997:
Temperature
2) Oceans’ heat content (source NOAA), confirms the pause since 1998:
Oceans’ heat content
3) Reconstructed Sea Surface Temperature (source NOAA), also confirm the pause.
SST
4) ENSO index shows more frequent negative values, also confirming Pacific cooling (Source NOAA).
ENSO
5) PDO index also switched to negative i.e. cool mode confirming Pacific cooling:
PDO
6) The rate of sea level rise has significantly decreased since 2004/2005. A decreasing sea level has even been observed since 2009 (Source CNES, ESA, LEGOS). This is the direct impact of oceans’ cooling.
Sea level
Sorry, corrected link for Temperature
Eric Ollivet
Thanks for posting links to various physical observations, which confirm that global warming has taken a pause.
The conclusion from these data is unequivocal, since they all confirm the same thing independently.
Now we will have to wait to see if the hiatus will continue for another few years and thus become a “statistically significant trend” or whether the warming seen in the 1980s and 1990s will resume.
I believe the premise of catastrophic global warming is being seriously tested. If the “lack of warming” (i.e. slight cooling) continues another few years despite CO2 concentrations reaching record levels, it will have been invalidated by the physically observed data.
Either way, the next few years will be very interesting.
In view of past physically observed multi-decadal cycles, I could imagine that it is highly probable that the current “lack of warming” will continue.
We have already seen a shift in “branding” from “alarming anthropogenic global warming” to “catastrophic global climate change” to “global climate disruption”.
If it has really stopped warming for an extended period, look for a new “framing” shift to “dangerous ocean acidification”.
Max
ENSO and CO2 :
Just comparing variations of CO2 concentration with ENSO index you may observe that peaks of [CO2] variations exactly correspond to peaks of ENSO index i.e. strong El Nino events.
Conclusion: [CO2] increase results mainly from oceans’ warming and subsequent degasing, and not from human activities / fossil fuels consumption.
Another and more obvious way to show the link between [CO2] variations and Oceans’ T°, not using ENSO but SST
Eric Ollivet
The ENSO/CO2 correlations you show are interesting.
I have seen one reference (can’t remember where) alluding that anthropogenic warming may be causing more pronounced ENSO warming cycles.
So CO2 is causing El Nino?
(I don’t believe a word of it, but look out for this new rationalization attempt.)
Max
Who are you people? What are your qualifications?
We are the “Funders” and it is the “Funders” who always have the final say.
Twist the facts, lie and try to deceive the Funders and you will always be found out and be tried by the “Funders” in the court of public opinion.
Ok….I guess….
No. CO2 variations correlate with El Nino events, but that’s not the only signal. There is also a steady increase in the average.
And then Eric Ollivet’s post on a correlation with SST…most of the CO2 plot peaks and valleys lead the sea temperature curve implying CO2 is forcing the sea temperature, not the other way around.
Have a better look Frank or put your glasses on : [CO2] peaks or valleys always come few months AFTER the one of SST, not the other way around : SST is forcing [CO2]
My mistake. So, how do you address the steady increase in the average? I think there are multiple signals here.
You’re right in the extent there is a background positive trend in the [CO2] variations, that does not exist (or is very small) for SST variations.
This background trend could potentially result from human activity but it is very clear that oscillations (on top of the background trend) are fully correlated to SST i.e to natural variability.
The other important point is that Global Temperature variations are always preceeding variations of [CO2] (by about 6 to 9 months), which definitely confirms that CO2 IS NOT THE EARTH’S THERMAL KNOB…
Curves here
Thank you Eric. Very telling!
Here’s more mainstream media coverage: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2066240/Second-leak-climate-emails-Political-giants-weigh-bias-scientists-bowing-financial-pressure-sponsors.html
Odd that the Daily Mail has done more digging into these e-mails than other newspapers…
Daily Mail headlie
Climategate scientists DID collude with government officials to hide research that didn’t fit their apocalyptic global warming
HA HA, what a WHOPPER !
No, not a whopper at all. The emails do contain clear evidence of collusion with UK government employees. The BBC journalists caught out are all government employees for a start. What is more alarming is those showing collusion with non government officials. Around 30 emails were accidentally caught by the automatic filter used pertaining to World Bank involvement in climate “science”. In your crazed trolling on this thread, trying to tell all that these new 5000 emails are “out of context”, “hacked” or “stolen”, you seem to have forgotten the information bomb waiting to go off. The leaker included an encrypted file containing a further 200,000 emails. Given what has already been found accidentally included in these 5000 emails relating to the World Bank and Goldman Sachs, what do you imagine is in the next 200,000? This is not going to blow over any time soon.
Not a Whopper ? OK, I guess that sounds too much like something to eat.
Would you prefer it be called a stinking pile of crap?
Or maybe a big ball of malodorous doo doo?
To be fair, I will say the article gets some things, and concludes with a sentence about the police investigating the hacking. The police think the hacker broke the law, and he must fear he did, as he continues to hide.
Again with the “hacking” fantasies. You clearly haven’t been through the original climategate files. The whistle blowers name is mentioned twice by my reading.
M. carey
You’re in the hole with your argument trying to put the onus on the “hacker”, rather than the “hackees”.
My advice stop digging.
Max
Better tell the police then. It’s your duty as a citizen.
