Embattled UK climate scientist steps down
The embattled director of the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU), Dr. Phil Jones, announced that he will be temporarily standing aside as director. An independent review of his conduct in light of the emails illegally hacked from his computers last month is in progress. In a press release, Professor Jones said: "What is most important is that CRU continues its world leading research with as little interruption and diversion as possible. After a good deal of consideration I have decided that the best way to achieve this is by stepping aside from the Director's role during the course of the independent review and am grateful to the University for agreeing to this. The Review process will have my full support".
The University and the police are investigating the break-in, and it is currently unknown if this was the act of an insider or an external break-in. I think it is highly unlikely this was the work of an insider in a whistle-blower type of action, since a computer at realclimate.org was hacked into the same week (via a computer in Turkey), and the criminal attempted to upload the emails stolen from CRU to the realclimate.org server. This is not the sort of action a whistleblower would do. Dr. Gavin Schmidt of realclimate.org said in a comment yesterday that the CRU break-in appeared to have been done from the outside, into a backup mail server. It is unlikely the hacker acted alone, since hackers aren't typically intimately familiar with the details of the climate change science debate. The emails and code stolen were selectively culled by someone who appeared to have considerable expertise in climate science.
What did Dr. Jones do wrong?
So, what did Dr. Jones do wrong? For starters, he should have confronted the allegations raised by his critics immediately and talked candidly to the press about some of the specific accusations being made. For example, one of the emails contained the statement that he would like to "redefine what the peer-reviewed literature is" to exclude two questionable papers from the IPCC report. Well, that's not something a good scientist should seriously advocate, and is an impossibility, in any case. No one can redefine the peer-reviewed literature, since the rules for this are well-established an not subject to change. When I read the comment in the context it was made, it reads as a joke. There is no discussion in the hacked emails about how to go about redefining the peer-reviewed literature. In the end, the two papers Jones was referring to with this comment, McKitrick and Michaels (2004) and Kalnay and Cai (2003), ended up being cited and discussed in Chapter 2 of the IPCC AR4 report. Those intent on discrediting the science of human-caused global warming are spinning the comment differently, creating a controversy about something that is impossible to do, and was not being seriously suggested. Jones should have immediately spoken up to quash the hype on this comment.
The "trick" to "hide the decline"
Another area of concern is over a graph Dr. Jones helped construct in 1999 showing the "hockey stick" of Earth's surface temperature going back 1,000 years. This graph combined instrumental measurements made since the 1800s with older paleoclimate data (including data from tree rings) to show a continuous 1,000 year record of Earth's temperatures. The paleoclimate data after 1960 show a bogus decline in Earth's temperatures that does not agree with what modern thermometers have been measuring, due to a well-known variation in tree ring thickness as a function of time, referred to as "the decline". Thus, Jones elected to toss out the bogus paleoclimate data (using a "trick" to "hide the decline") rather than present it in the graph. The graph was not properly labeled to show this was done, so viewers of the graph would have had needed to be familiar with a 1998 paper published in Nature or the 1999 paper referenced in the caption on the graph, which explained this well-known data issue. The graph that Jones used his "trick" on was put into a 1999 report called the "WMO Statement on the Status of the Global Climate". The report was given to policy makers, but was never published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. No reputable climate scientist believes that the paleoclimate data since 1960 is of higher quality than the instrumental record (this is discussed in detail in Chapter 6 of the 2007 IPCC report). In order to make the "hokey stick" graph less confusing, removing "the decline" from the tree ring data is a reasonable thing to do--provided one labels the graph properly. The graph was not properly labeled. Does Jones' "trick" and failure to properly label the graph constitute data falsification, or was it merely sloppy science? The hacked emails contain no suggestions that the "trick" was done to intentionally fool people, and the "trick" never appeared in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, including the IPCC reports. In Dr. Jones' words, "This is well-known and is called the "decline" or "divergence". The use of the term "hiding the decline" was in an email written in haste. CRU has not sought to hide the decline. Indeed, CRU has published a number of articles that both illustrate, and discuss the implications of, this recent tree-ring decline, including the article that is listed in the legend of the WMO Statement figure".