Max and Konrad are hacker huggers. I would never trust a hacker hugger. They might think it’s OK to steal my e-mail and use it to malign me.
M. Carey – Actually if you read Pointman’s analysis (granted it is but one man’s opinion), you will clearly see that the fear of legal reprecussions is lowest on the list of factors leading to the leaker’s insistance on anonymity. Given the thorough analysis by pointman, I tend to agree with his assessment than your flippant remark.
M. carey,
the onus is STILL on YOU to show that the constabulary have made any statements clearly accusing “someone(s)” of breaking any laws. Please link your evidence.
Statements by UEA and others clearly are agenda driven and cannot be accepted.
The fact of whether the emails were hacked or leaked is a separate story. A very interesting one, but not really germaine to the content of the emails themselves. Being hacked or leaked has zero effect on the content.
If you can show how it does have impact, please feel free. Otherwise please just stop with this useless line of reasoning, before its stupidity rubs off on you.
BBC journalists are not government employees. The BBC is a corporate body established by Royal Charter and is independent of the government (although the government does have certain power over the BBC by being able to set the level of the licence fee which funds it.
Splitting hairs Andrew, They were created, are funded, and ultimately controlled by the UK Gubmint. While many of the controls may not be direct, gubmint REGULATION and purse strings are still control.
According to the Royal Charter, the BBC must maintain impartiality.
Look at the various posts on BishopHill”s blog about the connections between CRU, the Tyndall Centre, and the BBC science editors. These connections go back to the early 2000s.
The BBC is threshing their charter and has been – still is the main propaganda outlet for AGW. And that is what the British public has been spoon-fed for nearly a decade.
The Governments? Pah. They’ve supped from the same propaganda spoon, which isn’t that surprising, seeing that the Government Department for Environment is in cahoots with CRU as well.
And we in the UK are made to pay turlough the nose for all this, especially the policies based on this.
The scientific scandals and the bent personalities pale into insignificance when shrugged against the lives lost last winter, and those which will be lost this winter because our pensioners can either heat a room or eat.
kuhnkat,
If you are including BBC journalists as part of the government WRT a supposed plot between scientists and governments then I don’t think it is a meaningless distinction. I certainly don’t think the Government particularly sees the BBC as on its side in general.
Viv,
The BBC is supposed to be politically impartial. It has no duty to be impartial between real science and junk science.
Andrew,
what you THINK and what the BBC reporters are alledgedly supposed to be doing or be is not evidence of what has actually been happening.
Would you like to present any evidence to us that might change our view of what the BBC and the gubmint in the UK and the BBC reporters have been doing for the last, say, 30 years??
kuhnkat,
I assume you are in the US? I’m in the UK and so am pretty familiar with the totality of the BBC’s coverage of scientific issues over the last 30 years, and our government’s approach to them.
What I see our government doing is accepting the mainstream scientific position, which is surely what one would expect, I would be more concerned if our government was making policy based on contentious minority views.
Similarly with the BBC, one would expect their scientific coverage to generally (but not exclusively) reflect mainstream scientific views, whilst highlighting significant differences of of opinion where they exist, which it does in my view. And if they need to take advice on their scientific coverage I would expect them to consult experts in the relevant fields.
Andrew,
What you and most others of the (C)AGW faithful seem to be blissfully unaware of is the extreme bias represented by ‘consensus’.
Anyone who has been trained in any real scientific discipline will be able to recognise the shortcomings of post-modern climate science.
Peer-review has morphed into pal-review in the case of climate science.
Proper peer-review is intended to guard against flawed studies being published.
Proper peer-review should ensure that ALL possible avenues of “fudging” have been precluded including all sources of bias (e.g. selection bias), data errors, inappropriate statistical methods, unverified and non-validated computer models, incomplete/irrelevant/out-of-date references, etc.
Manifestly this has NOT been done with any consistent rigour in climate science.
In the case of the IPCC the deficiencies have been documented in the IAC Review
http://reviewipcc.interacademycouncil.net/report.html
If you have not yet read this you really should take the time to do so.
Given the economic ramifications of the ‘remedies’ recommended by the IPCC its ‘assessment report’ should have been a formal evaluation of the type we expect from government regulatory agencies. Instead, we got an uncritical acceptance of the ‘consensus’ view with an overdose of self-referencing (while we are on the subject of confirmation bias).
The fact that IPCC has been allowed to operate in this fashion for more than 2 decades is a searing indictment of the lack of due diligence on the part of the UN and the sponsor governments.
Meanwhile in Durban they have Consensus! A decision has been reached! A binding agreement has been made! …Although its only on the first order of business, where the next stop on the “travelling circus” will be…
“The 2012 UN Climate Change Conference, COP 18/CMP 8 (the 18th Conference of Parties to the UNFCCC, plus the 8th session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol), will take place in Qatar from 26 November to 7 December 2012.”
http://unfccc.int/files/press/news_room/unfccc_in_the_press/application/pdf/pr20112911_cop18.pdf
This thread is nearly unreadable. I am reminded of the Paris peace talks where months were taken debating the shape of the table to be used.
At some point, Dr Curry may need to decree that certain topics/arguments/opinions are just off limits. Not because they aren’t debatable, but because the same people comment about them ad nauseum in every thread.
There are people with interesting points to make that a lot of us would like to read. But wading through dozens or hundreds of “did not/did so” takes way too much time.
Durban will be the end of Kyoto.
More specifically, if Durban fails (as it will) then extending Kyoto without a gap becomes impossible. The next COP will mark the expiration of the Protocol. The only question is will the MSM recognize that Kyoto is dead now, or wait a year?
This group has no interest in this issue, apparently.
If anyone is interested i following the Durban game in its native language of UN-speak, there is daily coverage here: http://www.iisd.ca/climate/cop17/
Mind you there are a lot of code words. The “In the corridors” section is most useful. Here is a paragraph for the flavor:
“Delegates settled into an intensive schedule for the week
as they completed their initial consideration in plenary of the
agendas of the COP, COP/MOP, AWGs and SBs, and started
moving their discussions into numerous contact groups and
informal consultations. Observers highlighted a heavy workload
that includes both various “technical” matters (including
agenda items under the SBs, and operationalizing the Cancun
outcomes), as well as “political” issues relating to the future
of the Kyoto Protocol and a possible roadmap towards a future
agreement.”
David,
Reality was the end of Kyoto:
It was a pointless treaty no one actually followed. Even if followed Kyoto would have done nothing to change the climate, even if the underlying consensus views on CO2 sensitivity were correct. And it would have cost an insane amount of money to achieve its non-functional goal.
Sorry hunter, I guess I did not realize that international treaties were pointless. I wasted my time writing 14 anti-Kyoto op-eds. If only I had heard from you sooner, and the rest of the world likewise. We could all have done something useful.
Listen up people, this game is not over.
David,
In no way did I say the game was over.
To paraphrse W. Churchill, this not the beginning of the end, but is the end of the beginning.
The lure of AGW as a faith is too strong for many.
I was not seeking to disparage your point about Kyoto but rather to add a perspective that Kyoto, like Rio, Bali, Cancun, etc. are all going to fail because what they seek to do not only is not feasible to achieve in terms of CO2 but also because it will not change the climate.
The AGW movement in their treaty negotiations are agreeing on how to organize angel dances on the heads of pins and hoping nobody will look too closely.
Canada’s pulling out of Kyoto and I don’t see any other signatories sacrificing their economies to step up and make actual reductions.
China seems to think they can play a shell game with emissions intensity vs actual emissions. I think it’s pretty cynical of the WWF and other folks cheering China on who will actually be increasing emissions greatly over the years when their stated cause is to reduce total emissions. Maybe net emissions doesn’t matter?
So far the game isn’t over, you are correct. It’s a matter of trying to get competing economies to your country to take on a burden on industry by having them self-impose energy taxes.
Whether the ‘international community’ makes Canada enough of a pariah for pulling out of the agreement to start imposing global sanctions will be a sign of whether the treaty actually has teeth or is a toothless yappy dog.
Gullible Gillard’s government in Australia has indeed imposed legislation to implement a self-destructive carbon tax – after repeatedly lying to the electorate in the week before the election.
CRINGE!!!!!
Judith,
Scientists created certain words that can NEVER be used due to showing of leadership and authoritative knowledge.
We put trust that they are looking for the best information and include ALL parameters in their studies.
This is far from what actually happened. Using generalized theories as gods to bad parameters of exclusion of the smallest details.
These became “interesting” but was NOT included as temperatures are NOT effected by their effects.
Motion was a HUGE mistake to exclude.
I love how people so disposed to believe in AGW are so willing to grasp on to Mann’s creation and cherry picked graph, and are so quick to throw away writings during the MWP and LIA as well as archeological finds and other real world evidence that have been in history books for hundreds of years.
Although it scares me that if history can be so easily rewritten from now on what the academics of the world will do to society. Maybe we will just have to go back to legends and campfire stories to get accurate history.
Nobody that I know of throws away writings about the LIA and the MWP.
……. apart from Mann perhaps.
Future to the past composed.
=============
This is a post I made on RealClimate
If we examine the motives leading to the release of these emails it is clear that the purpose is to influence the general public and lead them to a guilty verdict of Climate Scientists. The accusation being that they have acted fraudulently.
What they have presented as evidence is all circumstantial and rather thin gruel. Whoever acts on their (climate scientists) behalf will be able in most cases to diminish the evidence or even discredit it altogether line by line.
The problem lies with the sheer weight of the evidence or should I say mass. There are so many emails, each needing to be explained and however well it is done the Jury will be overwhelmed. They will be able to dismiss part of the evidence but will eventually succumb and return a guilty verdict.
[Response: Which is of course why ‘trial by public opinion based on tabloid ‘journalism’ should be ignored.–eric]
I made this post early on and would like to amend the thin gruel line, lots of meat and potatoes have been added since then.
However my point in posting it here is to highlight the arrogance shown in the reply.. In the UK you dismiss the tabloids at your peril when formulating policy.
You’ll find a lot of arrogance at the RC echo chamber. Places like here and the Blackboard are much better for discussion.
Ron Bailey at Masterresource just sent me this link:
http://www.masterresource.org/2011/11/gerald-north-on-climate-modeling-revisited-re-climategate-2-0/
Now he is a perp. What next? A child molester? How do you know he is not telling the truth? The authors of the emails say they are legit. So how do you know differently than the authors?