Figure 1. The WMO 1999 "hockey stick" figure (top) with climate reconstructions and instrumental temperatures merged, and a version (bottom) with the climate reconstructions (coloured) and instrumental temperatures (annual & summer in black) shown separately. Note "the decline" in the temperature obtained from tree ring data (green curve) in the bottom curve. Image credit: University of East Anglia.
Global warming contrarians are spinning the "trick" as reason to discredit the "hockey stick", claiming that the data was falsified to hide the fact that tree rings were telling the real story. Since the hockey stick was falsified, some claim, the entire science behind human-caused global warming needs to be questioned. This is plain ludicrous. The graph was never published in a scientific journal. Several updated versions of the "hockey stick" graph have been published in the ten years since the disputed graph was produced, and the "hockey stick" can be reproduced in essentially the same form excluding the controversial tree rings, using other paleoclimate data such as boreholes (See Mann et al., 2008, Figure 2). Furthermore, the peer-reviewed science supporting human-caused global warming is not based solely upon the "hockey stick" and the CRU data used for the last 150 years of the hockey stick graph. There are three separate data sets of global temperatures maintained by NASA, the CRU, and NOAA's National Climatic Data Center, that all show essentially the same global warming. We also have evidence from nature herself in the form of plants and animals expanding their ranges poleward, the record loss of Arctic sea ice in 2007 and record loss of multi-year Arctic sea ice this year, the shrinking of mountain glaciers, reductions in the length of freeze season in many Northern Hemisphere lakes and rivers, the shifting of spring blooms earlier in most regions of the world, and on and on and on. Again, Jones should have spoken up immediately to kill the ridiculous hype being pushed by global warming contrarians about the importance of a 10-year old graph that is now scientifically irrelevant, and was never published.
Figure 2. The "hockey stick" of global temperature anomalies since 300 A.D., as published in a 2008 paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Mann et al.. Even if one excludes tree rings (blue curve), the hockey stick looks the same.
Resistance to releasing data to other researchers
The hacked emails also show that Dr. Jones resisted releasing his data to contrarians and urged others to delete emails regarding Freedom Of Information (FOI) related requests. Many countries protect their weather data under an international agreement called World Meteorological Organization Resolution 40, which prohibits the data from being made public (this is why wunderground can't give out the UKMET model forecasts on our web site, for example). About 5% of the CRU data fell in that category, making release illegal. However, deleting emails related to FOI requests is inadvisable and implies one has something to hide. The investigation should certainly pursue the issue of whether Dr. Jones properly handled the requests to turn over his data to outside researchers. Ideally, weather data documenting Earth's climate history should be free to everyone on the planet (I am not a big fan of WMO Resolution 40). However, another aspect to this issue is the time it takes for the scientists involved to prepare the data for release. Large, complicated data sets require extensive documentation and access to related computer codes in order to process them, and making the data available to every amateur investigator interested in the data puts an unfair burden on the scientists who maintain the data sets. In particular, an amateur climate science investigator named Stephen McIntyre, who runs the web site Climate Audit, has created such an issue. McIntyre, a retired mining executive and an investor, is not a professional scientist, but has been successful identifying several technical errors made in the published literature. He has also generated a huge amount of misleading and incorrect information over the years, and has done a tremendous amount of damage to the understanding of climate science. McIntyre is intent on discrediting the science of human-caused global warming--presumably for ideological reasons, since he has no obvious ties to the fossil fuel industry--and has generated a large number of Freedom of Information requests to further his cause. One of the hacked emails, from Dr. Ben Santer, complained that McIntyre's FOI requests were intrusive and unreasonable with no scientific justification or explanation given, and appeared to be a calculated strategy to divert Santer's attention and focus away from research. It's worth reading Santer's reaction to the hacked email affair to learn more. Given such tactics by McIntyre, Dr. Jones' resistance to FOI requests from McIntyre is understandable, but appears to have been poorly handled.