Interpretation? I guess if you are of the Bill Clinton school of law, you are still trying to figure out the meaning of “is”. But most cognizant people learned that in first grade.
As for “hiding”, that would be an interpretation. We do not know if they are hiding or just choosing to remain anonymous. And if you have not read the analysis by Pointman, I would suggest it. It might answer some of your questions. Unless you are still hung up on the meaning of is.
Phil, you don’t read so good, which is characteristic of readers who take words out of context. For example, in the following e-mail exchange, you might conclude Bill is a sadistic wife beater and should be arrested.
Jim asks Bill : Did you and your wife have fun playing tennis? Were you finally able to win a game?
Bill replies to Jim: I had fun. I beat my wife.
Nice of you to play tennis with your wife. However, I have not taken anything out of context, nor is there a problem with my reading comprehension (your childish taunt of “so’s yours” only works with other children).
So again, I have to ask 2 things. #1 – point out my reading comprehension problem as my post was on point. And #2 – why do you have to continue to not comprehend what you read? I asked several questions before, but I doubt I will, get an answer since your posts always seem to be either a bleating of sheep, or a non-sequitur.
I see you are still struggling with “is”. For those who can comprehend English, I will repeat my post:
Phil, please stop sidestepping my question.
What is your test for “statistically worthless” ?
You did not ask that. In fact, what you said was:
I them had to show all that I am not claiming anything, I merely paraphrased the M&M findings. I know you will not understand this post as you have not understood any of the others. So do you care to answer the question – what part of the word is do you not understand?
Why hasn’t the hacker identified himself? Probably because he fears hacking has consequences, including jail, retaliation, and loss of reputation.
Why hasn’t the hacker released all the e-mails he hacked? Perhaps because an agenda is more important to him than the whole truth.
M. carey,
How many times are you going to repeat your misleading question?
I really think it is a problem with understanding English. I have already directed them to a possible answer to the question, yet as you note, they seem not to have read it. An empty mind is fillable. A closed mind is worse as nothing can get in.
“Why hasn’t the hacker identified himself?” is a misleading question?
I don’t think so, but I suppose hacker huggers might. I wouldn’t put anything past hacker huggers.
M. Carey,
Why should the leaker/hacker/whitleblower ID themselves on your schedule?
Why do you try to create pejoratives? Clearly they do nothing to further your viewpoint, and I would even guess cause some to distance themselves from you that would otherwise agree with you.
Pejoratives are the crutch of the weak minded.
PhilJourdan,
M. Carey demonstrates your point rather well.
M. carey,
nonexistant persons have extreme difficulty communicating.
Why haven’t the existing people who released the emails released all of them??
You seem to be very confused about what a “hacker” and a “leaker” are. The historic odds favor an insider leaking but it’s still guessing. Then again guessing inspires warmists to commit trillions to imaginary solutions to unproven climate results and fictions targeting carbon producers.
Regardless this is a dead horse; “hackers” unless you have proof.
Hacker huggers would like to think of it as a dead horse. They fear exposure of the hacker. They are afraid of what could be the truth.
I want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Hacker huggers don’t.
You can’t handle the truth.
Would your opinion change if you found that the hacker was a co author with Jones?
steven, if we are going to entertain hypotheticals, I can think up a few. For example, what would you do if you were in the hacker’s shoes?
M.Carey – I think the proper term is duffer. I do not play the game, but that is what I heard.
M. carey,
when you produce evidence that the emails were released by a hacker it may be more interesting to discuss. Sadly, although you insist it was done by a hacker, you cannot seem to produce any evidence that would point to a hacker rather than an insider. Additionally you cannot seem to grasp the point that it makes no difference to most of us legally or morally whether the deed was done by an insider or outsider and what laws may or may not have been broken in the commission, in the context of evaluating information that should have been open to us.
Since it appears that you only wish to argue that since the evidence came from a poisoned well and let the criminals off, it is a waste of time to discuss this with you. You wish to assist people in escaping the reasonable consequences of their actions. Why is this??
You do not want the truth. Your insistence on using pejoratives clearly shows you want to be lied to – as long as the lie is comforting.
I want the entire truth, including the hacker’s identity. You seem to prefer the hacker remain hidden. If so, why?
M.Carey – sorry, no straw for you! I never said whether I want him to remain anonymous or be exposed. I clearly did call you out for your childish name calling. So again, why are you continuing to use pejoratives? What purpose does it serve you? You say you want the truth, yet you run away from it. Instead of seeking it, you clothe yourself in ad hominem attacks, pejoratives and childish name calling.
If you want the truth, seek it with an open mind, and closed mouth. You get into less trouble that way, and do not come off looking immature.
Phil, I want the truth, the whole, and nothing but the truth, including the identity of the hacker and his motive for hacking. It’s that simple. If you are arguing with me about what I want, it must mean you don’t want me to have what I want. Why?
M. Carey – I have no idea what you want – other than what you write. And you write pejoratives, ad hominems and childish taunts. These are the anti-thesis of truth – akin of plugging ones ears all the while yelling “lalalalalala”. I care not if you want motives and names. I only care what you write as that is all I know about you. And what you write is not pretty – just pretty mean.
Phil –
Interesting. You find fault with M. for using pejoratives… OK.