The science of human-caused global warming remains unaffected
None of the hacked emails reveal any conspiracy to publish falsified or "fudged" material in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. The science of human-caused global warming will require no revision as a result of this affair. Baseless accusations of fraud, data manipulation, and conspiracy against climate change scientists stemming from the hacked emails are being massively hyped by the Manufactured Doubt industry in an effort to discredit climate scientists, since no flaw with the science can be found. Most of the public is in no position to distinguish good science from bad, so if you can create doubt, uncertainty, and confusion, you can win--or at least buy time, lots of it. The hacked email affair is all about politics, not science. Dr. Jones is an excellent scientist, but unfortunately was over-matched as a politician. It was hardly a fair fight--one scientist against the political might of the mightiest PR campaign against science ever waged, armed with some selectively culled stolen emails taken out of context.
Other posts in this series
The Manufactured Doubt industry and the hacked email controversy
Is more CO2 beneficial for Earth's ecosystems?
Next post
I'm working on a post called, "Don't shoot the messenger", and plan to run this Sunday or Monday.
Our Climate Change expert, Dr. Ricky Rood, will be in Copenhagen for Monday's start to the crucial COP15 climate change treaty negotiations. Be sure to tune into his blog for updates on the talks. Wunderground has provided financial support for several University of Michigan students to attend the talks, and I may be featuring portions of their blogs over the coming weeks.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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You tell him, Amy!
And with that, I'm out...going home to the Floodman! :)
Ahh, but you parried...
What percent of our last-50-years temperature trend is attributable to cleaner particulate emissions?
No way could one claim that the surface instrumentation downwind of, say, Pittsburgh from 1950 to now wouldn't be partly influenced the diminished scattering of incoming sunlight in the atmosphere. Simply not possible.
I think this is a very important question. We cannot attribute trend A to forcing Y if forcing X has not been accounted for in the measurements.
I fail to see the redundancy in RitaEvac's posts. The snow event for Houston is a MAJOR event for the area, and completely appropriate for this blog, especially considering how many here live in the Houston area.
Also... please note that quite a few of the GW-related posts are redundant, and some are even confrontational. (not necessarily yours, but I've seen quite a few).
In other words... pot, meet kettle.
A Simple Proof that Global Warming is not Man-made
Written by Dr. David Evans
Wednesday, 02 December 2009
WOO! New Orleans are better get some otherwise im going north!!
Welcome to the blog? What I find more amusing is that quite frequently, many of these selective trolls are some of the most uninformed/misinformed people I have had the displeasure of conversing with.
1. radar has to show echos
2. where are the echos/and intensity
3. is the air column cooling as expected
4. will today's sun keep ground too warm for accumalation
5.how long does event last
6. will pandomonium take place tomm in the south
No way could one claim that the surface instrumentation downwind of, say, Pittsburgh from 1950 to now wouldn't be partly influenced the diminished scattering of incoming sunlight in the atmosphere. Simply not possible.
A stochastic analysis of them renders explanations and predictions that look more like probability clouds than point blank results. Also, the evolution of these cycles is not linear.
May be, in the big scheme of things, the hockey stick spike after the little ice age is not the biggest thing but is too important to ignore.
I'm an economist and managed hedge funds for a long time. We deal with the most advanced math available to science. When I see graphs like these, with NASA, NOAA and CRU data, I would certainly pay serious attention.
I do not want to sound elitist but, Science has become so complex and technical that is almost impossible to be a renaissance man and understand everything and be versed on it.
Plato once said that Democracy was the weakest of the government systems because most people were not philosophers. This seems to be holding today and the big interests (I am in the middle of them) have a big time party.