Is that your blog that your name hyperlinks to?
M. carey,
M. carey, why don’t you admit you are a child molester??
“Hacker huggers would like to think of it as a dead horse. They fear exposure of the hacker. They are afraid of what could be the truth.
I want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Hacker huggers don’t.”
Child molester huggers would like to think of it as a dead horse. They fear exposure of the molester. They are afraid of what could be the truth.
I want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Child molester huggers don’t.
Why don’t you admit you are a child molester?
Good God, you hacker backers know no shame.
M. carey,
you appear to be fine with accusations with little evidence. What is wrong with asking you questions? At least I haven’t claimed you ARE a child molester!! Think about it if you have enough capacity left over from your mania.
M, carey,
look at your response again. You are calling me names not even accusing, but, making blunt declarations of my guilt of backing hackers. What evidence do you have that I back hackers? None, yet you are now claiming I personaly are associated with supporting illegal activity. You seem to have no problem with LYING about me. This is what I am trying to get across to you. You are willing to LIE about people you have never met and do not KNOW what they may or may not do just to advance your agenda.
You are like the rest of the Hockey team. Immoral. Your claiming connection to God is a typical leftard move since you were just today making fun of a man’s beliefs. What else are you and your type capable of without even THINKING about how immoral your actions are??
kuhnkat, reading between the lines, it sounds like I may have convinced you the hacker should come out of the closet.
I want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I hope you do too.
M.Carey,
Are you OK? No snark intended. There seems to be something slipping- you were more topical in the past and not depending on child rhymes and circular evasions. Now, it is almost all you do.
I miss the old fire and brimstone M. Carey.
Am I OK? …… hmmm
hunter, now that you mention it, I guess I could have caught the kim disease here. Have you ever had a case of the kims?
The prior distribution suggests leaker: 80% of the time.
I’m not aware of a study showing hackers are leakers 80% of the time. Source?
“The first phase was finally admitting to myself that the science was simply junk; there wasn’t any other word for it. The second phase was realising that even though the science was junk, that wouldn’t stop the madness because at heart, global warming was never about the science. It was always about politics. It doesn’t actually matter if the science is crap. CG1 was a selection of emails aimed at showing the science was crap because at the time, they innocently believed that would be enough to do the job. I feel CG2 is more about showing the dirty politics at work behind the scenes. As people dig into the mountain of emails, I think that’ll become more apparent.”
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2011/11/24/some-thoughts-and-some-questions-about-the-climategate-2-0-release/
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2010/12/17/why-climategate-was-not-a-computer-hack/
Cwon14 – thanks for the links. I read them off an earlier post of yours, and have been referring to them, but have not posted them. M. Carey would do well to read them.
Thank’s for the link to Pointman. He’s a hacker hugger’s hacker hugger. Here are a few of Pointman’s comments about the hacker and the hacker’s helpers:
“We’re very definitely looking at a person driven by integrity and conviction, someone who can’t be bought or sold, either by common coin or by popular recognition.”
“My admiration of them is only tempered by my awe at the escalated level of risk they’ve now decided to take on.”
Pointman sounds like he’s in love. Perhaps when the hackers are behind bars, Pointman can take some cookies to them.
” My admiration of them is only tempered by my awe at the escalated level of risk they’ve now decided to take on.”
Easy. He is an insider and wants to minimize the damage he does to his fellow workers. he sits on all the mails of CRU. The first few thousand didnt do the trick. Now he releases more. This time he is careful to redact personal details. He is obviously torn between getting the changes made that he wants and his personal devotion to his workmates
So, you think he’s a back-stabber? Well, if that’s the case, his career may be in jeopardy. Co-workers and employers want people they can trust.
I’m of the opinion that the leaker works for the CRU as well. And I think that at least a few people at the CRU know who it is. I also think that the leaker is not being caught because the CRU doesn’t want him to be caught. First of all, it would be a huge embarrassment for them to have it be an insider. Second of all, you would never want to put an insider on trial, because the emails may be only a fraction of the dirty laundery that he has at his disposal.
I don’t see any perfect fits myself, but a few things that Briffa has said make me think that he may be a possible candidate. Another possibility is one of the programmers that we see complaining in the comments to the code. But I’m just guessing here.
Publish and retire. Sage advice from the emails.
==============
Tilo, don’t you think the police would see through that?
Tito, your theory is interesting, but I doubt EAU and the police failed to investigated within the University, or have investigated and are covering up.
As long as we are speculating, have you considered the perp or perps may be giving false clues?
Have you considered adultery and/or blackmail could be a part of the case?
I don’t doubt that the police investigated within the CRU. But that doesn’t mean that the people who knew or had suspicions had to help them. And other than conducting a few interviews, I doubt that the police had much to go on. Obviously, the police cannot prosecute someone for saying “I don’t know”, unless they can prove that someone knew. And that is very difficult.
M. carey
So, you think he’s a back-stabber?
Read the emails. Back-stabbing was the name of the game.
bi2hs
That was my thought as well. A hacker wouldn’t be bothered by such details.
The first few thousand didnt do the trick.
What exactly do you claim this supposed leaker for whom you have zero evidence was trying to achieve?
aa,
Now THAT is a funny question.