Interestingly, our founding fathers never mention the word Democracy in the nation's originating docs and, in order for the 'we the people' to hold, created a complex and relatively inefficient government structure, with checks and balances and a representative democracy, fight of factions and balance of interests doctrines. Then, most people were illiterate.
Now, the body of knowledge is too big for anyone to have a big hold on it, and these relative ignorance is the food that feeds the propaganda machines of the special interests, which have the actual legal obligation of making profits or face criminal and civil charges.
In the absence of economic means for other factions to protect society from results from the fiduciary obligations of the corporate side of the special interests, our government intervenes, as the ultimate risk manager, so a neutral balance occurs (at least in theory). That's why, in part, we fund independent scientific research.
Nada for New Orleans ahh..
Statement as of 5:32 PM EST on December 3, 2009
... Record high temperature set at Fort Lauderdale today...
The maximum temperature today at Fort Lauderdale international
Airport reached 89 degrees at 1:40 PM EST. This breaks the record
high temperature for December 3rd... previously 87 degrees set in
1921. This also is just one degree shy of tying the all time record
high temperature for the month of December... which is 90 degrees set
on December 8, 1919.
Fear Not! The meteorologists and computer models are in decent agreement that there will be a "decent snow storm" for portions of your CWA. Be sure and take plenty of pictures and post those "bad boys" online for us all to see :0)!
I don't know you yet, but gosh you are interesting -- in a good way.
Me, I'm a total dilettante, jack of all trades but master of none. They call us Communication majors, lol. You know what I'm good at? Finding the experts who know what they're talking about, so I can consult with them. And trying to balance the panel discussion!
Anyway, I liked your posts and think it's good to have a lot of different perspectives and fields of expertise represented here.
Back to the weather. Happy snow you cr-azy southerners! Maybe you'll see some at Fed-Ex field on Sunday. I'm afraid you won't see much of a game :(
"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."
- Winston Churchill
"Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried."
- Winston Churchill
This is an example of why I really love this Blog.
:(
If their data and interpretations were rock solid, they would be on us like stink on dog doodoo, demanding we look at the data and prove them wrong. They would be showing us the RAW data and the math that was used to reach their conclusions. Rubbing it in our noses that they were right and we were out in left field.
Instead, they hide the data behind bogus claims of proprietary concerns and refuse to let a true debate ensue. They data is 'homogenized' which means it has been modified and that is simply not scientific.
It is like taking 2 + 2 and insisting that it actually is equal to 3 or 5 and defending their position that they have the formula to prove it...only thing is, they refuse to give us the formula to evaluate.
There is only one conclusion, they know they done 'biffed up' and to save face, they are blindly standing behind a hoax. The release of those e-mails is a sign that the wall is beginning to crumble as more and more of the scientists are becoming uncomfortable with the possibility that their names might actually be found to be on the wrong side of the truth.
heheheh
If you still love me you know what I want!
"As the Wheel Turns...Pottery's Diary"
Episode ?
Guess it better be blog or weather related, sigh. I know you can do it, in my expert-consulting kind of way!
Abnormal tides reported in northern Tasmania last week are being attributed to a rare atmospheric disturbance, known as a meteo-tsunami.
The Weather Bureau took several calls from people in Stanley, Port Sorell and Bridport who noticed particularly high and fast moving tides on November the 22nd.
The bureau says it was caused by a rare rissaga, or meteo-tsunami, but spokesman Brendan McMahon says it is not known what triggered the event.
"Unlike the conventional tsunami which we've come to know which is produced by a seismic activity, so an undersea earthquake or some sort of earthquake...this is produced by an atmospheric phenomenon."
"So a deep low pressure system, the passage of a front moving through quite vigorously."
Bridport shack owner Tony Power witnessed the event.
He says in a matter of minutes the tide came up to his shack and then went back out dragging two trees with it.
"I reckon within 10 minutes it was up over the sand bar coming towards us," he said.