Thanks for cheering up an otherwise boring evening.
hunter,
No, it’s a serious question. Steven claims that the first release of emails didn’t “do the trick”. I am wondering exactly what Steven thinks the supposed leaker wanted to achieve that wasn’t achieved by the first batch of emails. I mean the motives which we might attribute to a hacker – providing fodder to the “skeptics”, trying to undermine Durban etc. presumably wouldn’t apply, they must have a much more narrow and presumably more noble goal.
aa,
I think the whistleblower will turn out to be someone who, like McIntyre is onboard the basic science, but is astonished by the out of control social miasma that is corrupting those around him or her.
Or this could be a purely personal agenda- a broken heart, an ignroed achievement, a belittled, ignored worker. who knows?
He redacts Briffa’s personal info, but not Mann’s home phone number.
Still works, does it ?
Why hasn’t the leaker revealed themselves?
Very simply because their identity as a whistle blower protected by UK legislation is an additional political weapon. UK government officials were too quick to use the terms “hacking” and “stolen” with regard to the original release of files. One even went so far as to cast aspersions about the intelligence agencies of sovereign nations. If they made these unfounded claims official, the whistle blower can then reveal themselves and deliver a punishing political blow. This is why the Norfolk police are dragging their feet on the investigation. They cannot claim a hacker or a foreign power is responsible when the whistle blower can then reveal themselves subsequent to the announcement. They cannot make a thorough investigation of possible whistle blowers because the UK government doesn’t want that result, for the same reasons you can’t cope with it.
Why hasn’t the leaker revealed all the emails?
Actually they partially have. All the remaining emails liberated in 2009 have been released in a heavily encrypted file of 200,000 emails. Even I have a copy. The key to unlock the emails is part of the “deadman trigger” insurance policy for the leaker. In one of the original emails Dr. Mann talks of referring matters to “higher ups”. Given what has been shown by the 30 or so emails in the recent release referring to the World Bank, you can be sure that these “higher ups” really, really don’t want these 200,000 emails decrypted.
I’m guessing that the UK authorities have already worked out who the leaker is. They just fear the consequences of any action toward that individual.
Yes, little doubt the Tales from the Crypt is a hair-raising horror story. But the leaker is hiding in plain sight AKA The Purloined Letter, and your analysis fits my conjectures.
=================
Andrew Bolt Sunday, November 27, 2011 writes:
“Climategate 2: How to create a global warming scare from nothing”
Why is that that the guys who stick their fingers in their ears while repeating the same foolish claims over and over again tend to be alarmists? This question is snark-free. I really want to know.
It’s a pathology that runs deep in liberal circles. While there are divergent liberals and skeptics who are liberal the heart and soul of AGW is similar to that of an OWS or anti-war rally. Greenpeace, earthday, anti-industrialization, population bomb, academic left, teacher unions, non-profit GSE. AGW is a dogmatic culture of the same stripe. This society hates the production culture even if they are part of it. AGW is a way to self-identify and bond. “Let’s punish those oil people and take their money, they are to blame for the worlds condition.”
I have income from a gas and oil lease, and no one’s trying to punish me. Fear of punishment from liberals may be a symptom of mental illness.
They are trying to punish you. They are just very inept. Anyway, you seem to be the type that would bend over for that kind of punishment.
Don, if you are fishing for an insult, you have to use better bait.
You don’t know the difference between fishing and schooling. You been schooled.
Don, if you want me to insult you, ask me in a nice way, preferably saying “purty please with sugar on it.” Also let me know what kind of insult you want, and I’ll do my best.
i prefer to do the insulting, thank you. But of course, you are ignoring me. I can tell.
You got yours.
lol.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xl6NfQyNLto
Your post explains so much.
ttfn,
Where’s Cindi Lauper when we need her?
================
M. carey –
Fear of punishment from liberals may be a symptom of mental illness.
Yes and ignoring your fear of punishment from liberals may also be a symptom. I’m afraid you’ve got it bad.
Hang in there.
bi2hs
M. carey:
Unless you are a bank president or something similar, the left would much rather attack, “Big Oil”, “Big Business”, “The Military Industrial Complex”. And while they will not attack you directly, if they can shut down your oil lease as a part of shutting down all oil production, they will happily do so. Now, moving from the culture of the left to the subculture of climate change alarmism, if you think that there is no attempt to punish those that pose a threat to their ideology, then you apparently haven’t read the emails.
Tito i’m afraid you swallowed a big dose of right-wing BS. The left doesn’t want to shut down oil and gas production. Some want to limit the drilling of new domestic wells for environmental reasons and so some will be left for future generations, and they do make a good case.
I suspect you are an ideological capitalist rather than a practicing capitalist like myself, so how we think may be very different. I know increases in the supply of natural gas will not benefit me who lesses in a gas producing area, so I welcome environmental opposition to new gas wells in other areas.
Ka-Ching, and some are more equal than others.
========
or to be more precise, a conditioned reflex.
You are not concerned about the environmental effects of fracking I take it? Have any of the water bores/wells in the immediate vicinity of your lease shown any sign of pollution?
According to this
http://co2insanity.com/2011/11/15/new-satellite-data-contradicts-carbon-dioxide-climate-theory/
Industrial US and Europe are net CO2 sinks and just the opposite of what conventional consensus theory as per IPCC claims.