"Fairly forceful, you probably wouldn't have stood up in it.
"It was pretty strange and eerie because you sort of didn't know how far it was going to come.
"We didn't know whether to retreat to higher ground."
- ABC
A cool southerly wind change which affected southern Australia last weekend has finally made an impact in the northern tropics, leading to record low temperatures.
At about sunrise this morning both Borroloola and Nhulunbuy in the Northern Territory Gulf Country dipped below 20 degrees, both breaking December low temperature records.
For Nhulunbuy this is the first time below 20 degrees in December since 1969, when the previous record was set. For Borroloola this is the first time in December in at least 15 years.
The southerly wind change was dry enough to rid the tropical air of much of its moisture. This allowed the temperature to fall five-or-six degrees below the long-term average overnight and early this morning.
The change is having a lesser effect on the western Top End where Darwin dipped to 23.9 this morning, only 1.4 below the average.
But with drier air still to come for Darwin, tomorrow morning may be slightly cooler.
For the Gulf Country and anywhere to the south, nights and mornings will be warming up due to winds tending more northeasterly.
- Weatherzone
Kind of like snow in Texas or maybe N.O. before the Northeast U.S. Except more dangerous.
:)
Well, Awake, are saying you like franciscolopezus, more! And by the way folks, he is not nor was not ever a student of mine. Just someone who writes in a similar style.
maybe...but I still love you, man!
:)
By SETH BORENSTEIN,
AP Science Writer Thu Dec 3, 9:17 am ET
I can't even make myself read it, but if anyone wants to, knock yourself out.
Link
Obama science advisers grilled over hacked e-mails
what kind of a carbon footprint is that gonna make?
Through a microscope
ok, ya'll, I need a favor. Well really, EmmyRose does.
Bridge information for the Houston/Galveston area. Need an update on closures, as they happen, or if you know of times they might happen.
Most specifically: 610 to 45 to Galveston, and the Beltway 8 to 45.
I obviously have no idea what I'm talking about, so those of you who can make sense of this, I thank you.
Please wu-mail me, as I am busy making candy, etc.
Thank you all very much.
GROTHAR!! No one could ever replace you!
Oh, Amy, you have SO many admirers!
"Pot" hasn't even written a diary entry for me yet...he darn well better be working on it, lol.
Grothar, our baby boy TornadoDude needs some Surge or Urge soda, lol, what a name.
The only place they still sell it is NORWAY!
Hook the boy up, would ya?
You would NOT believe what they say it goes for on E-Bay! (Note to self, hmmm, pretty good profit in that, no prescription needed...)
can't he just get some Jolt Cola?
Here my dear!
http://www.houstontranstar.org/
LINK BELOW:
Link
The hearing was supposed to focus on the latest in global warming scientific findings. Lubchenco even attempted a high school chemistry lesson with two quick experiments at the witness table. Donning one rubber glove, she demonstrated how adding carbon dioxide to water made it more acidic and said that is what's now happening in the world's oceans. Then she put chalk in acidic water compounds and showed it dissolving a bit, to demonstrate what will happen eventually to vital sea life.
Of course anyone who knows a thing about climate knows, this is TOO simplistic of an experiment to try and prove a PLANETARY phenomenon. It neglects all the other variables in NATURE, that play a role in ocean acidity...This is more proof that AGW is a juvenile stupid lie...
You will have to pry the snow shovels from our dead frozen texan fingers before we ever believe again. Remember the Alamo!
http://www.dot.state.tx.us/travel/road_conditions.htm
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/hgx/misc.htm
You can sign up for mobile web or e-mail alerts on this one; sign EmmyRose up so you can make candy! I will WU mail you this.
http://traffic.houstontranstar.org/layers/
Speaking of...gotta make dinner!
I had to look it up; it has some cr-azy Wiki history!
Heck, you know I thought Red Bull and Vodka.
Then I remembered how old he was.
Things were WAY different when I was 18.
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