This apparently comes from JAXA.
Anyone seen this before?
Check out this animation:
https://data.gosat.nies.go.jp/GosatBrowseImage/browseImage/XCO2_L3.gif
from:
http://www.gosat.nies.go.jp/index_e.html
It is made with the better observations your link refers to.
This has come up before randomengineer. At this point we are waiting for a confirmation of that chart.
There is also my take on the release at:
http://bittooth.blogspot.com/2011/11/climategate-2-more-unethical-team.html
This tries to put some of the discussion into the overall context of the debate, focussing on a couple of more than usually egregious activities.
I fear no man, and my boss’s bark is worse than her bite. She barks a lot.
M. Carey,
As a sometime troll, myself, with an eye on the competition let me grudgingly acknowledge your achievement. Your cornpone, dumb-butt, screw-loose, zany tear through this thread is something truly new to this blog and, I suspect, the climate blogosphere, generally. No doubt about it, your trollery’s got a goofy, original, unpretentious charm. Quite a relief from the dreadfully-serious, grim, self-important booger-flicking of creep-out bozos like ianash and Robert. Except for a tad bit of over-emphasis on quantity at the expense of quality, it’s good stuff. My compliments, M. Carey.
mike,
The main dogged defenders of the dilapidated Big Climate dogma, Joshua and Robert, are not on duty this evening, so carey is trying to fill in.for them. He is not quite as disingenuously loquacious as those two, but he is resilient. Like a cheap punching bag clown.
http://www.officeplayground.com/Punching-Clown-Inflatable-P1230.aspx?gclid=CKySv7ef4KwCFQhbhwodAXoTnw
Mike, thank you, but it’s addictive, and deep down I feel I should be doing something better with my time.
M. Carey,
I appreciate your candor–it strikes a responsive chord with me. But at its best, I regard trollery as a vital corrective to the blogosphere’s tendency to divide itself up into enclaves of group think. So I would judge the pursuit of quality trolling, especially in the context of an important blog like this one, as a not unworthy use of one’s time.
The trick, of course, is to keep the trollery engaging, lively, interesting, and provocative without letting it degenerate into the sort of brain-dead, dreary, reflexive unpleasantness that characterizes Robert’s pestiferous commentary. And that’s what struck me about your troll-work, M. Carey–it has a folksy, nice-guy sense of humor and a good-fun, self-effacing whimsy to it. While I can see you’re still refining your “schtick”, I think it has great potential as a complement to Josh’s more cerebral approach.
On the other hand, a troll typically deals in rapid-fire engagements with multiple interlocutors and it’s both challenging and draining to keep one’s troll-craft at a high level in such circumstances. All the more reason to pace oneself and choose one’s targets carefully, I would say. For what my thoughts are worth.
I don’t believe that the contributions of trollers serves any useful purpose at all. It takes up time and resources, distracts from the topic at hand and stirs up excess emotions.
Trolls come from both sides of the AGW debate and the best visitors to this blog can do is to generally ignore them and move on to the next post.
I understand and respect that you are convinced of AGW but I sincerely suggest that you use your undoubted debating skills in a more positive way.
Please do
I don’t know if anyone has flagged Matt Ridley’s lecture on Scientific Heresy. Well worth reading. Find it at http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/ridley_rsa.pdf
Quote on global warming: So what’s the problem? The problem is that you can accept all the basic tenets of greenhouse physics and still conclude that the threat of a dangerously large warming is so improbable as to be negligible, while the threat of real harm from climate-mitigation policies is already so high as to be worrying, that the cure is proving far worse than the disease is ever likely to be. Or as I put it once, we may be putting a tourniquet round our necks to stop a nosebleed.
And read his The Rational Optimist
Another interesting reading about Matt Ridley and his book:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2010/jun/18/matt-ridley-rational-optimist-errors
seems as if in preparation for Durban there has been an increase in climate related stories in the mainstream press. A quick look at Google trends shows the increase started back in August and are mostly “it is much worse than we thought so we need to act now to save the planet” stories.
I don’t think Climategate II however has received much attention in the press outside of a few op eds and the majority of those were “nothing to see here move along” stories.
Just for your own edification, you might want to show where anyone is “backing hackers”. Indeed, other than discussing the emails, of which the method of release is still in question, no one seems to have an affinity for or against the agent of the dissemination of the information except you. So perhaps instead of issuing petty pejoratives about “hacker this” or “hacker that”, you might want to examine your own motives for your continued situational ethics where you seem to applaud Assange, but not people who do the same thing for issues you approve of.
Phil,
M. Carey is acting a lot like someone who is desperately trying to avoid dealing with certain unpleasant realizations about his chosen faith.
He is basically trying to do a mantra of rhymes to drown out these issues.
Whatever he is doing, he is not winning converts to his faith,nor is he stopping the progress of the skeptical deconstruction of AGW.
Let him have his fun.
At least he is not a tedious bore like Joshua.
#1 – Reading between the lines is the same thing as claiming telepathy. When did you realize you possessed this attribute?
#2 – You have rejected any truth proffered your way so far, so your last statement rings hollow.
You demand answers and reject them out of hand. You asked what could possibly be the motive, and were given a POSSIBLE explanation. Not THE explanation, but an interesting analysis of the actions so far. And what do you do? revert to childish pejoratives and ad hominems.
I frankly have no idea if Pointman is barking up the wrong tree or dead on. And I frankly do not care, because I did not DEMAND to know the motivations as you did. But when given an option, you plug your ears, start yelling your “huggyhuggyhuggyhuggy” mantra and act again like a spoiled child.
You did not even have the decency to at least evaluate pointman’s thesis.
Just a couple of points of clarification.
#1 – Tilo – not Tito (I doubt he is one of the jackson 5).
#2 – Investigation does not mean resolution. That is why there are unsolved crimes. I am sure they investigated the staff at UEA as well, but since the leaker/hacker has not been exposed, then that tells us they have found nothing – inside or out.
#3 – Perps? Adultery? Blackmail? See those are valid questions. Not exactly Rhodes Scholar ones, but still legitimate. Although I fail to see how adultery(?) would be a motivation. Unless you mean a spurned lover (which does not mean adultery, only an affair).
Back in this thread, we find
“JCH | November 30, 2011 at 9:07 am |
The longterm trend is strongly positive.`
I tried to point out, politely, that JCH has absolutely no science to support the contention that the longterm trend in global temperatures is strongly positive. He was somewhat rude to me. So, rather less politely, I gave some science to show he was wrong. I have waited 24 hours, and nothing from JCH.
I would point out that I use my real name. I live in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and anyone can find out who I am. Assuming JCH is male, he hides behind an alias. We have no idea who he is. Also, it appears he is not man enough to admit he was wrong. Putting together these two ideas, there is only one word that comes to mind.
Coward.
Jim there are many reasons to alias and cowardice generally isn’t one of them. In my case I found most of the places I would comment, being wordpress, would automatically infill my blog identity when I was logged in for work on my “online” machine, so for me to comment with a real name I’d have to erase/retype every time. Eventually I tired of it and I simply go by that ID everywhere.
Meanwhile in my wife’s line of work (which I help with) vending at ren faires and conventions untold numbers of people know us by our character names and have no idea what our real names are, so when I’m logged into the “her work” machine dealing with online queries etc the same automagic infill occurs and I’m simultaneously anonymous and very well known. Everyone in that universe knows my character name, so for me to abuse the system to be a coward I’d have to snark at people using my real name, which of course would confuse the crap out of everyone (hey, who IS that guy, anyway?)
The result is that I wound up with two distinct “personality IDs” straddling two different universes of interest, neither of which is my real name, and neither of which is intended as subterfuge or indicative of wanting to engage in anonymous drive-by snark.
randomengineer. You seem to think I am stupid. I knew that what you wrote is absolutely true, long before I made my comment. My object was simple; to try and get a response from JCH. I have used this tactic on this blog before, and on other blogs. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. What I hope is that I was stupid like a fox. JCH has responded.
He has not, however, responded as I hoped. I hope he will either agree that what he wrote was wrong, or that he will provide some form of data or citation to prove he is right. I would like the latter. If I get the former, all I get is a little staisfaction; if the latter, I would really have learned something new.
Now all I can hope is that JCH will, in fact, respond more fully.
Lol. I’ve apparently broken Judy’s “must reply within 24 hours or there will be a prissy fit” blog rule.
There’s an unstated “link or STFU” rule at play here as with other blogs and I think Jim’s post was the polite and verbose version of this.
How simple life is for some people: they can determine whether or not someone is a “coward” based on whether they assign their full name to comments left on a blog.
Of course, IMO, calling someone a “coward” on a blog based on whether they assign their name to their posts is not a particularly “courageous” thing to do. But to each his/her own.
Judy makes the rules. If it is her rule that commenters can call somebody a coward after waiting 24 hours for a response, fine with me.
a graph of longterm trends
Looks to me like HadCrut shows .023 per decade for 10 decades, 1850 to 1950 (yellow trend). If you change it to 12 decades it’s .025. If you change it to 13 decades it’s .026. If you change it to 14 decades, it’s .031.
I have waited another 24 hours, and still nothing substantitive from JCH. I must assume that he has absolutely no science and no citation to support his outrageous and wrong claim that there is a strong positive trend for global temperatures; zero, nada, zilch. It would appear that JCH regards himself as a Team player, and on this blog does his best to support The Cause. He can certainly recite the mantra about CAGW. He seems not to be able to realize that when it comes to the science behind the alleged CAGW, we skeptics are “very likely” to be correct.
I was reading John Mashey’s “Deep Climate” site. Bias aside, he seems to do a good job on things like the latest Climategate dump.
I wonder if a guest post (joint with Steve Mosher?) would be informative.
Like the young woman/old hag illusion, often we see what we want. Where is truth, reality? Parsing the emails is hard.
(BTW, I tried to suggest this to him, but, altho he grumbles about, apparently, being banned from WUWT for a day, I was banned years ago, from his site, entirely: straight to the trash heap! So much for his open mind!) …Lady in Red
Much as it pains me – this round goes to M Carey …
… for getting the most response.
What is truly inspiring is he did it with nothing more than inane idiotic taunts and comments.
Why do you all bother to respond to Carey? He’s a classic troll, pretty much by admission, but by responding you all seem to allow him to emit his Ingsoc Team drivel ad nauseam and thereby encourage the tosh he delivers.
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